"... fuck it, I'm gonna work on WEB DEVELOPMENT. That bad."
I hear you!
The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
11–20 of 253 posts
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#12A big fallacy that I always see - and that is implied by this post - is that the work ends after shipping, a.k.a. "build it and they will come". That doesn't happen any more. So after you "ship" it, you need to promote it, advertise it, create buzz around it and make people use it. And that is a totally different kind of beast than coding something. But on the flip side, if you develop a side project just for yoursel…
'So I deployed it on Vercel, bought a domain name and posted it on the brand twitter account we created a few days ago. Why am I not getting users?'
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#13This article made me so sad - the author really doesn't need to be as hard on themselves as they are!
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#14A big fallacy that I always see - and that is implied by this post - is that the work ends after shipping, a.k.a. "build it and they will come". That doesn't happen any more. So after you "ship" it, you need to promote it, advertise it, create buzz around it and make people use it. And that is a totally different kind of beast than coding something. But on the flip side, if you develop a side project just for yoursel…
> "build it and they will come"
I also used to think that build it and they will come was a big fallacy, but it's not really. The fallacy is, "build it and the whole world will fight to get what you built". That sure won't happen by itself or by chance.
But if you build something reasonably good, some people will come. That may not be enough for you to make a living out of it, but it will make it worthwhile.
> Learning things is valuable in itself.
From the same author:
> Open source, writing blog posts, and playing with tweaking lint settings and editor themes all day are completely fine until your landlord knocks on your door or you're at the checkout at the grocery store. You're doing a crazy 2-hour commute every day telling yourself "well at least I'm learning a lot about SVG". Fuck that.
https://kitze.io/posts/github-stars-wont-pay-your-rent
(I am actually, currently learning a lot about SVG and love it; but the quote is right that it's not paying the rent.)
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#15Yep, I'm there, been going for a year, it's amazing how quickly time passes by. Getting ready to ship, for realsies this time. Maybe I'm imagining, but due to the unimaginable number of apps and SaaS out there today, it's not as easy to put out something you're embarrassed about. The only way to do that is to have something extremely small and polished, in which case it's almost certainly been done already multiple t…
You can do it! HN believes in you.
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#16Kinda feel the app that managed to ship deserved a shoutout in this. Your idea is already out there, the value is 0.
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#17A big fallacy that I always see - and that is implied by this post - is that the work ends after shipping, a.k.a. "build it and they will come". That doesn't happen any more. So after you "ship" it, you need to promote it, advertise it, create buzz around it and make people use it. And that is a totally different kind of beast than coding something. But on the flip side, if you develop a side project just for yoursel…
I saw one startup whose "launch" was a splash page with a logo, description of an imaginary product they hadn't built yet and a Hubspot signup form that you sign up for news. These guys had it right. Get customer insight while you build features. In fact, they were building something that has been solved since before the computer was invented, they were just going to have a splashy brand.
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#18Being a solo dev on some app/website is not really worth it these days. There was a time when you could single-handedly create a million dollar app in some niche. But now the competition has increased so much that you need VC money or atleast a team if you want to create any impact whatsoever.
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#19A big fallacy that I always see - and that is implied by this post - is that the work ends after shipping, a.k.a. "build it and they will come". That doesn't happen any more. So after you "ship" it, you need to promote it, advertise it, create buzz around it and make people use it. And that is a totally different kind of beast than coding something. But on the flip side, if you develop a side project just for yoursel…
Serious question, how do you know whether it's your product or your marketing that sucks?
For example, I tried twitter ads for my product [1] and I got zero sales after spending $50.
What are good marketing strategies for niche hardware products?
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#20Being a solo dev on some app/website is not really worth it these days. There was a time when you could single-handedly create a million dollar app in some niche. But now the competition has increased so much that you need VC money or atleast a team if you want to create any impact whatsoever.
I don't believe this. A solo developer can create a more focused product, with less features, and still do well for themselves. Once you accept VC money you need to do well for the entire company, and the expectation is to be less niche to meet many users. Just talking very generally.