What's interesting is that he did two things. 1) Spent about $1000 on light meters, domains, logo, upwork. and 2) Talked to a couple people, for free, that made him realize the idea can't work. (This conversation did not use any of the knowledge gained from the $1000 spend.)
In the first few paragraphs, my thought was "hotels have lots of rooms with very different light characteristics, and when you reserve a room, you are not reserving any specific room." I can vet and dump this idea in 5 minutes and $0.
Lo and behold, he found out the same thing after 20 hours and $1000:
> "I called my cousin, who had worked for Hilton for a decade before moving on. She walked me through how important it was for hotels to do room assignments morning-of; having to hold certain rooms was a tremendous impediment to flexibility and efficiency since it’s quite difficult for them to predict which guests are going to show up when and even which guests are going to check out which days sometimes."
Maybe a better title is, "How I played around with light meters for 20 hours and $1000, and then vetted and dumped a startup idea in 5 minutes."
Even if they reserved specific rooms, I'm not sure the logistics of taking all these measurements would be profitable. Its a good idea to not just talk to potential customers quickly, but also do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Although if more founders / investors did that, we wouldn't have all these wonderful SV startups subsidizing our dinners, deliveries, etc. until they go bust.
This person just oozes self-obsession. It's pretty discouraging that people like this are super rich and taking expensive vacations with their entire families.
Is the only way for me to become rich like this person is just to become really conceited and stubborn?
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 17.1 ms ] threadThere is certainly a lesson here.
Lo and behold, he found out the same thing after 20 hours and $1000:
> "I called my cousin, who had worked for Hilton for a decade before moving on. She walked me through how important it was for hotels to do room assignments morning-of; having to hold certain rooms was a tremendous impediment to flexibility and efficiency since it’s quite difficult for them to predict which guests are going to show up when and even which guests are going to check out which days sometimes."
Maybe a better title is, "How I played around with light meters for 20 hours and $1000, and then vetted and dumped a startup idea in 5 minutes."
Even if they reserved specific rooms, I'm not sure the logistics of taking all these measurements would be profitable. Its a good idea to not just talk to potential customers quickly, but also do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Although if more founders / investors did that, we wouldn't have all these wonderful SV startups subsidizing our dinners, deliveries, etc. until they go bust.
Is the only way for me to become rich like this person is just to become really conceited and stubborn?