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Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building

derrickreimer.com

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

#201

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

derrickreimer wrote: post #101
wpietri wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the kind of "mature" they were talking about. From context, I think it's pretty clear they were thinking about product maturity. If customers are suspicious of organizational stability, they use a different set of excuses. E.g., they'll ask about funding, large customers, track record.

That's correct, I was referring to feature-richness.

But it's also true about presentation. If you're selling B2B, you have to be a business - preferably a convincing full-fat business with employees and an office and a reputation (for something, at least).

Otherwise you're a jumped-up contractor with a hobby project. And you're not going to be taken seriously as a business partner.

I learned this the hard way in the early 00s. It's one of the fundamental marketing elements in B2B, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the product, its features, its ability to solve problems for a convincing price, and anything rational.

You can even say that anything above the very lowest levels of corporate B2B marketing - excluding the trades and very small mom & pop SMEs, who are a separate market - is about projecting business charisma and potency, not so much about solving actual problems with any efficiency or effectiveness, and certainly not about solving them at an affordable cost.

It's entirely tribal. And if you're a one-person shop you're an outsider - effectively just a potential employee or remote temp - and not part of the tribe.

IMO no amount of marketing and validation can overcome this bias in B2B. You're just not going to be considered a worthy equal, no matter how you spin it, or how good your offering is.

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

#202

Post by stock_toaster »

joncrane wrote: post #180
BrentOzar wrote: post #14

Slack has a staying power that the author didn't catch: once you've got all kinds of apps reporting data directly into Slack, and all kinds of rooms set up for specific data purposes, it's even more sticky than email. Before a Slack-using company would switch, the competitor would need to support many/most/all of the integrations that the company is using. You've really only got two chances to win Slack's customers:…

Isn't Mattermost pretty close? When I moved to a company with Slack, I recognized a lot of stuff from my previous job where some of the devs used Mattermost.

zulip has quite a few integrations too apparently.

I've been thinking about giving zulip a whirl with one of our smaller teams at work, and see how it compares to slack. Quite a few items on the "why zulip?" page really resonate with me.

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

#203

Post by stock_toaster »

caseyf7 wrote: post #183
Aeolun wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t use confluence. There are knowledgebases with way less friction.

Please name them for those of us looking

I'm also super interested in better, or more usable, recommendations.

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

#204

Post by detaro »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #127
boudewijnrempt wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was struck with " They recognize that Slack is not suitable for meaningful conversations, so they automatically delete chat messages older than a few weeks to discourage relying on it for long-term archival." in your article. It's something I feel quite strongly about: chat should not be archived. There should be no backscroll; being not around when people are talking means not being part of that conversation. Chat…

> 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…

Agreed about being able to access some backlog being important, but even in well-implemented systems with good search etc. I personally haven't found backlog older than maybe a few weeks that useful.

Similarly, I'd disagree about friction, but I can see how that might be cultural/personal preference - none of the chat systems I've used provides good-enough tracking of "I still need to take care of this" compared to email clients with a few flags.

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

#205

Post by some1else »

> An engineer at Stripe told me about their careful balance of email, forums, and Slack. They recognize that Slack is not suitable for meaningful conversations, so they automatically delete chat messages older than a few weeks to discourage relying on it for long-term archival. In retrospectives, team members often reflect on whether they chose the right medium (email, chat, or forum) for various conversations.

This is bad news for Slack's freemium economics. I'm going to recommend we don't upgrade with this in mind.

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

#206

Post by downtide »

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 get that, but the more intimate you are with a product, it's also hard to see the warts, especially when it comes to usability. I remember using ebay for the first time, and absolutely loathing the experience. I had to get used to the product. And there is much friction. Transparant simple UI is very hard. I am always noticing troublesome UI areas, and usually when mentioned, I get the response: oh that's just the way it is. Luckily you later forget those initial irritations. Anyway, just saying however critical you are, you are likely not the best person to reveal insights into your own product.

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

#207

Post by downtide »

ehnto wrote: post #195
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 found that I am passionate about my skillset but not the industry as a whole. So my industry experience doesn't lend itself to spotting problems I can care about. Passion has never really affected my ability to deliver once I spotted a problem I thought I could solve, but I would be lying if I said I hadn't quit early on a few projects because I just didn't care if they failed. Sometimes I wish I were more ruthless…

I'm exactly like that, if I feel the product has value, I can get behind it. I'm a good salesman for a 'good product'.

The flip side is that I have worked on many a drab project and site, that could have been improved with a little technical finesse, and simple UI overhaul, but there hasn't been the wherewithall from others. Hence perhaps an initially loved or cared for project has slowly declined.

I've also been at a startup, after many of the developers took the money and then departed. On a site that two founders had poured all their money into. People hadn't even the courage to tell them to quit, or throw out some un-needed features. That's almost heart breaking, but you do understand when those people have invested so much. I'm talking about remortagaging houses on a punt, to a pay a developer for a middle of the road product.

I've poured months of time into projects that have gone absolutely nowhere also for one reason or another. Not personal projects I might add. I have lost time and not been paid either. But by comparisson with the above have just taken it on the chin.

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

#208

Post by AdrianB1 »

iso-8859-1 wrote: post #161
AdrianB1 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

SMS is NOT chat.

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

#209

Post by detaro »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #208
iso-8859-1 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

SMS is NOT chat.

That's also culture-specific.

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

#210

Post by GordonS »

This was a really interesting read - it's so difficult to walk away from something you've put heart and soul into for so long.

This also sounded familiar:

"The gist is that it’s tough to get unbiased feedback during customer validation. I already knew this to be correct, but I underestimated to the degree to which everyone lies"

Has anyone found effective strategies for getting honest customer feedback?

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