At what point did you get stuck lately?
just curious where it became hard to push forward.
For me, I guess it's always building a community around product. I'd say marketing, but often I realized that it's a problem that comes before that, related to finding the right pain points and testing outcomes with a community.
what's your approach when trying to find community?
and if you found it, did you get stuck somewhere else?
It's easy to have an idea, and there's usually a straightforward way to launch an MVP. But after that, getting any sort of sustainable traction is difficult.
agreed, product launch doesn't seem that complicated now. lots of tools/ tutorials you can use.
why do you think getting that traction is difficult?
for me, the biggest blocker part is not getting any feedback. I would love for people to tell me what they think is wrong. instead, i get * crickets * mostly. suspecting that it has to do with a need I either overestimated or didn't present properly. I always hope it's the latter, because then I wouldn't have my product invalidated :))
Yeah in that case, I would recommend trying to get as close to users as possible. Get them on phone calls and ask to watch them use your product.
If you're working on anything right now that I can help with, please reach out on Twitter or email (both in my bio). More than happy to provide honest feedback.
Yes, marketing your product is by far the hardest part.
So I definitely share your experience here.
It's hard because it requires a lot of patience, dedication, and skill.
I think it helps to put community-building as your first objective in mind and not product or revenue growth.
At the end of the day, it's really just about connecting with people. Building relationships. Making friends. Being generous with your time and resources.
The more you give, the more people want to give back.
Hope this helps :)
yes, very much this.
thanks for sharing.
I'm not the natural talker, so I guess it takes more effort to do that, but as far as building community goes I'm convinced it's the only way.
how about finding community? where is the first place you'd search for it?
we're a bit biased over here because most of the stuff we think of caters to other founders/entrepreneurs and is SaaS most of the time.
might be a challenge of building a natural, innate curiosity too, to explore places where you wouldn't have looked otherwise.
About not being much of a talker. I understand I am the same.
But I force myself to do it in an environment I am comfortable with.
I started a podcast in Nov 2020. It's called The Implement Podcast if you want to check it out.
Recorded over 65 episodes so far. This means I met with 65 people I didn't know before and spent 40 min talking with them about marketing.
I am an introvert unless I am talking about things I am passionate about I guess haha.
This podcast has been one of the greatest self-development training and network booster I've ever had.
To answer your question about finding communities, I think you need to know where the people you want to target "hang out".
A few years ago I consulted with a startup targeting small retail shops. They were building a sort of Yelp platform.
Traditional digital marketing didn't work because the owners were not really online.
However they realized that these small shop owners were always part of a small local club (for sports, music, food, owners associations, etc...).
They started targeting those, sponsoring them, and got great results.
Online, people hang out on big platforms and social media (you know the names Reddit, FB, LinkedIn, Slack, etc...). So it's really about taking each platform and searching for the niche groups where you'll be able to add value and the admins will let you post something. :)
Also, you need to figure out the attention span of the people in those groups. Do they like long-form or short content? Do they want learning or entertainment?
It takes time but at some point, you'll have your go-to groups.
Hope this helps!
I now struggle to get started once I've identified a competitive market or gap where a product could exist. Doubt plays a huge part in causing me to move on to find another idea, where the cycle starts all over again.
What I'm also finding is that there's so much noise out there with people and companies posting success stories and this echoes on to the self-doubt above. It's looking like I need to switch off the internet lol!
yes, this!
I also feel things are very crowded nowadays. Guess it's each one of us trying to find a niche. Most our ideas won't make it, I think what's important is to spend just enough time on them (and as less $ as possible) to see which ones could actually work.
what I'm trying to do is not cancel ideas in my head. Seeing so many products, I often say to myself that it's been already done. but there's lots of space out there. think about pizza places. you wouldn't not open a pizza place because somebody thought of it first. there are many variables that can work to your advantage (location, angle, pricing, implementation,luck).
self-doubt is a big issue, I partially overcame it by trying to care less about my ideas being bad. I'm heavily invested when I think about them, but try to detach and put them in the bottom drawer once I feel they're lacking something.
and switching off the internet, taking a walk, works wonders as well ;)
I often get stuck on all of the above ;).
me too. lol.
haha fair point.
Well I've been stuck on most. now I breeze through the ideas/sketches/UX/MVP at least.
getting stuck on which part would you say is the most frustrating?
for me even though the community is the toughest, most frustrating is code. so much so that I'm learning myself.
I would say it depends. Being stuck is just part of it. When you have done any of the above more often you will just be stuck for a shorter amount of time.
For me the bottleneck is marketing. In a way that is because I (and probably most people here) have more experience with coding. For marketeers it's the other way around.
The tricky part with marketing is that you see formulas (you can do this and this and this). But you have few info on how to actually try to find your target to show it to. Most of it is a shot in the dark.
With coding, it's easier because you have rules. It's predictable.
But marketing is also weirdly emotional, seems to me. And that's unpredictable, you have to have a sixth sense for it. Many marketers can have a set of rules that work but lack that flair. And when your budget is limited that flair seems vital.
tied to the community talk - you can target people, but how do you find proper communities that could use your product? For this, think the only solution is hard work, getting involved in those communities, and starting to actually talk (a skill I too am learning). I'm still at the part where I learned to set up a dynamic FB ad with a minimal budget (to not bleed $$), but I think that just scratches the surface.