But then I read they noticed traction because people started submitting pull requests and trying out the code. At that point, they already had some product.
So what are they advocating for? Is it just a different way to look at an MVP? Where you focus on creating something that can test traction instead of creating something that can deliver value?
At this point we started building a working product and the pull requests came a few days after we published a first version of that.
My understanding is they fumbled around in the dark until they found something people might want and later, once they started building it out, they started getting pull requests.
If you want to find traction without a product, I strongly recommend reading "The Mom Test" and following the advice in there - it's going to get you much farther than what this team did. If you don't want to do that, at least follow the often-repeated advice of YC itself for startups:
- Scratch your own itch
- Be in love with the problem
- Talk to potential customers to find what they need, not what they want
Then you can iterate on an MVP like this team did, but hopefully with less wandering and head scratching in the beginning. If your starting goal is "I want to start a startup" and you then go looking for a product to shoehorn into a market, I think you're doing it wrong and you should probably stick with working a day job.
2. Be in love with the problem
3. Talk to potential customers to find what they need, not what they want
What if {{1} ∩ {3}} ∪ {{2} ∩ {3}} = ∅?
That is, what if everything you love to do is not marketable and the solutions to the problems you care about are not marketable either?
> If your starting goal is "I want to start a startup"
My starting goal is "retire by 50 without taking a hit to my six-figure lifestyle".
Achieving it via my technical chops is the only way I know how.
I'm a bad investor and my wife is a spendthrift. It's highly doubtful that we'll get there "the slow way" (e.g. collecting on several corporate real estate investments) by starting at 34.
Don't start a startup then.
> My starting goal is "retire by 50 without taking a hit to my six-figure lifestyle".
Don't start a startup then.
You don't build a startup for income security or to get rich quick.
"...Strangers would star our GitHub repo. One Saturday, whilst I was hiking, my phone started vibrating: Pull requests and issue comments from people trying Nango started flowing in.."
The writing and appearance apart from that would suggest they want to build a startup not just an open source project so i would be hesitant to write a headline like that without even a pricing page.
We have some more details on (future) pricing in the docs but will look into making this more visible on the website. Pricing info: https://docs.nango.dev/license-faq#pricing
I'll admit, I'm used to stories of "I saw problem X, so I founded Y".
But I like their approach of iterating on problems to offer a solution for.
Especially, as the author of WinRAR is no doubt very aware of, people do prefer their problems solved for free, so if you're getting paid, you've found that gap, nice :)
