What is it like to build a startup that “no one needs”?
And why are we still building Assemblio, the online version of your “geek next door”.
A product that no one needs?
The last 6 months were pure hell for a team of 4 young Croatians: we launched a true MVP of our online desktop PC configurator — Assemblio, we prepared and targeted only the local Croatian computer market, we had our first pitch, we felt our first wave of criticism, but also our first wave of praise.
In hindsight, we’ve heard a lot of different criticism, but this sums it up pretty good:
“You are 10 years late — no one needs your product today. The PC market is long dead… why are you building this?”
In all honesty, that’s probably one of the worst things you can hear as a young entrepreneur. It’s cruel, depressing but to us it was a surprising motivation to rethink everything we knew about our product. Or at least everything we thought we know.
We sat one day, discussing similar solutions like PCPartPicker.com and Pangoly, and as one thing led to another, we soon realized that the most of the community feedback we got was really positive. True, at that moment we didn’t have answers to questions like “How we are going to scale this?” and “How many PCs can we sell in Croatia?” but we realized we had something else:
a firm community of hardware enthusiasts, gamers and local tech influencers that strongly challenged us to deliver a platform that can help anyone buy the best PC for their budget
And what a challenge that is! The current Assemblio community (our early adopters and our followers) are not newbie computer users: they are tech savvy forum members, hardware enthusiasts and hardcore gamers.
Their problem is not how to build a good PC, they already know how to do it. Their problems come from the people who ask them to help them build a PC and from other forum members who often challenge them to build a better PC, and thus they lose a lot of time scraping through computer hardware magazines.
And that’s when we decided that we are not building just a product. We are building a platform for others to utilize for their own needs. The problem we tried to solve shifted: we were no longer only building the best PC for a given budget, we were now building tools that enable the hardcore users (our early adopters) to do that much much faster than they did it before.
This is what we what we realized want to make:
Someone builds a PC using Assemblio, sends you the link, you (an expert) tweak it a bit and send it back. The user clicks “buy” -> BANG! He get’s a preassembled PC shipped to his doorstep, containing only the very best of for your budget and usage.
The user gets an amazing PC, the expert gets street credit.
Our favorite view of a new build
The current state of desktop PC market
We were told so many times that the PC market is dead, that we decided to see that for ourselves. We soon realized that the “doomsday statistics” are far off… the PC market lost around 20% in units shipped from 2012 to 2014, but that factor was decreasing every year — mostly because the overall market was growing. The customers were buying tablets as “a small cheap device for the living room/toilet/the kid”, and the hype is coming slowly down.
The PC is still strong and healthy, even though it suffered such a loss in shipping amount.
Don’t believe us? See it for yourself at Gartner.com.
We believe that the trend will continue — tablet sales growth will go flat, but so will the decline in PC sales. PC is still the productivity king, and especially with the Windows 9 on the horizon, we feel like the trends are shifting again.
Note: Although we currently only support desktop PCs and strongly believe they are the best buy computer option you can get, we are preparing Assemblio to handle all kind of consumer hardware, as we expect the mobile market to enable customizable devices really soon.
So, what exactly are we building here at Assemblio? More about the product in the next section.
Assemblio, in more detail
We are building the imgur of custom PC builds, but with “a brain”, a good old fashioned algorithmically constraint based brain. Guessing already?
We are building an optimal configuration builder, a free online tool where you’re only need to input how much money you plan to spend on your computer and what’s it going to be used. Assemblio will do the rest:
- Calculate the best buy computer build tailored for your needs
- Predict how well that computer is going to fulfill your needs and how long it’s going to be “able to perform”
- We are also going to give you an amazing way to manage your PC’s warranties
- We will suggest future upgrades (as time goes) and notify you of important dates (warranty expiration dates, etc…)
As it comes for our core audience, the advanced & hardcore users, every PC build is going to be editable and we generate realtime “build versions” and links that enable you to share your build with fellow forum members, friends and your League of Legends troll team!
We got many features planned, with intent to cover both the newbie and the hardcore PC market.
Lastly, we also plan to partner with your local computer hardware shops and enable direct shopping using Assemblio. The shops are already contacting us for possible cooperation, as they’re in dire need of a specialized marketing platform that targets their core consumer body.
And that’s where we come into play. By building a platform, a foundation for amazing (but unknown) PC builders to shine, we plan to open “a can of whop ass” on the stagnant PC market — custom builds all the way!
Closing words
So, how does it feel to build the product that “no one wants”? Actually, great!
We’ve survived our first 6 months, we got more than 64211 generated configurations, much more daily active users than we’ve hoped for and an amazing community of hardware enthusiasts supporting us. We love you guys!
But there is something more important then everything else written in this article: the fact we were so harshly criticized gave us strength and peace of mind — we are now in a place from where we can only go up.
Yes, you’re building your startup for market success, and it should be near the core of your product, but you’re also building it because you believe in it. Don’t forget that, and especially don’t let other people make you forget that.
This is our pitch, for those interested in more info (English subtitles are available):
You can contact us at info@assemblio.hr, the next version is coming in the following months, so stay tuned. We are not sure when we’re launching internationally, but expect it to be sooner than later.
