Yeah my previous SaaS I launched with beta testers two years ago was a totally misplaced end user targetting. In an effort to "capture" all opportunities I ended up building everything to compete on features alone which increased price sensitivity and led to bloat which made changes harder.
My experience from this was to start from top to bottom, not starting with code. Picking your market, knowing who is using your product and finding copies of him, I tried to do this on my own last year but developing product, website, documentation, tutorial videos, writing blog posts, sales quickly was way more than I can chew.
It's from this point where I clearly know that I focused on the entirely wrong group of customers. It was the naive belief that I could solve business problems with engineering and taking on more technical debt that ultimately led me to feeling burnt out (as you will see from my previous submissions).
1) I totally agree. Beta testers <<<<< paying customer. I've been there trying to aimless wonder the desert in hopes of finding water. It's so simple but I get it now after failing hard for a long time: "Be where your customers can pay you today not tomorrow or when this feature is ready".
2) Ironically this is where I feel the highest confidence but also where I take most caution. You don't know someone until you've worked with them for a while and sometimes I have misplaced expectations....they may not love your product, and not taking it personally....finding people would be quite hard as well and I think that in Vancouver there's a lot less people just striking out doing or hacking things on their own compared to SF probably.
3) 100% agreed.
> Today is day 1. Go get some customers!
I need to figure out how to get paid for the MVP and find people who will do that.