I'm pretty sure I'm one of the "growth hacking" guys in this story.
Personally, I don't see this as an accurate description of what happened. We were seriously considering sendwithus and were looking at how to integrate their product. We talked a few times (maybe 4 times?) and definitely saw the value of what they were doing and where they were going.
We also were very transparent about the features we needed to move forward and they gave us a fair time range for when they could deliver them. Originally, we were comfortable with the timeline. Of course, you sometimes want things to be built yesterday and we happened to come across Vero which had all the requested functionality already built. That's what caused the switch.
Hope that clarifies things and honestly, I'm disappointed by the above comment. Anyone who's built something from nothing knows the hustle required and sometimes you have to risk annoying people to prove there's value in what you're doing. There are many examples of this. Here's the most recent one I've seen: HotelTonight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EER3rdWXbNk).
Their ambition isn't limited to the song meanings / annotations market. They wouldn't have raised $15m on that. Look at how they're branching out. PoetryGenius, NewsGenius, etc. They want to annotate the world's information.
That's a huge market and with RG's excellent execution so far (everyone has missteps - remember that), it warrants a $15m bet.
if you have a billion dollar idea or even a million dollar idea, you shouldn't worry about "burning" contacts. You'll have plenty of other people to test with.
If people have enough of a pain point, they'll happily use a google doc. Look at Craigslist. It's god-farking-awful (worse than a google doc), but people still use it to find apartments...
Let me ask you a question. What is the number one thing you need to test to prove the viability of this idea?
He said that you should test it while dedicating minimal resources. In this case, a Google Doc spreadsheet could do the trick. It's a great piece of advice.
Why spend multiple weekends working on building a prototype when you could start testing the idea's viability (virtually) straight away?
$180k is an exorbitant figure. I would question his motives 100%.
A CEO at your stage should be someone who is deeply involved with building and selling the product/business (at this stage, your business is your product). What responsibilities do you envisage him having? Also, how much equity is he looking for?
I'm a FounderFuel alum and I can say with certainty that the data isn't complete. From the first cohort alone, around $2.5m has been raised so far. They're now about to start their third cohort in August.
The messaging on your landing page is very unfocused. As a potential customer, you're asking me to do way too much work to understand your value prop. The benefit to me should be instantly identifiable. A feature is not a benefit...
Happy to chat if you'd like to discuss. Email in profile.
Disagree. Love what I do but it's not all puppies and lollipops. Things can (and do) go wrong on a regular basis and you have to learn how to deal with that reality.
You don't really get a sense for engagement until your product is being used on a large scale. That's the true test for engagement. That's why distribution should come first.
Personally, I don't see this as an accurate description of what happened. We were seriously considering sendwithus and were looking at how to integrate their product. We talked a few times (maybe 4 times?) and definitely saw the value of what they were doing and where they were going.
We also were very transparent about the features we needed to move forward and they gave us a fair time range for when they could deliver them. Originally, we were comfortable with the timeline. Of course, you sometimes want things to be built yesterday and we happened to come across Vero which had all the requested functionality already built. That's what caused the switch.
Hope that clarifies things and honestly, I'm disappointed by the above comment. Anyone who's built something from nothing knows the hustle required and sometimes you have to risk annoying people to prove there's value in what you're doing. There are many examples of this. Here's the most recent one I've seen: HotelTonight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EER3rdWXbNk).