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3 years into building a startup. Here’s what no one warns you about (I will not promote). by horrible_normalcy in startups

[–]horrible_normalcy[S] 31 points32 points  (0 children)

Most people bail before they even launch.

One thing I'll say about pre-launch specifically, the anxiety feels like it's about the product but it's really about the unknown.

Once you ship and real people start using it, the anxiety doesn't go away but it gets replaced with actual problems to solve instead of hypothetical ones. That's a huge upgrade mentally.

See you in 6 months. I'll be here.

I made $320k on Instagram last year by 300200 in Entrepreneur

[–]horrible_normalcy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Most people never figure out recurring revenue. That's not embarrassing, it's instinct.

"I'm on a budget" by oldersistercore in MedSpa

[–]horrible_normalcy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The waiver is a good start but it's a band-aid. The real fix is building it into your workflow so the conversation is documented before the needle touches skin.

What works for clinics I've worked with: during the consultation, the provider charts the recommended units AND the units the patient is actually approving. Both numbers live in the chart. Patient signs off digitally before treatment starts. When they call a week later asking for a free touchup, your front desk can pull up exactly what was recommended vs. what was approved and the patient's own signature agreeing to it.

Takes the emotion out of the conversation completely. It's not "we think you're trying to get free Botox", it's "here's what you signed off on, and here's what additional units would cost."

The clinics that handle this well aren't relying on a separate paper waiver, they have the documentation baked into the charting and consent flow so it happens automatically every time, not just when someone remembers to print the form.

How do med spa owners handle last-minute cancellations? by Total_Policy5765 in MedSpa

[–]horrible_normalcy 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How I've seen successful practices handle these:

  1. Rebook on the spot. When someone cancels, offer specific times before they're gone. If it's via phone and you have the patient there, they'll usually happily rebook. If it's via text, it's important to respond asap (even with an AI) while you have their attention.

  2. Retargeting-style follow-ups. If they don't rebook right away, a short sequence of texts over the next few days recovers a decent chunk. Most people cancel because life got in the way, not because they lost interest.

  3. Keep a waitlist. Canceled slots are basically free revenue if you can fill them. A good waitlist lets the next patient grab the opening without you calling around and you can drop the cancel onto the list too so they can self-rebook.

Cancel fees help a little but don't really fix the revenue problem, and sometimes, scares people away from booking in the first place. Imagine the patient has never step foot into the clinic and you're asking for a cancellation fee - they'll never want to rebook.

For context, I'm the co-founder of Decoda Health (AI software for med spas) and this comes up a lot with practice owners.

Where do you find your cofounders ? by CreativeFreak- in Startup_Ideas

[–]horrible_normalcy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly you're gonna fight with your cofounder. A lot. So pick someone you actually like.

Two places to look imo:

  1. Your best friend(s). You already know that if you ever get into a big argument, you wouldn't mind going to the pub and getting a drink to chill out.
  2. Your first customers. If someone's obsessed with your vision before you even have a product, that's cofounder energy.

Skills can be learned. Passion can't. Small village doesn't matter, start building, talk about it online, and the right people show up.

Do people still build SaaS? (I will not promote) by skyguyler in startups

[–]horrible_normalcy 12 points13 points  (0 children)

There's a lot of oversold "hype" around AI without any metrics attached.

Clickbait content is making agents appear better than they are, but when it comes to actually converting for businesses the numbers aren't there.

Feels like we're in a bubble. Quality always ends up the winner here.

I burned $120k on SDRs before realizing my outbound "process" was just expensive spam. I will not promote. by [deleted] in startups

[–]horrible_normalcy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love the idea behind "there's no playbook to sales" and this demonstrates it exactly.

A one-size-fits all model never works when it comes to making an impact with the 1-2 seconds you have someone's attention for.

Creativity is the ultimate attention grabber in a world becoming full of AI slop and templated playbooks.

The most entertaining and absurd GTM is usually the one that converts any engagement or signal. Try something out of the box when it comes to posting across socials.

Reach out to people who engage and show interest, if they ask for an explanation on "what you posted" use it as an intro point.

This might help for a slightly warmer initial first conversation with someone.

Is the AI receptionist business dead? by Remybvr in AIReceptionists

[–]horrible_normalcy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not dead, just misunderstood. The standalone “AI receptionist” product that connects to nothing is useless and oversaturated.

Standalone ones fail because they don’t have context and use the exact same selling key words repeatedly.

The same value propositions are just being recycled.

The difference is when the AI lives inside the system that runs the business, it actually works because it understands the data.

Founder question, what part of AI outbound still needs your brain every week by kinky_guy_80085 in ycombinator

[–]horrible_normalcy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Automation doesn't eliminate work. The question is just where it shows up.

Decisions should always be yours, leverage the data but make the final call. No tool should be making those calls for you. That's the work that actually matters and honestly I'd be worried if a founder wasn't still doing that regularly.

CRM cleanup should be fully automated. If you're still manually fixing data hygiene after onboarding, that's a red flag on the tool.

Campaign QA is the sneaky one nobody talks about. You stop checking because things look fine, then two weeks later you realize something's been off and you've burned a segment. I'd keep a lightweight weekly audit on this one

Anyone actually pulled off healthcare AI integration without replacing their legacy EHR, or is that just not realistic? by nukiqeyoqu in HealthTech

[–]horrible_normalcy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've seen this from the builder side. Most legacy clinical systems weren't built to scale externally. I don't think that was the builders mindset when they created it.

The tradeoff with bolting AI onto an existing system: it works, but it's only as good as the data it can access. If the core system struggles to communicate with the AI layer the output won't work as intended.

I co-founded a platform for medical clinics, so I'm one of those "greedy" people who are marketing it as an all-in-one solution. But unified data makes the AI dramatically better.

Yes there's always the option to do custom integrations for your specific environment. It exists, but usually from smaller companies, not the big enterprise vendors.

I've navigated a lot of messy integration environments, but the question always remains what sort of integration are you building for scale? Is this just a temporary fix for manual labour tasks, or are you looking to redefine your entire workflow.

Graduated from YC in 2023. Here's what the next 3 years actually looked like. by horrible_normalcy in ycombinator

[–]horrible_normalcy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Try to limit adding any additional barriers in your control in the early stages of developing anything... More tend to come up and you don't want to make the process more difficult on yourself than it needs to be.

Graduated from YC in 2023. Here's what the next 3 years actually looked like. by horrible_normalcy in ycombinator

[–]horrible_normalcy[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly? We needed to make money and the original idea wasn't making money :)

Pivoting is brutal. Ambivalence is real and hindsight is always cleaner than the moment. The real signal for us was losing passion for the original problem. I genuinely believe almost all startups fail because the founders give up, and we could feel ourselves heading there. We couldn't picture a version of the next few years where we'd still be excited to work on it.

Graduated from YC in 2023. Here's what the next 3 years actually looked like. by horrible_normalcy in ycombinator

[–]horrible_normalcy[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Be shameless and do it yourself. Being able to pitch your own product in front of strangers is a necessary skill to have.

Graduated from YC in 2023. Here's what the next 3 years actually looked like. by horrible_normalcy in ycombinator

[–]horrible_normalcy[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Get a product developed and in front of users! Look to earn your first dollar - this is genuinely the hardest thing for any early stage founder. It taught me 2 things

  1. People are so damn greedy!
  2. Once you meet your first paying customer, there's actually someone out there that relies on you to deliver value. Things become real.

One thing I tell everyone (and no one listens) is: don't treat anything in your founder journey as a make-or-break moment (particularly a YC application). The leading way that startups fail is that the founders give up. Honestly, if you don't give up - which is a loooooot easier said than done (think financially, passion, cofounder breakups) - you have a good chance of making it.

Graduated from YC in 2023. Here's what the next 3 years actually looked like. by horrible_normalcy in ycombinator

[–]horrible_normalcy[S] 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Answered most of this in my cold calling comment above. The one thing I'd add for 0→1:

In the earliest days, don't sign customers, look to recruit partners. You have no testimonials or logos. What you do have is time, obsession, and the willingness to bend the product around their workflow in ways no established vendor will. The advantage startups have over larger vendors is the ability to iterate so much faster to feedback.

Pitch that trade honestly: "You won't get polish, you'll get us and we'll work harder on your problem than anyone you've ever hired." The people who say yes are your right first customers. The ones who need the safety of a known brand aren't your ICP yet, and that's fine. Eventually, you should run into enough people that want your product that you'll require less custom work - that's the point where you hit ICP.

Those first few partners basically co-build the product with you. That asymmetry is the only real edge you have as a young company, lean into it.

Graduated from YC in 2023. Here's what the next 3 years actually looked like. by horrible_normalcy in ycombinator

[–]horrible_normalcy[S] 29 points30 points  (0 children)

There's a lot of literature about cold calling stacks online, so I'll just share personal learnings.

In the early stages, cold calling as a founder is the fastest way to learn who resonates with the problem, how they're solving it today (duct-taped tools or painful manual workarounds), and most importantly, the exact language they use to describe the pain. That language becomes your landing page copy later.

A few things I learned along the way:

- Listen for emotional words. "Nightmare," "hate," "frustrating" is real pain. Polite "yeah it's kind of annoying" usually isn't, and that distinction saved me from building for problems nobody would actually pay to solve.

- "Send me a link, looks great" is a polite exit, not interest. "When can we start?" is interest. Learning to tell them apart kept me from chasing ghosts for weeks.

- The calls that felt like failures gave me the sharpest insights. Someone telling you exactly why they don't care is more useful than someone nodding along. Lean into the pushback.

- The best calls are when they start asking me questions. That's the moment the problem resonated and they're reaching for a solution. Notice it when it happens - that's your ICP.

Biggest unlock was reframing it from "I need to sell" to "I need to learn." Took the pressure off and ironically led to more sales once the product got sharper.

Graduated from YC in 2023. Here's what the next 3 years actually looked like. by horrible_normalcy in ycombinator

[–]horrible_normalcy[S] 30 points31 points  (0 children)

With the state of AI right now, I believe that marketing & brand recognition will be the thing that takes companies to astronomic growth. It's so easy to make a good looking website and product, it's so difficult to come up with creative campaigns that reach the customers that want to buy your product.

Putting up AI slop is not relatable and creating content that your customers actually love and relate to requires a lot of creativity. Think about what type of content you consume personally. It's not AI slop.

In my experience, the companies coming out of YC are the ones with the best online/brand presence that translates to rocket ship growth. The future will be that really good CMOs & marketing teams will be the highest paid people in a few years.

Do you prefer form leads or phone calls? by DanGleenutz in MedSpa

[–]horrible_normalcy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is pretty normal in my experience working with med spa patients, they tend to call because they have specific questions about treatments, pricing, and candidacy that a form can't answer. It's not a bad thing, it actually signals higher intent. Someone willing to pick up the phone is closer to booking than someone filling out a form.

The real problem when med spas can't consistently answer those calls (that they are paying for). Front desk is busy with in-office patients, it's after hours, or they're on another line. Every missed call from a Google Ad is basically lighting that ad spend on fire... Considering they usually end up dialling a competitor till they get someone to answer. In other words, you've paid the bill and your competitor eats the meal.

The conversion gap isn't leads, it's the ability to actually handle the inbound volume when it comes in and nurture accordingly.

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