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Ask HN: Should we abandon our product?

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Ask HN: Should we abandon our product?

#1
Hi HN,

We've spent the last few months developing a product, but now we've hit a wall and we're thinking about abandoning it. We'd appreciate your brutally honest feedback about what we should do and if our solution makes any sense at all.

For context, here is our YC startup school presentation, and our landing page:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxpVkonSHJQ

- https://tuiqo.com

Basically, we made an editor that tries to solve document versioning issues. While trying to find product market fit, we've separately tested it with different target groups, like writers, journalists, lawyers, academics and digital content creators. We kept getting great feedback from these groups, but had a hard time converting any actual users. We had to stop developing because while trying to sell it, everyone kept requesting more and more different features, and it seemed no matter what we would add, still no one was ready to pay for it.

Do you think there is any scenario where someone would find this useful enough to actually use it or pay money for it? Or did we just build something that seems interesting to a lot of people but no one is really willing to use it?

Re: Ask HN: Should we abandon our product?

#3
No, the problem is your marketing. Time to pivot, your idea is not unique what you have built is the basics of a document management system. This problem has been solved by virtually every EMR, and other companies with products such as OnBase. The good news is that you are not alone, and there are other succesful/profitable businesses in this market space.

Remember you do not have to be Unique or the best in the market; you just have to be better than some.

Re: Ask HN: Should we abandon our product?

#4

You might want to narrow the audience if you keep getting feature requests. Make the product awesome for one of those groups you talked to and then grow from there.

But at what point does it become too many features? You can't just keep developing for free can you? I assume they are running out of funds...

Re: Ask HN: Should we abandon our product?

#5
"We kept getting great feedback from these groups"

If someone says "they love it" and "it looks awesome", or "that's such a great feature", that's just them being nice. Did they actually ask you for an account to use? Did they ask when it would go live so they could pay you?

If not perhaps there's no market. For whom isn't basic collaboration (aka Google docs) enough?

The only group I could reasonably see paying for this are the lawyers, and I don't see it happening (they're not know for being cutting-edge in tech adoption). But I've been wrong before :)

Yes I would abandon it.

P.S.: the startup school link doesn't work for me, looks like requires a login.

Re: Ask HN: Should we abandon our product?

#6

No, the problem is your marketing. Time to pivot, your idea is not unique what you have built is the basics of a document management system. This problem has been solved by virtually every EMR, and other companies with products such as OnBase. The good news is that you are not alone, and there are other succesful/profitable businesses in this market space. Remember you do not have to be Unique or the best in the mark…

Marketing/sales are definitely one of our biggest issues. We understand that there are many enterprise document management systems, and that is exactly why we went to those markets where companies/users cannot afford those expensive EMS, or they are simply too complex for their needs. We want to pivot, and that is exactly what this post is all about. Thank you.

Re: Ask HN: Should we abandon our product?

#7

"We kept getting great feedback from these groups" If someone says "they love it" and "it looks awesome", or "that's such a great feature", that's just them being nice. Did they actually ask you for an account to use? Did they ask when it would go live so they could pay you? If not perhaps there's no market. For whom isn't basic collaboration (aka Google docs) enough? The only group I could reasonably see paying for…

Updated startup school link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxpVkonSHJQ

Re: Ask HN: Should we abandon our product?

#8

"We kept getting great feedback from these groups" If someone says "they love it" and "it looks awesome", or "that's such a great feature", that's just them being nice. Did they actually ask you for an account to use? Did they ask when it would go live so they could pay you? If not perhaps there's no market. For whom isn't basic collaboration (aka Google docs) enough? The only group I could reasonably see paying for…

  “Did they actually ask you for an account to use? Did they ask when it would go live so they could pay you?”
No, they haven’t. They all missed some features before they’d be willing to commit. We realise most of these people were probably just trying to be nice :)

  “The only group I could reasonably see paying for this are the lawyers, and I don’t see it happening
  (they’re not know for being cutting-edge in tech adoption). But I’ve been wrong before :)”
Exactly, you’re not wrong, we’ve reached the same conclusion. Lawyers really suffer from this problem and see us as a potentially great solution but as one of them put it: “It took us 10 years to learn MS Word, we are not changing to something new.”

Thanks for the honest feedback!

Re: Ask HN: Should we abandon our product?

#10

You might want to narrow the audience if you keep getting feature requests. Make the product awesome for one of those groups you talked to and then grow from there.

That’s basically what we’ve been attempting. We tried to target just one user group at a time, but everyone seemed to have their own different vision of what this should be. At this point we don’t feel too confident with spending several more months developing targeted features for someone, only to find out it was all in vain.
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