Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem
colmanhumphrey.com
Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem
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Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem
#2Didn't see you mention Retool. I'd think if a company was aware of Retool, they'd always pick that over Slight.
Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem
#3I would also maybe add "picking a name that's impossible to Google and hard to remember".
The number of emails I get along the lines to "Your trial period of Foowazzle will expire soon" and my reaction is usually "I can't remember what the hell Foowazzle is".
In fact the reason I often fail to actually use trials of potentially interesting services after signing up is because I forget what they are called and can't find them when I need them.
At least "Foowazzle" would be easy to search for...
Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem
#4I would also maybe add "picking a name that's impossible to Google and hard to remember". The number of emails I get along the lines to "Your trial period of Foowazzle will expire soon" and my reaction is usually "I can't remember what the hell Foowazzle is". In fact the reason I often fail to actually use trials of potentially interesting services after signing up is because I forget what they are called and can't f…
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Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem
#5I chatted with Colman years ago when Slight was around about joining forces and I was really impressed by his character and intelligence. It didn't work out between us for unrelated reasons. And then later on they shut Slight down as described here. But failure is such a good learning experience. If he ever starts something again I would definitely recommend folks to follow/join it.
Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem
#6A really level-headed take on what must have been a very tough experience.
I'm reminded of the Star Trek TNG quote "It's possible to commit no mistakes and still lose that's not weakness, that's life."
Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem
#7[flagged]
Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem
#8I would also maybe add "picking a name that's impossible to Google and hard to remember". The number of emails I get along the lines to "Your trial period of Foowazzle will expire soon" and my reaction is usually "I can't remember what the hell Foowazzle is". In fact the reason I often fail to actually use trials of potentially interesting services after signing up is because I forget what they are called and can't f…
In all our automated emails, we put something like "As a reminder,[name of company] is a ..."
Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem
#9 > Distribution
Across three different startup efforts, I've learned that even if some team loves the product:
1) legal/compliance/IT team gets involved and kills it for a handful of common reasons,
2) it addresses a key part of their workflow, but the primary process exists in some *other* system so they are not willing to add a new system,
3) the potential customer sees a small startup team as a risk and are not willing to switch part of their process to an unproven entity.
EDIT: A key lesson learned for technical founders seeking co-founders where your target market is enterprise/B2B SaaS: the best non-technical candidates don't want to take the risk in a startup (because they are already making bank with enterprise sales) and most candidates that want to do a startup probably aren't the best candidates (because otherwise, they'd be making bank doing enterprise sales for an incumbent). It's really needle in the haystack that you find the right non-technical partner that can sell into an industry and is motivated by entrepreneurship.
Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem
#10> If you don’t know how your product will be adopted, how would your customers know?
I feel like this is both correct and incorrect at the same time, possibly because it’s almost a catch-22.
With any online product at all, not just SaaS, the way your customers use your product may end up entirely different than how you planned your product to work.
Of course, it’s important to have a direction to begin with, but I feel like analyzing how your customers use your tools and adjusting rapidly to that instead of sticking to what you wanted to build in the first place is what makes or breaks a lot of startups.
Take that with a grain of salt though, I’ve still never launched a product with an ROI greater than the value of the time I put into it.