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Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

derrickreimer.com

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

#41

Post by rpedela »

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…

I agree overall but it's not that hard to get people to talk to you if done a certain way. If you are trying to sell them while talking, yes that will be hard/impossible. However if you approach it as learning from experts, then I find people are much more receptive because most people like to help and feel important/useful. I always say I want to learn from them and offer to pay for their time which shows them I understand they are busy. I still get some NOs but that's okay. BTW I've never had someone want me to pay them, but I would if they did.

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

#42

Post by fourseventy »

It seems like one of the main problems is that their target market was too large, and they were directly competing with slack which dominates that market. A better approach might have been to target a more niche market in the business communication tool space, and be the best tool in that space, before broadening to the wider market.

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

#43

Post by closeparen »

dpandya wrote: post #38
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:…

You could make this same argument to argue that Slack would fail against email. Something like: there are all kinds of email integrations, user-specific and group-specific setups, etc. at companies. How can Slack ever compete? The answer was that Slack was so much better for many companies that it made sense to suffer the pain of switching. The company that beats Slack will likely be 10x better communication software…

Chat is a complement to email, not a replacement. Over time some people may take their formerly-email activities to chat, but no cutover is required.

Running two chat systems side by side, on the other hand, is a huge pain. There really is a pressure to get everything migrated and the old one turned off.

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

#44

Post by pier25 »

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.

It's not subjective.

We usually sit right at the center of our main monitor for a reason. Reading that website on a large 32'' monitor is annoying.

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

#45

Post by closeparen »

gopher2 wrote: post #26
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.

My employer ran several pilots of alternative chat systems alongside our primary. It sucked. Having both clients open, remembering which rooms are actually in active in which systems, etc. was obnoxious. Might work for a single closed-loop team but even then.

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

#46

Post by taurath »

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:…

Those integrations are slack's moat, but I think many of those useful integrations are already multi-tenant (having to support hipchat for large corps), or through a proxied service that can add a new output integration. For smaller businesses who just use the slack connector store that might be more difficult.

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

#47

Post by staunch »

apl002 wrote: post #21
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

Paul Graham's essay "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" should be required for anyone working with developers.

http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

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

#48

Post by taurath »

closeparen wrote: post #43
dpandya wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make this same argument to argue that Slack would fail against email. Something like: there are all kinds of email integrations, user-specific and group-specific setups, etc. at companies. How can Slack ever compete? The answer was that Slack was so much better for many companies that it made sense to suffer the pain of switching. The company that beats Slack will likely be 10x better communication software…

Chat is a complement to email, not a replacement. Over time some people may take their formerly-email activities to chat, but no cutover is required. Running two chat systems side by side, on the other hand, is a huge pain. There really is a pressure to get everything migrated and the old one turned off.

Email is for outside the boundaries (outside-of-company, outside-of-division in a silo'd company), chat is for inside - there's still people who do prefer email especially in partner facing roles, but I think its fair to say that most prefer using chat if they had a choice.

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

#49

Post by yeahitslikethat »

philipov wrote: post #37
ErikAugust wrote: post #24

"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.

That kind of circular reasoning is only more maddening because it makes sense. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy combined with a prisoner's dilemma.

I don't think it does make sense. Funded businesses die all the time. Google cancels products all the time. companies are acquihired and products end of lifed.

Even within organizations there are critically important employees.

So, no, it doesn't make sense.

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

#50

Post by u02sgb »

taurath wrote: post #48
closeparen wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chat is a complement to email, not a replacement. Over time some people may take their formerly-email activities to chat, but no cutover is required. Running two chat systems side by side, on the other hand, is a huge pain. There really is a pressure to get everything migrated and the old one turned off.

Email is for outside the boundaries (outside-of-company, outside-of-division in a silo'd company), chat is for inside - there's still people who do prefer email especially in partner facing roles, but I think its fair to say that most prefer using chat if they had a choice.

Not necessarily true. For example the enterprise I work in doesn't allow saving chat history. This makes email better for technical discussion that needs recorded.
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