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My app failed: lessons learned

rithm.app

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Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#61

Post by cortesoft »

rexreed wrote: post #47
jfengel wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really realistic to build something people "need"? Humanity survived millions of years without a single piece of software; it's unlikely that anything you write is ever going to be a "need". People buy stuff they don't need all the time. Games and other entertainment are the very definition of "nice to have", and they're vast markets. Even business tools are usually not "needs" if all they do is improve an exis…

If you're trying to run a business, then yes, it needs to be something people need, because you're asking people to give up something of value to them. Money and/or time. If you ask for something of value you have to provide something of value in return. Of course, the need can be anything that people find valuable. It could be a product or a service or just a way to stay connected or entertainment. Whatever it is, i…

I don't really understand your definition of need. You define a 'need' as anything that people find valuable, but I would classify 'nice to have' as also being things someone finds valuable.

How do you distinguish something that is a 'nice to have' and a 'need'?

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#64

Post by rorykoehler »

henvic wrote: post #14

I know this pain. In my case, I spent most of my life around 18-23 years old living in my parents' working about 100% of my time on something of my own I had a lot of negative support from friends, colleagues, and extended family as many don't see entrepreneurship with good eyes in Brazil. The last project I worked ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dML0FQIUcTY , I spent 2013-2014 on it), was heading to the right dire…

>as many don't see entrepreneurship with good eyes in Brazil.

How do they think the companies that offer salaried work started?

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#65

Post by ehnto »

bko wrote: post #18

He mentions a false positive of paying customers. I have some personal experience of customers paying for a product and not using it. We're all guilty of it in one way or another. What percentage of paying customers should be active? 100% is unrealistic, but 0% is troubling since they are not getting any value from it and its not validating your idea. How does this depend on price of the product or whether its a subs…

My first and only paid subscription on one product I built was from a user who never used the service, and also never cancelled their subscription. It had no free trial, so they knew they were paying money from the get go. After a while I cancelled their subscription and sent them an email saying they could re-enable if they wanted to keep using the service. I felt bad for taking their money.

It was definitely motivating and I would say it was part of the reason I kept working on it, but unfortunately no-one else subscribed, and it wasn't to be.

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#66

Post by kylebolt »

tommiegannert wrote: post #35

Thanks for sharing! > So the lesson is that while all businesses have a product, not all products are a business. And even products that look successful may not actually be good business, if they have negative net income and surviving on venture capital that eventually runs out.

Glad you enjoyed it! I've meditated on that point now for a few months... it's an important distinction in the maker community. Building a product vs. building a business.

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#67

Post by kfk »

My own lesson is to crunch the financials, always. Truth is when I crunch the numbers I almost always end up with the same result: if I am going to invest my own time and money, I must go b2b and charge >=100k per client. I can never find a way to fund myself and the marketing/content experts by charging a few dollars per subscription. Of course you might have a big existing audience or might find a cheap channel to get your product across quickly, I am just saying I find it easier to convince a few companies to pay tens of thousands euros than thousands of people to pay one hundred.

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#68

Post by cubano »

henvic wrote: post #39
halflings wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't have any regrets re:seeing something "similar" sold for millions of $. Unless "heading in the right direction" means that you had a growing user base and/or solid revenue, in all likelihood the product you were building just wasn't succeeding. The idea in itself is not worth much: think Uber, Coursera, Airbnb, ... these are not novel ideas, many many people had the same ideas but didn't manage to make them…

tl;dr: I don't regret working on it. Just not even trying to market it! By heading in the right direction, I mean that I've built the 'minimum viable product' entirely in one year. Now it was time to go after putting it in the market somehow, search for a venture capitalist or anything like that. But, no, we didn't even try. We had many features that other sites didn't have back then. Such as the 'Google-like' search…

ahhh yes...you were working with an infamous "idea guy" where you were expected to do all the work while he sits back and just thinks of new ways to crack the whip with you.

that sort of thing is very rarely a good way to structure a business. the people who do the actual work almost always need to be the ones who decide on new features as only they know the proper work/reward ratios.

if i had a nickle for all the proposals i've seen from the "idea guys"...well i sure would have a lot of nickles.

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#69

Post by stingraycharles »

jfengel wrote: post #34
rexreed wrote: post #15

Good lessons. But so many common mistakes To summarize: 1) Build something people really need, not a nice-to-have 2) Keeping customers is more important than just acquiring them 3) If you're not keeping your customers that means they don't want or need what you have 4) Changing people's behavior is really hard. Unless you have a significant amount of marketing budget, don't try to change people 5) "Distribution" is k…

Is it really realistic to build something people "need"? Humanity survived millions of years without a single piece of software; it's unlikely that anything you write is ever going to be a "need". People buy stuff they don't need all the time. Games and other entertainment are the very definition of "nice to have", and they're vast markets. Even business tools are usually not "needs" if all they do is improve an exis…

> Is it really realistic to build something people "need"?

I don’t know about B2C, but with B2B it’s fairly easy — just solve problems that cost them money, either in terms of actual money, time saved, or delivers new value.

If you can’t easily express the value a customer gets from your solution (especially if you have competition!), chances are you need to think again about the problem you’re solving.

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#70

Post by kylebolt »

klausjensen wrote: post #3

Thanks for the openhearted blogpost. It is very important to also see some of these failures, where the stars did not suddenly align and sparkling rainbows started raining money. I think I learned more from your post than from 10 success posts, honestly.

Thanks for reading!

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

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