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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

#131

Post by depressedpanda »

lloydde wrote: post #56
gopher2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Microsoft Teams with their decent video conferencing might have an angle plus being “free” part of 365.

The company I worked at previously tried to force MS Teams on everyone. Problem was that most developers there ran Linux and the client was far inferior to Slack on that platform. Unsurprisingly very few developers used Teams and it failed horribly as a decent communication replacement. It became yet another communication channel devs may, or may not, respond in. End result: email still reigns supreme, complemented by xmpp for the non-devs with the technical know how to understand how to connect to the internally hosted server.

So my view is that until Microsoft get their act together, Teams is not a serious contender to Slack. Companies can get it "free" together with their Office subscription, but most developers won't use it until it works decently on their development platform of choice.

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

#132

Post by gknoy »

boudewijnrempt wrote: post #122
derrickreimer wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. Slack is undoubtedly sticky, although I challenge the assumption that all integrations need to be replicated in a niche play. Those who did adopt Level were willing to give up a number of integrations that were low-value to them or were just causing noise that proved unnecessary.

I was struck with " They recognize that Slack is not suitable for meaningful conversations, so they automatically delete chat messages older than a few weeks to discourage relying on it for long-term archival." in your article. It's something I feel quite strongly about: chat should not be archived. There should be no backscroll; being not around when people are talking means not being part of that conversation. Chat…

> There should be no backscroll; being not around when people are talking means not being part of that conversation.

We must use chat very differently, because I don't understand this.

The number of times I've found answers to problems ("How do I X? Why can't I get Z to work with vagrant?" etc) by searching through Slack channels, or viewing pinned messages that explained something (or had a workaround/fix for a problem) is huge. This has been especially helpful when joining a team, where searching the archives can be the first step in finding answers.

A lot of what we chat about could safely be ephemeral, but there's a significant amount of company / team knowledge which can be searched (or pinned). The friction necessary to have people put answers in Confluence (or similar) is high enough that often the answers (or discussions around them) are either never written, or not updated later.

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

#133

Post by RaceWon »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #66

I read this, and all through the article I kept waiting for the part where the author would talk about his own experience using his own product. What I'm getting at is that, its really difficult to get people to love something you build unless you love it yourself, Seth Godin touches on this in his book "This is Marketing" I like the data driven approach to product development, but sometimes passion trumps data, if y…

> What I'm getting at is that, its really difficult to get people to love something you build unless you love it yourself

This reminded me of a quote which is totally the opposite, and imo more accurate: "Most entrepreneurs fall in love with the wrong thing. They fall in love with their products and their business when they should be falling in love with their clients and customers" -Jay Abraham

Both sentiments are however; worthy food for thought.

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

#134

Post by ska »

brainpool wrote: post #96
bluGill wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal. When we are sued (we make equipment used in dangerous environments, and we have a lot of money, so if there is the slightest chance we can be blamed we will be sued) US law says we need to give all relevant information to the other side. That includes any saved chat logs and emails. However if something was deleted before we are sued we don't have to give it out. We lost a law suit once because a [not native E…

Sounds wrong to me. Hiding chat logs or other business information from the company itself as well as customers (albeit suing ones) seem stupid. How would the company ever be able to audit its own operations? Getting sued is sometimes also not too bad as it can reveal bad practices within an organization. An analogy would be an X-ray, not entirely healthy but very revealing.

It doesn't matter what sort of business you are in, you need to have some ad-hoc communication that isn't part of a "permanent record", or else you incur communication friction everywhere.

Having it broken down by system is a pretty practical approach.

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

#135

Post by joering2 »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #106
brainpool wrote: post #105

My take is that this was a case of hubris. Can happen to the best of us. Where it really derailed was here: “Others were not decision makers, so I had to take their feedback with a grain of salt.” Most users of this kind of product are not decision makers, at least when it comes to selecting the product. But they are the ones that have to use it and their opinions are critically important.

The idea of soliciting feedback before building a start up really doesn’t make sense to me. If you like your idea (“this is something I’ve always wanted”), are willing to dedicate yourself and have the means then you should try it. Otherwise you’ll never find out. If the creator of the automobile had listened to people they probably would’ve thought it was a dead end because unlike horses cars can’t reproduce. The id…

> If the creator of the automobile had listened to people they probably would’ve thought it was a dead end because unlike horses cars can’t reproduce.

Actually, a true story: Ford said that if he were to listen to what people want better than a horse, he would have built a carriage with hitch for 6 horses :)

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

#136

Post by diminoten »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #106
brainpool wrote: post #105

My take is that this was a case of hubris. Can happen to the best of us. Where it really derailed was here: “Others were not decision makers, so I had to take their feedback with a grain of salt.” Most users of this kind of product are not decision makers, at least when it comes to selecting the product. But they are the ones that have to use it and their opinions are critically important.

The idea of soliciting feedback before building a start up really doesn’t make sense to me. If you like your idea (“this is something I’ve always wanted”), are willing to dedicate yourself and have the means then you should try it. Otherwise you’ll never find out. If the creator of the automobile had listened to people they probably would’ve thought it was a dead end because unlike horses cars can’t reproduce. The id…

The cold hard truth is that just because you like it and want to build it doesn't mean anyone else gives a shit.

The idea that everyone should just roll the dice with months/years of their lives because they like an idea isn't actually tenable.

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

#137

Post by jcytong »

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…

You're right. Getting to the real crux of the problem that someone faces but also are willing to pay for a solution is not easy.

Though I have had good experiences talking to different industries because it could be as simple as a 20 min phone call.

I find that if people are really facing problems that they want to get rid of and someone is genuinely interested in solving it for them, they are usually open to chatting. It does take some effort to reach out.

I have had success talking to 30-50 individuals before I come up with a solution and customer development is also a skill that needs to be develop .

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

#138

Post by OrgNet »

nategri wrote: post #7

Is "a year" supposed to add a lot of impact here?? I frequently spend multiple years on more dubious endeavors, and have zero regrets about it. That's life. Edit: Okay this came out pretty harshly, but what I am poorly trying to express is that most people spend more time on worse things, so "a year" doesn't parse as the intended intensifier for me.

Did you write an article about your experience?

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

#139

Post by inopinatus »

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:…

There's a lesson in there, viz. that an ISV ecosystem around your product is a major retention factor.

Nothing new here of course, tech shops have been doing it for decades. Centuries even maybe.

See also: certification programs.

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

#140

Post by mritchie712 »

RaceWon wrote: post #133
trustfundbaby wrote: post #66

I read this, and all through the article I kept waiting for the part where the author would talk about his own experience using his own product. What I'm getting at is that, its really difficult to get people to love something you build unless you love it yourself, Seth Godin touches on this in his book "This is Marketing" I like the data driven approach to product development, but sometimes passion trumps data, if y…

> What I'm getting at is that, its really difficult to get people to love something you build unless you love it yourself This reminded me of a quote which is totally the opposite, and imo more accurate: "Most entrepreneurs fall in love with the wrong thing. They fall in love with their products and their business when they should be falling in love with their clients and customers" -Jay Abraham Both sentiments are h…

Best case scenario: you are the customer. In this case, both sentiments can be true.
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