The Harsh Reality of Starting a Business: My Journey with a Neuroanalytics Service
Hello everyone,
My name is Farzam, and I'm a 43-year-old software engineer with a background in game development and cognitive applications. I'm also a husband and a father of two boys. Over the past three years, I've been working tirelessly on creating a Neuroanalytics service for game developers to detect emotion and engagement of testers while playing the games using EEG devices. Despite working part-time jobs to support my family, I managed to put in an estimated 4000 hours of work into creating an MVP of the solution, which includes an SDK (1) that integrates with the games, a desktop application (2) that collects triggers from the SDK and connects to the EEG to collect brain signals, and a cloud-based backend (3) that processes everything to generate a report and provide it to the client. I formed a scientific advisory board from the best in class scientist and with their help I managed to finish the job. I also did a little bit of market research by interviewing some CEOs before starting the project.
Although I had two clients in the past (one of them a returning customer), I charged them very little money, as I only wanted to test if people were willing to pay for such a service. I know the pain points of the game industry, and I believe this service could bring a lot of value to the development process.
However, despite my best efforts, I'm struggling to move the business side forward to generate revenue or raise funding. I've approached a few investors, but they didn't show much interest, mostly because I'm a solo founder and there's not much traction yet. To create some traction, I doubled my effort on the sales (which is absolutely out of my comfort zone) and I've tried marketing efforts by writing articles showcasing the benefits of this service, along with a little bit of advertisement. I've also reached out to lots of other businesses that I thought might be interested in partnering with me to bring in new clients. Although some conversations have been formed, nothing has brought in any revenue, and I don't see anything on the horizon.
I'm feeling very drained, and I'm considering giving up. However, I would appreciate any advice or insight that could help me make a strong decision. Perhaps there's something I'm missing, something I should be focusing on more, or maybe I just need to be patient and not give up too soon. I'm also open to feedback if the quality of service doesn't match the standard level of acceptance from the customer or if there is no market need for such a service. On the other hand, it's also possible that there is no market awareness yet and it's too soon to have such a service. Or maybe I shouldn't have started this project at all, and the whole thing is stupid.
If it helps, you can learn more about my project at https://braintelligence.io.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
This is an amazing product. Please don't give up. Question for you, what is the value proposition of this product?
Thanks for the comment, and I've not given up yet. :D
The USP of the project is to provide game developers with an objective, accurate, and reliable user emotion report. This can help them prevent making bad decisions regarding the product and to help them avoid doing ineffective growth hacking tasks and to be able to maximize the LTV to CAC ratio.
Or at least this is my assumption!
What is the specific feedback you're getting from customers and investors for not wanting to move forward?
The feedback from investors in: more traction is required,
From the customers: they don't end up in the demo meeting (mostly).
this is a super smart product. i guess from my opinion id start with the go to market strategy vs. the product creation. other than a few outliers it seems most successful businesses today start by identifying a customer and then back in to creating the product.
some projects like trends.co and explodingideas.co make this pretty easy i think but yea i think the dynamics of starting a business have changed a bit to being more data driven vs. gut driven. i would apply that, maybe a pivot or something would help...
Hello Eric,
Thanks for the comment.
Actually, this is one of the things which are sad! as I tried to interview as many future clients as before I start the project. All responses were amazing. but when I came back with the service to the same people, they didn't seem to be willing to pay for it. :/
There's a good book about this phenomenon called The Mom Test. Click "Read Sample" to get the gist.
Thanks for sharing, sounds like a very practical and useful book.
so by potential customer i mean have a payment form for your product and have the customer purchase your product prior to it existing. refund them the money then go make the product. that measure real purchase intent. interviews aren't sufficient anymore. most big bootstrapped brands start out via this method so they know there's true buyer intent.
Thanks for sharing this. Never thought about it this way. Probably I should have done that before the start.
It's a cool product for sure! It's absolutely NOT stupid. Most stuff people post here is some trivial app they built as part of some 100 apps in 100 minutes challenge, another keyword analytics service, SEO shit etc. Honestly, most stuff on these forums is garbage. This project, I honestly believe, is NOT that.
Your product is actually interesting, unique, and has a real value proposition - though a challenging one to deliver for sure.
Few questions that came to mind...
[1] Are you selling just the software or the hardware also to monitor the EM emitted? (On the website, there is wearable device that goes on the users head - is it something you buy from a third party or from you?)
[2] Is this product intended to be used during the game development process as part of a user study group? For example, a game studio is developing some level and wants to understand whether the level design is good. The game studio conducts a user study where the participators wear the monitoring hardware to record EM emissions that are later analyzed using your software by the game developer?
Have you reached out to smaller game studios (not AAA ones but also not "indie hacker" style game developers that carry no reputation weight when raising money).
Based on your profile picture, you are obviously familiar with SC2 (we may have even crossed paths on /r/starcraft). Have you reached out to Frost Giant (https://frostgiant.com/)? It is quite well funded and is currently developing a spiritual successor to Starcraft 2 (which you probably already know but just mentioning in case you don't). If you can find just one or two reputable game studios willing to work with you that you can reference, there is much higher likelihood you can get VCs interested.
Have you reached out to VCs such as Lux Capital (Joshe Wolf)? They funded CTRL-labs (I am sure you are familiar with) before Meta acquired it.
Have you reached out to the developers of Kernel (https://www.kernel.com/), who may be interested in partnering with you? I read the founder of Kernel initially also had hard time finding VC backers - though it didn't matter. He was multi millionaire after selling Braintree and funded Kernel to the tune of $50mm himself before VCs joined. So he knows what it's like.
Other ideas...can you train a model (probably not enough data for transformer yet)* to interpret the thoughts into actionable commands...perhaps to control a game character (Counter Strike with your thoughts) or more broadly - PC actions? It would be a very cool demo that has high chance of gaining a lot of media publicity and interest in your company. (I don't think it has to be the most practical..just needs to be "WOW that is cool / novel.")
Hello Ghidra,
Big big thanks to you for your encouraging words (which I read twice) and good points to mention!
I try to answer your questions 1 by 1,
1- I do not produce any EEG hardware. But I tried my best to be compatible with as much EEG hardware as possible (12 till now). So either I run a test and deliver the report to the client. or they buy the hardware and do it by themselves.
2. Technically this can be used at any time, but it's important to have something experience-able. so you can put it to the test with the group or testers. I'm not sure somebody would use this in the concept phase.
Yes, I did approach indie developers or even AA-size studios. Mostly they say it's a good idea but when it's time to take a serious step they are not there anymore (even to integrate the SDK to see a first trial result).
Yes, I'm a big fan of CSII but I never approached Frost Giant or other studios on that scale. But what you just said makes me wonder, that probably I should more effort into chasing the established studios.
I reached out to local VCs only. Abd mostly they are more interested in start-ups with traction and that's where I'm lacking big time.
Also a fan of Blue Print, Kernel, and Brian Jhonson! And yes, I reached out to Kernel. Their device is probably 100 times more expensive than an average device and it might be suitable for clinical approaches. My vision to bring Neuroanalytics to daily life is based on the availability of Consumer-grade devices. But in general, from my point of view, Kernel is next-level tech.
I see your point about the Counter-Strike idea, and I totally agree that I should have an eye-catching sample. Probably doing some collaboration with video game tech YouTubers. Will think about this more.
Thanks again Ghidra, I really appreciate your time.
Hey Farzam,
Are there any other businesses successfully selling this type of product?
Chris
Hi Chris,
Thank you very much for the response.
I try my best to be as objective as possible.
The answer to your question is no, at least not in the game industry.
Although there are other services working in the clinical and healthcare sector, also Neuromarketing services in the advertising industry.
And that's exactly what creates hope for me.
I interviewed with a couple of these services long ago and I noticed there are game developers who are reaching out to them to get the service (ofc they didn't tell me the names but it sounded to me like they were big companies).
There is also another start-up in the game industry that I know of. I don't know exactly how they are doing but, they got their second chuck of funding for 2.5 mil.
That's all I can say.
Hey Farzam,
So, there's promise for your idea but you need to be aware that you're operating in a bit of a grey zone right now.
There isn't really any existing demand for your solution in your target market and this is normally a very bad thing (category creation is a very difficult way to create a successful business - it's inadvisable for 99.9% of startups).
However, that being said, there is existing demand in other industries so it's potentially promising.
You're in a similar situation to a (former - it's now an established company) startup called Drift. They launched an AI chatbot and started selling to marketing and sales professionals which was an underserved market at that time (chatbots were sold to customer service professionals only back when Drift launched).
The best strategy for this situation (as well as any other situation tbh) is to use the same strategy that Drift did - it didn't just sell a solution, it sold a brand-new belief system (a type of belief system that I call a BLUNT belief).
You can check out more information as well as see case studies of startups and companies that used this strategy right here - www.thebluntmethod.com
Hope that helps, let me know if you have any questions.
Best
Chris
Hello Chris,
Thank you very much for the help and guidance. I really appreciate it.
I took a look at the Blunt method, and it sounds not only inspiring but also practical. Will get deeper into it and will get back to you by email.
Thank you very much.
You're very welcome. Glad I could help.
Best
Chris
This is so fake. Sad to see it's getting traction and comments on IH.
Hmmm, You can call my project useless, and I probably won't like what you say, but I'd say; maybe you are right!
But fake? why? :)