I lost over $200,000
5 years ago, I lost just over $200,000 and went into a heavy depression.
Today, I am sharing the learning lessons so that you do not make the mistakes I made.
- Do not trust people blindly, especially your team.
This was the number mistake my cofounder Oscar and I made. We trusted our team blindly.
- Don't launch an unstable product.
My product was in the alpha stage, and I fell for someone's trap who asked me to launch my product early, leading to many angry and upset customers.
- Do not build an ALL-IN-ONE product.
Time and time, even at https://pitchground.com, we see founders having a large vision and wanting to BUILD an all-in-one tool.
It's a recipe for disaster because managing the repo is difficult if the scope is too large.
Instead, split the large vision into multiple smaller projects if you want. It's easier to manage, maintain, grow and kill if things are not working out.
- Follow a systematic launch cycle:
- Idea: Validate your idea with at least 80 out of 100 people who have paid you $1 for your idea.
- Build JUST one MOST REQUESTED FEATURE by your buyers in your idea stage.
- Test, TEst, TESt, TEST...and KEEP testing.
Many companies need to understand the importance of QA during early-stage. You don't want frustrated users.
- Focus on building stability and not UI/UX:
Your MVP should focus on stability and not UI and UX because your initial set of customers won't care how fancy your product looks, but what they care about is whether their problem is getting solved.
- Sell to at least 1k paying users before building more.
We made a huge mistake by building more, leading to more stability issues and unsatisfied users.
- Build an audience before building a product.
I wish someone had told me this 5-6 years ago. Please only build a product if you have an audience.
Spend at least six months building enough audience so your initial distribution becomes very easy.
I have learned more valuable lessons, which I will share in the future, but I hope these lessons help you build better & smarter.
Let me know your thoughts in the comment below.
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How do you build an audience without a product?
I asked myself the same question, I believe that without a product, even a small one, to make yourself known it is impossible to create an adequate audience in the b2b market
Build content around your product. For example, if your product is similar to Canva, create content around graphics and share strategies.
Build a newsletter and do the following:
Point everything towards your newsletter, which you can set up for FREE on substack.
Once you have 1000+ users in your newsletter (Should take two months max), turn that into a community on Discord/Facebook Group/Telegram/WhatsApp, wherever your users feel comfortable.
If you have ZERO audiences, it will take around six months to reach 5000-10000 users.
That's how you can start and build an audience.
As a software developer, I just cannot convince myself to do all these, because it feels like I'm wasting all the coding skills.
It's almost like the coding skills are holding me back when it comes to building a business...
You should either hire a marketer or get a co-founder. Because if you just focus on building and not marketing, it will end up leading to frustration.
You do what you are best at, but get someone else on board.
Spot on!
Udit, I find your post very qualitative. I myself have tried in the past to create an All-in-one tool, and indeed, as a founder, you think you have the best product in the world, and that everyone will buy it.
But, the problem is that too much functionality creates confusion for the customer, and customer attention is very low.
A phrase to remember: less is more.
As for creating an audience, I think creating a waiting list is a good idea, it allows seeing if the product is hype or not. And to have first users' opinions.
Absolutely!
Hence if someone wants to build a large scope, create multiple SaaS and then connect them with each other.
My fear with validating ideas is,
What If when trying to build audience, another person or company took over is idea and build it within a short period
People can copy your idea but cannot copy your process, distribution, culture and execution skills.
You nailed it with #7!
I help founders grow as a strategic consultant and the first thing I recommend is to focus on the MVC even harder than the MVP. For some strange reason, most people don't even know MVC stands for Minimum Viable Community. So when they get to create the product, they actually have nobody to sell it to...
After they realize it, they usually lose months building an audience who would actually care about the MVP and provide enough feedback to move on. That's unless they have a shortcut such as paid ads, but that means a good funnel in the first place (which requires marketing knowledge). And then again, they still need to build that MVC.
Anyway, sad pattern I've seen too many times...
Everyone want growth ASAP now a days, that’s the problem.
Wish I saw the second tip earlier 😖
Now you do, avoid other 6 mistakes too
Very helpful, thanks a lot for sharing!
Glad you found it helpful
thank you for this information 🙏🙏
Glad you found it helpful
I created an all-in-one product in my previous company, but despite interest in the all-in-one approach, many of our core features remained unfinished, causing our product to fail on the market. I really believe that the best features should be fixed first, and then more features should be added. #lesson_learned
Ya, it's a fact; even bigger companies do not build all-in-one products, it's very hard to maintain.
Not only that, it makes user adoption very hard.
This is such an insightful post! Thank you for sharing your painful experience . I’ve definitely picked useful tips. There’s already a temptation to build an all in one product because it’s such a great selling point😅
We’ve been in beta for some months and would be launching https://insight7.io next week and we’d definitely use some tips from your post.
Please also support us on product hunt too https://www.producthunt.com/products/insight7
Thanks!
Only folks that visit a casino loose money. The $200K is a part of the investment.
Thank you for sharing. This is valuable for some one like me who is starting out.
Thank you for sharing. all the points mentioned up there are helpful for the community. Always keep in mind the 3rd point tho.
Glad you found this helpful.
I am launching my business which is in beta right now but i offered everything for free until i am sure everything works perfectly, i hope that is alright and it's not a mistake
Beta is completely fine, make sure you are talking to your beta users on a weekly basis, and getting all the required feedback.
I don't think all-in-one software is a no-no.
I think it's how you do business with such products that can be improved. You're not selling a product but a transformation: that required a lot of human interaction and iteration and a radically different business model.
I'm a bootstrapped founder of an all-in-one software and the more I dig, the more I'm convinced that these are the best opportunities to get started. You don't have to be a genius: just listen to your customer and build.
But you do have to make sales. Phone calls, build a sales-driven product with a mindset that prioritizes features over technology. You have to fall in love with your customer's problem with a problem-solving mindset.
I may write a post about this layer because there are so many learnings and bullshit strategies to avoid in that all in one game. And I'm really not sure it's any more complex to build than a single feature app.
Solving real problems of smb > Marketing your fancy one-feature app in a vacuum.
Glad you could build an all in one tool; best wishes to you.
I will never recommend anyone to build an all-in-one tool; rather, split that into multiple SaaS.
Also, its easier to sell and adopt that way.
Very helpful.
Thanks for sharing
Glad you found this helpful.