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Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

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2101 points jamesjyu | 2 comments | 07 Feb 19 15:28 UTC | HN request time: 1.181s | source
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AznHisoka ◴[07 Feb 19 16:03 UTC] No.19106033[source]▶
I wasn't interested in the emotional story behind this. But I did resonate with 1 line in particular here: "It doesn’t matter how amazing your product is, or how fast you ship features. The market you’re in will determine most of your growth."

This is so true, in my experience. You hit a roadblock in recurring revenue, not because your product doesn't have enough features, or your team sucks, but simply: your market is smaller than you thought.

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ikeboy ◴[07 Feb 19 17:10 UTC] No.19106560[source]▶
The corollary is that you can shift the market you're in and increase growth.

Clickfunnels addresses a slightly different market and has 9 figures of recurring revenue. Partly because they charge a lot more and have a lot more bells and whistles, partly because they have way more intensive marketing, but partly because they're targeting the demographic that wants those bells and whistles over the simplicity of gumroad.

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1. Novashi ◴[07 Feb 19 18:05 UTC] No.19107002[source]▶
That's really more for market leaders. If someone stops by your site and starts comparing it to other businesses and their features, you're not likely to shift the market soon. Even if you do shift the market, you might not get the growth as your well-funded competitors copy your features. It'd have to be some ground-breaking technology that essentially propels you to market leader overnight.
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2. ikeboy ◴[07 Feb 19 18:14 UTC] No.19107060[source]▶
Clickfunnels isn't particularly ground-breaking. I identified what I believe got them to their position.

In many cases, they're attracting customers who would never dream of using gumroad.