Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building • Hacker News Board

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#21

Post by apl002 » Fri, May 17, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

ErikAugust wrote: post #5

The buyers of a Slack for an enterprise organization wouldn't be developers doing "Deep Work". The buyers would be executives and managers, ie: the people pushing the content that causes the annoying notifications, anyway.

I am a product manager and basically live in slack. My job is basically to communicate all day. On the flipside I've spent the last couple years learning to code in my free time and I can't imagine being interrupted by slack while im in a groove. It's def made me better about waiting to talk to my devs in our daily meetings despite being right next to them

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#22

Post by mooreds » Fri, May 17, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #12

danvoell wrote: post #4

"The gist is that it’s tough to get unbiased feedback during customer validation." - I wish this was taught along with lean startup content. Too many times I have heard founders say they validated the idea when all they have done is gotten biased feedback while asking self-fulfilling questions.

Yep, it is extremely hard. Lean Startup makes it sound trivial when it's almost impossible. Almost nobody is going to clear up their day to talk to you about their problems, answer your questions, give you feedback, be your guinea pig, etc. The ideal way to validate it is to be so immerse in the industry/problem such that you understand most of the pain points. Do the job that your ideal customer is doing. Attend the…

> The ideal way to validate it is to be so immerse in the industry/problem such that you understand most of the pain points. Do the job that your ideal customer is doing.

I think this is a great reason to have a co-founder. I co-founded a company with a domain expert, and her ability to get in front of and understand our target audience was way more important to our startup success than my development ability (and the equity shares reflected that). I mean, we needed each other, but she was far more unique than I was.

The alternative for a developer is you immerse yourself into a different domain, or you build tools for developers. Both of which are good paths, but the former is far more time commitment and latter is more common (and thus more competitive).

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#23

Post by quaffapint » Fri, May 17, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

pathartl wrote: post #8

I've never been more annoyed by a basic website. Center your content!

It's one of those subjective things with design and why we have so many cars/etc to choose from. To each his/her own. I personally like the design.

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#24

Post by ErikAugust » Fri, May 17, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

"Every large team I spoke to had an exceptionally high bar and was unwilling to entertain Level until it was significantly more “mature.”"

They all made the right decision, as it folded only a couple months later.

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#25

Post by ambicapter » Fri, May 17, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

tschwimmer wrote: post #16

matwood wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hotcakes that's your validation Exactly. The best validation is people paying for a product.

I would go so far as to say it’s the only unambiguous validation you can get.

Not really that unambiguous depending on the market and/or product. You could make the argument that these HIV drugs are miraculously helpful! As you jack up the price. People keep buying it at any price, must means its fantastically effective, right?

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#26

Post by gopher2 » Fri, May 17, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

BrentOzar wrote: post #14

Slack has a staying power that the author didn't catch: once you've got all kinds of apps reporting data directly into Slack, and all kinds of rooms set up for specific data purposes, it's even more sticky than email. Before a Slack-using company would switch, the competitor would need to support many/most/all of the integrations that the company is using. You've really only got two chances to win Slack's customers:…

Not that it'd be easy but I imagine that you can steal their customers by adding chat rooms and integrations slowly to some other type of software, rather than a more direct angle where you have to win at one of those two moments.

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#27

Post by woohoo7676 » Fri, May 17, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

Great post - it really resonated with me, having personally tried to do an overambitious startup that failed with a small budget. I agree with you that doing a 'lifestyle business' and getting to really zero in on a niche group's needs is an ideal area to be.

Thanks for sharing, and hope you find what you're looking for in your next venture (and keep sharing details!).

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#28

Post by rand84545 » Fri, May 17, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

quaffapint wrote: post #23

pathartl wrote: post #8

I've never been more annoyed by a basic website. Center your content!

It's one of those subjective things with design and why we have so many cars/etc to choose from. To each his/her own. I personally like the design.

The website doesn't look the same for different resolutions. If I set my resolutios to HD, it's fine. If I set it to Full HD, half the screen gets covered by the photo and it's very distracting.

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#29

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, May 17, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

ambicapter wrote: post #25

tschwimmer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go so far as to say it’s the only unambiguous validation you can get.

Not really that unambiguous depending on the market and/or product. You could make the argument that these HIV drugs are miraculously helpful! As you jack up the price. People keep buying it at any price, must means its fantastically effective, right?

Even in less extreme cases, it may be just that you have extremely good salespeople / marketing team. With good enough sales, you can sell any kind of garbage, and in many markets it might be unlikely that complaints of existing users will reach or discourage new ones.

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#30

Post by drchiu » Fri, May 17, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

Level is a pretty well designed product. Tried it briefly and I really did like it. My team was already using other communication tools (not Slack, but email and other options) and using Level might have become an eventuality if I or someone else on my team pushed for it harder.

That said, as someone who also creates and launch products, I think it's hard to MVP into a space like this. It's better to wedge yourself into some aspect of that space and eventually branch out once you have a paying user base that already likes your product.

Good luck on your next endeavour.