Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building • Hacker News Board

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#161

Post by iso-8859-1 » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:31 AM UTC

AdrianB1 wrote: post #154

JoshTriplett wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being not around when people are talking means not being part of that conversation. Persistent chat is one of the biggest values of Slack or Discord or Mattermost, and one of the big reasons I'll take it over IRC any day. Persistent chat that you can join and read the backlog of is incredibly valuable. It becomes an asynchronous communication medium, rather than a synchronous one. And it's much richer and lower-fri…

With people having the expectation of chat to be instantly replied, like a chat in a real life (someone walking to your desk and saying something) it is not asynchronous in any way.

You seem to suggest people have that expectation, but I think it might be very culture specific. Where I come, people will not freak out if it takes you a day to respond to an SMS.

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#162

Post by travisjungroth » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:38 AM UTC

jnwatson wrote: post #142

davidivadavid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also keep recommending this book to everyone. The TL;DR is: NEVER ask questions about hypotheticals. Ask people about what they do, how much they pay, how much time it takes, and so on. Facts, not answers to "Would you use this if...?"

Interestingly enough, that’s also a principle of behavioral interviewing. Hypothetical questions allow the bullshitters to shine, but specific targeted lines of question about what the interviewee did in a specific situation is frequently enlightening.

For a technical sales job, I would have people do a role play about suggesting a technology. They’d always start saying “I would tell them about...” and I’d pause and ask them to tell me the thing, not talk about telling me.

My point is that I believe hypotheticals take a lot pressure off and allow you to be super vague in interviews. For the past, talk about real situations. For the present, do a role play.

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#163

Post by mratzloff » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:51 AM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #135

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of soliciting feedback before building a start up really doesn’t make sense to me. If you like your idea (“this is something I’ve always wanted”), are willing to dedicate yourself and have the means then you should try it. Otherwise you’ll never find out. If the creator of the automobile had listened to people they probably would’ve thought it was a dead end because unlike horses cars can’t reproduce. The id…

> If the creator of the automobile had listened to people they probably would’ve thought it was a dead end because unlike horses cars can’t reproduce. Actually, a true story: Ford said that if he were to listen to what people want better than a horse, he would have built a carriage with hitch for 6 horses :)

It's not a true story. People wanted less manure and fewer horse corpses. They were thrilled with the automobile because it neatly solved their top two transportation complaints.

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#164

Post by fuddle » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:53 AM UTC

Why is there no screenshots of the level app on the homepage or Github page? A picture of the app would help me decide whether I want to use it.

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#165

Post by dmitryminkovsky » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:56 AM UTC

andrewbinstock wrote: post #113

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of soliciting feedback before building a start up really doesn’t make sense to me. If you like your idea (“this is something I’ve always wanted”), are willing to dedicate yourself and have the means then you should try it. Otherwise you’ll never find out. If the creator of the automobile had listened to people they probably would’ve thought it was a dead end because unlike horses cars can’t reproduce. The id…

That's true of products that are true innovations, that is, they create entirely new product categories. Here, however, he's just improving on an existing product. Getting opinions about what's wrong with the current product makes a lot of sense.

For sure. I've worked in finance and we did tons of market research when before giving loans to companies like Rite-Aid, CVS, etc, knowing that they did their own market research, too. But, I'm not sure how far that carries over to tech. Even "commodity" ideas aren't always so commodity in this sector.

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#166

Post by dmitryminkovsky » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:58 AM UTC

diminoten wrote: post #136

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of soliciting feedback before building a start up really doesn’t make sense to me. If you like your idea (“this is something I’ve always wanted”), are willing to dedicate yourself and have the means then you should try it. Otherwise you’ll never find out. If the creator of the automobile had listened to people they probably would’ve thought it was a dead end because unlike horses cars can’t reproduce. The id…

The cold hard truth is that just because you like it and want to build it doesn't mean anyone else gives a shit. The idea that everyone should just roll the dice with months/years of their lives because they like an idea isn't actually tenable.

That's what I'm saying, but I'd go further that even in 100/100 people tell you that they love your idea, that may translate into 0/100 using it. You shouldn't just try anything willy-nilly, but you won't know until you try it.

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#167

Post by yixiang » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:59 AM UTC

> I spent the next six weeks building. By that point, my customers were loving the product – even my largest customer that started out highly skeptical of the paradigm. Everyone who had converted so far applauded the user experience and agreed Level was a beautiful product.

I wonder why they switched to Level and loved it when most were fine with Slack. Is it because they were fans, or do they have some real pain that drive them to action? Maybe the author accidentally hit a niche?

If it's me, I'd find that out before giving up. So most people are fine with what they have and won't switch, so what? Isn't that to be expected? Aren't you supposed to find some earlier adopters and grow from there?

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#168

Post by wpietri » Sat, May 18, 2019, 1:59 AM UTC

trustfundbaby wrote: post #66

I read this, and all through the article I kept waiting for the part where the author would talk about his own experience using his own product. What I'm getting at is that, its really difficult to get people to love something you build unless you love it yourself, Seth Godin touches on this in his book "This is Marketing" I like the data driven approach to product development, but sometimes passion trumps data, if y…

I think a great example of the eat-your-cooking thinking is Slack itself. It started out as an in-house tool at Butterfield's now-defunct game company Glitch: https://readwrite.com/2013/08/14/stewart-butterfield-tiny-sp...

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#169

Post by dmitryminkovsky » Sat, May 18, 2019, 2:00 AM UTC

mratzloff wrote: post #163

joering2 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the creator of the automobile had listened to people they probably would’ve thought it was a dead end because unlike horses cars can’t reproduce. Actually, a true story: Ford said that if he were to listen to what people want better than a horse, he would have built a carriage with hitch for 6 horses :)

It's not a true story. People wanted less manure and fewer horse corpses. They were thrilled with the automobile because it neatly solved their top two transportation complaints.

Not sure about my particular anecdote, I can't verify that to be accurate or attribute it to Ford (I have heard it on many occasions, and even once saw a clipping from a newspaper but can't find it now), but https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americ...

Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

#170

Post by mratzloff » Sat, May 18, 2019, 2:03 AM UTC

tomxor wrote: post #152

> If people were ravenous for a solution, why weren’t most people even attempting to pilot Level? This is _not_ purely the "everyone is lying" problem, i.e everyones lack of ability to quantify the actual importance of a problem... The original questions were deceptive to both parties because they are unwittingly framed with the assumption that a "solution" in the form of a product or technology is a _valid_ form of…

I attended a UX seminar once. We split into groups and were assigned a scenario: improve the check-in experience at a fictional hotel (acted out by the organizers). Literally every other group began their presentation with, "We built an app that..." Most involved checking in by phone.

Meanwhile, our group noticed a number of basic inefficiencies and suboptimal interactions, and proposed about 5-10 improvements to policies and staff procedures.

We all watched the same skit. I thought the solutions were so obvious as to be on the nose, but evidently not.