Tom Blomfield
tomblomfield.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2012
Tom Blomfield, co-founder of GoCardless and Monzo, writes about startups, fundraising, customer growth, risk and founder mode.
What HN saysHN commenters link it as an example of Y Combinator-style startup advice and for its tips on picking and serving the right target customer.
16HN people shared it
3linked it in comments
32stories submitted
1.6Kstory points
2 years agolast shared
2012people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1How we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years3 people · 103 points · first shared 2022 · 116 comments on HN
- 2The Age of Abundance3 people · 11 points · first shared 2025 · 1 comments on HN
- 3How to Raise Investment2 people · 215 points · first shared 2021 · 41 comments on HN
- 4Taking Risk2 people · 212 points · first shared 2024 · 293 comments on HN
- 5What is "founder mode"?2 people · 89 points · first shared 2024 · 65 comments on HN
- 6When to join a startup1 people · 338 points · first shared 2016 · 113 comments on HN
- 7Automate Everything - the hacker way1 people · 146 points · first shared 2012 · 48 comments on HN
- 8Customer churn can kill your startup1 people · 108 points · first shared 2014 · 29 comments on HN
- 9Making something people want - the GoCardless story1 people · 82 points · first shared 2012 · 18 comments on HN
- 10A crash course in startup metrics1 people · 72 points · first shared 2013 · 11 comments on HN
- 11Apple is propping up a fundamentally broken payments industry1 people · 49 points · first shared 2014 · 52 comments on HN
- 12Automating Customer Service at a Startup1 people · 36 points · first shared 2012 · 10 comments on HN
- 13Attracting great engineers1 people · 28 points · first shared 2013 · 23 comments on HN
- 14How to interview engineers as a startup1 people · 27 points · first shared 2013 · 48 comments on HN
- 15Don't write tests - The Hidden Cost of TDD1 people · 24 points · first shared 2012 · 9 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
tim333 · 2018-10-31
Another ad for the YC school of doing these things
> ...I’m a follower of Paul Graham and the YC camp of startup wisdom... http://tomblomfield.com/day/2015/12/13
From the CEO/co founder, GoCardless (YC S11) alum
tomblomfield · 2012-02-14
I agree - I implemented it using Ruby, Sinatra & TwiML [1], but it should be a couple of clicks on Twilio.
Come to think of it, they should really have some simple "If-this-then-that" style rules that non-developers could choose to implement a really simple IVR system.
"If it's between 9am and 5pm GMT, then call 077xxxxxx"
"If no-one picks up, then call 077xxx"
"Else leave a voicemail".
Why do I have to support a sinatra app to host some static TwiML?
1 - http://tomblomfield.com/post/17571449233/home-brew-customer-phone-supp…
ignoramous · 2021-12-26
> And yet frame.io seems to be doing very well, it is popping up more and more places.
The key is knowing who your target customer is and solve for them [0]. Then, you are in a good place where you either fire ones who aren't [1] or change your solution (rather, start with a burning, hair-on-fire problem your target customer has, not solutions) [2].
Typically in a b2b setting, one starts out by addressing all needs (must-have) of their target customer as opposed to their wants (good-to-have). That is, other customers whose wants are NOT your target customers needs, you do not address them in the early stages of the product development [3]; and price / position [4] the product accordingly [5].
When changing the solution, figure out if there's another much bigger adjacent problem, that you weren't paying attention to [6], staring you down [7].
[0] https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done
[1] https://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/users-you-don-t-want
[2] https://www.ycombinator.com/library/8g-how-to-get-startup-ideas
[3] https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024
[4] https://hackernoon.com/obviously-awesome-a-product-positioning-exercis…
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix#Lauterborn's_4_Cs_(199…
[6] http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html
[7] https://tomblomfield.com/post/33506878578/making-something-people-want…