How we were building the wrong product • Hacker News Board

Re: How we were building the wrong product

#11

Post by mkohlmyr » Thu, Mar 10, 2016, 4:03 PM UTC

The fact that they feel the need to have mixpanel, segment.io and hotjar on their webpage doesn't exactly show confidence in the product :p

Analytics is such a saturated market at this point. It will be interesting to see how things shake out in terms of consolidation / niches / price ranges.

It is also interesting to me that they decided to invent yet another format in which customer data must be exposed. Just like the previously mentioned companies. https://www.w3.org/2013/12/ceddl-201312.pdf (shameless plug: https://github.com/mkohlmyr/ddl-json-schema)

Re: How we were building the wrong product

#12

Post by BillinghamJ » Thu, Mar 10, 2016, 4:19 PM UTC

mapleoin wrote: post #10

Will their next post be "How we were building something that already existed for the last 10 months"? Because this a lot like https://www.geckoboard.com/

And as far as I can tell, there are around 20 companies offering exactly the same thing in this space - most of which have been around for a couple of years already.

Not sure it's a good idea to pivot into this space.

Re: How we were building the wrong product

#13

Post by palumbo » Thu, Mar 10, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

Not being familiar with this product to begin with, I'm wondering if he gave up on his product too quickly!? In my experience customers are typically wrong and misinformed - the whole "faster horse" concept at play. Instead of acquiescing to his customers whims (I want what I want when I want it), could he have had a viable, differentiated product in the market if he would have worked on selling, onboarding and educating about his product's POV. More often SaaS products are selling an idea combined with a methodology (Slack is a good example of this). You need to sell the idea that your organization will benefit from doing it "our way" rather than "your way".

Re: How we were building the wrong product

#14

Post by striking » Thu, Mar 10, 2016, 4:31 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Overall I think analytics aren't as good a market at they sound. The basic problem is that they are something you bolt onto your business after the fact rather than something that is core to running a business. They are a "nice to have" rather than "have to have" and when something new comes along it is too easy to replace them.

It's the difference between a vitamin and a pain-killer.

You want to make pain-killers, because people need them.

Vitamins can be helpful. But people don't usually need them.

Re: How we were building the wrong product

#15

Post by estefan » Thu, Mar 10, 2016, 4:31 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #8

estefan wrote: post #5

> It took us almost 10 months to put our product in the hands of real users. Almost wondering if I should read the rest of the article at all... How did they expect to build the right product without collaborating with their target customers? Is this a company staffed by psychics? TLDR; Prototype with customers before you build anything.

You make it sound easy and obvious, but the problem is that customers doesn't actually know what they need. They know what they think they want, but they usually want something very much tailored to their business, using their ideas, and their workflows, but at a price of $10/month because it's a SaaS app. Building something that works for many customers means you actually have to come up with a very astute compromis…

Customers know their pain. Don't expect them to innovate and create the solution for you, but get them to describe the problem. You can then go back in other rounds offering potential solutions through prototypes. Try to keep moving towards getting them to commit (i.e. pay). Ask what it would take to make them buy, what they'd pay, etc.

It may not be easy to do, and I agree that people don't know what they want, but it took these guys 10 months to do any research. They shouldn't have built a thing, but should have put prototypes in the hands of customers ages ago. Then they might have learnt the things 10 months ago they're only just learning now.

There's the old adage from Ford "If I'd have asked customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse". But that's asking them for a solution. It's your job to come up with that. But the customer is the one who knows the pain. And if they can't describe it, it's not big enough to solve anyway.

Nail it then scale it (www.amazon.co.uk/Nail-then-Scale-Entrepreneurs-Breakthrough-ebook/dp/B0055D7O1U/) describes a practical product development process that puts research at the forefront.

Re: How we were building the wrong product

#16

Post by infecto » Thu, Mar 10, 2016, 4:32 PM UTC

The pop-up without a close button was a bit of a deal breaker.

Re: How we were building the wrong product

#17

Post by thaumasiotes » Thu, Mar 10, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

striking wrote: post #14

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Overall I think analytics aren't as good a market at they sound. The basic problem is that they are something you bolt onto your business after the fact rather than something that is core to running a business. They are a "nice to have" rather than "have to have" and when something new comes along it is too easy to replace them.

It's the difference between a vitamin and a pain-killer. You want to make pain-killers, because people need them. Vitamins can be helpful. But people don't usually need them.

I would have put money on this example being structured the other way around. People can live with pain; they can't live without vitamins. They only don't need vitamins in the same sense that people don't need oxygen.

Re: How we were building the wrong product

#18

Post by burnallofit » Thu, Mar 10, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

The pitch in their email is "plug & play SaaS analytics tool".

This pitch tells me nearly nothing. It doesn't say what I would use it for, what benefits it offers, how it stands compared to other solutions on the market, or even any details about what platform(s) it supports. So basically unless I happen to currently have no solution and am actively looking for one, then I don't care. Which I would guess is about 99.999% of the people who received their email.

Re: How we were building the wrong product

#19

Post by jmiserez » Thu, Mar 10, 2016, 5:27 PM UTC

burnallofit wrote: post #18

The pitch in their email is "plug & play SaaS analytics tool". This pitch tells me nearly nothing. It doesn't say what I would use it for, what benefits it offers, how it stands compared to other solutions on the market, or even any details about what platform(s) it supports. So basically unless I happen to currently have no solution and am actively looking for one , then I don't care. Which I would guess is about 99…

The way I understood it is that the people receiving such an email were already on the beta-test invite mailing list. So they knew about the product already.

Re: How we were building the wrong product

#20

Post by dang » Thu, Mar 10, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

estefan wrote: post #5

> It took us almost 10 months to put our product in the hands of real users. Almost wondering if I should read the rest of the article at all... How did they expect to build the right product without collaborating with their target customers? Is this a company staffed by psychics? TLDR; Prototype with customers before you build anything.

Please don't be snarkily dismissive on HN.

If you know so much that others' mistakes are trivial to you, why not share something informative and non-obvious? Don't just put others down; teach us something.