Sean Hsu leads a Q&A on startup fundamentals: testing product demand with fake storefronts, pricing your MVP, hiring designers and marketers, and competing with Chinese manufacturers in hardware and retail automation.
Chapters
So this type of fake store website works great for physical products. But how would you construct the message at the end after a user buys something that is, say, a digital product?
What kind of digital product, for example? Like an app. Like an app? Do you have like a fake download? I don't know how do you count app performance. download page? Like something like— let's see. Something like this? Would that count? I mean, they can click and then you would just provide the feedback for them later, right? Or are you asking for a discount?
No, I'm saying right now if I'm a user, I go onto the site and I'm expecting an app that I just signed up for. With my credit card for, what message would be appropriate to deliver them from this fake door website that would be OK? That wouldn't have them go, oh, they're trying to steal my money, or oh, I just got scammed.
Yeah, so definitely the first thing is the message I typically do is we will not charge your card until the product is available. And you can also consult with your lawyer, but I think that is like—
That's what I'm getting at. Yeah.
With the apps, you can't pay through any way. You have to pay through the App Store anyway. It clicks and says, oh, it's not available now. We'll be back. We'll get back to you. So there's no payment on your website. You can pay on the website, but not on the App Store. You have to go to the App Store and then pay through them. Otherwise, they don't make money.
Yeah. And before you actually charge them, that's like the very bottom line, you are reaching the the boundary of the law. So yeah, in all of my exercises I don't actually charge them, but I'll let them feel like it's charging them. So in this exercise I didn't leave their credit card number because I just don't want to deal with that gray area of the legal thing. But some of my startup friends, they actually do credit card number but don't charge. charge them like 2 weeks before the product will ship.
Couldn't you just say the app is under review, like just find your own app store?
Yeah, that also works.
Do you teach people to do this whole thing?
Well, I—
For people who are non-technical, this is amazing, but do you have anyone like apprentices around you? Do you believe that when we engage them, they can actually do this?
I don't know. I learned this by years, so I don't know how to—
How many of us would pay for someone that you have taught to do this?
Okay, how about this? How much would you pay for one MVP?
One MVP for 5 days, $500.
Yeah, so I don't think that's good. That's a margin of 9 now. No, I think this typically— so I can tell you a lot of details. If you want a professional marketing team to help you to buy the advertise and to fine-tune it, like digital marketers, not in the US, like in other countries, the cheapest I can find so far is $1,800 per month, just advertisement. The website, you can find someone to do probably like $1,500 as well, like the whole design and these kind of details.
Usually the designers don't understand what you described. So the designers want to do the full product, and the more you try to explain what you just explained in a half hour, they go like, no, no, you can't do this. I have to do everything legit. I'm trying to get an MVP out. There are not many people People who have bridged the technical side to the MVP side to the business side and the designer, web designer role. They want to do it perfect.
Yeah, that's classic.
Yeah, of course. That's why I'm trying to find anyone with the right mindset and the technical capability. There are a lot of people who pay for that. It's not as cheap as anything.
I'm trying to find the same. So this is why we need entrepreneurs, right? I don't know what kind of job title fits in this category.
MVP builder.
MVP builder. Yeah, maybe that can be your next startup. Okay, we have time for one more question.
Yeah, sure.
Go for it.
I was going to ask, what do you see as the future of design in 15 years and what will you be doing?
Well, 15 years. So I think— so let's— I'm from hardware and I spent more than 10 years in hardware, but I'm feeling that there's no way to compete hardware in— so hardware includes a lot of design because design is like one of the crucial things in hardware. So I don't feel like Is there any chance that any other country can beat China in hardware? I bought this scale, like a scale you can monitor your weight, for my wife and then just kind of just for fun and then you can have— there's an app to monitor your weight and every details. 2 years ago it was like $299 from iHealth from California. Now it's only $49 from a China company. The app is very, very legit. It's actually $39. $39 now, okay, yeah, it's a lot cheaper. So from hardware side, I don't feel like I'm going to do— I don't feel like hardware is a good competitive anymore. Maybe in another 5 years Apple still have this advantage, but then 5 years, 10 years later, it'll be almost the same. And yeah, that's like— so for myself, to answer your second question, I don't think I will spend more time on hardware. I'm going to do more automation and robotics stuff. So for example, how to automate the MVP build process. Or one of the projects I'm trying to do is how to start creating stories stores with no human in it, like boba tea stores or frozen yogurt stores or like Chipotle, Subway, this kind of stuff. So actually I'm working on a product that actually will replace 80% of the labor in every store. And this kind of— it's a more complex product, not just the hardware, but hardware plus robotics plus design plus everything together. more complex. You can call it AI as well, but so that's what I feel. But for design, there's definitely more HMI design and UI/UX design phase because all these are like HMI design. So even for robot, the interaction with robot is very challenging. And for any products like an app or a digital product, you always need the 2D design like UI/UX. That's what I feel for design. Thank you.
You were saying the design in China will match Apple's?
I feel like the hardware will be very good there. And I don't know, for hardware design, I tried to design IoT products before and there's nothing too much to change. Let's say when you see— so this year we have Apple have their HomePod and Google have their Google whatever. Home stuff, Amazon, all of them are very similar. Even with Apple, it's just going to be like a fancy egg, right? It's not too much different. That is not where design adds the most value at. I think design is more like the process, how you actually validate a feature or what people actually want. The ergonomic and the secret or the magic in design still exist, but that level of existence only happened with like only 1 or 2 designers in the whole planet. So like Jony Ive, he could know like what's going on on iPhone, but like I know Jony Ive's manager. So his name is Robert. He has his own design studio in San Francisco.
What's his name?
So this guy, he actually— when you look at his design, he designed Beats. He designed the Lift logo. When you look at his design, you can feel like the powerful— you can feel the force in it. But other than that kind of level of masterpiece design, most of the designers are just laying out stuff and trying to make things clean. So that's how I feel in design unless someone gets to a point, more than 30 years of experience, they become like the master master. Otherwise, it's not very easy to get difference. Like even at Tesla, there's only one key industrial designer who will call every style, even with websites, products, cars, battery Powerwalls, that kind of stuff.
Cool.
Awesome.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Yeah, feel free to send me your MVP, I can comment on that.
