OP found out that customer research and Go-To-Market are more important than engineering. Engineering is (mostly). Finding customers and selling to them is not.
I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer
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Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer
#22To go deeper on the idea:
Seller wants Y, and wants to do work X to pay for Y.
Buyer has to want work X.
Unless buyer and seller know each other really well, Y doesn't matter to buyer.
So by focusing heavily on Y your growth is limited to the subset of the network that seller already has and can promote to, that also wants X from them.
If you can't bring new buyers it's going to be very hard to entice sellers to join.
Given that you'd need a lot more buyers than sellers to make this one work, it's hard to see the focal point of Y working out.
Market places are very hard. Good luck with your next product! Keep building.
Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer
#23"Build it and they will come" is almost never a winning strategy. Of course sometimes it works, you build the right thing at the right time and it goes viral, but most of the time you get crickets even if it gets to the top of Product Hunt or Hacker News (neither of which are of any importance outside of tech circles).
The right way is to talk to prospective customers first in a given niche, listen carefully to their problems, and figure out which problems are worth solving, i.e. you have the skills and resources to solve them and people will pay you to solve them. This is difficult if you don't have a network or experience in specific industries so tech people just wait around for a business person to tell them what to build instead.
Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer
#24How do you defined 'failed'. If I were in your shoes, I would pivot, change, test, ask, and tweak a product. First idea usually don't work, you have to find what works, even if it means changing the whole idea. Sometimes it works from first attempt, but usually it doesn't work. It's a matter of not giving up.
Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer
#25This is a classic two sided market. People who need money and are willing to sell services don’t know who you are. And people who are willing to buy services don’t know who you are. And the platform is useless unless you have both of those. The trick here is to find a very specific niche to start with. Instead of the goal being “let me get this popular everywhere” your short term goal should be to find how to make it…
Also people who have skills that would be best for such platform in marketing terms (stuff really in high demand) are actually front loaded with work so they don’t have need for yet another platform.
My friend thought about something similar in our country - but I told him first he would have to have good plumbers/mechanics available and available exclusively so that if you hire via that page it is actually useful for the customer.
What I have seen was that my insurance has „repair man” service as bonus and when I called them I had someone fixing my stuff in 2 days. Where if I was calling around every professional was busy and could get to me in like a month.
If you have low demand skills like „making web pages” you are not getting traction with such site and you have to burn investors money to keep in demand pros on bench and most likely it will be years to become profitable.
Hope someone find it interesting as it was a lot of writing :)
Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer
#26"Build it and they will come" is almost never a winning strategy. Of course sometimes it works, you build the right thing at the right time and it goes viral, but most of the time you get crickets even if it gets to the top of Product Hunt or Hacker News (neither of which are of any importance outside of tech circles). The right way is to talk to prospective customers first in a given niche, listen carefully to their…
Exactly that. "Build it and they will come" is one of those stories only the victors tell. My own approach was to tell everyone to go away who was asking stuff and finally give in to the most persistent person, then reluctantly build something and sell it to them because I couldn't be bothered to deal with it. This gets you a comfortable life but not rolling in cash and you get to retain your sanity, your dignity and your ethics.
Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer
#27"Build it and they will come" is almost never a winning strategy. Of course sometimes it works, you build the right thing at the right time and it goes viral, but most of the time you get crickets even if it gets to the top of Product Hunt or Hacker News (neither of which are of any importance outside of tech circles). The right way is to talk to prospective customers first in a given niche, listen carefully to their…
Exactly that. "Build it and they will come" is one of those stories only the victors tell. My own approach was to tell everyone to go away who was asking stuff and finally give in to the most persistent person, then reluctantly build something and sell it to them because I couldn't be bothered to deal with it. This gets you a comfortable life but not rolling in cash and you get to retain your sanity, your dignity and…
Same exact thing for me. Although I built lots of things (and no one came), I also heeded a piece of advice I got very early on, that your career is shaped as much by what jobs you refuse as by what jobs you take on. You are in charge of plotting the trajectory of your future CV and deciding the best use of your time. Steady and comfortable is great, and leaves time for side projects and the occasional moonshot.
Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer
#28It took me 3 years before users entered my first successful app. After the first year i made barely a dollar per day. Just dont give up.
Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer
#29I spent a year and a half building a "startup" of my own (actually, a humanitarian nonprofit) that failed. I can relate to the author's painful emotions as he processes his experience. This emotional journey is common in entrepreneurship, but very few people talk about it, so I wrote the book I wish I'd had. The book is titled "Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal", and I mention it whenever th…
As I learned from the a blackboard when doing my study abroad year for Arabic that engrained my respect for teachers, formal or informal: من يعلمني حرفا فصرت له عبدا. Read your bio and thanks for the book, looks interesting Will download and read when I can.
google translate: Whoever teaches me a letter, I become his slave
Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer
#30"Build it and they will come" is almost never a winning strategy. Of course sometimes it works, you build the right thing at the right time and it goes viral, but most of the time you get crickets even if it gets to the top of Product Hunt or Hacker News (neither of which are of any importance outside of tech circles). The right way is to talk to prospective customers first in a given niche, listen carefully to their…
It really depends on your definition of "winning." My partner and I decided to make a small game together back in 2020, release it, and maintain it. "Winning" for me meant that it should earn $500 per year and have regular players who got the same joy from it that we got from making it. It was a really modest goal
We kept working on it over the last three years. It has just been slowly, but consistently getting better, with more players. Now it's earning $500/month
There's always the fantasy and the lure of building something that goes viral and becomes a sensation overnight, but there's something to be said for slow-and-steady, consistency, and doing something joyful!