Ask HN: Anyone else doing a non-software startup?
My wife and I recently kicked off http://wickhamhousebrand.com to sell men's accessories. Throughout the setup, business development, and so on I've used tons of stuff I've learned from HN in one way or another: culled marketing and business tips from the popular blogs here, developed software for running it using stuff I found out about from HN users, etc.
I'm always interested in people's software startup stories, but I can't help but wonder: is anyone else doing something similar?
Have other resources to share? Interested in some sort of "Getting Real in Other Markets" group or something? I know there have to be others who aren't necessarily doing "The Next Big Social Network 4.0™" but still hang around here for advice and ideas. :)
85 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadCould you add some more payment options? (It may also be worth tracking the number of people who get to the checkout page and then leave)
Please also make the 'more pictures' larger (or have thumbnails of all the photos), as it wasnt too clear at first that there were more. I like how BR does it:
http://bananarepublic.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=35356...
(thumbnails with mouseover)
Other than that, bravo!
Still, I expect to face some similar challenges due to the fact that my initial capital outlay won't be epsilon, unlike with pure software.
[1] That is, divergent from the typical HN startup.
With that said, we are making an iPad app because our customers want our books to read on-the-go for their kids.
Here are some of my thoughts I'd like to share, especially applicable to a non-software startup:
1. Focus on selling. I know you can just tweet it, or FB update it, but selling something is difficult. Giving something away for free is easy. So don’t focus on getting 100,000 page views. Get only 10 visitors, BUT, convert ALL those into paying customers.
2. Most of my customers come from word-of-mouth. So the website is only a gateway for the random customer to come in. The whole-and-soul of my business is taking care of the customer, so that he or she recommends me to someone else. I focus on that, instead of adding a slick new feature to the website. The website, as such, is a MVP... something to keep me floating, till I make some money.
3. There are some big (YC backed) players in my field now. They have a huge lead (and huge money), so I clearly cannot take them on at their game. The only way I can survive, is by differentiating myself and that’s what I’m primarily doing.
Of course we also do it via CrowdSourcing so we're nicely techy, and buzzwordy. But boy is it not a software gig in the traditional sense.
My sites are:
http://www.onedayonejob.com/ http://www.onedayoneinternship.com/ http://www.foundyourcareer.com/
The beautiful think about a content business is that it's much easier to build traffic—especially through SEO. I've seen a ton of employment industry startups fail because they built software that they couldn't market (I'm not sure that the software was very good either).
It's awesome, I've learned a ton, and the firearm industry is met with it's own difficulties.
And in case you are tracking your marketing effectiveness, I first heard about you on the SA forums.
I am a avid reader of HN like you in that the marketing and business tips can be applied to all kinds of businesses!
http://www.getinstantfocus.com
It's been an incredible learning experience in terms of building an ecommerce business from the ground up and putting all of the pieces together.
Plus I got to code a custom CRM for the backend because I couldn't find anything to fit my needs.
But I'm running into the serious limitations of having a physical product business-inventory, shipping, returns, phone support, etc. For example, due to various regulatory and logistical issues I can only sell to the United States, which severely limits my market size...I've had to turn away more than a few Canadians...so I'll be jumping into the SaaS startup world soon.
ECommerce is a LOT of work- for anyone choosing between selling a physical product or software, unless you have an awesome idea I would recommend software- a lot of the issues traditional stores face are automatically taken care of in a webapp.
I know a guy who is a GENIUS at marketing stuff like this. Let me know if you want an introduction.
What made you go into this market? It seems that this is a highly competitive product category.
I use that landing page style because it converts better than anything else I have tested :)
I can join in with www.recojeans.com, sustainable, stylish jeans.
Not an equity founder, but as one of the first employees I have a lot of free reign in planning. HN has been quite useful.
May I suggest you change the color of the top menu text. Thin blue Arial on a gray background is hard to read.
It's profitable and, on most days, pretty fun. :)
I'd love to talk to your friend. :)
It is fun and if business go wrong you can always drink your end product. Ask anything if you like.
spend 50-100x more time on the product features than the website at the outset.
It is actually very similar to software business: start small, create some product, learn from your mistakes and iterate.
You don't need tons of fancy equipment and huge infrastructure from the beginning.
It will be much more better to sell directly, but it is still just kind of hobby as I spent most of my time writting software.
A. Start with a large fortune.
My company is working on that. We're designing a complete precision viticulture analytical tool based on the principles of sustainable organic agriculture (I'm pretty sure everything is headed this direction, it can be done cheaper then petro-based agriculture when managed correctly. I'm curious, as someone involved in vineyard management - do you agree with this idea? Have you noticed increased demand for organic products?)
We're starting with small, boutique vineyards in Northern California. Maybe if yr geographically located you'd like to join our upcoming beta program?
Of course, that doesn't make organic farming pointless. Some people are willing to pay for quality. If organic farming reduces water consumption, there is also the issue that there are parts of the country that don't have unlimited water supplies, and I don't know of any plans to dramatically increase the water supply, other than perhaps there being a small decrease in corn farming as battery powered cars reduce the demand for ethanol to dilute gasoline with.
Our strength is definitely product quality, stemming from our attention to detail, knowledge of theory, and direct ingredient sourcing. Our weaknesses are primarily lack of sufficient initial funding, launching a gourmet product into a weak economy, and our general lack of business savvy. Did I mention that the product is good?
While there are definitely overlaps between the thought process of programming and that of business development, every time I have to deal with a regulatory agency I definitely long for the orderliness of a xterm. Many days I hope that "spend time working on your weaknesses" turns out to be a good long-term personal strategy.
If you're in the Bay Area and like good food, do check us out. We're opening a store in Oakland in the next few weeks, and are at Farmers' Markets from Santa Cruz to Marin. Or if you're a frozen dessert fanatic somewhere else, we ship overnight on dry ice, although the shipping costs can be rather steep.
I also know as we grow, the lines will begin to define themselves between software startup and "real" business (just waiting to run into FCC regulations on clothing tags...egh).
We're enjoying it for now, though. :)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772205
The chairs he builds are really nice though. He does everything by hand. Ex: http://morrellwoodworks.com/wp-content/gallery/double-rocker...
I have to wear a lot of hats, am constantly learning new things, get frequent feedback that I have to use to refine my product, can't do everything so I have to choose what things I'm going to spend effort on and what things can be suboptimal. Release early and release often and I'm playing against better funded often slower moving incumbents.
I have a single investor, so you could imagine that he's the web startup equivalent of an angel or venture capitalist. He's extremely knowledgeable about markets, and we keep open lines of communication about what I'm doing. He trusts that I'm a good founder and that I'm doing my best to capitalize on market opportunities, but he never tells me what to do. However, if I want his advice or access to his resources, he's happy to share.
It isn't HFT in the traditional sense (or maybe not any sense), but I do tend to prefer opportunities that are quantitative in nature and spend a lot of time programming.
Right now I'm making laughably small amounts of money (non-negative, but insufficient to support me), but I'm hoping that that will change soon. Again, very much like a startup -- I take a hit on the salary and stability because I want increased exposure to the success upside. And like a startup, my investor(s) win if I win.
However, I've recently seen an opportunity to join another such "startup" (currently 2 guys) and I'm considering that, which might be the death of my own little trading startup.
"Right now I'm making laughably small amounts of money (non-negative, but insufficient to support me)"
Is this because of lack of volume (i.e., fund too small), or because of algo quality issues? Do you try to compete with the big boys heads-on (in generic stock trading) or do you specialize, trying to add market knowledge to your model?
I guess my question is, do you have purely statistical models or do you try to model process-based, with information from outside the exchange feed?
How do you handle this technically? Do you have direct access to a broker API? Don't the fees kill you on that?
Also selling men's accessories (5+ years now) - send me some emails if you want war stories =)