If everyone you talk to says, "I wouldn’t use this service if you paid me in gold-plated puppies" then you really should consider that your service may have a problem.
No, you should consider that you're talking to the wrong people.
You might be talking to people in the wrong audience. If you asked me about, say, Gilt Groupe, I'd recommend setting it on fire. But that's because I'm a big nerd, and I think "luxury goods" are for idiots. I'm not in the market.
If you show your early product to anybody on the right three quarters of that curve, they'll tell you the seven thousand ways your idea is obviously wrong. The first SSDs (circa 1995) were too small, too slow, and too expensive for the mass market. But for military and aviation use, they were golden.
Every product has problems. The trick to startups isn't removing all the problems. It's finding somebody who's happy with early versions despite the problems, and then removing just enough problems that you can sell it to a slightly bigger audience.
The full quote was “I wouldn’t use this service if you paid me in gold-plated puppies… but I think you should be charging $X”. The "... but" part is why their opinion is worthless. And if you base your advice on selective quotation you should really consider whether your advice is worth anything.
I agree completely. It was very clear to me when reading the original that the context is that the person simply has no interest in buying the product no matter what for his own reasons. The selective quoting completely changes the vibe to read that the person deeply despises the product, not that he has no use for it. The use of selective quoting here is dishonest and highly misleading, by intention.
All quoting is selective by definition. I didn't add the end part because frankly its irrelevant. This person is trying figure out pricing. But you need to figure out if this is a product people want at all first. If people are telling you that you couldn't pay them to use it... that IS the big takeaway. You're right to ignore the "but ..." part of the sentence, but not because their pricing information is not valuable -- but rather because they told you the important part in the first half of the sentence.
The fact that the author and you miss this is probably indicative of why we see so much crap software produced with no real audience or use scenario.
Very true. Another possibility to investigate: You are talking to the wrong people. For example, if you are interested in software for managing HR processes, HN might be a great place for architecture advice, but are startups really a useful market to sample for product pricing and features?
It is possible you're talking to the wrong people.
I wonder, though, how you could have designed the right app if you have only been talking to the wrong people?
I mean, the sequence is either - "design an app that you yourself want and that you think is sooo cool that the whole world will want too" or "talk to people different enough from programmers that you need to understand them first to create a great app". The first approach is (caricatured) Steve Jobs, the second approach is Patio11. But it seems if the people you're talking to hate your app, you've failed at either of these approaches.
I hear you, but that's now always true. I wouldn't pay $10 to sign Cam Newton as my quarterback, but my Carolina Panthers just paid millions for him. Just because I don't see the value in something doesn't mean someone else won't.
As an addendum - my company (meaning, me and my staff) ran a basketball showcase over the summer. Players who attended paid on average $125 apiece to play for about 8 hours. Would most people pay that much just to play basketball? Of course not. But I know hundreds of college coaches and my event was featured on the front page of major media outlets. So it was worth it to them - a bargain, actually. Most events are far more than that.
If everyone you talk to says, "I wouldn’t use this service if you paid me in gold-plated puppies" then you really should consider that your service may have a problem.
Hehe, I very much agree :) At the same time - what if 25% or 30% of replies are this negative? I've experienced that on other forums, only to end up making a decent amount of money.
