4 ms·

Lots of people can write an app. At the end of the day you either have to get lucky with organic traction or be a little less lucky but be a relatively skilled

Lots of people can write an app. At the end of the day you either have to get lucky with organic traction or be a little less lucky but be a relatively skilled marketer that has a good command of how to convert paid traffic.

stets 6y ago
I'd argue organic traction can also be engineered. You are mostly correct though. It's a skill that can be improved on for sure.
AlchemistCamp 6y ago
Fascinating. So, you don't think the quality of the product itself matters much?
- stets 6y ago
  Your product has to work and solve a real need. It isn't that hard to figure out how to create an app. Communicating how that product creates value for customers, marketing it and doing all of the rest of the grunt work is the hard, difficult bit.
  - enraged_camel 6y ago
    >>It isn't that hard to figure out how to create an app. I think this totally depends on the app, and the problem domain. CRUD apps? Sure, those have very low barrier to entry. But they aren't the only type of app out there.
    - stets 6y ago
      Sure -- definitely true. But you can cover a TON of ground for b2b applications with basic CRUD operations.
- Ataraxy 6y ago
  Product definitely matters to a degree, but being able to sell people on it (ie. convince someone they need it) is a more important skill. That's obviously an insanely broad generalization, but so is me saying lots of people can write an app. You could argue that in a lot of domains you barely even need an app at all that requires more than wiring up google sheets to zapier or some such if you can cleverly package it up and target the right audience with it. SaaS products are merely an exercise in problem solving for people/businesses and there's a lot of ways you can usually solve these sorts of problems without needing to be super technical with it. At that point your bottleneck will always end up being acquiring and converting traffic.

stets 6y ago

I'd argue organic traction can also be engineered. You are mostly correct though. It's a skill that can be improved on for sure.

AlchemistCamp 6y ago

Fascinating. So, you don't think the quality of the product itself matters much?

stets 6y ago
Your product has to work and solve a real need. It isn't that hard to figure out how to create an app. Communicating how that product creates value for customers, marketing it and doing all of the rest of the grunt work is the hard, difficult bit.
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  >>It isn't that hard to figure out how to create an app. I think this totally depends on the app, and the problem domain. CRUD apps? Sure, those have very low barrier to entry. But they aren't the only type of app out there.
  - stets 6y ago
    Sure -- definitely true. But you can cover a TON of ground for b2b applications with basic CRUD operations.
Ataraxy 6y ago
Product definitely matters to a degree, but being able to sell people on it (ie. convince someone they need it) is a more important skill. That's obviously an insanely broad generalization, but so is me saying lots of people can write an app. You could argue that in a lot of domains you barely even need an app at all that requires more than wiring up google sheets to zapier or some such if you can cleverly package it up and target the right audience with it. SaaS products are merely an exercise in problem solving for people/businesses and there's a lot of ways you can usually solve these sorts of problems without needing to be super technical with it. At that point your bottleneck will always end up being acquiring and converting traffic.