Say more with less. I had a look at the website and it's not easy to understand what your product does. For some reason I thought it was code analysis software at first. If I go back and read more closely I see that it is an editor so to speak. I think a video to explain how to make a basic app would be nice, it's hard for me to see why I should learn to use your app when I can't understand how I get to a finished product.
Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
81–90 of 270 posts
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#82If your goal is to build a free tool that will be used and beloved by millions, you probably need to continue building on a deeply technical foundation and blog about it the whole way. It's ancient history now but a master class of this is when Damien Katz built and live-blogged Couchbase, like 2004. If your goal is to build an indie software business with hundreds or thousands of customers where you're making like 1…
Seconding that request for more information - or direction - on the self-sustained indie-hacker advice.
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#83Some feedback: I looked at it and I don't understand how its different from someone just importing a charting library and plotting the data. It really needs a better explanation of what it does/how it works.
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#84"Build it and they will come" doesn't work anymore. I see way too many people have killer skills to build something wonderful, but don't execute much when it comes to marketing. The reasons are plentiful: marketing is boring, it's a sleazy game, I don't want to spam people, I don't know how to, etc. That's why sometimes you see people that are good at marketing/sales out-succeed those that are great at building. Thes…
> "Build it and they will come" doesn't work anymore. Did it ever? I feel like this omits the mechanism for people to get to know there is something to come to and reasons for them to come. Not sure why this saying really exists. If someone builds a pile of garbage, I won't come, even if I knew about it, and I definitely won't be telling other people about it either. EDIT: so the phrase is a variation on some phrase…
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Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is a reporting and graphing tool for data... It doesn't really seem like what you're describing once you run it. For one, I can make all kinds of widgets and import all kinds of code (which is confusing in its own right). But more importantly, I can't export or publish my workspace in any meaningful way.
I didn't test the software, I just read through the marketing materials. Just took another look and I'm more confident than before that what I described is eventually what this intends to be. From the website it claims that these features are coming soon.
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Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#86The journey can end if you want it to but it doesn’t have to. I’ve built stuff and didn’t have the immediate viral adoption I wanted it to have, but it’s not over.
I takes time to refine and market your product, a long fucking time. If you’re not in it for the long haul (not really committed to the idea) that’s fine, but it doesn’t have to end if you don’t want it to.
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#87"Build it and they will come" doesn't work anymore. I see way too many people have killer skills to build something wonderful, but don't execute much when it comes to marketing. The reasons are plentiful: marketing is boring, it's a sleazy game, I don't want to spam people, I don't know how to, etc. That's why sometimes you see people that are good at marketing/sales out-succeed those that are great at building. Thes…
> "Build it and they will come" doesn't work anymore. Did it ever? I feel like this omits the mechanism for people to get to know there is something to come to and reasons for them to come. Not sure why this saying really exists. If someone builds a pile of garbage, I won't come, even if I knew about it, and I definitely won't be telling other people about it either. EDIT: so the phrase is a variation on some phrase…
The saying from the movie Field of Dreams, wherein a mentally ill man hallucinates a voice telling him to build a baseball field for ghosts.
The quote is only applicable to people who are building baseball fields for ghosts.
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#88What I gather from the comments in this thread: you built a tool to make it easier for developers to make custom data visualizations (for other people in their company to look at probably).
The fundamental idea of building tools that radically improve developer productivity in making internal tools is sound. Logically, engineers cost a lot of money and don't like building internal tools so decreasing the time they spend on them is a win for everyone. And empirically, I know of at least one company in the internal tools market that is doing extremely well in this space: Retool (source: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/181-david-hsu-of-retool).
You might take a look at their State of Internal Tools survey (https://retool.com/blog/state-of-internal-tools-2020/) to get a broad idea of the market and problems developers are facing.
If I were you, I'd try to find just a few developers in any organization that you can work with one-on-one and get them to use your product. That would easily help you validate that the problem exists and your product addresses that problem usefully in organizational contexts. Or not and you learn a bunch of things (for example, maybe you find that hosted solutions are more useful).
I don't think a broad reach is the right move at this stage. I would only focus on widely distributing your product once you've had a lot more early validation and it starts to build some momentum (the best being organic word-of-mouth — developers using the tool convince others to use the tool). If you don't have that early validation, I'd expect that distributing would just feel like throwing messages in a bottle into the ocean — kind of lonely and depressing when you never hear back. But if you do have early validation, then you have a lot better idea about who finds it valuable and where/how you should market it.
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#89I've been in this position many times. The only things I know how to are...
- post in relevant online forums
- targeted advertising (throw 1k or 2k at it and see what happens)
- targeted reach outs on linkedin sales
- cold email campaigns at scale (better follow best practices here so you don't get your domain ruined)
- spam your personal/community connections
- reach out to "non techy businesses who want tech" or other people who sit in your customer acquisition channels about partnerships
Yeah that's kind of it. It's not pretty stuff, you have to have thick skin and be ok getting rejected and annoying people.
Re: Ask HN: I built it, nobody came, now what?
#90What does it do, what user segment are you looking at?
It’s a “Rapid application development” tool, targeting developers who create internal apps.
I am building something similar [0] (think Jupyter for the web, without the Observable black box, supporting clientside Python), also to scratch my own itch. I think you need to solve a problem directly, instead of being "a new tool that I now have to learn".
In my case I am trying to get Javascript/visualization/web developers to embrace the literate programming paradigm. The tough part here is that those familiar with something like Jupyter don't often know web APIs very well to really build a simple "app" in 100 lines, and those who do have probably never used a "notebook" at all and wouldn't even consider it.
How I am currently adressing this issue is by embracing content authoring first. The base of my tool are now WYSIWYG blocks, with the "super powers" being use-as-you-learn. Think gitbook but it's actually notebooks: that's not too scary. In your case it may mean some pre-built drag and drop no-code visualizations.
Importantly: don't give up now. My project has gotten some attention, but not nearly as much as I think it deserves. Follow the advice of others: see who really has a need for your product and let them help guide your next steps.
Finally, check out ellx [1] too as it's quite similar in its target audience.
[0]: https://starboard.gg [1]: https://ellx.io/