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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?

#101

Post by aborowie »

xrd wrote: post #50

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 t…

Agree, I think a better process might be

- interview 40 users over zoom, gain insights, test assumptions, create hypotheses

- create sketch of product, wireframe or prototype and get feedback from 60 users on a site like UserTesting.com that produces granular insights

- hone in on problem space, understand user pain points through research instead of guessing in a vacuum

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

#102

Post by vmception »

codezero wrote: post #100
vmception wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my comment absolutely added to the gradient, productively. the gradient of all the other responses and just in case those responses didn't allow the author or anyone else to extrapolate what's wrong, then my comment makes the hysterical absurdity of the current approach clearer just check out the rest of the thread instead of this unsolicited meta-critique for something a lot of people would find useful

Your hysterical absurdity is a potential genius newcomer's complete and total confusion and a massive chilling effect on creating a supportive environment of innovation. Edit: I see no trend in the comments of substance free sarcasm, I see plenty of pretty direct critiques with clear reasons or at the very least direct explanations of the displeasure. Sorry you are bothered by my focus on this thread, it's not person…

> a potential genius newcomer's complete and total confusion and a massive chilling effect on creating a supportive environment of innovation.

A tolerable indiscretion.

This potential genius newcomer and the next all need a marketing and sales person on their team, and should just completely not pursue ideas until they have that person.

Just write the idea down in a notepad and move on to the next idea that doesn't need additional personnel. If they aren't the kind of people that don't get a lot of viable ideas, then they aren't even competing amongst the rest of us in this sector. If they meet a spunky co-founder at some mixer, resurrect the old idea. This is a Machiavellian area with a survivorship bias favoring people that can afford to survive, not people with a single poorly executed idea with misaligned product market fit. It's back to work for these kind of people, like everyone else.

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

#103

Post by codezero »

vmception wrote: post #102
codezero wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your hysterical absurdity is a potential genius newcomer's complete and total confusion and a massive chilling effect on creating a supportive environment of innovation. Edit: I see no trend in the comments of substance free sarcasm, I see plenty of pretty direct critiques with clear reasons or at the very least direct explanations of the displeasure. Sorry you are bothered by my focus on this thread, it's not person…

> a potential genius newcomer's complete and total confusion and a massive chilling effect on creating a supportive environment of innovation. A tolerable indiscretion. This potential genius newcomer and the next all need a marketing and sales person on their team, and should just completely not pursue ideas until they have that person. Just write the idea down in a notepad and move on to the next idea that doesn't n…

> This is a Machiavellian area with a survivorship bias

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

And for context: I believe humanity is at the least Darwinian point of its survival to date. To that end, any belief that we are in some sort of zero sum competition with one another is a lean towards a more primitive way of thinking which will actively hold back humanity's advancement.

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

#104

Post by aborowie »

Jonovono wrote: post #48

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 (no…

I was a former Mint user and switched to PersonalCapital which in my opinion is a much better Freemium product than Tiller, with PersonalCapital there’s an option to pay for financial advisor or just use dashboards from the free version

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

#105

Post by collin128 »

Check out Ash Maurya's blog post the 10X product launch. From memory and possibly a few other thought leaders it looks a little bit like this:

1. Conduct customer development interviews where you interview potential users and don't show them your product. Simply ask questions that will demonstrate to you if they have pain.

2. For each pain statement, ask them to rank it's importance on a scale of 1 to 10 and their satisfaction with their current solution on a scale of 1 to 10. This helps you quantify the size of the opportunity.

2.a. repeat this process 50 to 200 times.

3. Stock rank your pain statements based on the largest surface area.

4. Build an MVP.

5. Show it to the people that rated the pains the highest and ask for feedback.

6. If you really nailed it they will be asking you how they can become customers.

7. If they're not asking how they can buy then ask for more feedback.

I think the quantify step was pulled from "lean product management".

I've followed this twice and you usually have to loop through the feedback step a few times before you get it.

Both times, my first 10 customers have come from these interviews and my next 100 have come from referrals from those initial 10. I think that's the gist of Ash's 10x product launch.

I'm being fairly brief because it's a complex subject and I'm on mobile.

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

#107

Post by RheingoldRiver »

Maybe use a "happier" example than COVID cases on your landing page? Something that people aren't depressed to see go up? Seeing a graph of COVID trending upwards is going to put potential users into a negative mindset immediately, not something you want when they are learning about your new product. It's definitely low-hanging fruit for "everyone knows what this is and why you might want metrics on it" but I'd try and come up with another example data set.

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

#108

Post by prawn »

cheph wrote: post #80
lalokaya wrote: post #78

"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…

It used to be trivial to rank well in search engines with minimal effort, so if "build it" includes the few seconds to submit to one search engine, yeah, it used to work. You could buy a 2-3 word keyphrase domain, submit it to Google and get traffic for a few minutes of work. I used to rank top 1-2 in my country for "make money" with a random single page site I built in 30 minutes. Had another site (which took half a day to build) make $20k/y with zero ongoing effort.

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

#110

Post by vmception »

codezero wrote: post #103
vmception wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a potential genius newcomer's complete and total confusion and a massive chilling effect on creating a supportive environment of innovation. A tolerable indiscretion. This potential genius newcomer and the next all need a marketing and sales person on their team, and should just completely not pursue ideas until they have that person. Just write the idea down in a notepad and move on to the next idea that doesn't n…

> This is a Machiavellian area with a survivorship bias That's just, like, your opinion, man. And for context: I believe humanity is at the least Darwinian point of its survival to date. To that end, any belief that we are in some sort of zero sum competition with one another is a lean towards a more primitive way of thinking which will actively hold back humanity's advancement.

A quantifiable opinion if you noticed I was referring to entrepreneurship especially amongst software sales and SaaS products, and not humanity.
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