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Unicorn Tears
book

Unicorn Tears

by Jamie Pride
January 2018
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
200 pages
3h 48m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Unicorn Tears

CHAPTER 8THE HOLLYWOOD METHOD

Given the fast-growing app economy and the sexiness associated with the building phase, it’s not surprising that most founders rush to develop their technology. They think the startup is the technology. I have a different view. I think of startups rather as business models and the technology is to a certain degree irrelevant.

Let me back this up. Several years ago I worked with a first-time startup founder. He was an expert in his particular field but had never before built a technology product or a startup. Nevertheless, he raised about $1 million in funding — then spent all that money on building his product. He had used an outsourced developer who had essentially responded to every change he made — not an uncommon scenario. At the end of that process the product was terrible, because it didn’t meet the needs of the customer.

After building a product that no one wanted, he had blown all his seed money and he came to me looking for more. I had to confront him with why he was in this situation: ‘Your product is terrible; it doesn’t meet the market need. You won’t get any more funding.’

Basically, his startup went out of business the very next day, which of course had a huge personal impact on him.

His mistake was that he’d spent all his time and money on building an app without any blueprint, without a value proposition, without a business model, and certainly without a prototype. He’d spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on outsourced developers, ...

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ISBN: 9780730348696Purchase book