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I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

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Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#121

Post by berkes »

lupire wrote: post #51
berkes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not. But there are many ways in which AI can improve or help support. So even if "AI chat support" turns out to not work, AI can still be very helpful in automating support. Like detecting duplicates, preparing standard answers, grouping similar requests, assigning messages to priorities and/or people and so on.

That's not what "AI" means now. "AI" now means LLM babble

Even LLMs can do many of what I mention. Categorizing, grouping, assigning prios etc. maybe not as good as dedicated AI trained for this purpose only (I guess many could be "simple" bayesian filters even) but good enough and readily available.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#122

Post by Eisenstein »

datavirtue wrote: post #87
zerkten wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know the answer to this even before modern tech businesses existed: running a business is a very different experience from what people expect. This is exacerbated with certain experiences that create worldviews which are closer to the opposite of running a business. This is why startup people straight out of school are often unencumbered with ideas that impact their mission. If you go into a large organization, yo…

The paycheck mentality. It depresses economic output and productivity across the board by keeping people unengaged and dependent.

I don't think that 'everyone an entrepreneur' would increase economic output and productivity, and the fact is that some people just want a paycheck because they don't really care about making more money than the paycheck gives them, and the work is fine.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#124

Post by Eisenstein »

1024core wrote: post #117
pjc50 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The usual suggestion, often given by HN's patio11, is to charge, and charge more. For some reason free customers are the most demanding, and the more you charge the more people self-select out of the customer base.

There's this old story about an old farmer and his horse. You see, this old farmer had a horse that he loved dearly; took great care of it and pampered it. But he was getting old, and wanted to retire to the City, where he could not keep a horse. So what do I do with this horse, he wondered? He asked a wise friend, who told him: sell the horse for the highest amount of money that you can. What?!? replied the farmer;…

Or, give it to someone who can't afford a horse but really needs one, because it will be worth more to them than to someone who can afford to overpay for it.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#125

Post by lostemptations5 »

shash7 wrote: post #37

Can relate, I've been in a similar boat running a small B2B Saas over the last 2 years. It does get easier over time. I've learnt a few tricks for managing early stage pain points. - You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. - Once your core product is built, its worthwhile spending some time automating the heck out of everything. This will save a TON of time in the near future. - Inve…

Wow! This is a great blog. Thanks for putting it out :)

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#126

Post by Vegenoid »

duxup wrote: post #79
shash7 wrote: post #37

Can relate, I've been in a similar boat running a small B2B Saas over the last 2 years. It does get easier over time. I've learnt a few tricks for managing early stage pain points. - You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. - Once your core product is built, its worthwhile spending some time automating the heck out of everything. This will save a TON of time in the near future. - Inve…

>You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. And very focused responses in terms of action items. You might think of 3 things to say, check, but sadly 90% of the people you respond to with a list will behave like they read just one of them. Sadly this also leads to dragging things out for everyone who can handle more than one thing at a time :(

Yep. All the time when I worked in IT:

Me: Please try these 3 things and let me know how it goes: (list of 3 things with instructions)

Them: I tried (thing #1) and it didn’t work.

Me: Thank you, please try these 2 things and let me know how it goes

Them: I tried (thing #2) and it didn’t work.

Me: Thank you, please try this thing and let me know how it goes

Them: (no response)

Me: Just checking in to see if this is resolved?

Them: (no response)

Me: I’m closing this ticket as I haven’t heard back, let me know if this is still a problem and I can reopen it

Them: Don’t close the ticket, I’m still having this issue

Me: No problem, can you try this thing and let me know how it goes?

Them: (no response)

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#127

Post by brnt »

crazygringo wrote: post #54
_se wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one wants to talk to an AI for customer support.

Actually, I do. There's no wait in line. There's no waiting 2 min for each response in chat, or waiting 5 min on hold while the rep figures out what to do. And I've, shockingly, gotten issues resolved faster and better. Using one semi-popular consumer app -- once it pointed me to docs on their site that Google wasn't finding because I didn't know what keywords to use. And twice it escalated me to send a message to th…

There's also no useful output whatsoever if you actually tried any troubleshooting yourself.

Never has a chatbot been of help to me.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#128

Post by ruffrey »

I strongly relate to this post. Having grown mailsac.com to above average side project revenue, the admin overhead isn't crazy, but it's exceptionally repetitive and boring. So much time is spent on fraud and normal "running the business" really sucks the enjoyment out of a side project (for me as an engineer). I think that having a side project co-founder who is a relentless business operator is more important than having a decent technologist.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#129

Post by rodrigodlu »

wruza wrote: post #116
duxup wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You need to develop a polite but curt tone of voice for customer support. And very focused responses in terms of action items. You might think of 3 things to say, check, but sadly 90% of the people you respond to with a list will behave like they read just one of them. Sadly this also leads to dragging things out for everyone who can handle more than one thing at a time :(

I’m observing this for many years and it feels like there are two types of people. Those who perceive lists as a whole and those who list.shuffle().pop(). Try asking your colleagues/etc three semi-related questions in one message and you’ll get only a partial answer in a significant number of cases. When confronted (constructively, much later) they usually get evasive and can’t explain. I could theorize it’s a learne…

I'm pretty sure it's because they're not paying full attention, even worse, sometimes already building an intense narrative with only few items internalized inside their brains.

I also feel that this is happening more and more, since there's more rewards for giving very small pieces of attention and energy to a bigger pool of people, instead giving extra energy or attention to a smaller pool of people seeking for one's help.

I'm just facing this with a contractor doing repairs in my house, a month ago was finding a decent mechanic to fix just 2 issues on my car.

The first promptly finds energy to discuss things it receives through social networks or messages, but can't provide a decent list of things that I need to provide him to finish his work faster.

The second case took a lot of time and discussing with 6 different mechanics, until th car broke and it was towed.

I'm seeing this more and more, unfortunately.

Re: I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it

#130

Post by cies »

gnutrino wrote: post #93

The amount of fraud and scammers out there is insane. I worked on a platform that only had a few hundred in revenue a month (just starting out). We did many smaller transactions, and getting hit with disputes was a killer. If someone did 15 transactions, they could get hit with 15 chargebacks up to 3 months later. So for every transaction, even if it only generated $3 in revenue, the chargeback could be potentially $…

Chargebacks are a creditcard thing. In some countries people are willing to pay with methods that do not allow chargebacks.

Also chargebacks do not work for wiretranfers. So you can ask them to do a wire transfer instead

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