I spent 5 years building a product that failed, don’t be like me
Yes, this is a real story. And yes, there are some suggestions at the end for you.
It was 2015. We had traveled for 8 hours by car to have the whole team together. It was going to be the best platform in the market, ever, no questions asked. We spent a week, the entire team abstracted from the world - all expenses paid - designing, defining, reviewing all that we had learned about the market, the product, and the customers.
We were going to make it! We got funding, not much but spent smartly; it would give us more than a year of runway.
And then we coded, we coded like there was no tomorrow, no weekends, like in the movies!
But… our MVP kept sliding; we were always almost there, but not quite. People saw our product, they said they liked it (If it only had X), but nobody was buying. We added more and more features. We made it faster. We created an API.
Still, no traction.
We build alliances, deals; we integrated. (Did I mention API?)
No traction.
People simply didn't buy into our product. Those who used it hated it to their guts.
So, now you're asking, great... So what?
Do you know why we failed? It's evident to me now: We were building a thing, a "what" based on features. We never stopped to listen; we never let our users be our guide; we never created a community!
People don't buy WHAT you do; they buy WHY you do it.
And you can only explain the "Why" by building a community, a place where your users, your customers, and you can talk about what's important and why it is important. A place where they can find the answers to their problems and realize that you're there for the same reasons they are, and not only for the money.
Don't get me wrong; a community is not "a tool," a Slack channel (or a forum if you're old school) where you slam all your users and expect some magic to happen. A community is a place where people have a reason to gather and also to re-engage. Thriving communities provide valuable things to do, leveraging everybody's experience and passion for solving collective problems and discussing topics.
So, next time you're thinking about building something, about creating a new product, remember: Create a community first, be in sync with your future customers, and then, only then, make it.
My journey of learning about communities has just started. All these revelations didn't happen overnight; a simple chat with @8bit triggered them, so my most sincere thanks!
If you happen to have sailed in a similar ship to mine, I'd love to hear your story. And if by any chance you figured this out and succeeded, please tell me... How?
Hmmm this just made me think about my product in a totally different light. I think you’re right people need to engage.
I'm glad it was helpful! Yes, connecting, being helpful, and figuring out why they're there.
sweet! what has changed in your thinking? how can i help?
I recently had to announce the death of a project. It was horrible. I’m trying to bounce back from it but wow is it difficult.
Yes, it's hard to let go! Death is exactly the word as the feelings are very similar. I poured all my soul into it and now is no more.
what is the hardest part of this "bouncing" back? how can i help?
Thanks. Your thoughts on my bouncing back strategy would be helpful.
great. i did.
Thanks for sharing, I'm on year 3 with my product. This was a scary but necessary read.
For the past few months, we've been in that weird "in-between" stage too, although it seems a bit more optimistic than your example. We have quite a few sales, and most customers rave about the product. Our conversion rates is also increasing rapidly, based on changes made to answer user feedback.
However, it still doesn't get the traction that would make us really succeed. We're still hoping for the "ahah" moment where it finally clicks and we just feel that unmistakable pull.
Let's hope we reach it before it's too late 😅
what do you think is missing from your current setup? what is the next milestone? what experiments are you trying?
how can i help?
For us it always seemed like we were "one more feature" away from that moment, but then you realize 5 years is such a long time!
So, my advice would be, connect with your customers now and listen.
Well said. It is really nice to have someone to talk to and solve our problems together than alone. Every audience builder (who says they're building a community) gets to this understanding at some point, I hope they can read your journey to get that understanding faster.
Being around people with a sense of community does matter, a lot more than being around for ulterior business motives. I even shared my experience on IH recently, helping people on Twitter without any expectations has got so much good to me.
And as Mick asked, what lies ahead of you?
My project, CuratorList is about creating communities around content, but am I creating a community for these creators? Or do I need to take a step back and get some perspective?
Curator List can enjoy a community around it. Many Substack communities are built around curation, with Substack it's a simple comments feature that made this possible.
You could do something like votes (as we see here on IH), maybe allowing subscribers of curator list to vote up and down your listings. So that they have control over your curation process and you can team up to do it as a community.
This is personally coming from me btw, it'd be nice to vote up and down a listing, aggregator type newsletter. The author also would come to know what the audience really likes.
THIS:
thank you.
This resonated. And your journey is similar to mine - lots of time spent building stuff, with a recent revelation that forming bonds around a purpose is what brings the stuff to life.
So.. what's next for you?
👋🏻 — good to see you!
Honestly? Figuring out how to make it happen.
I've just begun this journey, and revelations are happening every day.
glad i can help friend!
it's not about figuring it out... it's about learning to do it better, and better, and better.
👆🏻 — this never stops. keep going. glad i can help.
Yes, that applies to everything in life!
Make the sale! Too many startups fail because they start to code, imagine that users will buy it, and just forget about the most important thing for a company:
Make the sale!
If you can't sell it to at least one person, you have a problem.
Sorry to hear this, @pablius, and I hope much success in your next venture!
Thank you! You live and learn.
how are you doing @kikiriki?
If you don't mind me asking, what was your project? What were it's selling points?
It was a travel booking engine. And it had so many selling points that it had none. That's another thing I learned, you can't be everything to everybody.
good question.
It takes a lot of inner strength to admit that the product has no more life and you have to fold up and move on.
For me write now, my goal is to deploy fast, so that i fail fast and learn and move on fast. or I succeed and push the project with more vigour.
Great write up.
Thanks! Yes, moving on is not easy at all.
can you move faster? what's in your way?
Hi, thanks for sharing. I went through the same thing not once but multiple times and I didn't have funding, i bootstraped every project so it was my loss each and every time so I can really relate.
I think that you are half right. Firstly people don't by what you do or why you do something they buy first and formost what they need. You may have the most incredible story about why you built your snake pet snack company but if you are talking to people who hate snakes or who don't own a snake pet, you are dead in the water.
That's why I believe you don't have to start by building a community, you should look for one that already exist. When you have found that community, you need to start blending in and ask them what is their biggest issue when it comes to X (Topic related to the community). Based on their answers you'll have a list of issues that are troubling the community, you pick one and build an app as a solution to that issue.
Now you can build your own community off the original one. You'll have the solution to their problem and you don't really have to build the community you are just building one off an existing one and you can even give them free trial of your app if they join your group or whatever so it's a win win situation.
Here you have it, those are my 2 cents.
Hope it helped.
Hi @Irodman, thanks for your reply! It's always encouraging to read other people stories, and mostly, that there is hope!
I spend 1 year on my Startup before deciding to stop the idea.
It's usually a struggle and you expect it to be hard. So you think, "Ok no traction is normal in the beginning".
So you keep going and going. It's important to understand when to stop.
But man, 5 years is to much.
I would like to read more about what you build and what mistakes you made.
I wrote my learning about when to stop working on an idea on my blog.
Don't get discouraged. Learning is mostly a painful process. Take that with you for your next project.
Exactly, learn, try, learn, try :)