{"id":41186,"date":"2023-10-20T15:12:12","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/why-startup-founders-need-to-be-wary-of-hijacker-users-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:12:12","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:12:12","slug":"why-startup-founders-need-to-be-wary-of-hijacker-users-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/why-startup-founders-need-to-be-wary-of-hijacker-users-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Why startup founders need to be wary of \u201chijacker\u201d users &#8211; StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"td-post-featured-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"332\" itemprop=\"image\" class=\"entry-thumb\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/crowd-640x332.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"crowd\"><\/div>\n<p>Startup founders can be too heavily influenced by users and need to prevent customers from \u201chijacking\u201d their products, Y Combinator partner Michael Siebel says.<\/p>\n<p>In a post on the Y Combinator blog, Siebel says that founders need to become experts in identifying these \u201chijackers\u201d and resist the urge to alter their product to meet the demands of a few.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you\u2019re just getting started, many startups will take every user they can get,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey have a strong idea of a problem and they want to attract as many users with that problem as possible. Unfortunately when you open up the barn doors you get all sorts of people with all sorts of problems. Some of them will try to hijack your products to solve a problem you didn\u2019t intend to solve.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t have to pivot your business because a customer needs something that you don\u2019t offer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Founders need to have the ability to remain focused on a core offering, rather than trying to please every single user.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the early days by focusing on solving one program really well, you\u2019re betting on making a small amount of people very happy,\u201d Siebel says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you let any user that walks in the door steer the product roadmap you\u2019re going to end up doing a shitty job at half-solving a lot of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While these \u201chijackers\u201d can sometimes identify a potentially lucrative problem to solve, founders need to discuss with each other on what they want their product to offer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSometimes the hijacker users are actually showing you where there\u2019s an even more acute need, an even bigger problem,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut in other cases they are leading you into a trap where you are solving a problem for a smaller group of users or in the worst case, just them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a consulting business and if you are doing a tech startup you don\u2019t want to be in the business of solving one-off problems for users.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBeing good at customer service doesn\u2019t mean serving every potential customer. You should always be courteous with people you can\u2019t serve but you shouldn\u2019t feel bad telling them that you\u2019re focused on solving another problem.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019ll survive and you\u2019ll be much more likely to serve your target customers better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You can read Siebel\u2019s full piece over here.<\/p>\n<p><em>Follow StartupSmart on<\/em> <em>Facebook,<\/em>&nbsp;<em>Twitter,&nbsp;<\/em><em>LinkedIn.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Startup founders can be too heavily influenced by users and need to prevent customers from \u201chijacking\u201d their products, Y Combinator<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41186"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}