Sounds like a good fail you clearly learned a lot.
My app failed: lessons learned
111–120 of 177 posts
Re: My app failed: lessons learned
#112I've yet to see a single product that was improved by being a chatbot.
For a chat bot product to succeed, it has to be indistinguishable from a real human in every way. Otherwise the user will know its capabilities are limited, but won’t know in what way exactly they are limited. This is a perfect recipe for endless frustration as you slowly uncover every way in which it does not work how you expected it to, impeding whatever simple talk you wanted to complete. If I had nickel for every…
Being indistinguishable from human is a high and low bar. Chat is just a medium and it's not usually the best medium (for me). When I use it, I expect speed and care less if it's a human or AI. For example, I had a billing issue with my electric company. I used chat because I didn't have a week to ping-pong emails back and forth (they might cut my power). I also didn't have time to call them and sit on the phone for 30+ minutes. I knew it was something a human would need to get involved with. So, it's really just chat that is helpful as a medium. The bot part almost always gets in the way of speed to answer/solution.
That my personal experience anyways, would love to hear more about how a chatbot was actually helpful to someone. Whenever I see those chat pop ups on a SaaS home page, it makes me think do people actually type "show me the pricing page please" instead of just clicking the link to the pricing page. It has to be just a friendlier nicer way to collect emails and phone #s for sales to follow up with (?). I totally don't get it.
Re: My app failed: lessons learned
#113Good 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…
> 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".
I would argue that the software itself isn't the need, but rather a means of meeting the need.
Take Doordash for example. Humans have always needed to eat. Long ago, we met that need by each individual directly gathering food themselves. When a better solution came along - agriculture - we embraced it and largely dropped the previous one. Fast forward 12k years or so, and now we're able to have food prepared and brought to within a few feet of where we're sitting by tapping on a phone.
In other words, just because a problem has an existing solution doesn't mean it's not a viable target niche. If you can make a solution that's better for some population (and get it in front of those people) you have a product.
Re: My app failed: lessons learned
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that only defines human needs, and not whether a specific app is a need and/or whether it’s just a nice to have. I could make the best new social network, which addresses a need, but hardly anyone really needs another social network. So how do I distinguish between a need or a nice to have within this context?
The process of getting from nice to have to need is called marketing.
I think that’s an oversimplification, that downplays the necessity of having an idea that’s not just a nice to have.
Re: My app failed: lessons learned
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looks like you are still working on learning distribution. I'm typing on a mac, but own an android. i still can't use or try your app :(
At least for this particular flavor of app, building an Android version is an optimization that should be made once the product has been proven successful. Until that happens, it would be a huge waste of time and money for the developer to build an Android version, since it too would fail as a product, just like the iOS version. Multiplying 0 by 2 is still 0. The situation might be different for an app whose success…
Why not build something like this cross-platform? The functionality sounds simple enough that you don't really need a native app for each platform.
Re: My app failed: lessons learned
#116> The app landed as the #4 product of the day on ProductHunt, had some good initial traction which proceeded to fall off a cliff. This is why you don't post on ProductHunt. Your target market isn't there. Its nothing more than an ego trip for so many founders.
Full disclosure: I've not been down this road, so I'm talking through my hat here.
Posting a project to ProductHunt is unlikely to get it in front of your target demographic, but that doesn't mean it's worthless. People will download your app and if all goes well some of those people will leave you a positive review.
That matters for ranking, which gets your app in front of people. If you get some good reviews, that matters for conversion because it lends some social credit.
Re: My app failed: lessons learned
#117> The app landed as the #4 product of the day on ProductHunt
I honestly don't get this. I don't know a single smartphone user who looks at product hunt for new apps. None.
As far as I can tell, it's just an echo chamber of ego-seeking devs showing off their apps to other devs and spambots - that's not a market (I guess unless your app is targeted at ego-seeking devs?).
Re: My app failed: lessons learned
#118Good 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…
I'm a lot more hesitant to say: Build something people really need because of examples like Instagram/Snapchat etc. Were those really needs? Were people really "needing" Instagram at the start?
I think businesses should target pain points/needs but I'm now of the opinion that its best to start with targeting a sizeable target segment and then work out pain points/products/needs/inspiration from there. As long as there are customers/users/market, there will be possibilities.
I know it might sound similar to others but a need can always be argued into existence or a need can be hidden so deep you can't even qualify it until the company/product is out (hence why some startups pivot or end up doing some exploration before they take off). But it is much easier to have a target group in mind and then target them and figure out a distribution channel to reach them than figuring out needs from the start. I think come up with your target customer group first, study them and then figure out the marketing and messaging needed target them and then things get easier from there.
Re: My app failed: lessons learned
#119Good 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…
I think another lesson here is that the app was built to help people do something hard (build/change habits) and all the apps that are wildly successful are more oriented to reforcing easy, lazy, and bad behaviors (gossip, idle chatter, time-wasting, procrastination).
The people who really make up their minds to change habits don't need an app. They just do it.
Re: My app failed: lessons learned
#120> The app landed as the #4 product of the day on ProductHunt I honestly don't get this. I don't know a single smartphone user who looks at product hunt for new apps. None. As far as I can tell, it's just an echo chamber of ego-seeking devs showing off their apps to other devs and spambots - that's not a market (I guess unless your app is targeted at ego-seeking devs?).
Exactly, or even the feedback on the comments tends to be congratulatory mostly.