Er, nice story, really entertaining to read, but I think it would benefit from actually mentioning the "competitor" app that he ended up paying money for. I mean, he won't ship his own app anymore, so no harm done in mentioning it, right?
The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
31–40 of 253 posts
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#32This article made me so sad - the author really doesn't need to be as hard on themselves as they are!
I think he was exaggerating to make it a more interesting read. Or, at least, I hope so...
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#33> My app is officially dead. Most markets are large enough to accommodate several businesses. There's really no reason to stop working on something just because you find that there is already someone solving that same problem. Who knows, they will shut it down at some point, or might head upmarket or pivot to a tangential area.
Exactly. In fact, it's even a bit of validation that maybe the market you're trying to address actually exists.
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#34Mine was when the iPhone SDK was released. I’d made a small Mac thing and gone to a few WWDCs, and really wanted to be an app developer. I brainstormed some dumb ideas, but one day I was meeting up with some friends in the city and while waiting for them to show up, I thought “there should be an app for this”.
It felt like I got a lot of blank stares when explaining the idea to people, but I went ahead and built a prototype app where you could invite friends to share their location for a limited time, and it would show you where everyone is in realtime on a map. I did a simple backend server to coordinate sending the updates between devices. There was a chat built in so you could tell people your train was running late. I sent it to a few people, we tried it out, I got busy doing other things, and never finished it.
My memory may have distorted the timeline, but it felt like a long time before I saw apps like Glympse, Apple’s Find My Friends, or Google location sharing show up. I could have easily gotten that over the line while it was still my idea. Entirely my fault, though.
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#35Er, nice story, really entertaining to read, but I think it would benefit from actually mentioning the "competitor" app that he ended up paying money for. I mean, he won't ship his own app anymore, so no harm done in mentioning it, right?
I’m curious too!
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#36A 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? [1] https://www.invisible-computers.com/
That's precisely the thing i am going to be looking for soon. Yours looks pretty good, but i find the product page to be a bit lacking in detail and polish ( including typos like "come with wooden stand" instead of "comes"), which can be off-putting.
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#37Er, nice story, really entertaining to read, but I think it would benefit from actually mentioning the "competitor" app that he ended up paying money for. I mean, he won't ship his own app anymore, so no harm done in mentioning it, right?
I could see that distracting from the main point. Then it becomes "Why were you solving that problem?" "Why did you insult their app, it's really great!" "The author's right, no one should use app X."
It's not the point of the story.
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#38Er, nice story, really entertaining to read, but I think it would benefit from actually mentioning the "competitor" app that he ended up paying money for. I mean, he won't ship his own app anymore, so no harm done in mentioning it, right?
I could see that distracting from the main point. Then it becomes "Why were you solving that problem?" "Why did you insult their app, it's really great!" "The author's right, no one should use app X." It's not the point of the story.
It's not really a story as it is now though. Someone did something better than this guy. It's just a stream slightly coherent gonzo ranting.
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#39"Maybe this is actually obvious, but it's still a common mistake in startups so I'll say it - you don't have to believe your product is good to start selling; you just have to be better than not having the product. You don't even have to believe it's the best, or believe it's complete, or even like it. People will happily give you money for anything that makes their pain point slightly less painful." Me, 3 hours ago.…
I wouldn't quite agree that people will happily give you money for anything that makes their pain less. There is still oboarding friction, possible import issues, fear of vendor lock-in etc.
I think it is something that is easy to describe in theory, "ship what people want", "pivot quickly" etc. but the truth is most of us think we have solved a problem with our product but as soon as the first customer says, "I would buy it if you changed all those things", we quickly get stuck between, "product market fit" and "I am not solving your problem so let's find the customer whose problem I am solving" to avoid creating something that only customer wants.
Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)
#40"Maybe this is actually obvious, but it's still a common mistake in startups so I'll say it - you don't have to believe your product is good to start selling; you just have to be better than not having the product. You don't even have to believe it's the best, or believe it's complete, or even like it. People will happily give you money for anything that makes their pain point slightly less painful." Me, 3 hours ago.…
Aka JobsToBeDone theory of innovation.