Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem

#71

Post by bitbasher » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 2:58 AM UTC

They fell for the classic, "build a product and then find customers" strategy. It's the quickest way to burn 1-2 years.

I have a saas product that I have been running for several years by myself and I would consider it quite successful. The "strategy" I used (if you can call it that) was almost the exact opposite.

I witnessed customers paying services for a product. I looked at the product and thought, "Huh, I could do that and charge half as much" and then (the most important part), I did it.

Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem

#72

Post by colmanhumphrey » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 11:01 PM UTC

bitbasher wrote: post #71

They fell for the classic, "build a product and then find customers" strategy. It's the quickest way to burn 1-2 years. I have a saas product that I have been running for several years by myself and I would consider it quite successful. The "strategy" I used (if you can call it that) was almost the exact opposite. I witnessed customers paying services for a product. I looked at the product and thought, "Huh, I could…

That sounds like a very viable and valuable type of business, but it's kind of a different category of business model

Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem

#73

Post by colmanhumphrey » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 11:03 PM UTC

devmor wrote: post #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 fe…

oh that's an interesting perspective. I would say you're right, and maybe I didn't phrase it well. I probably should have said something more like: if you don't know how, or if you can't learn how (through iteration etc), then how can your customers. Or something to that effect.

Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem

#74

Post by colmanhumphrey » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 11:06 PM UTC

sirspacey wrote: post #51

This is such an excellent reflection, especially the iterative nature. “Yes but” is now a part of my toolkit to help me authentically unpack all the justifications that come to mind & convert them into learning. I’ve lead B2B SaaS revenue efforts a number of times. You correctly identified all the things that are hard and how customer size is a major factor in choosing what to build and how to sell. My general recomm…

a very generous comment! Very interesting you say that, I believe we did at some point have some thoughts about targeting B2B2C, but sadly that was one of the areas we failed to fully learn about / experiment / iterate on.

Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem

#75

Post by colmanhumphrey » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 11:09 PM UTC

mritchie712 wrote: post #2

Didn't see you mention Retool. I'd think if a company was aware of Retool, they'd always pick that over Slight.

I am surprised to hear you say this given your previous experience founding a product that from a distance might look to cover some similar space to retool but in practice is quite different. My perspective: only investors ever asked us about retool, not customers. Some of them even used retool tool. Hah even just typing this out brings me back to investor meetings!

Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem

#76

Post by colmanhumphrey » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 11:10 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #31

> Slacking around SQL snippets, schlepping around CSVs, devs having minor inconsistencies when running a bunch of ad-hoc queries: problems for sure, but not major ones for a small company. This is a general theme: it is hard to fight "good enough". Even in a big-enough company, a competent engineer will have a good enough way to manage queries, while incompetent ones won't care. In the end, very few people will want…

This rings true, and I guess further backs up how important it is to carefully choose your initial customers, so the product is actually good enough by the time it gets to the broader swathe of companies. At least, that's my guess — I'm the one that failed after all!

Re: Why Slight Failed: A Slight Post-Mortem

#77

Post by colmanhumphrey » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 11:16 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #3

I 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…

haha, not sure I agree with this one at all, I think a name is pretty far down the list of priorities for a business. I would be extremely surprised if "customers who started trials but then didn't use the product at all, but then later wanted to, but couldn't because they couldn't find the name" is a segment that moves the needle.

From this brief note, you sound like you potentially are trialling an order of magnitude more services than the average person. I bet that gives you a ton of interesting perspective on all these products, sign-up flows, etc, but probably puts you in a very unusual position with respect to product names!