>Responding to feedback from the ‘wrong’ customers kills so many products/startups.
That's something I wonder about with Show HN. Aren't many of us on HN inherently the 'wrong' customer for any product or service that aspires to be mainstream?
Famously, for example, 10 years back, some of the comments when @dhouston submitted "My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive" [1] pretty strongly indicated 'wrong' customer.
I won't pull out the comments, because: 1. I don't want to make it personal & 2. It's with the benefit of hindsight.
Exactly, powerusers are in many ways actually terrible customers because
1) They are ok with using worse/harder solutions because they know how to use them.
2) They don't like to pay for things.
3) They are much more technically adept than the general population.
4) There aren't that many of them compared to the general population.
5) They skew towards 20-35 years old, white/asian men with good income.
For example, this startup: https://unlockd.com/ pays you (via phone bill discounts) to watch ads on your phone after you unlock it. It had raised $17m as of May. I first thought it was the dumbest idea ever, but then I realized that this was because I would never use it. In fact, I couldn't even see my friends using it. That doesn't mean others might not.
Power-users are not good proxy's for broad markets. But then aren't there markets where power users are the bulk of users and are actually willing to pay?
i agree with you here but sounds like you are mostly talking about "Early Adopters"?
Power users of a product who get deep recurring value from your product are get to analyze. they may be mostly earlier adopters at first but hopefully will grow to be your core customer.
That's something I wonder about with Show HN. Aren't many of us on HN inherently the 'wrong' customer for any product or service that aspires to be mainstream?
Famously, for example, 10 years back, some of the comments when @dhouston submitted "My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive" [1] pretty strongly indicated 'wrong' customer.
I won't pull out the comments, because: 1. I don't want to make it personal & 2. It's with the benefit of hindsight.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863