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The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

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Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#131

Post by pkrumins »

pflenker wrote: post #3

A 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…

You're so wrong. I built it and they came. And when I say they, I mean millions of users. Here's my blog post about it: https://catonmat.net/if-you-build-it-they-will-come

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#132

Post by bemmu »

konschubert wrote: post #19
pflenker wrote: post #3

A 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/

You might be able to get some customers with that spend on average, but could have hit zero just from bad luck (randomness is clumpy). Customers can easily cost tens of dollars to acquire.

As an example, for my own subscription box service the cost to acquire a customer from YouTube ads was ~$49.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#133

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

lbriner wrote: post #42
pflenker wrote: post #3

A 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 think like others have said, it does depend on whether you are targetting the mass market or a smaller (and hopefully more lucrative) niche. Plenty of companies don't do what you say and still become successful. However, for a pure software solution with little market expertise, I suspect what you are saying is correct because the barrier is so low. If you can "build an app" in a weekend, so can 1000s of other peop…

They "can" but will they?

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#134

Post by MockObject »

Markstar wrote: post #85

I'm a bit in a similar boat: My wife's department (university) asked me for a 'little' favor, which I programmed in Java to get back into programming after ~4 years of being a stay-at-home dad. After finishing the prototype in 2019, we made the life-changing decision to focus on making it a program that we want to sell. Decided to go C++ and Electron, but with the corona virus and me taking forever to learn all the s…

Why didn't you ship the Java version?

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#135

Post by HWR_14 »

rukuu001 wrote: post #91
LVanguard wrote: post #80

I had this experience a couple of months ago when I noticed a gap in the shopify app ecosystem. I saw some comments discussing this need, found nothing in the store, and had a friend starting a shop that could potentially use it as well. Worked on the app for 2-3 months, polishing, coding, learning tailwind and a bit of formal UI design in the process. Kept thinking "It's not ready yet. Just needs this hook into the…

The most affirming thing in the world is making something and then selling it. The second most affirming thing in the world is watching someone make the exact thing you thought of and then selling it.

Why is selling it affirming? I never got a huge amount of satisfaction from selling things. Giving things away always brought me more satisfaction.

In fact, putting a price tag on something I was giving away always seemed like step 1 towards no longer caring about it.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#136

Post by dcow »

While there’s clearly some nugget of advice in this rant, I can’t help but find it really cringe to the point of wondering if the author has mental or psychological issues. They are literally sitting here telling everyone else to ship their shit but they won’t ship their shit. Talk about bad ways to lead. Does the author want a pity party? I’m just really confused what I’m supposed to take away as the reader from all the self flagellation. Is it an effective literary tactic for people?

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#137

Post by lostcolony »

jschveibinz wrote: post #120

“The MVP was ready in a few days. I'm not that good of a coder, it's just a simple app.” This sentence is incredibly important. If a MVP is ready in 3 days, then how valuable can that product be? When literally everyone has access to tools that they believe can result in something marketable in only a few days, then we have achieved the time when nobody makes money from software. Thoughts?

If you stop at the MVP, agreed. The implication is either what you have in an MVP is good enough no one will compete, or that you'll keep moving forward with it once you get any sort of validation.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#138

Post by jamil7 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #113
rozenmd wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sitting here running the 200th uptime monitoring service, laughing at the notion you have to be first to ship a solution to a problem. Build something good, that people want, and iterate rapidly as feedback comes in.

I think an uptime monitoring service will be my back up idea. It is like a pizza business, you can always find people who want pizza and who will rave about your pizza. Dominos and Pizza Hut are not a problem.

That's a good analogy, there are some pieces of software that are used by so many people that there's always room for a slightly different spin on it. Look at notes apps for example.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#139

Post by UnpossibleJim »

pflenker wrote: post #3

A 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 also think they didn't learn one important lesson (maybe). MVP's don't need bells and whistles. Stop adding that "one last thing". It's a Minimum Viable Product. It should be lean, and somewhat polished. Add features later.

Re: The saddest “just ship it” story (2020)

#140

Post by dylan604 »

pflenker wrote: post #3

A 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…

The biggest fallacy in my experience is that the thing you built isn't done at ship because your first build is only what you thought of to build. Your users might need some of what you built, but the feature requests will quickly show you that you only thought a fraction of the possible things a user would want.
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