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Sounds like you're doing great! If I could offer one bit of friendly criticism, it relates to this sentence: My biggest struggle is that because I am still ac
by hluska 10y ago
Sounds like you're doing great!
If I could offer one bit of friendly criticism, it relates to this sentence:
My biggest struggle is that because I am still actively developing and adding new features to the app, I have problems putting down the coding tools and building momentum with marketing.
I keyed in on that particular sentence because it sounds almost exactly like something I said in a few of my own solo ventures. The longer that I kept adding features, the easier it got for me to think that the next 'killer' feature would turn everything around and I'd end up with legions of customers begging me to take their money.
In retrospect, I think that this all relates back to how, for me at least, development is easier than marketing. Marketing always felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall, but dev was the exact opposite - I'd get things done and get all of these constant little rewards.
I wish that someone had told me to freeze features for a few weeks and get out there and start hustling. In retrospect, I realize that I wasted much of my runway adding in features that nobody would ever actually pay for. Since I got so distant from customers, I didn't realize that until it was too late.
- laurencei 10y agoAndrew Chen actually wrote a blog[0] on this exact topic titled: "The Next Feature Fallacy: The fallacy that the next new feature will suddenly make people use your product" [0] http://andrewchen.co/the-next-feature-fallacy-the-fallacy-that-the-next-new-feature-will-suddenly-make-people-use-your-product/ http://andrewchen.co/the-next-feature-fallacy-the-fallacy-th...
- hluska 10y agoGood link. Thanks for sharing!
- FooBarWidget 10y agoI remember reading a Joel Spolsky blog post a couple of years ago that contradicts this. I can't find the post anymore but I think he said that out of everything he tried, nothing gained him more customers than adding new features.
- cyberferret 10y agoThanks for your thoughtful feedback. The main reason I keep adding features and improving current ones is because, usually when I DO get a reply from someone who ceases to use our system, they usually say "Oh, I thought your system was great, but I really needed something that would do X". In a lot of cases, "X" was something that I was either already planning to add later, or else would only take a small tweak to accomplish, so I go ahead and do it. But in almost all cases, when I reach out to the same user (I track all feature requests against users) to get their feedback, a lot of them don't come back anyhow, so I am not sure if they missing feature was just an easy excuse for them, or perhaps they have found something else out there that does have that feature already?!?
- hluska 10y agoI wish that I had good advice that would fix this issue for you. Unfortunately, if I could, I'd be so busy and have such an incredibly high hourly rate that I wouldn't have time to reply to comments on Hacker News....:) I've learned a couple of things about users. The biggest one is that users tend to make a value judgement about your product very quickly. They're not even entirely conscious of the factors that went into making the decision. Often, they'll try to use logic to justify why they feel the way they feel...and one major way they do this is via feature requests. Unfortunately, since they are just grasping for straws, adding this feature often does not resolve the initial feeling that your product is not right for them. Best of luck to you - I'm certainly in your corner and wish you an incredible amount of success!!