The saddest “just ship it” story (2020) • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by alin23 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 8:54 PM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #187

alin23 wrote: post #71

If you want to get paid, projects will need a lot of non-coding work after coding the basic features: presentation website, payment/licensing, contact forms, ProductHunt/HN launch, copy text (have you ever tried to fit what your product solves in two short sentences?) One good strategy I found accidentally through Lunar ( https://lunar.fyi ) is to launch for free, prioritizing the contact form, and letting people kno…

Lunar is a great app! I've been using it along with Vivid.

Thanks! Not sure if you’re aware but Lunar also has XDR Brightness: https://lunar.fyi/#xdr

In fact the feature landed in Lunar before Vivid launched and it uses a different approach that increases the brightness for the whole system instead of only for what’s behind an overlay like Vivid does (although the overlay also has its own advantages like being able to only increase brightness for a single window etc. )

It can be activated in the same way as Vivid: increase brightness over 100%

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

#202

Post by datagram » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

Perseids wrote: post #168

mwcampbell wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse if we routinely read highly critical message boards like this one. I'm currently developing a desktop app using Electron, but comments like this [1] make me wonder if I should scrap it and start over using purely Rust and/or C++. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31350035

I find it really fascinating how a completely different subset of Hackernews users answers to you than are present on other threads. As literary no sibling is voicing a dissenting opinion I feel compelled to present it: Purely from the user perspective I hate electron, because of its RAM usage. The speed argument is a straw man: Of course V8 is fast. And yes, VSCode is a very good IDE. But the problem is real world e…

> So what is the conclusion? I have no idea how to fix our collective resource waste and it is hard to assign individual responsibility and I'm deeply dissatisfied by the whole situation.

I think the most likely conclusion is that once OSes are guaranteed to have a modern-enough browser engine (this is close to being true for Windows since they introduced WebView2), Electron could update their framework to use the system's native webview (or at least make it available as an option for the developer). This would bring back the problem of having to test in multiple browsers, but I'd rather test against an old version of Chromium, or even Safari, than have to test against the old Edge engine in WebView1.

Edit: Did some more reading, and the way Electron discusses WebView2 doesn't seem to imply that they're interested in integrating with it: https://www.electronjs.org/blog/webview2

But regardless, I think all it would take is someone else making a framework that uses native webviews and implements enough of Electron's APIs/tooling to be close to a drop-in replacement. (Then again, how many people are using Preact?)

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

#203

Post by s1mon » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:24 PM UTC

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/

It's not clear who your product is for. "Everyone" is the wrong answer, BTW. If you try to make everyone happy, you usually end up making no one happy. It's super important to focus on actual user problems.

1. Is this solving a pain point the user has already?

2. Do they currently have some less-than-great solution in place?

3. Are they willing to pay for something which will solve their problem?

Looking at your product, I see a possible market, but it might need to be tuned (UX and/or marketing) to be successful.

A relative of mine needs 24/7 in-home care. There are a number of people involved and a decent number of Dr appointments etc to coordinate. The people involved with elder care are super low tech, but in her case, a shared visible calendar could be useful.

In general, the products for seniors and/or people with dementia or other disabilities tend to have horrible design and still aren't really suited to physical/cognitive challenges of the users and their caregivers. It's a niche, but one that could use a lot of developments.

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

#204

Post by goatcode » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:43 PM UTC

Having experienced this very thing, I can say: there's a good chance the other guys had already made their app in some form long before this guy did. Don't worry, bro: everyone has had a cool idea (all of which are very cheap -- ideas, that is) and then seen someone else doing it later. The good news is this though: if you're dishonest and connected enough, you can still make your app succeed. Especially if it's worse than your competitors'. I have a strong suspicion that that's how it's usually done.

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

#205

Post by aliswe » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:47 PM UTC

pflenker wrote: post #175

pkrumins wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Congratulations! Though in claiming that since it worked in your case, it will work in the majority of cases you commit the anecdotal evidence fallacy.

aka Survivorship bias.

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

#206

Post by aliswe » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:48 PM UTC

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…

most importantly you also need to continue developing it

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

#207

Post by Nimitz14 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:58 PM UTC

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/

I don't think the landing page is bad. Product seems cool. I don't agree with the people talking about extra features. The main issue I feel is that this is something only people with quite a bit of money and leisure can afford (because it's not solving a direct problem, it's just for convenience). So you need something on the page that will unconsciously persuade these people that it's cool. It's an upmarket product but the website doesn't advertise it as such.

Rather than doing online ads I think a promo vid with a progressive looking family / hipsters would be more effective. ;)

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

#208

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

texasviking wrote: post #189

Hits me in the feels. In 2011 I had an idea for a ceramic coffee mug with a threaded base. then build a screw on base with heating element, battery, and QI charger. Screw the base on, set it on a QI charge pad... voila "always hot coffee". When you're done for the day, unscrew the base, put the mug in the dishwasher. Rinse, repeat. For a year I researched getting a prototype built, castings, etc. Finally decided to j…

Why does it need to screw into the heater? I picked up a coffee mug heating plate at a garage sale for $3. Works great.

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

#209

Post by quickthrower2 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

jmstfv wrote: post #156

quickthrower2 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As someone who built and sold an uptime monitoring service - don't*. You will have a hard time attracting customers as most common marketing channels are very saturated. *unless you're going to approach it from a unique angle AND have access to a customer base; even then, it won't be a walk in the park

Yeah, now that you say that it sounds a bit like starting a pizza restaurant I guess: hard work. Probably harder as the Pizza restaurant has physical presence and proximity, where as online, it is more democratic: we are all equally shouting into the void for attention.

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

#210

Post by czhu12 » Thu, May 12, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

The tone of this post suggests that if the author simply just shipped, they would be as successful as the competitor.

Building successful products is not a matter of “shipping” but also promoting, selling, continually improving, studying user behaviors, providing customer support and engaging potential customers.

Given that the author wasn’t even motivated enough to ship when all these other tasks weren’t even applicable yet, I can’t imagine they would be motivated to do all the work after shipping.

Frankly, this is a good thing. I’ve never been more stressed than when I’ve managed to ship a product, picked up a tiny number of paying customers, and subsequently realized that many hundreds of more hours would have to be poured into the product to make it truly useful.

You slowly start working on it, customers are upset and start churning, and you’re constantly questioning whether it’s worth it anymore to keep pushing.

The most success I’ve ever had was building something I personally thought is fun and interesting with 0 expectations of money or profit, customers be damned.

I’m building https://mintables.club right now, sometimes I pick it up for a few hours on a weekend, often I ignore it for weeks, but I visit it all the time because I love the artwork people upload. There’s tons of competitors that do similar things, even before I started it, but I couldn’t care less.