[HN Gopher] My app failed: lessons learned
___________________________________________________________________
My app failed: lessons learned
Author : kylebolt
Score : 197 points
Date : 2021-07-22 15:29 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rithm.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (rithm.app)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| <searches thread for words 'grift' or 'hustle'>
| henvic wrote:
| I know this pain.
|
| In my case, I spent most of my life around 18-23 years old living
| in my parents' working about 100% of my time on something of my
| own I had a lot of negative support from friends, colleagues, and
| extended family as many don't see entrepreneurship with good eyes
| in Brazil.
|
| The last project I worked
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dML0FQIUcTY, I spent 2013-2014
| on it), was heading to the right direction, but then my business
| partner (first and last one so far) always wanted more and more.
|
| In the end I had other opportunities (go back to college, and
| start a new job), and we just ditched all our efforts. Of course,
| we both regret it. Especially each time when we see something
| similar sold for a couple of millions.
|
| Good luck to us next time!
| halflings wrote:
| I wouldn't have any regrets re:seeing something "similar" sold
| for millions of $.
|
| Unless "heading in the right direction" means that you had a
| growing user base and/or solid revenue, in all likelihood the
| product you were building just wasn't succeeding. The idea in
| itself is not worth much: think Uber, Coursera, Airbnb, ...
| these are not novel ideas, many many people had the same ideas
| but didn't manage to make them a success (bad execution, or
| just bad luck/timing).
|
| You seem to still be very very young, most successful companies
| are founded by people in their mid 30s, so don't despair just
| because a couple of your attempts were not successful. The best
| is still ahead of you.
| henvic wrote:
| tl;dr: I don't regret working on it. Just not even trying to
| market it!
|
| By heading in the right direction, I mean that I've built the
| 'minimum viable product' entirely in one year. Now it was
| time to go after putting it in the market somehow, search for
| a venture capitalist or anything like that. But, no, we
| didn't even try.
|
| We had many features that other sites didn't have back then.
| Such as the 'Google-like' search with auto-complete, auto-
| refresh appeal, etc. not so common back then, but we never
| went out after a single potential consumer or investor.
|
| I was in a situation that I had to stop developing on my own
| and focus on other things in my life. However, my business
| partner didn't want to stop adding new features. He wanted a
| few more things that I could achieve in a month or two to
| start looking for an investor, but I just didn't have the
| throughput (no time due to new endeavors + saturated), and
| things died off.
|
| I blame him for chickening out when we had possibly a
| tremendous competitive advantage that might make it an easy
| sell. I blame myself for not doing my own research for
| investors once I noticed that we reached a point of
| stagnation.
|
| Context: He had great designing ideas but was not technical.
| I wasn't good at communication back then and counted on him
| too much to make this happen. If this was today, it wouldn't
| happen again, thanks to my experience now.
| cubano wrote:
| ahhh yes...you were working with an infamous "idea guy"
| where you were expected to do all the work while he sits
| back and just thinks of new ways to crack the whip with
| you.
|
| that sort of thing is _very rarely_ a good way to structure
| a business. the people who do the actual work almost always
| need to be the ones who decide on new features as only they
| know the proper work /reward ratios.
|
| if i had a nickle for all the proposals i've seen from the
| "idea guys"...well i sure would have a lot of nickles.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| >as many don't see entrepreneurship with good eyes in Brazil.
|
| How do they think the companies that offer salaried work
| started?
| sergiomattei wrote:
| I sense snark in this comment, but I'll answer anyways.
|
| In Latin America, our culture is extremely conservative about
| taking risks. We're expected to get a job, settle down, live
| a nice life.
|
| Generally entrepreneurship is frowned upon by our families
| and friends.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| What does society think of successful entrepreneurs?
| gumby wrote:
| I appreciate that the author really did think about things that
| went wrong rather than making excuses.
| kylebolt wrote:
| I've still got lots to learn! Thanks for watching / reading
| [deleted]
| tdaltonc wrote:
| Great write up!
|
| I wrote a book on habit formation in apps.
| https://usetemper.com/digital-behavioral-design/
|
| I run a sub-reddit that get's at least 1 post a month from
| someone launching a new habit tracking app.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Habits/
|
| My last company made SaaS to help app publishers understand and
| strengthen the habits in their app.
| https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dopaminelabs
|
| I'd add one item to your list: No one _wants_ a habit tracking
| app. A lot of people could benefit from one, but when people have
| a problem in their life (sleep, diet, productivity) they almost
| never conceptualize it as a habits problem. They look for tools
| to "improve sleep," or "be more productive" but not a habit
| tracker.
|
| My new company (https://usetemper.com/) is all about habits and
| behavior change, but that's mentioned almost no where on the
| website because that's not how our customers think about their
| problem.
| kylebolt wrote:
| This is true, "habits" is too general of a topic. This is why
| Strava chose cycling as their first sport and expanded from
| there. Smart of you to focus on fasting, hot topic! Wishing you
| all the best.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| > I initially saw oh ok, there are a ton of people making these
| apps, it must be profitable.
|
| If you look at a dense market and decide to join in because you
| see potential profit _because the market is dense_ , you're
| already destined for failure. Everyone else already has a head
| start, which means you need some sort of differentiating feature
| to be competitive.
|
| Why would I pay for blog software that's half baked or doesn't
| offer anything new? Or a to-do list? Or time tracker? Or
| invoicing tool?
|
| The author dances around this, but it honestly sounds like the
| product they built wasn't remarkably good or novel, and was
| positioned against incumbents that were plentiful and often had
| existing success. The failure here seems to be a lack of business
| plan beyond "join the pack and make money".
| kylebolt wrote:
| I thought habits might be an interesting market to work in +
| using a chatbot as a novel approach but alas my approach did
| not pan out.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| But what about being a chat bot made it _better_? Being a
| chat bot doesn 't make it do anything different than the
| competition, it's just a different interface. Being novel
| doesn't make it useful.
| asdev wrote:
| This seems like a classic case of "build and they won't come". I
| feel like OP could've validated that the market for a product
| like this is too competitive quite easily before writing a line
| of code.
| kylebolt wrote:
| Well I built it, they came but they did not stay! Would love to
| know your thoughts on how to validate something for retention.
| kranner wrote:
| Nice writeup! I see that the app is available only in English. In
| my experience with indie apps (admittedly not recent),
| localisation in at least Spanish and Portuguese can help drive a
| lot of sales. It can also be easier to rank higher with localised
| keywords, and it's easier to get featured in country-specific App
| Stores in non-English languages as well.
| kylebolt wrote:
| Good point! I'm working on localizing for Spanish, German and
| Portuguese in next version.
| rexreed wrote:
| Good lessons. But so many common mistakes
|
| To summarize:
|
| 1) Build something people really need, not a nice-to-have
|
| 2) Keeping customers is more important than just acquiring them
|
| 3) If you're not keeping your customers that means they don't
| want or need what you have
|
| 4) Changing people's behavior is really hard. Unless you have a
| significant amount of marketing budget, don't try to change
| people
|
| 5) "Distribution" is key. I have a hard time with the word
| "distribution" when often people mean "marketing" or "promotion"
| or "channels". That's what is usually meant. If you can't get an
| audience with the people you are trying to sell to, you might as
| well be invisible. I still don't get why people use the awkward
| term distribution for this.
|
| 6) You have to be better than what's already out there. If you're
| just as good, or worse, than the alternatives, then it's going to
| be really hard to make a sale. Alternatives don't mean direct
| competition. Anything that is an alternative for a customer to
| buy or use your product is real competition. This is especially
| the case if you're requiring the customer to change their habits
| to switch to your offering. You have to be MUCH better than the
| status quo and alternatives to do that.
|
| 7) Know who your customer is. Your user might not be your
| customer. Your customer might not have the itch to scratch even
| if the user does.
|
| A lot of these are pretty common reasons for business failure but
| I suppose everyone has to go through their own personal
| challenges to internalize them.
| ensiferum wrote:
| Most of these fall under the term "product - market fit". All
| key points really. Fail at the these and it's an uphill battle
| to acquire and esp. Retain customers.
|
| Good stuff to read "the mom test" and "sell more faster".
| mdorazio wrote:
| To your #5, I find that developers tend to be allergic to the
| term "marketing" because it's easy to think it's a waste of
| money or the department of flashy do-nothings if you've never
| tried to actually build a business yourself.
| dnautics wrote:
| I doubt that's why they are allergic to it. Perhaps I'm
| projecting, but I suspect that developers have seen their
| fair share of products which succeed (for some measure of
| succeed, e.g. "raised a round" or "founders cashed out") with
| only marketing and a crap or, worse, vaporware product. It's
| a very common and easy fallacious inference to go from there
| to "all marketing is bad", especially in a field where there
| are a handful of success stories (e.g. craigslist) where the
| success was built with very little or no marketing, and "the
| product spoke for itself".
| brianwawok wrote:
| Marketing on a bad product sometimes lets you make money.
|
| No marketing on a good product seldom lets you be
| successful.
|
| The mistake of founders is to let burns from the first
| bucket, stop the second from having a chance.
| dnautics wrote:
| That's a paraphrase of what I wrote
| wsc981 wrote:
| I'd say it's also just not fun. For example setting up a
| product page on Steam and the iOS AppStore is just a royal
| pain for me, and I would think most developers would feel the
| same. It's much more fun to code.
| throwinawaysoon wrote:
| 8.In hindsight, it's easy to give advice to others on their
| flaws than making it a reality on your own. Making a list
| really sells it to people.
|
| 9.Stop making products, start writing personal
| development/marketing books that contain things that seem
| obvious in your head but you've never really tried it yourself.
|
| 10. Make your fluff seem as authentic as you can
| cercatrova wrote:
| > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't
| cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer,
| including at the rest of the community.
|
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
| what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Number 7 is a subtle but huge problem. I ran into this way back
| when I was trying to sell a small, education-focused GIS system
| I wrote as an alternative to the monstrosity that is ArcGIS.
| Students loved it since it was easy to use (only had maybe 5%
| of the functionality of ArcGIS, but it was the functionality
| that covered 90% of basic analysis.) The department heads I
| spoke to loved the idea since it was drastically cheaper than
| Arc, they could push the cost to the student (less than a
| textbook) rather than maintain ESRI contracts. The problem was
| that the decision maker, ie the real customer, was the
| professor, who did not experience either the ease of use
| benefits or care about the expense. As such I got nowhere with
| the product.
| kylebolt wrote:
| The worst part about a lesson like this is that it can take
| years to really get to this conclusion. I'm trying to ask
| myself "who is the buyer of this product". This is happening
| a lot in digital health where the payor isn't the end user.
| forkLding wrote:
| I'm a lot more hesitant to say: Build something people really
| need because of examples like Instagram/Snapchat etc. Were
| those really needs? Were people really "needing" Instagram at
| the start?
|
| I think businesses should target pain points/needs but I'm now
| of the opinion that its best to start with targeting a sizeable
| target segment and then work out pain
| points/products/needs/inspiration from there. As long as there
| are customers/users/market, there will be possibilities.
|
| I know it might sound similar to others but a need can always
| be argued into existence or a need can be hidden so deep you
| can't even qualify it until the company/product is out (hence
| why some startups pivot or end up doing some exploration before
| they take off). But it is much easier to have a target group in
| mind and then target them and figure out a distribution channel
| to reach them than figuring out needs from the start. I think
| come up with your target customer group first, study them and
| then figure out the marketing and messaging needed target them
| and then things get easier from there.
| kylebolt wrote:
| Yes great re-cap, thank you!
|
| Even though I've read and heard about these common mistakes,
| sometimes we have to learn by doing to truly find out if they
| apply to our use case.
| jfengel wrote:
| Is it really realistic to build something people "need"?
| Humanity survived millions of years without a single piece of
| software; it's unlikely that anything you write is ever going
| to be a "need".
|
| People buy stuff they don't need all the time. Games and other
| entertainment are the very definition of "nice to have", and
| they're vast markets. Even business tools are usually not
| "needs" if all they do is improve an existing product.
|
| It's incredibly hard to know what will attract people. Even if
| you know categorically that a thing will make their lives
| better, people often won't get it, and instead spend their
| money on something objectively useless.
|
| It seems to be luck as much as anything else, being in the
| right place at the right time. It catches a "buzz" for whatever
| reason and becomes popular, or fails to and doesn't. Knowing it
| beforehand would be great, but nobody ever does.
| rcurry wrote:
| Sure, this is true. In 500 BC I would have lived in a cave.
| But now I have a garage, it has a door, and one thing I need
| is an app that lets me open the door when I get back from
| cycling. Fortunately, there's an app for that!
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I think another lesson here is that the app was built to help
| people do something hard (build/change habits) and all the
| apps that are wildly successful are more oriented to
| reforcing easy, lazy, and bad behaviors (gossip, idle
| chatter, time-wasting, procrastination).
|
| The people who really make up their minds to change habits
| don't need an app. They just do it.
| rexreed wrote:
| If you're trying to run a business, then yes, it needs to be
| something people need, because you're asking people to give
| up something of value to them. Money and/or time. If you ask
| for something of value you have to provide something of value
| in return.
|
| Of course, the need can be anything that people find
| valuable. It could be a product or a service or just a way to
| stay connected or entertainment. Whatever it is, it has to be
| something people "need" from a value perspective, if you are
| planning to make a business out of it.
|
| Of course, you don't have to run a business. Many people do
| things out of their own interests that are never turned into
| businesses, and certainly humanity has been doing that for
| millenia. You don't have to turn it into a business. The
| points above are relevant to running a successful business.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I don't really understand your definition of need. You
| define a 'need' as anything that people find valuable, but
| I would classify 'nice to have' as also being things
| someone finds valuable.
|
| How do you distinguish something that is a 'nice to have'
| and a 'need'?
| mdorazio wrote:
| Nice to have is a luxury - it doesn't solve any actual
| problem people have, it just make life a little bit
| nicer. Need is an actual value proposition - people are
| already spending time or money to do a thing that you can
| do better.
|
| I think you're using the rigid definition of "need" like
| the bottom of the Maslow hierarchy, but in the business
| world "need" is more value driven, or in the B2C side
| closer to the top of the hierarchy.
| brianwawok wrote:
| If you sell to a business, your software makes a job go
| from needing 3 employees to 1 employee to do. You saved
| the business say $6000 per month. As long as your
| software cost less than $6000 per month, it helps the
| business be more profitable.
|
| Selling to a person, to learn a new habit.. what is the
| dollar value to that? If a user cannot learn something on
| their own, that shows low commitment to that task. What
| then makes them open their wallet to commit to something
| else?
|
| I think it's really hard to make money off bettering
| yourself, and really easy to make money selling to
| businesses. At least that is my view, and why I do B2B
| SAAS.
| sombremesa wrote:
| It doesn't have to be a Need with a capital N. I had the same
| questions when I first encountered this advice, but I've
| since realized that it's perfectly fine to address vague
| needs like the need for entertainment.
| marban wrote:
| I would define "need" as per Reiss 16 Motives:
|
| - Acceptance/Self-confidence - the need to be appreciated
|
| - Curiosity, the need to gain knowledge
|
| - Eating, the need for food - Family/Love, the need to take
| care of one's offspring
|
| - Honor, the need to be faithful to the customary values of
| an individual's ethnic group, family or clan
|
| - Idealism, the need for social justice
|
| - Independence/Freedom, the need to be distinct and self-
| reliant
|
| - Order, the need for prepared, established, and conventional
| environments
|
| - Physical activity/Vitality, the need for work out of the
| body
|
| - Power/Efficacy, the need for control of will
|
| - Romance, the need for mating or sex
|
| - Saving/Ownership, the need to accumulate something
|
| - Social contact/Fun, the need for relationship with others
|
| - Social status/Self-Importance, the need for social
| significance
|
| - Tranquility/Safe, the need to be secure and protected
|
| - Vengeance, the need to strike back against another person
| stingraycharles wrote:
| But that only defines human needs, and not whether a
| specific app is a need and/or whether it's just a nice to
| have.
|
| I could make the best new social network, which addresses a
| need, but hardly anyone really needs another social
| network.
|
| So how do I distinguish between a need or a nice to have
| within this context?
| marban wrote:
| The process of getting from nice to have to need is
| called marketing.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| I think that's an oversimplification, that downplays the
| necessity of having an idea that's not just a nice to
| have.
| ijidak wrote:
| You actually answered the question in your statement
| above.
|
| It has to be an unmet need. The key word being "un-met"
|
| You said:
|
| > "hardly anyone really needs another social network"
|
| You're absolutely correct.
|
| The first phase of social networks had a lot of early
| adoption for many different social networks circa 2003,
| because at that time the need was unmet.
|
| Then the world settled on a winner, Facebook.
|
| Now that's no longer an unmet need.
|
| But in reality, there are limits to being able to predict
| a winner.
|
| If that existed, starting a winning business would be
| easy.
|
| We only have heuristics, no crystal ball.
|
| Also, spotting a need is not the same as satisfying it.
|
| It's why Steve Jobs could arrive late to the party and
| build a winner that leapfrogged the competition over and
| over again.
| sizzle wrote:
| unless you target necessary industries niches e.g. banking,
| big pharma, etc.
| [deleted]
| LeonM wrote:
| > Is it really realistic to build something people "need"?
| Humanity survived millions of years without a single piece of
| software; it's unlikely that anything you write is ever going
| to be a "need".
|
| Replace "need" with "desire" and suddenly it makes sense.
|
| People have a desire to socialize (facebook), people have a
| desire to be heard (twitter), people have a desire to
| communicate (messenger apps, phones), people have a desire to
| travel (automotive, travel), people have a desire to be
| entertained (netflix et al). Etc. Etc.
|
| You don't really 'need' any of it, but there is a very high
| demand, and thus a big market.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Need in the context of the quote was used as opposed to
| "want". I think the point was to drive home that people are
| less likely to pay for, and continue using, things that
| they "want" versus "need".
|
| The problem is, needs (as prerequisite to survival) isn't
| really what is being described here. "Desire" doesnt quite
| sounds like the right term either, because it is
| semantically no different than a want.
|
| Rather than looking at the customer's spectrum of desire,
| perhaps a better framing is fulfillment- does the app
| fulfill a gap in a person's abilities, or does it sate an
| idle fancy?
|
| Facebook and twitter do both, I think, at different levels.
| Perhaps that is why they are so successful.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| > Is it really realistic to build something people "need"?
|
| I don't know about B2C, but with B2B it's fairly easy -- just
| solve problems that cost them money, either in terms of
| actual money, time saved, or delivers new value.
|
| If you can't easily express the value a customer gets from
| your solution (especially if you have competition!), chances
| are you need to think again about the problem you're solving.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > Humanity survived millions of years without a single piece
| of software; it's unlikely that anything you write is ever
| going to be a "need".
|
| I would argue that the software itself isn't the need, but
| rather a means of meeting the need.
|
| Take Doordash for example. Humans have always needed to eat.
| Long ago, we met that need by each individual directly
| gathering food themselves. When a better solution came along
| - agriculture - we embraced it and largely dropped the
| previous one. Fast forward 12k years or so, and now we're
| able to have food prepared and brought to within a few feet
| of where we're sitting by tapping on a phone.
|
| In other words, just because a problem has an existing
| solution doesn't mean it's not a viable target niche. If you
| can make a solution that's _better_ for some population (and
| get it in front of those people) you have a product.
| bluedino wrote:
| How was this product marketed/advertised?
| kylebolt wrote:
| I tired Apple Ads, Facebook and Youtube. But no matter how many
| folks I got in the top of funnel, most chured out... so adding
| more marketing spend would just have me spending $2 to make $1.
| mcraiha wrote:
| This is the only question that needs to be asked nowadays. You
| need user acquisition money. Sad fact is that otherwise it is
| almost impossible to do anything.
| ehnto wrote:
| I think there is still paths available that don't require
| advertising money. I think a lot of SaaS necessarily relies
| on customers to come "From the ether" via the internet, and
| sustain their business with $9/month accounts. That means
| you're competing with people who can outspend you for
| people's attention.
|
| If you're in an industry niche and solving a valuable
| problem, you can charge a lot more and afford to sell
| directly to your customers, potentially in person.
| Acquisition looks like it costs more, but if you're a one
| person show and it's your time, then that's a sacrifice you
| can make as you're trying to bootstrap your business.
|
| Just a contrived example, if you're selling telemetry
| software to motorsports garages, you could have the margin
| and the value-add to go knock on workshop doors and sell if
| it's valuable enough to them.
|
| I think there's still a lot of hard software problems to
| solve in grass roots industries, with customers that you can
| go visit in your city. I think we get stuck in the idea of
| selling software to the internet and software industries.
| koalala wrote:
| Exactly, I would recommend spending a few thousand on a good
| PPC marketing agency and let them set up your marketing. You
| might be amazed at what this would accomplish since your
| product seems fine.
| asdev wrote:
| very interested if you know how to find a good agency for
| this as well. please DM/message if you can, thanks
| jpf0 wrote:
| I'd be interested in hearing of any experience or
| recommendations. If you have them available, please do send
| me a message.
| yorwba wrote:
| "100% churn" doesn't sound like a product that is fine and
| just needs more marketing.
| kylebolt wrote:
| This is exactly the moment I figured out this version is
| dead. At first I was thinking "ok I have a good product
| and now all I need are more folks in the top of funnel"
| but when all users chured out within 60-90 days... adding
| more marketing wasn't going to save it.
| syshum wrote:
| So the field of dreams of dead?
| kylebolt wrote:
| Well we will see have version 2 goes!
| kamilszybalski wrote:
| For a second I read $194m in revenue, is it Friday yet.
| kylebolt wrote:
| haha let me check my numbers again
| smoldesu wrote:
| The first red flag I see is that the app isn't multiplatform. I
| know there's plenty of iPhone/Android exclusive apps, but I will
| _very rarely_ use (much less spend money on) something that is
| locked-in to one app.
|
| Also, does anyone else find it ironic that a habit tracking app
| has a monthly subscription? Feels darkly ironic looking at the
| IAP block towards the bottom.
| handrous wrote:
| > The first red flag I see is that the app isn't multiplatform.
|
| This doesn't matter to most users (of a given target platform),
| and if you're charging money for an app--rather than making
| money with ads, or providing a service that needs maximum reach
| or user base, or relying on network effects to somehow make
| money as e.g. a messenger or social network might--then you
| only need/want iOS until you are seeing enough traction to be
| confident that the lower sales rate on Android will nonetheless
| be high enough to make it worth it.
| mrweasel wrote:
| A few months ago I looked for a habit tracker, I don't recall
| if this was one of those I looked at. As with all apps, for the
| phone, I skip everything that has a subscription model or "in
| app purchases" and I suspect many will do the same. To me
| subscriptions and "in app purchases" has become synonymous with
| "low quality".
|
| Personally I don't care much if apps exclusive to iPhone, it's
| not going to stop me from buying an app. It's not like I'd be
| able to transfer the purchase to Android anyway.
| kylebolt wrote:
| Totally, relying on the apple app store alone was a mistake.
| Next product I make will be cross platform. I was blinded by
| the handful of successful ios apps out there.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| > The app landed as the #4 product of the day on ProductHunt, had
| some good initial traction which proceeded to fall off a cliff.
|
| This is why you don't post on ProductHunt. Your target market
| isn't there. Its nothing more than an ego trip for so many
| founders.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Full disclosure: I've not been down this road, so I'm talking
| through my hat here.
|
| Posting a project to ProductHunt is unlikely to get it in front
| of your target demographic, but that doesn't mean it's
| worthless. People will download your app and if all goes well
| some of those people will leave you a positive review.
|
| That matters for ranking, which gets your app in front of
| people. If you get some good reviews, that matters for
| conversion because it lends some social credit.
| kylebolt wrote:
| We also launched via paid ads (spent around 2k on Apple Ads
| and FB ads)
| folli wrote:
| I guess it depends on the product. I just recently posted my
| newest side project there (an NFT minting webservice) and I
| even got a handful of paying clients. The conversation rate was
| quite high, and it has dropped significantly afterwards.
|
| So I guess if you want to reach a techie audience, it's not a
| bad place to get the word out.
|
| Edit: the website is https://Nuftu.com, you can find it on
| producthunt by searching for the name
| kylebolt wrote:
| Very true, they are more product focused vs. habit / self
| development focused.
| allenu wrote:
| I've posted on ProductHunt as well and so many of the upvotes I
| get and comments that I get are clearly spambots.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > so many of the upvotes I get and comments that I get are
| clearly spambots.
|
| Is there any data on this? I'd be interested to see what % of
| real users they have.
|
| Many times I've visited ProductHunt there's a top 4 app that
| doesn't seem useful at all that has tons of generic comments
| like "Great work!", "Can't wait to see what you do next!",
| "So useful!" (common on Twitter too).
|
| Guessing you could get bots to vote + comment occasionally to
| build up their reputation and then use or sell your bot army
| to manipulate the votes for specific product launches later?
| allenu wrote:
| I don't know if there's data, but I've seen other people
| posting about on Indie Hackers. I started noticing
| something was up when I saw the same generic comments you
| mentioned on my post as other people's posts.
|
| Another thing that's interesting is after you post on
| Product Hunt, you may get emails from third parties
| offering services to boost your upvotes.
| yoble wrote:
| Regarding lesson 4 (Distribution), the author links to a tweet by
| Justin Kan saying "First time founders are obsessed with
| products. Second time founders are obsessed with distribution".
|
| Justin Kan posted[0] today a video of himself criticizing that
| very tweet, saying that it didn't age well and he now believes
| product is 99% of the work, and the reason that many unicorns are
| founded by first-time founders is they don't get distracted by
| thoughts about anything other than product, like distribution.
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1418003365695418373
| orasis wrote:
| A good enough product with great distribution can earn you a
| fantastic income if you bootstrap.
| djrogers wrote:
| > The app landed as the #4 product of the day on ProductHunt
|
| I honestly don't get this. I don't know a single smartphone user
| who looks at product hunt for new apps. None.
|
| As far as I can tell, it's just an echo chamber of ego-seeking
| devs showing off their apps to other devs and spambots - that's
| _not_ a market (I guess unless your app is targeted at ego-
| seeking devs?).
| lalos wrote:
| Exactly, or even the feedback on the comments tends to be
| congratulatory mostly.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Product Hunt's customer base is largely product people,
| designers, and a handful of developers and investors.
|
| If your product's target demographic overlaps with that of
| Product Hunt (design tools, project management tools) then it
| can be useful to get ranked well on Product Hunt. If your
| product targets the average consumer, Product Hunt is basically
| useless for anything other than maybe networking.
| pacifika wrote:
| Sounds like a good fail you clearly learned a lot.
| bko wrote:
| He mentions a false positive of paying customers. I have some
| personal experience of customers paying for a product and not
| using it. We're all guilty of it in one way or another.
|
| What percentage of paying customers should be active? 100% is
| unrealistic, but 0% is troubling since they are not getting any
| value from it and its not validating your idea. How does this
| depend on price of the product or whether its a subscription or
| not?
| rexreed wrote:
| There will always be inactive customers, but if your customer
| growth month-over-month is not greater than your % of inactive
| users (the inverse of % active users), then you will stall and
| enter decline.
|
| For example: if 80% of current customers login on a regular
| basis (monthly, daily), and you're growing at 10% per month new
| users, you will actually decline at some point because your 20%
| inactive users is greater than 10% new customers. It might take
| some time, but at some point customer churn will outpace new
| customer growth.
|
| So you have to measure new customer acquisition as a % of
| current installed base, total % of actives (measured on a
| logical period relevant for your solution), and total churn %
| (non-renewals divided by renewals). If the churn measure is
| measured differently you can think of it as the renewal rate
| because you want to measure retention vs. acquisition.
|
| To simplify: if acquisition is not greater than retention, then
| you have problems. Retention is dependent on active use with
| some factor and with some delay.
| LimaBearz wrote:
| When I first read that it completely made sense. But my mind
| immediately ran to leetcodes subscription.
|
| I imagine their churn is fairly high, but they can also
| capitalize on new graduates or folks looking to up their game
| to keep revenue flowing in so that by itself is only part of
| the story. Likewise their active count maybe falls off a cliff
| after 4-6 months for users who actively engage with platform,
| and I'm sure some of them make the purchase and either never
| use it or give up fairly quickly.
|
| To toy with your question specifically let's use LC as an
| example. Some percentage of users need to be engaged and
| referring it via word of mouth for it to be validating. As for
| retention and engagement, once you have a decent cycle of
| customers coming in that becomes a game psychology. Think
| Reddit emailing you on every comment you get, notifications,
| gamey mechanics like Robinhood, or some other mechanism to
| reinforce behavior
| ehnto wrote:
| My first and only paid subscription on one product I built was
| from a user who never used the service, and also never
| cancelled their subscription. It had no free trial, so they
| knew they were paying money from the get go. After a while I
| cancelled their subscription and sent them an email saying they
| could re-enable if they wanted to keep using the service. I
| felt bad for taking their money.
|
| It was definitely motivating and I would say it was part of the
| reason I kept working on it, but unfortunately no-one else
| subscribed, and it wasn't to be.
| tvirosi wrote:
| This makes me wish there was a version of producthunt except
| where the culture was ok with brutally honest replies (rather
| than the forced encouragement on producthunt, which is nice and
| has its place too but you need to hear both voices).
| phgn wrote:
| I'm feeling the same way, also can't stand all the self-
| gratulating content on these sites.
|
| But if you remove the status game, why would people engage with
| the site instead of only posting their own questions? Shallow
| social validation seems to be why people use twitter,
| producthunt etc.
| bambax wrote:
| Slightly OT: I built myself a journaling app that sends one email
| every day to remind me to write about that day; I respond to that
| email and the response gets stored in a db as an entry for that
| day.
|
| The system doesn't try to be clever in any way, it just sends and
| receives emails; it's proven quite effective. It's been running
| for about two years now and there are only a couple of days
| missing, if that. It's very interesting to be able to go back to
| any day in the past and know what happened, or what I was
| thinking about, that exact day.
|
| The system can also be set up to handle different journals at
| different intervals; it helped me write a novel last year.
|
| I'm the only user and it lacks many features to be called an
| actual product; but sometimes I wonder if others would find it
| useful.
| lambo2991 wrote:
| do you mind explaining your stack / tech a bit? would love to
| whip up something similar for a pet project
| jmcphers wrote:
| This is almost exactly the feature set of OhLife, which tried
| and failed to make this experience (replying to a daily email
| as a form of journaling) into a product. It's a great idea but
| kind of hard to make money on.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/17/ohlife-personal-journal-em...
|
| http://ohlife.com/index.php
| mdorazio wrote:
| Also OT: I built something very similar, but with text messages
| and asking for a positive thing that happened during the day
| rather than a journal entry (forcing myself to look for
| positive things in a day helped snap me out of a spiral toward
| depression in the early days of lockdowns). I spent a weekend
| getting it to the point where it was good enough to share with
| friends and family, and about a dozen of them signed up. My mom
| and I are the only ones who still use it.
|
| I guess I have two thoughts: 1) simple, habit-based products
| aren't nearly as sticky as I thought without some kind of
| social validation component. 2) dogfooding your projects with
| your personal network is a great way to see if they're actually
| sticky and just to learn more about the market in general - I
| recommend it.
| lambo2991 wrote:
| do you mind explaining your stack / tech a bit? would love to
| whip up something similar for a pet project
| kylebolt wrote:
| Yes people find it hard to stick to new habits let alone
| tracking them in an app. Good experience building these
| things nevertheless.
| kylebolt wrote:
| This sounds interesting, I think the advantage here is that
| you've focused on 1 use case where I was focused on many
| habits. Keeping it focused on one niche like journaling makes
| more sense.
| dzonga wrote:
| one thing, the OP is missing. with consumer oriented stuff, don't
| make the naive mistake of launching thinking you'll make money.
| do it as a vanity project. yeah, every now and then shout it out
| but don't expect it to make money. unless you're vc funded and
| you're trying to corner a market. b2b is different of course -
| there exists people willing to pay
| kylebolt wrote:
| So early 2020, I launched Rithm, an app that helps you build
| habits, reach your goals and stay motivated.
|
| The 1st version was a chatbot app, think of it like an
| accountability coach that you text with to track habits and stay
| accountable.
|
| Rithm landed as the #4 product of the day on ProductHunt, had
| some good initial traction which proceeded to fall off a cliff.
|
| Here are the 8 lessons for a failed version 1, see video and blog
| post.
|
| Hope this helps some makers out there!
| pacman2 wrote:
| You app with the chatbot is a bad nightmare. I would never use
| something like it.
|
| Combine a Tamagotchi with your app, have the user "feed" them
| with his "habbits". At least you would combine two things.
|
| With the chat bot? Move on.
| somenewaccount1 wrote:
| Looks like you are still working on learning distribution. I'm
| typing on a mac, but own an android. i still can't use or try
| your app :(
| drewolbrich wrote:
| At least for this particular flavor of app, building an
| Android version is an optimization that should be made once
| the product has been proven successful.
|
| Until that happens, it would be a huge waste of time and
| money for the developer to build an Android version, since it
| too would fail as a product, just like the iOS version.
|
| Multiplying 0 by 2 is still 0.
|
| The situation might be different for an app whose success
| depended on the user's ability to use the app to communicate
| with all of their friends, some of which had Android phones.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Why not build something like this cross-platform? The
| functionality sounds simple enough that you don't really
| need a native app for each platform.
| realusername wrote:
| Even when using about cross-platform frameworks, there's
| quirks and time to invest to maintain the other platform.
| My Flutter app is still not available on iOS for example.
| allenu wrote:
| It seems like it would be simple enough, but it's death
| by a thousand cuts. Supporting Android means having to
| keep track of even more screen sizes, OS versions,
| updates, app store releases and so on. It just adds on
| more and more. For one developer who is trying to prove
| out an idea, the work to support the app on multiple
| platforms just eats up your time and focus when you
| really should be focusing on features and adjusting what
| the product is as you get more info from your existing
| customers.
|
| There are of course frameworks out there to help you
| build one codebase for multiple platforms, but if you go
| down that route, if you aren't familiar with the
| framework, you have to learn it. There are going to be
| quirks in them that you're not aware of. Maybe framework
| version X only works with iOS version Y and Android
| version Z. It just goes on and on. Frameworks aren't
| perfect either, and things don't work exactly the same
| across platforms even with the framework.
| somenewaccount1 wrote:
| than i guess it _wasn 't_ actually a lesson worth learning,
| although it was in his list of eight. ::shrugs::
| kylebolt wrote:
| I thought failing on 1 platform would be more economical than
| failing on 2 :)
| somenewaccount1 wrote:
| Then.....extending distribution wasn't really a problem or
| lesson learned. It's a nice to have.
| allenu wrote:
| For mobile apps, if you're a single developer, I think
| going with a single platform is fine. You can only do so
| much, and if you're familiar with the platform, you can
| move much more quickly than having to support two. That's
| the strategy I've chosen and it's helped a lot because I
| was already an expert in iOS and a lot of the work is just
| "figuring out what users want" and it's easier to change
| your code on a single platform that you know really well.
| OJFord wrote:
| Just a minor copy note:
|
| > There are a million and 1 habit and goal apps out there and I
| made the mistake to think that just because there are a lot of
| products in this space, doesn't mean that there is a lot of
| businesses in that space.
|
| I think you were thinking of two different ways to phrase that,
| mixed them up, and the result is that it says the opposite?
|
| As in, either remove 'I made the mistake to think that', or
| 'doesn't mean that'.
| kylebolt wrote:
| Good spot, thank you!
| carlgreene wrote:
| This was really great and love the video with it as well! Best of
| luck on this new version
| kylebolt wrote:
| Thanks Carl, appreciate you taking the time to check it out!
| andreyk wrote:
| I use this sort of app, have for years. The idea of using a
| chatbot as UI is completely unappealing. So I think it comes down
| to there not being a need for this new take on this concept.
| kylebolt wrote:
| Yes totally, I thought "hey using a chatbot would be like
| texting an accountability friend or coach" but in reality that
| gimmick just doesn't work. Since tracking habits requires
| displaying data, a user interface with visual elements is more
| effective than a chat UI.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Here's my take on selling:
|
| 1) Sell to people who can write the check, and have a budget to
| spend
|
| That's my entire advice. It seems obvious. If you're selling to
| an individual, choose a demographic with money to spend. And
| charge a price to fit into their budget.
|
| If you're selling to a team, don't. Sell to the person buying
| products/tools for the team, the one with signing authority. They
| make the ultimate decision. And they have a budget to spend, and
| will likely spend it all on something.
| Cantinflas wrote:
| This is 100% on point... For selling to big companies. B2C is
| another game!
| kylebolt wrote:
| My next product is going to be totally focused on this single
| point -> Sell to people who can write the check, and have a
| budget to spend
| tjs8rj wrote:
| Note that this isn't the first step. In order: identify a
| problem, talk with people (first with those you think have
| the problem) to learn more about it: Is it actually a
| problem? How are people addressing/solving it? What are the
| pain points? Is it severe enough to warrant a better
| solution? Would anyone pay for a solution? How much would
| they pay? How many people would pay for that solution? Can I
| make the solution? Can I distribute the solution?
|
| If you get a bad answer to any of these, you need to do some
| thinking and talk with more/different users, and if no change
| then you probably can't make a business on this (and don't
| need to continue along the chain until then). Once those are
| true, then yes, sell to the people who can write a check.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| This reminds me of the quote: "When a great team and product
| meets a lousy market, market usually wins. When a mediocre team
| and product meets a great market, market usually wins"
| mettamage wrote:
| I have experienced this directly.
| Axsuul wrote:
| What does this mean?
| zem wrote:
| it means a bad market will make even a good product
| unsuccesful, and a good market will make even a mediocre
| product successful. the quality of the market wins out over
| the quality of the product.
| bromuro wrote:
| Does this mean the market works by manipulating
| consumers?
| whall6 wrote:
| The market _is_ consumers.
| kfk wrote:
| My own lesson is to crunch the financials, always. Truth is when
| I crunch the numbers I almost always end up with the same result:
| if I am going to invest my own time and money, I must go b2b and
| charge >=100k per client. I can never find a way to fund myself
| and the marketing/content experts by charging a few dollars per
| subscription. Of course you might have a big existing audience or
| might find a cheap channel to get your product across quickly, I
| am just saying I find it easier to convince a few companies to
| pay tens of thousands euros than thousands of people to pay one
| hundred.
| JoblessWonder wrote:
| Stack Rank reminds me of a mistake our owner made... We purchased
| a tall Sprinter van for mobile work. When we went to purchase a
| second, he asked for feedback/complaints and heard it was "blown
| around in heavy winds." To compensate, the next one they bought
| was not a tall model. No one wants to use it because being able
| to stand up straight while in the rear is _much_ more important
| than the few times we drive in heavy winds. Had they stack ranked
| the feedback they would have seen that the complaint was small
| compared to the new issues they were creating.
| kylebolt wrote:
| Stack rank is very underrated as a prioritization tool
| cpcat wrote:
| From my experience, if an app takes more than a few months to
| build and launch, the risk is no longer worth it. Large companies
| also do this (years building before launching and i have yet to
| hear of a success)
| Retric wrote:
| Games generally take significant time to build sometimes years,
| but can be quite successful.
|
| You wider point is reasonable though as many people waste a lot
| of time building something that never gets traction.
| cpcat wrote:
| Totally agree about certain games. You can't have certain
| games before years of building, it's like making a movie.
| kylebolt wrote:
| Yes this is the confusing thing about creative endeavours.
| Lean start up says to learn quickly and pivot yet so many
| artists work on the movies, games, and books for years and
| years. I guess we need to realize that most of us are not
| James Cameron :)
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| Stardew Valley might be the ultimate example for this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardew_Valley
|
| I think it's also important to recognize how much
| survivorship bias there is in these stories, too, though.
|
| There are plenty of people who have spent similar amounts of
| time working on games or projects with nothing much to show
| for it. The experience might be worth something to someone,
| though, in terms of resume building, etc.
| canniballectern wrote:
| Games are really easy to test viability for, though. The game
| has perfect information about itself, rarely connects in a
| complex way to anything outside the game, and it's easy to
| replicate the user's context just by sitting in a dark room
| on your own. The test is simple - is it fun?
|
| By contrast, most apps need to connect to people, software
| and things outside themselves - they're part of complex
| systems, and it's really hard to know if they work well
| without putting them into use and seeing how they perform -
| and that means selling and talking to users, not something
| you can do in isolation.
| Retric wrote:
| It can take a long time to get enough of the game together
| to test fun vs not fun. Racing games for example can be
| play tested before the art is finished, but they are
| heavily dependent on subtle interactions between the
| tracks, cars, physics engine, and controls.
| brushfoot wrote:
| Yes. I "wasted" 2019 building a platform that my customers
| didn't need. Scare quotes because it wasn't really a waste; it
| taught me a lot about what not to do.
|
| In 2020, realizing it was going nowhere, I started talking more
| with my target audience. Really talking and really listening.
| It turned out that most of them had a very specific pain point.
|
| I thought about how to solve it. I could build another gigantic
| app. Or I could start as small as possible. I could write a
| tiny script that addressed that pain point, and do everything
| else by hand.
|
| If I knew it would scale to x, I might have started with more.
| But I realized I'm bad at predicting what will take off, so I
| started as small as I could.
|
| This year I'm getting close to $1K MRR. It's not much in the
| grand scheme of things, but coming from no business experience,
| it means a lot to me.
|
| My biggest takeaway so far is, for those like me who don't have
| an incredibly clear vision, start as small as possible. Not "if
| you build it, they will come," but "when they come, you can
| build it."
| kylebolt wrote:
| Yes I've now learned that lessons, luckily I've not quit my day
| job.
| allenu wrote:
| I think the biggest myth with apps today is "if you build it,
| they will come". I think it was true 10 years ago when the iPhone
| App Store was getting started, but not today.
|
| The thing is, having a ton of competitors in the space means you
| will have to work extra hard for your app to be seen and then
| picked. "Lesson 4: Distribution" in the post is probably the most
| important thing here. Marketing and SEO are huge in terms of
| getting people to know about your app.
|
| I have an app of my own in the iOS app store and the times I've
| had jumps in sales have been tied to either me posting about it
| somewhere or someone else posting about it on their own. If I
| don't get the word out, nobody is going to know about my app.
|
| Like the poster, my app is in a crowded space (flash cards), and
| so a search in the app store doesn't even show my app, at least
| not until you scroll for a minute or so...
| kylebolt wrote:
| Thanks for reading! I'm focusing more on distribution and
| monetization (or ability to pay) on my next product.
| albeebe1 wrote:
| > I think it was true 10 years ago when the iPhone App Store
| was getting started, but not today
|
| In 2008 before the App Store when Cydia and Installer where the
| only way to install apps on your iPhone, my app was getting
| 10,000 installs per day with 0 marketing. I refer to that
| period as the gold rush days.
| allenu wrote:
| I remember a coworker made a very basic compass app with a
| friend in the early days of the iPhone and he disclosed that
| they made something like $200k on it, which is absolutely
| wild.
| granshaw wrote:
| > the biggest myth with apps today is "if you build it, they
| will come"
|
| Are there really people who still think that? I thought it was
| common knowledge that market knowledge, sales, and marketing
| are an order of magnitude more important than the tech.
|
| I shudder to think of those who quit their jobs and jumped all
| the way in without knowing this basic fact
| tommiegannert wrote:
| Thanks for sharing!
|
| > So the lesson is that while all businesses have a product, not
| all products are a business.
|
| And even products that look successful may not actually be good
| business, if they have negative net income and surviving on
| venture capital that eventually runs out.
| kylebolt wrote:
| Glad you enjoyed it! I've meditated on that point now for a few
| months... it's an important distinction in the maker community.
| Building a product vs. building a business.
| collaborative wrote:
| I prefer solving my own need and curiosity than focusing on
| market fit. This probably means I will never be game for
| investors but I also won't measure my success by the money I've
| made. It will be measured in passion and happiness
| nicoburns wrote:
| I've yet to see a single product that was improved by being a
| chatbot.
| smoldesu wrote:
| You also increase the revenue of Acme Chatbots Inc, who will
| use those proceeds to hire more people to sell you a better,
| more comprehensive package.
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| Google Search is better as a chatbot when using a voice UI.
|
| I don't know of any others that I would put in the same
| category.
| nkrisc wrote:
| For a chat bot product to succeed, it has to be
| indistinguishable from a real human in every way. Otherwise the
| user will know its capabilities are limited, but won't know in
| what way exactly they are limited. This is a perfect recipe for
| endless frustration as you slowly uncover every way in which it
| does not work how you expected it to, impeding whatever simple
| talk you wanted to complete.
|
| If I had nickel for every time a chat bot or phone bot told me
| to speak to it like a human, and then was completely incapable
| of handling that, I'd be rich.
| conductr wrote:
| Being indistinguishable from human is a high and low bar.
| Chat is just a medium and it's not usually the best medium
| (for me). When I use it, I expect speed and care less if it's
| a human or AI. For example, I had a billing issue with my
| electric company. I used chat because I didn't have a week to
| ping-pong emails back and forth (they might cut my power). I
| also didn't have time to call them and sit on the phone for
| 30+ minutes. I knew it was something a human would need to
| get involved with. So, it's really just chat that is helpful
| as a medium. The _bot_ part almost always gets in the way of
| speed to answer /solution.
|
| That my personal experience anyways, would love to hear more
| about how a chatbot was actually helpful to someone. Whenever
| I see those chat pop ups on a SaaS home page, it makes me
| think do people actually type "show me the pricing page
| please" instead of just clicking the link to the pricing
| page. It has to be just a friendlier nicer way to collect
| emails and phone #s for sales to follow up with (?). I
| totally don't get it.
| travoc wrote:
| Your competitors' products are relatively improved when you
| deploy a chatbot.
| kylebolt wrote:
| So true, it's an inferior user experience is most all cases
| where a UI could suffice. (A game product could be the
| exception)
| redisman wrote:
| The early adventure games used a interpreter that was
| basically like a chatbot. It got quickly replaced by more
| direct controls.
|
| Typing "walk north" instead of just pushing the up arrow or
| clicking with a mouse was pretty frustrating
| zem wrote:
| i've seen one - my workplace briefly experimented with a
| chatbot for taking vacation time. you would say something like
| "i'm on vacation from tuesday to friday" and it would parse it,
| extract or convert the input to a date range, and submit a
| vacation request through the official tool. it would then ask
| if you also wanted to display your vacation status on your
| calendar and set up an email autoresponder, and do them for you
| if you answered 'yes'. i was sad when they removed the bot - i
| think they did it because they streamlined the website, but
| even with the new improved web workflow i still preferred the
| experience of doing it via chatbot.
| klausjensen wrote:
| Thanks for the openhearted blogpost.
|
| It is very important to also see some of these failures, where
| the stars did not suddenly align and sparkling rainbows started
| raining money.
|
| I think I learned more from your post than from 10 success posts,
| honestly.
| kylebolt wrote:
| Thanks for reading!
|
| "Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough
| to make them all yourself." - Eleanor Roosevelt
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