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1: Correct, we had "assumed" who the ideal users would be. Because the market was already huge, and we "assumed" people who used our competitors would use our p

1: Correct, we had "assumed" who the ideal users would be. Because the market was already huge, and we "assumed" people who used our competitors would use our product too. And when we were not able to sell, we thought It was because of lack of feature. The "one more feature" mentality was bad. The surface area of products like Hubspot(our competition) is huge - and we tried to catch up with them in terms of feature and this was a mistake. We didn't try to identify a niche. I think this is one of those things that is easy in theory and hard to practice. 2: Agree that both are hard. I'm still happy with the pace which we shipped at. Looking back at it I think we were not shipping the right features. There are a few reason for this: - We got a bit desperate at some point and started building features for single customers(which we thought would be useful to others, but was not). And this spiraled downwards and our product started doing things that we initially didn't intend to. (Like email automation, push notifcations, website builder, form builder, inapp messaging, blogging platform, social media management etc) - At some point we blindly started copying features, without thinking why we need to build it. (I know this sounds really stupid now, hence the title) - We were young and we thought we could brut force(or hustle) our way out of every problem. I hope that helps. Happy to explain more if you have questions :)

joseluisq 6y ago
Yes, brutal-force our way out of every problem some times is our "human natural" way to react against problems out of "our scope/control". But for the same premise that are out of our handling are in majority of cases wrong reactions to face problems. Thanks for sharing.
- soorajchandran 6y ago
  Totally agree. I think over time, we will learn to let it go and think sensibly.
danjac 6y ago
How many potential customers did you talk to before starting development?
- soorajchandran 6y ago
  We started out as a Shopify plugin for marketing and had some users. But before expanding the product we didn't really talk to any potential users. Again, another stupid mistake. Once we started building we got the opportunity to talk to a users(Other YC companies in the same batch) - which thinking of it now was not the ideal user persona.
  - irjustin 6y ago
    Why is another YC company not ideal in terms of customer?
    - soorajchandran 6y ago
      Most companies were very early stage - Not investing too much into marketing.
    - danjac 6y ago
      If you are having to take customers with whom you share the same investor, it's probably a sign that you are not doing well enough to find customers on your own. Plus I don't think YC derives much benefit if its companies survive by selling services to each other.
ignoramous 6y ago
Sorry for being a bit too inquisitive, feel free to answer only what you're comfortable answering: Funnily enough, I was about to cite the example of Freshworks (in that building SaaS companies from India gives one an unfair pricing advantage; and also that focusing on one product for a large but under-served (read: small companies) market that can be sold "repeatably" (read: feature set everyone needs) is the "key" before moving "upmarket" to large enterprises [0]) but it looks like you are an ex-employee and so you'd know all of this already! That out of the way, a few follow-ups: > ...we "assumed" people who used our competitors would use our product too. And when we were not able to sell, we thought It was because of lack of feature. I mean, I'd naively think it to be true as well-- that not being able to sell (to target customers) would be usually be due to lack of features. If not that, what, you think, were some reasons Marketfox couldn't? > At some point we blindly started copying features, without thinking why we need to build it. You mean Marketfox didn't know if a missing feature (that a competitor had but Marketfox didn't) was important / critical but expended engineering resources on it anyway? If so, what you'd have done in its stead? How else you'd approach figuring out what to build? Also, I am assuming Marketfox had access to founders/mentors who had done SaaS before... why you'd think that didn't make a difference (given your analysis that the mistakes you enumerated were avoidable)? What'd you, in the light of that, do differently? Thanks. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU5CAVZ4hoA?t=8m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU5CAVZ4hoA?t=8m30s
- soorajchandran 6y ago
  Re: Freshworks - Yes we had a ton of learning from there and the plan was to execute something similar. Had lot of advantages in terms of cost. This was also a serious part of the business plan. Re: Selling to customers: This was not easy as we thought. Most people just doesn't switch to a new product based on features. Either the new product needs to be substantially better - so that it overcomes the pain of the switch. This means we had to build a product that is much better than existing products - and we failed placing our product correctly. Marketing is an area with a lot of verticals. Content, Digital, Email etc. We tried to do a lot of things at the same time. For example we could have focused on just email marketing, or just content marketing. Instead we tried to do all of these together and they were mediocre. I guess that was not enough to force the switch. After a point we couldn't tell who were we competing against - The email marketing solution, the push notification solution or the enterprise marketing solution. If I were to rebuild it today I would have focused on a single thing and built a great product out of it. About mentorship - I'd say I didn't have enough "access" to mentors or the network due to several "internal reasons" (Slightly touching upon this on the decision imbalance) If it was solely up to me, there are things I would have done different back then too. At least now, I have wonderful people helping me through my startup journeys. And I'm a big believer of having the right mentor. At the startup I co-founded last (Carrom - which was acquired https://money.yahoo.com/oyster-acquires-carrom-accelerate-global-100000172.html https://money.yahoo.com/oyster-acquires-carrom-accelerate-gl...) I had the opportunity to work with some great people and this was something I did right in terms of mentorship.

joseluisq 6y ago

Yes, brutal-force our way out of every problem some times is our "human natural" way to react against problems out of "our scope/control". But for the same premise that are out of our handling are in majority of cases wrong reactions to face problems. Thanks for sharing.

soorajchandran 6y ago
Totally agree. I think over time, we will learn to let it go and think sensibly.

danjac 6y ago

How many potential customers did you talk to before starting development?

soorajchandran 6y ago
We started out as a Shopify plugin for marketing and had some users. But before expanding the product we didn't really talk to any potential users. Again, another stupid mistake. Once we started building we got the opportunity to talk to a users(Other YC companies in the same batch) - which thinking of it now was not the ideal user persona.
- irjustin 6y ago
  Why is another YC company not ideal in terms of customer?
  - soorajchandran 6y ago
    Most companies were very early stage - Not investing too much into marketing.
  - danjac 6y ago
    If you are having to take customers with whom you share the same investor, it's probably a sign that you are not doing well enough to find customers on your own. Plus I don't think YC derives much benefit if its companies survive by selling services to each other.

ignoramous 6y ago

Sorry for being a bit too inquisitive, feel free to answer only what you're comfortable answering: Funnily enough, I was about to cite the example of Freshworks (in that building SaaS companies from India gives one an unfair pricing advantage; and also that focusing on one product for a large but under-served (read: small companies) market that can be sold "repeatably" (read: feature set everyone needs) is the "key" before moving "upmarket" to large enterprises [0]) but it looks like you are an ex-employee and so you'd know all of this already! That out of the way, a few follow-ups: > ...we "assumed" people who used our competitors would use our product too. And when we were not able to sell, we thought It was because of lack of feature. I mean, I'd naively think it to be true as well-- that not being able to sell (to target customers) would be usually be due to lack of features. If not that, what, you think, were some reasons Marketfox couldn't? > At some point we blindly started copying features, without thinking why we need to build it. You mean Marketfox didn't know if a missing feature (that a competitor had but Marketfox didn't) was important / critical but expended engineering resources on it anyway? If so, what you'd have done in its stead? How else you'd approach figuring out what to build? Also, I am assuming Marketfox had access to founders/mentors who had done SaaS before... why you'd think that didn't make a difference (given your analysis that the mistakes you enumerated were avoidable)? What'd you, in the light of that, do differently? Thanks. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU5CAVZ4hoA?t=8m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU5CAVZ4hoA?t=8m30s

soorajchandran 6y ago
Re: Freshworks - Yes we had a ton of learning from there and the plan was to execute something similar. Had lot of advantages in terms of cost. This was also a serious part of the business plan. Re: Selling to customers: This was not easy as we thought. Most people just doesn't switch to a new product based on features. Either the new product needs to be substantially better - so that it overcomes the pain of the switch. This means we had to build a product that is much better than existing products - and we failed placing our product correctly. Marketing is an area with a lot of verticals. Content, Digital, Email etc. We tried to do a lot of things at the same time. For example we could have focused on just email marketing, or just content marketing. Instead we tried to do all of these together and they were mediocre. I guess that was not enough to force the switch. After a point we couldn't tell who were we competing against - The email marketing solution, the push notification solution or the enterprise marketing solution. If I were to rebuild it today I would have focused on a single thing and built a great product out of it. About mentorship - I'd say I didn't have enough "access" to mentors or the network due to several "internal reasons" (Slightly touching upon this on the decision imbalance) If it was solely up to me, there are things I would have done different back then too. At least now, I have wonderful people helping me through my startup journeys. And I'm a big believer of having the right mentor. At the startup I co-founded last (Carrom - which was acquired https://money.yahoo.com/oyster-acquires-carrom-accelerate-global-100000172.html https://money.yahoo.com/oyster-acquires-carrom-accelerate-gl...) I had the opportunity to work with some great people and this was something I did right in terms of mentorship.