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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?

#141

Post by polote »

I don't understand the problem you are solving. Usually when this is the case it also means you don't really know what problem you are solving.

You haven't planned to reach out to people to sell your software so I guess you are targeting individual people, and not ceo or cto who don't have time.

So you have two problems, you have not figure out what is your target audience and who you are selling to

Take a paper and list real world use cases that are ideal for your product. It should take a few days. Figure out who has this kind of use case, among those people who is really wanting to improve the way they are solving it. And finally where they gather. Then go on popular saas website and try to understand how companies are positioning themselves. There are mostly two ways of communicating. Either you talk about your product either you talk about your vision.

The fact that people that you talk to don't get it doesn't mean they don't get it, it means you don't know how to explain what you do, whether or not you have a product won't make them change their mind about it. If you have trouble communicating the values you will also have trouble communicating the values on the website and throughout the product. So spend a few days thinking about the value, the use case. That's an iterative process especially if you have never done it before

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

#142

Post by tunesmith »

For a really good effort-to-payoff, it would probably take you a couple of hours - put three example documents in the downloadable application. That was the first thing I looked for and it would make it far easier for me to understand how to start playing with the app.

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

#143

Post by meheleventyone »

batoure wrote: post #136
d--b wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, what you say works for big corporations. However buyers in big corporations are not first customers. Nobody gets fired for buying tableau. CEOs in 20-people companies don’t have time for syntax errors for sure, but they do care how much time reports take away from building features. Anyway that needs rephrasing

I’m the Founder of a sub 20 person company and you are right about tableau but also completely wrong about your view. The problem with your tool is anyone who will find this useful can also just solve this problem with JavaScript. Additionally I think you fell pray to a mistake i my self made about 8 years ago. I built a product thought it was amazing tried to turn it into a company and completely failed. In one of m…

This is a key issue in my field as well. Marketing isn’t just about selling and should also be part of focusing on what to build. Commercial passion projects are awful for this because you have to go from building something for yourself to understanding what people actually want.

Part of the problem is cultural as well. Games in particular lionises unrepeatable successes. Which ends up with very similar “scratch your itch”/“build the game you want” and “build it and they will come”/“just make a good game” generic advice. Often given by people who haven’t succeeded themselves!

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

#144

Post by _y5hn »

d--b wrote: post #34
AznHisoka wrote: post #33

Is your project JigDev? I actually had a need for something like that awhile back. I needed quick visualizations for data from my database. I used Google Sheets as a solution by calling API calls inside the cells and having a chart rendered from that data.

Yep! Glad to hear that you've experienced that problem. It usually ends up in hacky spreadsheets... Give it a shot if you face the same problem in the future :-)

If any hacky spreadsheet can do it, wouldn't developing with JS be harder and slower? Spreadsheets date from 70's and found their optimal form in 80's, so are much alike today. What does this tool provide beyond ie. OpenOffice?

Do you use the tool for your own need, eat your own dog food?

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

#145

Post by danielmarkbruce »

d--b wrote: post #137
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #135

Did you try becoming an excel or sheets power user first (using macros/vba/apps script)? What specific thing/things/usecase do they suck at which you are doing well?

Yes, I am a 10y+ finance excel-based app developer. In short: - sheets cant be audited - too many formulae - not webable It’s inherently unsafe to run apps on Excel. Yet, people are more productive with Excel than with any other platform.

Can you be more specific on what you mean by "audited" ?

What does "too many formulae" mean? Like what is a specific example?

What does "not webable" mean?

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

#146

Post by d--b »

polote wrote: post #141

I don't understand the problem you are solving. Usually when this is the case it also means you don't really know what problem you are solving. You haven't planned to reach out to people to sell your software so I guess you are targeting individual people, and not ceo or cto who don't have time. So you have two problems, you have not figure out what is your target audience and who you are selling to Take a paper and…

Thanks for your feedback. I’ve changed the message.

There are a few ways to market the idea.

Trying to find the most effective one.

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

#147

Post by d--b »

tunesmith wrote: post #142

For a really good effort-to-payoff, it would probably take you a couple of hours - put three example documents in the downloadable application. That was the first thing I looked for and it would make it far easier for me to understand how to start playing with the app.

Yes, totally agree. I was working on this. Then I thought why not ask HN what they think the most valuable path is going forward.

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

#148

Post by randomsearch »

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…

two thirds down the page until I came across this comment.

> You need to have conversations with them.

This, a million times this. Stop building and start talking.

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

#149

Post by mpermar »

I think you should throw away everything and start from scratch sailing on an already solid platform. Whether that is a plugin for Office 365, a paid app for Smartsheet or Airtable or any other *already successful* platform.

From your submission, I think what you are failing to understand is that you are asking people/companies to move their excel app/reporting to random-joe-bloggs' platform. It's not about the marketing. Even with the best marketing in the world, as a buyer I would ask myself "where this is going to be in one year?", and well...

Pick a solid platform. Hundreds of thousands of buyers are already there, the technology is already there, and you are not asking them to rebase their business. You only need to pipe the solution to the problem. If there is such problem then marketing will be way easier with a solid ground.

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

#150

Post by randomsearch »

Your questions have been answered by pretty much every startup book going, but try "Running Lean" for a quick read that covers most of it.

Here's some quick advice, but tbh you could write a book answering this question. I suppose the general point of this answer is _you're asking the wrong question_.

Firstly: the mistake nerds make is asking "Can I Build it?" rather than "Will they buy it?"

There is a distinct difference between a _business_ and a _side project_. Nerds enjoy and are great at building side projects. Building a business is much much more than that. It's much more difficult. It requires a range of skills. And absolutely crucially, the software is _part of the business_ rather than the business being an "add on" to the software.

Writing software is almost never the difficult part of the business.

You should have a business model canvas describing your business. If you don't have one, create one (or more) to match your different models. You can knock one out in 15 minutes.

Now you have the canvas in front of you, you know exactly what you think the problem is and who you think your potential customers are. Great. Now you can go gather information that tests those hypotheses. No problem if you're wrong - you'll just need to adjust your hypotheses and try again.

How many of those potential customers have you spoken to and formally interviewed? I can guess it's none or very few, because those interviewees become your customers and you're having trouble getting customers. It should almost never be a "release the product on the world and sell it", but "build a product with users / potential customers". Most of us are not Steve Jobs or Apple.

Go back to basics. What are the three main painpoints you're fixing? What is the problem they have? Now speak to a CEO. Ask them what their biggest painpoints are. Mention excel, as them if they use it. Talk about it. See if they raise those painpoints. If they don't, you're off the mark. Find out what they _do_ care about. Be open minded to the idea of having to change your product.

Diving into specifics about copywriting or marketing strategies is pointless if you haven't gotten the fundamental right, that is: "make something people want" as some incubator likes to say.

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