Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building
derrickreimer.com
Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building
1–10 of 221 posts
Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building
#2Great read, and also a strong bull case for Slack no matter how unbearable it gets at any significantly large organization.
Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building
#3I've never heard of this product before, but it definitely does sound interesting. I know exactly how hard it is to get a small / medium sized company to switch to a new product, its definitely not easy.
That aside, I wish Slack was more customizable (or open to allowing some customization) that would enable it to function more like what Derrick was trying to accomplish with Level. That would be the best of both worlds.
Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building
#4"The gist is that it’s tough to get unbiased feedback during customer validation." - I wish this was taught along with lean startup content. Too many times I have heard founders say they validated the idea when all they have done is gotten biased feedback while asking self-fulfilling questions.
Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building
#5The buyers of a Slack for an enterprise organization wouldn't be developers doing "Deep Work". The buyers would be executives and managers, ie: the people pushing the content that causes the annoying notifications, anyway.
Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building
#6"The gist is that it’s tough to get unbiased feedback during customer validation." - I wish this was taught along with lean startup content. Too many times I have heard founders say they validated the idea when all they have done is gotten biased feedback while asking self-fulfilling questions.
I mean, iterate on the product until it sells like hotcakes that's your validation. Then you'll spend the rest of your days trying to STOP the torrent of complaints, feature requests, etc. Better yet have actual experience in the industry that the product is targeting rather then expecting that industry to go out of its way to tell you what to build.
Ideally you have orders for the product before you start building it, don't put all your eggs in if I build it they will come.
Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building
#7Is "a year" supposed to add a lot of impact here?? I frequently spend multiple years on more dubious endeavors, and have zero regrets about it. That's life.
Edit: Okay this came out pretty harshly, but what I am poorly trying to express is that most people spend more time on worse things, so "a year" doesn't parse as the intended intensifier for me.
Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building
#8I've never been more annoyed by a basic website. Center your content!
Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building
#9Is "a year" supposed to add a lot of impact here?? I frequently spend multiple years on more dubious endeavors, and have zero regrets about it. That's life. Edit: Okay this came out pretty harshly, but what I am poorly trying to express is that most people spend more time on worse things, so "a year" doesn't parse as the intended intensifier for me.
There's no need to be so judgemental of a well written article describing someone else's experience, even if it isn't as grand and wonderful as yours.
Re: Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building
#10"The gist is that it’s tough to get unbiased feedback during customer validation." - I wish this was taught along with lean startup content. Too many times I have heard founders say they validated the idea when all they have done is gotten biased feedback while asking self-fulfilling questions.
I mean, iterate on the product until it sells like hotcakes that's your validation. Then you'll spend the rest of your days trying to STOP the torrent of complaints, feature requests, etc. Better yet have actual experience in the industry that the product is targeting rather then expecting that industry to go out of its way to tell you what to build. Ideally you have orders for the product before you start building i…
> hotcakes that's your validation
Exactly. The best validation is people paying for a product.