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Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

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Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#21

Post by _nalply »

whartung wrote: post #14

By a similar note, I'm working on a pet project, with no commercial aspirations, but, yea, it would be nice if others eventually use it. And by that notion, I have lots of ideas, but I must continually consciously reign myself in and try to not fall into a hole for a "nice to have". I don't even have a "have" yet, and would be good to get that finished before we get to the "nice" to haves. But, I whittle away, pushin…

That's not a bad thing if you have fun and don't have the expectation of a product.

Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#22

Post by ChicagoBoy11 »

whartung wrote: post #14

By a similar note, I'm working on a pet project, with no commercial aspirations, but, yea, it would be nice if others eventually use it. And by that notion, I have lots of ideas, but I must continually consciously reign myself in and try to not fall into a hole for a "nice to have". I don't even have a "have" yet, and would be good to get that finished before we get to the "nice" to haves. But, I whittle away, pushin…

I'm in the same boat, and I think the lack of commercial aspiration is a bit of a double-edged sword, because then its tough to balance the competing forces between developing features because they'd be fun to develop, developing features because they would be nice in the product, and developing something that people other than me would actually want to use.

Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#23

Post by cschreiber »

sullivanmatt wrote: post #3

I would recommend reading both Inspired and Empowered by Marty Cagan to help you think about your product journey. Very relevant to what you'll be building, and personally I found Empowered challenged me in ways that both made me uncomfortable and also better at my job as a Product Manager.

Any other PM books you found had a significant impact on your role?

Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#24

Post by m0llusk »

This seems like basic marketing. You need to know who is interested in buying the product, why, and what kind of language they use. Microwave ovens are a great example of this. They existed for quite a while, but people rejected them because of the cost and mismatched features. When makers got serious about polling people and demonstrating examples sales of honed products took off faster than any other product before then.

Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#25

Post by markus_zhang »

tchock23 wrote: post #18
markus_zhang wrote: post #2

Don't blame yourself, even teams in big companies don't bother to do validation and fetch customer opinions before developing the products. And I know why.

I’ll bite… Why?

From my experience it's similar to a knight to grab a piece of land and build a castle -- so that he can have a better source of income and better position in the feudal system. And he can then dream of being a lord or something better than a knight.

Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#27

Post by ironmagma »

mhuffman wrote: post #16
ironmagma wrote: post #5

There’s a balance to be had. Show your thing too early and it can die. There’s a reason large companies don’t announce everything the moment it’s planned.

There is a big difference between Apple tipping its hand and China printing out a bazillion clones of it before it even hits the market and testing to see if you actually have a market to start with. Apple does not have to test to see if it has a market to start with. People would buy white iTurds on a stick and show unboxing videos if Apple released. You can have a galaxy brain idea but since you don't have millions…

It's not just about market fit though. Pixar didn't announce a movie as soon as it was conceived, and neither should you. Announcing too early often sets you up for failure.

Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#29

Post by [deleted] »

Dudester230602 wrote: post #17

Best growth hacking thing to do now is to make an HN post about lesson learned and to make sure all the links are included. Like the OP. Later on it should be possible to make another HN post about the impact of the previous HN post on the sign up counts. Make sure to include the links there too.

[deleted]

Re: Painful Lesson: Always 'Show and Tell' Your Product Before You Develop It

#30

Post by chrispogeek »

I write the simplest incarnation of an idea onto an app, and just share it out with colleagues. I have no expectations. I'd say my hit rate is about 1/5. I consider it very high. It's also that high because my audience is my coworkers and I have a good idea of what they want. It's also that low because I just cobble together stuff that barely works, with the ultimate intent to see if i'd get more questions/requests out of it.
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