4 ms·

What if I don't want to do that, so I'll continue to focus my time on this product in the future?

conductr 4y ago
Nobody ever wants to do that but you make it sound like you'll be homeless and starving soon so I'm suggesting you evaluate priorities and cash flow should be #1. You could also pick up some contract work but, if you hadn't already thought of that, I think that would take you longer to line up and generate some cash from. There's no magic solution that HN can give you that will make your product start ringing in sales/users. But if this is some roundabout way of getting product feedback... It just looks like a Notion clone to me, the website is very disjointed and confusing, the copy has a lot of room for improvement (please have a native English speaker proofread or just hire a copywriter), a short explainer video might help as I think this could benefit from seeing in action, pricing>0?
bigiain 4y ago
Sounds like you'll be homeless and hungry pretty soon then. There's no shame in admitting your pet project isn't and is unlike;y to ever be a commercial success. You sound like you have (or are just about to) run out of runway, and your business is not "default alive" but "actually dead". The longer you drag out admitting that, the deeper the hole you're going to have to dig yourself out of when you finally do admit it.
kcplate 4y ago
You solicited advice so here it is, and I am going to be blunt. If you don’t want to go find a job and do this as a side hustle (which is the best advice) in my opinion you will need to do the following immediately just to start attracting folks organically. - Stop doing all product dev except bug fixes until you truly understand the product and features your users want. Think of what you have as being at the MVP stage. If you have additional ideas or features, just backlog them for now and come back to them if the product/company survives the next 3-6 months. There is no feature you can add that will rescue the company at this stage. Right now your only hope is that marketing can attract users, and the product is good enough to keep them. - fix the website: it’s not responsive, and not at all compelling to your product. The design is amateurish and dated. Get a designer to help, you need it. - Engage an “English as a first language” copywriter to fix all the copy on the site. When I read your site it comes off as “Let me write sign, I speak English good”. Poor copywriting like you have will literally exclude US users from using your product. It comes off as untrustworthy. - Understand your users. It seems to focus on all the wrong things. LaTeX, Markdown…developers might care about that, but it looks like your appeal is to med students. Latex means something completely different to a med student. If your app has specific benefit to med students or law students, set up specific landing pages optimized for those two user bases that market to them to compel a download. Why do they need to use your product? How will it make their lives easier? Target the 2-3 most likely groups that will use the product as is, and target all marketing to them. You can always expand to their user types later. - it seems your app is really more a flash card generator/guided studying utility than a note taking system. You should probably play up this feature and do specific marketing around it. More flash card and learning copy and less note-taking copy for SEO. For me, compared to a pure note taking app like GoodNotes or Apple Notes, your UX looks too complex. Perhaps it needs this complexity for the learning system you have created. So if your current marketing is centered around attracting folks looking for note taking apps I think you will turn people off. - might just be me, but I have literally never needed a statistical dashboard for a note taking app. I found that very strange that is was featured so prominently. I don’t understand how this is important, and your site doesn’t really tell me why I need it. Also, what is your plan to actually make this a revenue generator? If you are having difficulties getting an excited user base offering something for free…how do you plan on monetizing it? I get that this is a pet project, but does it have legs? Might have value to starving college students, but would they pay for it? I question that. You should too. If you don’t have a specific endgame in mind for it i.e. “I am going to sell this to Blackboard for $5M.”, you just have a hobby that is making you poor.

Nobody ever wants to do that but you make it sound like you'll be homeless and starving soon so I'm suggesting you evaluate priorities and cash flow should be #1. You could also pick up some contract work but, if you hadn't already thought of that, I think that would take you longer to line up and generate some cash from. There's no magic solution that HN can give you that will make your product start ringing in sales/users. But if this is some roundabout way of getting product feedback... It just looks like a Notion clone to me, the website is very disjointed and confusing, the copy has a lot of room for improvement (please have a native English speaker proofread or just hire a copywriter), a short explainer video might help as I think this could benefit from seeing in action, pricing>0?

bigiain 4y ago

Sounds like you'll be homeless and hungry pretty soon then. There's no shame in admitting your pet project isn't and is unlike;y to ever be a commercial success. You sound like you have (or are just about to) run out of runway, and your business is not "default alive" but "actually dead". The longer you drag out admitting that, the deeper the hole you're going to have to dig yourself out of when you finally do admit it.

kcplate 4y ago

You solicited advice so here it is, and I am going to be blunt. If you don’t want to go find a job and do this as a side hustle (which is the best advice) in my opinion you will need to do the following immediately just to start attracting folks organically. - Stop doing all product dev except bug fixes until you truly understand the product and features your users want. Think of what you have as being at the MVP stage. If you have additional ideas or features, just backlog them for now and come back to them if the product/company survives the next 3-6 months. There is no feature you can add that will rescue the company at this stage. Right now your only hope is that marketing can attract users, and the product is good enough to keep them. - fix the website: it’s not responsive, and not at all compelling to your product. The design is amateurish and dated. Get a designer to help, you need it. - Engage an “English as a first language” copywriter to fix all the copy on the site. When I read your site it comes off as “Let me write sign, I speak English good”. Poor copywriting like you have will literally exclude US users from using your product. It comes off as untrustworthy. - Understand your users. It seems to focus on all the wrong things. LaTeX, Markdown…developers might care about that, but it looks like your appeal is to med students. Latex means something completely different to a med student. If your app has specific benefit to med students or law students, set up specific landing pages optimized for those two user bases that market to them to compel a download. Why do they need to use your product? How will it make their lives easier? Target the 2-3 most likely groups that will use the product as is, and target all marketing to them. You can always expand to their user types later. - it seems your app is really more a flash card generator/guided studying utility than a note taking system. You should probably play up this feature and do specific marketing around it. More flash card and learning copy and less note-taking copy for SEO. For me, compared to a pure note taking app like GoodNotes or Apple Notes, your UX looks too complex. Perhaps it needs this complexity for the learning system you have created. So if your current marketing is centered around attracting folks looking for note taking apps I think you will turn people off. - might just be me, but I have literally never needed a statistical dashboard for a note taking app. I found that very strange that is was featured so prominently. I don’t understand how this is important, and your site doesn’t really tell me why I need it. Also, what is your plan to actually make this a revenue generator? If you are having difficulties getting an excited user base offering something for free…how do you plan on monetizing it? I get that this is a pet project, but does it have legs? Might have value to starving college students, but would they pay for it? I question that. You should too. If you don’t have a specific endgame in mind for it i.e. “I am going to sell this to Blackboard for $5M.”, you just have a hobby that is making you poor.