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Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

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Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#41

Post by macando »

The current site is not very informative. Copywriting is hard. Fortunately, your own rewording from one of the comments here is much better at explaining the tool:

'It’s a “Rapid application development” tool, targeting developers who create internal apps'. Now I get it.

Many developers build many internal apps every day. They want to do it rapidly. Now hire a technical writer to help you write this story.

It's Ok to namedrop as it will help with postitioning of your product against more famous tools:

"Hassle-free Excel"

"Dirt-cheap Tableau"

"Salesforce on JavaScript"

The other thing that's missing is an example of the tool in action in the form of a short video/gif or a small case study.

First fix your site then try to get more visitors to it otherwise they'll bounce like crazy (leaky bucket).

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#42

Post by d--b »

trilinearnz wrote: post #39
d--b wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you very much for taking the time and for the encouraging words. Paid ad campaign is something I am a bit afraid of, having done none of it... maybe i should give it a shot. i tried to get in various incubator programs in the past without success.

> Paid ad campaign is something I am a bit afraid of, having done none of it... It's quite approachable, and Google and Twitter make it very easy to set a small budget that your impressions will be limited to (i.e. the promos will run until you get a certain amount of views/interactions that you can define). Definitely recommend giving it a try.

Ok, sounds feasible. Thanks for the advice!

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#43

Post by d--b »

trilinearnz wrote: post #40
d--b wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it does: Jig helps CEOs/CTOs get custom insights about their businesses without using much developer time. Install the beta from https://www.jigdev.com

I like this a lot, as a unique selling proposition. The improvements you made to your site based on this also look good. By identifying this market segment, you can tailor your advertising more sharply, which will hopefully make it more effective than if you were trying to market to any/all segments.

Cool! Thanks

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#44

Post by trilinearnz »

Another idea: Quite often when I see a tool that isn't useful to me immediately, but might be in the future, I like to follow them on a social media channel like Twitter. This way I get reminded of the occasional update in the future, at a time when I might be in a position to use it. I think other developers would be the same.

Might be an idea to make a quick Twitter profile to allow this kind of thing to occur. Currently, you would need to remember to check back on your web site each time, whereas with the above approach, you have the option of pushing reminder content to people who previously expressed a "keep an eye on this" level of interest.

Of course, it does assume that you are wanting to keep the product around for a while, and continue developing it :)

A mailing list (often presented under the guise of "Sign up for the Beta program, and keep up with future updates") is another way of achieving this.

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#45

Post by winrid »

You are marketing toward the wrong person in the company, and I'm not sure how to fix it because:

In a big/medium company, business analysts do this work.

A business analyst doesn't know javascript. They use Excel.

The javascript devs know how to make charts themselves.

That's why nobody came. :)

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#46

Post by CGamesPlay »

d--b wrote: post #36
codingdave wrote: post #35

I took a look at it, and my very first thought was, "Oh, another analytics app." Maybe it is like you said - I'm just not seeing what is distinguishing it from Tableau or other such "DIY analytics from your data" apps. It gave me the impression that you built your own solution instead of learning what was already available. If I am wrong, then you don't need broader reach. You need a different message.

Thank you for the honesty. This is very valuable feedback. It’s very hard to find a way to convey what’s different... i’ll keep trying

I particularly appreciate comparison pages to other products (even if they are clearly biased). How does this product differ from Tableau / Metabase? Or perhaps there's a different competitor to compare to. It helps me understand exactly what the product does and why I should want to use it.

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#47

Post by kodah »

I mean, if you don't think you have followers guess again. I recognize your handle. Just because you don't have functionality for followers on HN doesn't mean you don't have name recognition.

The hardest part of a start up or small business is socializing your ideas. I've heard countless business leaders talk about why big businesses fail to innovate vs why small businesses are innovation machines. In my experience at startups it was all about hustle and connections. These are things big businesses struggle to do, and hustle does not scale unfortunately. A big Twitter account may help spread the word, but it's pretty arbitrary if you learn to hustle efficiently. This could be networking meetings but it can also be things like hosting a small seminar that's informational and reinforces what your tool is about.

Wish you the best of luck!

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#48

Post by Jonovono »

I think there could be something there, just needs to be tweaked. I recently came across this tool: https://www.tillerhq.com and instantly signed up. Think it's $10 a month or less. I think they do pretty good as well.

All it is is syncs your bank data to a Google Sheet and has pre built templates.

It doesn't have a great way of doing graphs tho, i'd love something like your tool but for analysing my transactions (not saying you should focus on that demo)

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#49

Post by dvt »

Downloaded it and installed it, and you seriously need to have some kind of onboarding for this kind of tool.

I'm an extremely technical person and I have no idea what I'm looking at. I can create cells that have code in them? How do they connect? What's the output, what's the input? Can I at least see an example of a jig file?

Is this vanilla Javascript? It looks like it might be, but the `viewof` keyword is confusing.

Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?

#50

Post by xrd »

You are targeting CEO/CTOs. You need to have conversations with them. It'll be impossible to reach those at large companies, but maybe you can find smaller companies and get their feedback.

ALL the other things are wasted effort until you have that feedback. And, this is a ton of work, you'll need to improve your skills in reaching out to people, selling them on why even having a meeting is good for them, then sell them in the meeting, then figure out a way to get past the fear of closing them in that meeting.

Those are transformative skills to have.

You'll probably need a coach to get you past all your blind spots. Its worth it to do that. Or, at least get yourself into a mentorship group with real concrete goals and people that will ask hard questions of you and hold you to your answers.

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