My app failed: lessons learned • Hacker News Board

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#121

Post by tdaltonc » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

Great write up!

I wrote a book on habit formation in apps. https://usetemper.com/digital-behavioral-design/

I run a sub-reddit that get's at least 1 post a month from someone launching a new habit tracking app. https://www.reddit.com/r/Habits/

My last company made SaaS to help app publishers understand and strengthen the habits in their app. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dopaminelabs

I'd add one item to your list: No one wants a habit tracking app. A lot of people could benefit from one, but when people have a problem in their life (sleep, diet, productivity) they almost never conceptualize it as a habits problem. They look for tools to "improve sleep," or "be more productive" but not a habit tracker.

My new company (https://usetemper.com/) is all about habits and behavior change, but that's mentioned almost no where on the website because that's not how our customers think about their problem.

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#122

Post by zem » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

Axsuul wrote: post #105

dcolkitt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the quote: "When a great team and product meets a lousy market, market usually wins. When a mediocre team and product meets a great market, market usually wins"

What does this mean?

it means a bad market will make even a good product unsuccesful, and a good market will make even a mediocre product successful. the quality of the market wins out over the quality of the product.

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#123

Post by PragmaticPulp » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #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?).

Product Hunt's customer base is largely product people, designers, and a handful of developers and investors.

If your product's target demographic overlaps with that of Product Hunt (design tools, project management tools) then it can be useful to get ranked well on Product Hunt. If your product targets the average consumer, Product Hunt is basically useless for anything other than maybe networking.

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#124

Post by zem » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #11

I've yet to see a single product that was improved by being a chatbot.

i've seen one - my workplace briefly experimented with a chatbot for taking vacation time. you would say something like "i'm on vacation from tuesday to friday" and it would parse it, extract or convert the input to a date range, and submit a vacation request through the official tool. it would then ask if you also wanted to display your vacation status on your calendar and set up an email autoresponder, and do them for you if you answered 'yes'. i was sad when they removed the bot - i think they did it because they streamlined the website, but even with the new improved web workflow i still preferred the experience of doing it via chatbot.

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#125

Post by sergiomattei » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #64

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?

I sense snark in this comment, but I'll answer anyways.

In Latin America, our culture is extremely conservative about taking risks. We're expected to get a job, settle down, live a nice life.

Generally entrepreneurship is frowned upon by our families and friends.

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#126

Post by realusername » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:17 PM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #115

drewolbrich wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even when using about cross-platform frameworks, there's quirks, store pages and time to invest to maintain the other platform. My Flutter app is still not available on iOS for example.

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#127

Post by bastawhiz » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

kylebolt wrote: post #100

bastawhiz wrote: post #73

> I initially saw oh ok, there are a ton of people making these apps, it must be profitable. If you look at a dense market and decide to join in because you see potential profit because the market is dense , you're already destined for failure. Everyone else already has a head start, which means you need some sort of differentiating feature to be competitive. Why would I pay for blog software that's half baked or doe…

I thought habits might be an interesting market to work in + using a chatbot as a novel approach but alas my approach did not pan out.

But what about being a chat bot made it better? Being a chat bot doesn't make it do anything different than the competition, it's just a different interface. Being novel doesn't make it useful.

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#128

Post by ijidak » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

stingraycharles wrote: post #108

marban wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would define "need" as per Reiss 16 Motives: - Acceptance/Self-confidence - the need to be appreciated - Curiosity, the need to gain knowledge - Eating, the need for food - Family/Love, the need to take care of one’s offspring - Honor, the need to be faithful to the customary values of an individual’s ethnic group, family or clan - Idealism, the need for social justice - Independence/Freedom, the need to be distinc…

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?

You actually answered the question in your statement above.

It has to be an unmet need. The key word being "un-met"

You said:

> "hardly anyone really needs another social network"

You're absolutely correct.

The first phase of social networks had a lot of early adoption for many different social networks circa 2003, because at that time the need was unmet.

Then the world settled on a winner, Facebook.

Now that's no longer an unmet need.

But in reality, there are limits to being able to predict a winner.

If that existed, starting a winning business would be easy.

We only have heuristics, no crystal ball.

Also, spotting a need is not the same as satisfying it.

It's why Steve Jobs could arrive late to the party and build a winner that leapfrogged the competition over and over again.

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#129

Post by rorykoehler » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

sergiomattei wrote: post #125

rorykoehler wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>as many don't see entrepreneurship with good eyes in Brazil. How do they think the companies that offer salaried work started?

I sense snark in this comment, but I'll answer anyways. In Latin America, our culture is extremely conservative about taking risks. We're expected to get a job, settle down, live a nice life. Generally entrepreneurship is frowned upon by our families and friends.

What does society think of successful entrepreneurs?

Re: My app failed: lessons learned

#130

Post by yoble » Thu, Jul 22, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

Regarding lesson 4 (Distribution), the author links to a tweet by Justin Kan saying "First time founders are obsessed with products. Second time founders are obsessed with distribution".

Justin Kan posted[0] today a video of himself criticizing that very tweet, saying that it didn't age well and he now believes product is 99% of the work, and the reason that many unicorns are founded by first-time founders is they don't get distracted by thoughts about anything other than product, like distribution.

[0] https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1418003365695418373