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My experience releasing failed SaaS products

mmartinfahy.medium.com

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Re: My experience releasing failed SaaS products

#11

Post by ZephyrBlu »

I think one of the important lessons that the author is yet to learn is that people don't give a shit about your product.

You have to realize that even if someone gives you a 1 star review saying "product does not work", they still probably don't give a shit. Even people who use your product more than likely aren't going to give you any feedback.

The fact the author is focused on things like SEO and is overly emotional about people's reactions to their product shows they don't understand this.

Who cares about SEO if your content doesn't make people give a shit, and having people take time out of their day to tell you how shit your product is isn't the worst outcome. I would rather people tear me and my shit apart than them not react at all.

The fact someone organically posted about your product and it got engagement is actually interesting. Maybe none of their feedback is actionable, but I would still count that as a win.

It also sounds like they're trying to build generic B2C products, which I think is the complete opposite of what you should be building as a solo bootstrapper.

Re: My experience releasing failed SaaS products

#13

Post by staticassertion »

flagman555 wrote: post #4

I have been building and failing multiple websites/mobile apps since 2006. To this day, I don't think I could ever be in that situation of creating something that somehow takes off. Theres gotta be a place for failed web/mobile app developers to get together and figure out a way to make it, anyone know of such a place?

Why not simply work at a company?

Re: My experience releasing failed SaaS products

#14

Post by ackbar03 »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #11

I think one of the important lessons that the author is yet to learn is that people don't give a shit about your product. You have to realize that even if someone gives you a 1 star review saying "product does not work", they still probably don't give a shit. Even people who use your product more than likely aren't going to give you any feedback. The fact the author is focused on things like SEO and is overly emotion…

>It also sounds like they're trying to build generic B2C products, which I think is the complete opposite of what you should be building as a solo bootstrapper

What would be your recommendation then regarding this point? Niche b2b?

Re: My experience releasing failed SaaS products

#15

Post by MattGaiser »

teraflop wrote: post #8

Much of this seems like useful lessons learned, but this particular section jumped out at me: > To my credit at this time I would learn and do anything to get more users to my site, to the point where I was getting banned from multiple forums for posting after people told me to get lost. How is this "to your credit"? If, as you say, the success of your product depends on getting niche users to buy in and trust that y…

I knew a company that did this (their marketing person would constantly make accounts on Reddit, get banned, and then try again all day) and asked them about it.

They said that only the regulars who post and comment get mad, not the lurkers. It might only be the mods getting mad if posts only lasted 15 minutes or so. So in their view it didn't matter that the mods were seething with rage as that didn't get passed on to most of the community as they removed the posts. Only the mods saw it as a flood of spam.

Re: My experience releasing failed SaaS products

#16

Post by ZephyrBlu »

ackbar03 wrote: post #14
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #11

I think one of the important lessons that the author is yet to learn is that people don't give a shit about your product. You have to realize that even if someone gives you a 1 star review saying "product does not work", they still probably don't give a shit. Even people who use your product more than likely aren't going to give you any feedback. The fact the author is focused on things like SEO and is overly emotion…

>It also sounds like they're trying to build generic B2C products, which I think is the complete opposite of what you should be building as a solo bootstrapper What would be your recommendation then regarding this point? Niche b2b?

Yes, niche B2B seems to be the winning play from what I have seen and heard from successful indie hackers.

Re: My experience releasing failed SaaS products

#17

Post by redis_mlc »

efnx wrote: post #7

> If you want to actually create a business you need to realize coding is both the easiest of all the things that needs to be done and also the least important. I don’t agree. I understand the sentiment, though. In my experience “the importance” of coding depends on the business. Like the author says, if you just want to code - go do it, you don’t have to have a business! But what they are missing is the compliment:…

If you're an experienced, motivated, results-oriented developer, then "coding" is an easy but still time-consuming thing.

But that's a very, very small percentage of the population.

When I talk to non-programming founders, they're insanely jealous that I can write a product and support it myself - because they can't. You can tell because they keep asking over and over, "You wrote that yourself?"

And a couple years later, their runway is spent on eng. salaries and they shut down.

Re: My experience releasing failed SaaS products

#18

Post by jbman223 »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #16
ackbar03 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It also sounds like they're trying to build generic B2C products, which I think is the complete opposite of what you should be building as a solo bootstrapper What would be your recommendation then regarding this point? Niche b2b?

Yes, niche B2B seems to be the winning play from what I have seen and heard from successful indie hackers.

I’ve had great success building B2C apps as side projects. It’s more about matching your passions to solving issues. Otherwise you’ll burn out and produce crap before you ever make anything people use.

Re: My experience releasing failed SaaS products

#20

Post by defnmacro »

JCDenton2052 wrote: post #12

A rather painful reading experience. The author needs to learn how to edit their thoughts and use punctuation/grammar properly.

A brief exercise in shipping an MVP and seeing if it gets traction before refining the feature set =). Thanks for reading my ramblings despite the lack of proofreading hopefully its a bit better for others now.
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