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I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer

buildingwithchris.com

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Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer

#41

Post by herbst »

hknmtt wrote: post #36

Ive done many projects in my life, none took off. I've got my first computer in 96 and been online around 2001. So I think i have seen the internet evolve for the past two decades. And what I have been observing ever since we left the 2010s is the rise of monopolization. The 2010s were magical years. Internet was amazing place where you could find a lot of things, communities, people... you could have made anything a…

That's a sad POV. Sure it might be hard to build the next social network without a lot of ad spent (likely always was) but you can definitely build the biggest social network for let's say tee drinkers and grow it naturally within an enthusiast community.

I too built things my whole life and have years of 'failure' on my back but I live of income I make on 'niche' sites no major company is ever going to compete for. No unicorns, no million dollar business but honest money for honest work.

Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer

#42

Post by withinboredom »

hknmtt wrote: post #36

Ive done many projects in my life, none took off. I've got my first computer in 96 and been online around 2001. So I think i have seen the internet evolve for the past two decades. And what I have been observing ever since we left the 2010s is the rise of monopolization. The 2010s were magical years. Internet was amazing place where you could find a lot of things, communities, people... you could have made anything a…

This is not strictly true. But if you want to "make it big," it's pretty accurate. However, as a one-or-two-man-shop, you can make a pretty good living off of "commodity software," for which there is still a lot of competition. To make money there simply requires showing up daily and maintaining the service, adding new features, etc. As you show your service to be more reliable, your small customer base will recommend you more and more, and you'll grow.

An excellent way to spot these opportunities is to see what services big companies give away for free. These companies feel threatened by these things and need MORE competition, not less (look at what happened to email hosting for a good example of what happens if people don't compete).

When I see a company offer me something for free, I immediately see what it costs (I want to understand the value I'm getting, at a bare minimum). What I see out there is a thriving economy that I never would have thought to look for if it weren't advertised as "free."

Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer

#43

Post by herbst »

danjac wrote: post #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…

> Build it and they will come

Is my exact strategy. My first startup I desperately tried to find any form of confirmation that my product has a need. I couldn't find it, nobody appeared to need what I was creating.

But I was half done and published it anyway and it was a huge success for me. Still haven't met a potential customer since outside of my customers. Also no paid ads, just Reddit, hn, ...

I think the actual problem with the approach is how much time people spent before they actually test their idea.

It's a full time gig for me, I can afford coding 2 months just for throwing the project. Wasting a year, next to working a normal job, on a MVP that won't sell is a stupid idea. But if you can built 6 ideas in that year it might work out.

Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer

#44

Post by gsky »

danjac wrote: post #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…

In my experience making into the top 10 here means nothing but 10k-20k visitors in the first two days.

Solopreuners have to be better focus on SEO

Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer

#45

Post by danjac »

gsky wrote: post #44
danjac wrote: post #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…

In my experience making into the top 10 here means nothing but 10k-20k visitors in the first two days. Solopreuners have to be better focus on SEO

Unless your product depends on eyeballs, SEO is just another vanity metric.

Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer

#46

Post by you-make-it »

hknmtt wrote: post #36

Ive done many projects in my life, none took off. I've got my first computer in 96 and been online around 2001. So I think i have seen the internet evolve for the past two decades. And what I have been observing ever since we left the 2010s is the rise of monopolization. The 2010s were magical years. Internet was amazing place where you could find a lot of things, communities, people... you could have made anything a…

[flagged]

Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer

#47

Post by altdataseller »

danjac wrote: post #45
gsky wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience making into the top 10 here means nothing but 10k-20k visitors in the first two days. Solopreuners have to be better focus on SEO

Unless your product depends on eyeballs, SEO is just another vanity metric.

Nonsense. No sales will convert from 0 eyeballs

Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer

#48

Post by takinola »

danjac wrote: post #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…

> 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

This is really not as difficult as it seems. After having done this a couple of times, I recently wrote a blog post to document my process - https://open.substack.com/pub/toluakinola/p/how-to-do-idea-d...

Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer

#49

Post by moralestapia »

takinola wrote: post #48
danjac wrote: post #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…

> 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 This is really not as difficult as it seems. After having done this a couple of times, I recently wrote a blog post to document my process - https://open.substack.com/pub/toluakinola/p/how-to-do-idea-d...

Hey, this is one of the first posts I've read about this that contains real actionable steps instead of bs. Thanks.

Re: I spent a year building an app and failed – The story of Taskwer

#50

Post by deepakarora3 »

"And that’s when a real problem emerged; nobody knew who I was" and "I felt invisible, like I was all alone in this world. I could have had the best thing in the world, and no one would care": Could not agree with you more on this - over the past many years it has been more and more important to build a digital brand for yourself and have many followers - to be networked with people and know people who can provide you with reach - something which is difficult for introverts and challenging to do now since I have crossed 50. I personally have felt this helplessness in trying to promote a couple of opensource Java libraries I released on behalf of my employer (shameless plug here -> https://github.com/americanexpress/unify-jdocs and https://github.com/americanexpress/unify-flowret). I thought I had done something of value which would be readily adopted by people after they saw it - guess what - first I have not been able to get through to a wide audience and second - I underestimated what it takes to get people out of their comfort zone and their traditional thinking. It is so difficult for people to accept that there may be better ways of doing things once they get used to a certain way. Anyway, I don't think you failed - you learnt and it is never too late to learn and do something new. Something will click eventually and I wish you all the very best.
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