When good ideas make bad business (tjcx.me)

Article summary

The article discusses a startup that failed to achieve product-market fit, highlighting the importance of creating value for all entities involved in the exchange. The founder's experience and mistakes are shared as a lesson. The article's title, 'When good ideas make bad business', suggests that having a good idea is not enough to guarantee success. The founder's journey and the comments reveal the challenges of navigating the healthcare industry and finding a viable business model.

Main themes

• product-market fit
• healthcare industry challenges
• startup failures
• business model viability
• incentives in healthcare

What commenters say

• Some argue that the founder should have done more market research before quitting their job and that building a side project concurrently with their existing job could have been a better approach. Others believe that the founder's experience, although costly, was valuable and that the opportunity cost of not pursuing the startup would have been higher. The healthcare industry's incentive structure is seen as a major obstacle to improving health outcomes, with some arguing that insurance companies have a financial incentive to keep people healthy, while others claim that their primary goal is to minimize costs. The importance of aligning positive healthcare outcomes with the incentives of those paying for healthcare is also highlighted. Additionally, some commenters suggest that the founder could have targeted a different audience, such as research institutions or pharmaceutical companies, and charged a subscription fee. Others propose that the founder should have tried to get WebMD as an angel investor or partnered with them to promote the site. The role of perverse incentive structures in the healthcare industry is also debated, with some arguing that they are the root cause of the industry's problems, while others see them as a symptom of a larger systemic issue.