Ask HN: How to sell my startup transcode.io

I have no experience with video transcoding. But I do run a single founder online business. So hopefully I can help.

We (technical single founders) have a bad habit of spending time developing code while we should be spending time understanding the market and the customer. Running an online business in my experience is 20% coding and 80% customer support and marketing.

My advice is to follow the below steps for 2 weeks.

1. Stop all development work on transcode.io. 2. Remove the message that this is not production ready. If there are some restrictions (e.g. output fixed to 360p), mention them. 3. Setup a Google Adwords account. Run some ads for keywords that potential customers would use. 4. Setup an online chat widget on your site. (e.g. zopim.com). This should not take more than 5 minutes. Be logged into the online chat all day. 5. As potential customers arrive, you can start an online chat with them. Speak to them about how they use transcoding in their business, find their pain points and find out what they are currently using. Try and get people to use your site by handholding them. 6. Email your existing users (40+) or people who have shown interest. Find out the same info from them. 7. If enough customers have the same pain point and you can fix it by adding a feature, add this to your list. Do not start development on this yet.

This will help validate whether transcode.io solves a pain problem for the customers. At the end of two weeks, you will have a better idea about 1. Is transcode.io solving a real pain point. If not, can it? 2. What are my costs of customer acquisition? 3. What is the market size? 4. Is this a sustainable business?

This will help you decide whether to continue working on transcode.io or whether to sell it. Also try and go for some tech/startup events in Calcutta. Who knows - You could meet your business cofounder there.

All the best!

It's no surprise you're demotivated, you've been creating empty work for yourself like an invoicing system and a support system when you don't have any customers. This kind of work does not make your company better and it's so premature it's not even useful.

Launch the paid version and focus on getting customers. Then your work will have meaning and impact and your company will be able to move forward.

I think you just need help on the business side because it sounds promising to me. If you are truly burnt out or you are in financial trouble, then I certainly would recommend to stop. Otherwise, just take a two week break and find someone to help with the business side of things.

I think a lot of the billing stuff can be handled by Stripe or a similar service. For legal, finding a good lawyer is most of the work. After that, they will guide you through the rest.

A few questions:

1. How much do you want for it?

2. How much revenue do you have?

3. Have you found a way to acquire customers?

4. How much will it cost the new owner to get it developed further?