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Re:Ask HN: How did you start a business? What was the first ... by buttminer on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @02:14PM (#19088686)
The first thing I did was find paying customers, as brudgers mentioned.

There are many many many business ideas that are hard to generate a single dollar of revenue off of because the problem you're solving is not big enough.

I'm in the cannabis point-of-sale space. The problem I was solving was inventory management for a single store I knew. If could help him track his numbers better, that was worth money to him (because he would save money for his business), and he was willing to pay $100/month for that right off the bat.

If I was solving something like, have a cool iPad display to show your products to your customers, that wouldn't be worth any money. It's not solving a big enough problem.

As we scaled, our value propositions shifted from a micro-scale more towards government compliance. Now we charge $500/month because we are solving a bigger problem.

Long story short: find a problem people are willing to pay for. If nobody's willing to pay, that's because the problem isn't big enough.

Re:Ask HN: How did you start a business? What was the first ... by ny8jjang on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @04:45PM (#19090166)
well said sir.