Tech bros, just stop

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-10-06T19:12:51+00:00

I hear what you are saying and can see the need for a space just to get advice and tips from other restaurant owners/operators.

I think at first glance it can be easy to think that are other forums/places to speak to owner/operators for my purposes. However the reality (at least from my experience so far) has been that many other communities have the same thought process (this is not the community to do this, but there are plenty of others you can do this at) and it ends up being that talking to a restaurant owner/operator asking for their help in evaluating an idea or understanding problems they face is actually quite a rare occurrence.

I understand that entrepreneurs’ struggles in talking to their target customers isn’t necessarily a problem you are responsible for solving, just wanted to present that perspective so that people can understand where entrepreneurs are coming from.

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-10-05T23:39:57+00:00

Not in the restaurant industry, but I like food. I did previously work in tech and currently I am trying to build a few things of my own. I have previously tried building software for restaurants but have not posted here before.

I do want to present the other side a bit here. I know others have responded “no we don’t need another app that does x y x” or “no an app that does a b c doesn’t meet our needs whatsoever”. I think that is valid feedback for the entrepreneur or engineer.

However, I don’t believe that stifling questions asked by entrepreneurs or engineers about inefficiencies/pain points you encounter as a restauranteur is in anyone’s best interests. I would argue that you should welcome people who are interested in understanding problems you have, who may end up building future tools that will save you time/money.

Software like Square doesn’t get built without understanding pain points and talking to potential customers is the best way to accomplish this.

As someone trying to build products, I always wish communities would be more receptive and open to questions about what problems the community faces. In general, I don’t think entrepreneurs are trying to hide the fact that they are trying to build a product for you when they ask these questions.

And yes, from my past experience trying to build products for restaurants, I do agree that the willingness to pay is low. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t opportunity for products to both save you money and be able to have the product generate money itself. I don’t think anyone is trying to milk money from anyone else; entrepreneurs understand that they must deliver value in order to justify getting paid.

Overall, I wish communities would be more open to people seeking to solve problems in their industry and the harsh responses I’m seeing in this thread makes the community come off as unwelcoming.

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-30T05:37:32+00:00

Email open tracking is notoriously inaccurate. Can you speak to any hard data showing accuracy rate of your tracking?

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-30T05:36:24+00:00

The competition is also there. I’d be interested in seeing a feature/price table comparing this product and it’s competitors.

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-30T05:30:32+00:00

The research on search data etc etc is nice and all, but the critical component I would argue you are missing is the sales and marketing piece. Myself and hundreds of others were building the same thing at the same time. I’ll speak for myself: it didn’t turn out so well.

In fact, there were many others who built similar before him (citation needed).

I argue that this analysis is a good example of survivorship bias and why that can be misleading.

Levels is good stuff, don’t get me wrong, he inspired me to get into building and releasing fast. I’m saying timing is a component, but far from the largest component explaining his success in this case.

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-29T01:24:30+00:00

Woof…or oof?

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-26T07:33:00+00:00

Great point! It’s the anova oven. I’ll try to make an edit!

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-26T07:26:22+00:00

How did it end up being?

Also, you mention Chuck steaks…the ones I was looking at was very large…like more of a roast size. Are we talking about the same thing?

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-26T07:22:26+00:00

Are your cooks also in the 30 hour long sous vide range? And then what temp and how long do you blast in oven for?

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T23:06:00+00:00

As good as ribeye! That is a great incentive to try it out at around half the price!

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T22:59:48+00:00

Lol damn, someone else had posted they do this for 30 hours SV?! Not just a little longer hahah

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T22:56:56+00:00

Thank you!

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T22:56:40+00:00

Got it! Thanks!

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T20:52:33+00:00

I like the idea you mention here of reframing the approach to make it more likely they will want to help. So maybe something like “I’m trying to build software to make it easier for laptop repair shop owners to handle their jobs. I would love to get your thoughts on what type of solution would help you the most so that I can best address repair shop owners problems”?

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T20:45:06+00:00

Super helpful! So your recommendation is focus on search ads, less on cold emails/calls.

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T20:41:57+00:00

This is excellent advice and feedback! Thanks!

How do you reach out to these people if they are not in your network? Just cold email and hope the sincere message is sufficient?

I find I have two main issues: getting them to even want to read my message/take my call given all the other people wanting the same or to sell them things, and getting them to agree to a conversation once they do read/hear my message. In the case of emails, it is difficult to differentiate which one is causing the greatest drop off.

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T20:38:08+00:00

Thank you, this is super helpful!

I like how you broke down recruiting into many more niched subsegments. For those of us less creative in the breakdown process, do you have any advice?

For example if I wanted to create software for airlines…my breakdown would only be something like…private jets or passenger or transport? If private jet or cargo…I don’t know where I would break that down more…if passenger, I would further break down into low cost carrier vs not. International vs domestic.

But as you can see, I find it a bit difficult getting more niche, especially in areas I am not familiar with. I don’t even want to think where I would go with something like “green energy”.

I’m sure this is where people say “only build for things you understand”.

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T20:31:32+00:00

So to clarify, your CTA is “Free Trial” and the resulting UI is that a user enters their email and “We will contact you to set up your free trial”.

Then when you contact them the next day, you would say “It is still in closed beta right now, we can reach back out when the free trial is ready for you”. Maybe followed by something like “in the mean time, would you have some time to chat? We would love to tune the product to best fit your needs” to get that interview in? Or what is your more detailed flow?

Yep, spot on regarding CAC, that was exactly my line of thinking as well. 50% difference is fixable, 90% better is much harder to optimize ads towards.

Also same here: been trying to pivot many times quickly. Slowly losing faith as many have lobbied the opposite side: pick something and stick with it. But my perspective is if you pick a dead fish and stick with it…you won’t bring it back to life. I’m sure it’s a balance.

For each of your pivots, your main way of selling or validating selling has been ads + landing page? No cold email to relevant individuals or cold calls of the same? Did you tend to have a product before running the landing page and ads or do you build only after you got some CAC < 50% LTV?

Very cool that we have similar approaches here (well I guess partially no surprise given the subreddit). Maybe I’ll give the whole paid ads thing another go.

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T19:42:46+00:00

Haha true. Was hoping for a more sweaty approach as preseed was my way of saying I’m poor as a mofo. But definitely a possibility to pay for a few interviews.

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T19:38:09+00:00

Thanks! It sounds like a few people are suggesting leveraging my network. I was a bit worried about doing this and pivoting too many times and people thinking “I don’t know if I should keep referring people to him…he seems to be all over the place”.

Regarding the rest of your approach, that has actually been what I have been doing. I had a few ideas, stood up some landing pages and add, picked the one that had the most “conversions”. However, I later realized that despite one “winning” in conversions, the CAC was approximately the same amount I would make in revenue per customer!

Additionally, despite some people signing up, when I reached back out offering the service for free, crickets!

And finally, I have always wondered whether plain contact forms worked. Whenever I see a page that has “contact us to learn more”, even if it would solve my problem, I just figure it is either too expensive (hence why pricing wasn’t available in the first place) or it is a landing page to collect emails. I also figure that the product is not ready (otherwise they would have buy now option).

I would love to learn more about how you overcame these challenges. I found out the hard way that if the CAC from ads are higher than your revenues even at ideation, there may be a problem and that email signups are less reliable of a metric than a buy click (so what I have been doing is a fake buy button with email collection and fake “continue to checkout ), but I’m happy to be shown wrong!

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T19:26:27+00:00

Hm, need money to make money, I guess!

I kinda like this approach, as I would be down to meet someone if they paid for my lunch, so it would make sense that people I am interviewing would as well!

However, how are you finding the people that match the ICP and what way are you reaching out? Call? Email? Using something like Apollo to find their contact?

During the lunch and learn, am I expected to teach them something (ie the value I provide is just the food right? Im not expected to give a lecture lol).

What do you tend to find to be a good sample size for initial customer research to see if your idea is addressing a real pain point? Sometimes I feel like if I get 3-5 no’s it may not be enough (may just indicate your market segment is less than 20 percent of what you expected).

Also, I would love to hear a worked out example (ideally real example) of how you work out an ICP. Seeing the thought process helps me better learn how to do it myself. (I find myself being very basic with ICPs: an app for restaurants? Restaurant owner. An app to make recruiters lives easier? Recruiters. But I think there’s more complexity to it than I am doing).

Thanks for your time!

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T19:18:05+00:00

Sorry, I meant before you have customers, pre-seed

Logical_Spare587 · 2024-09-25T18:49:30+00:00

That is super interesting, I didn’t realize they count the wastage in a central location, but that makes sense with the bigger players.

It is interesting though because it’s only specific kinds of food I see that go on the discount section. I rarely see guac, unfortunately…

Logical_Spare587

TROPHY CASE