Early warning signs: Nobody was interested in it. If you can't get a single one of your friends to use it, that might be a sign you are doing it wrong.
Edit: My friend is still working on this. He's invested a lot of time and money into the idea, and keeps finding things that will get him closer to success (if I just get this one strategic partner on board...). He's spent a lot of time on all the formalities of setting up a company and following all possibly relevant regulations, no matter how costly. I really like him, and I like the idea, but in the end there's no point in it when there are no users...
If it's a b2b app and none of your friends own a business who cares.
And what is the app, if you can say?
Concerning business model: It's freemium, and we experimented with different price points. But the lesson I learned was that nothing matters if you don't have any users.
This is common mistake most first time entrepreneur do. I did the same in my first go around. Focusing on company formation and things that don't directly impact product or customer. But next time I wisened up and waited until a customer sent us a $2,000 check as advance payment. "Hey someone sent us a check to a company that doesn't exist. We need to deposit it in a bank account. I guess we need to setup a company for bank account."
Keep in touch with your friend even if you don't want to get involved right now (though it is a learning opportunity). Dedicated people like your friend are hard to come by and typically figure out and succeed if not this time, maybe in next go around.
Yes. That's why I liked working with him so much. But when your MVP doesn't gain any traction, you must pivot or accept that it doesn't work. Dedication and determination is a double edged sword when it leads you to double down on the wrong idea.
What could I have done different? I don't have any business sense. I didn't calculate costs vs expenses, I just ran with what I thought was best. I also lacked the technical expertise for the networking side of things. Also what really killed off my dream was the quick rise of bargain basement web hosts like 1&1 and Dreamhost, offering unlimited everything for dirt cheap prices. I could never compete on that scale. I tried to pivot somewhat and offered more "personalized hosting & support" but again, couldn't compete on price. Potential clients would say "Why would I pay you $20/mo for web hosting when I can get unlimited space and a free domain for $1/year?"
It was a big learning experience for sure. I learned a lot about business and that it's not always as easy as "just be your own boss."
Another thing that really felt like a knife in the back was Google Apps. Trying to get a small office to go with a locally owned web host is difficult when their response is something along the lines of "Well I can just use Google Apps for free. Everyone knows Gmail! It never goes down!" Google's offerings are difficult to compete with. I think people underestimate just how widespread their influence is.
So, I still blog and what not. It is still not wildly successful (in terms of income), in part because my highest priority is still dealing with my chronic health issues. However, I am getting better at things like figuring out what the value position is and also figuring out how it will lead to money.
So, rule of thumb: If you do not have paying customers, you do not have a business. At best, you have a time consuming (potentially expensive) hobby.
Whatever thing you like doing, if no one is paying for it, it isn't a business. Paying customers of some kind are the heart and soul of business. The leather brief case and yada, that is all window dressing.
In essence: Don't confuse style and substance.
Me and one other guy built a web app called FitQuick which was basically a 2-sided marketplace to find personal trainers. Idea being you could use it to find PTs who offer group sessions in the park near you, for example.
I learnt that apparently you need to actually talk to people to figure out if someone would want to use (i.e. pay) for your product in order for you to get anywhere.
We ended up building an MVP but up until that point we didn't actually have any input from potential users so we were pretty off base and it just lost momentum because we were so deflated from no one wanting to use it.
I also got insight in to how small businesses and in this case PTs operate. A lot of them are terrible at running businesses and seemed more interested in working out than making their business a success. I'm not sure entirely what my takeaway here is, but I will remember this next time I do anything that's B2B.
In terms of warning signs there were probably obvious ones that we didn't notice because all we cared about was making a 'cool' product. When the penny dropped for me was when I went to demo it to a PT manager at a gym (we kinda pivoted) and she turned up 10 minutes late and then proceeded to do administrative paper work while talking to me and only half paid attention.
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In truth, it took a while for me to get over it because it felt like I was being shat on despite giving it a go. What I've come to realise is that no one cares if you're giving it a go except you and I shouldn't have expected gold stars for participation.
I'm building something else now and have 2 actual users (non-paying) who are consistently using the product and providing feedback, so that's really, really, really rewarding. Here's the shitty-free-heroku-dyno version if you're curious: https://simplerm.herokuapp.com
Shameless plug here, but I launched IndieHackers.com a couple days ago. There are lots of successful businesses on it, but I'd love to include some "failed" businesses, too. Otherwise there's too much survivorship bias, and readers won't learn how to see the biggest warning signs. Email me at submit@indiehackers.com if you're interested!
In retrospect I attribute my failures to 1) Not being in touch with what people wanted, or gathering feedback throughtout the process. There were a lot of extra features that I implemented which consumed a great deal of time that never even ended up being used.. So I should have launched a MVP and took things from there. I was scared of launching since I beileved my project wasnt ready even though all of the core features were implemented.
2) Lack of marketing/logistics knowledge. After I was done building the site, I truly didnt have the cash or knowledge for giving it the exposure it needed to gain traction. I naively thought that after launch my product would just organically grow itself, by word of mouth without having to put much marketing effort. Very stupid assumption.
3)planning and organization. I took on way too much technical debt for the project to the point where I cant even modify it. I built the site at a time where I was also learning web development and it was my first project ever. I ended up minifying the code, and was not even a Git user at the time. The variable names were lost and I only have the minified output. This is probably my biggest technical mistake.
So in hindsight these are probably the largest factors that contributed to my project being a complete failure, and honestly have discoraged me a bit from following some of my other ideas due to the fear of failure, which might just mean I am more concious of where I spend my time or it might be something that is holding me back. I am not quite sure.
My previous go (c2012) we failed cause we couldn't keep the team engaged. Silly distraction from little disagreement, not going in the same path. Ultimately led to a low quality product and then lack of customer
I've thrown up a few over the last few years. Just trials to gauge Traction. When nothing pops I bail.
There is an awesome book about Lean Customer Development which has loads of good ideas on the traction side.
I've also found that potential investors put Traction and Team at the top of their evaluation.
(Excerpts of) the Linux source code printed on a poster you can hang on your wall. Not one sale to date.
It's a niche market, and I haven't found a successful marketing strategy yet. (I donated one to the local LUG's raffle, and a couple people fought over it ... but apparently nobody wanted to pay actual money for it.)
When November rolls around, and people are starting to think about buying Christmas presents, I might go buy some Google ads.
Had some pivot plans to change it to be a customer feedback platform for folks who are always mobile and dependent on their calendars while meeting with their customers. Not much enthusiasm left, hence dropped.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8855648
Every now and then would see something and get inspiration to reignite this but didn't go back.
I assume this would be high-end, correct? As in, it's based on the client's preferences - someone who's willing to pay for that kind of attention to detail. I would also assume the information is delivered by some sort of tour guide (though a thorough-enough app could work here, too).
I was just in Italy and during the Roman part, I divided my time into sightseeing (75%) for the first week and relaxation (25%) for a few days after. The former, while beautiful, was monotonous and tiresome, and the latter was a slice of heaven. My enjoyment of the two, percentage-wise, was the inverse of how much time I spent on each. Which is to say, the relaxation part (which consisted of hiding away in a Roman neighborhood and only interacting with Italians, in Italian) was way nicer than the sightseeing.
Delivery is flexible: My default is a PDF with a daily list of suggestions, plus some maps to find your way, and anything interesting/relevant that I can add based on what I know of the client. Others plan to be online, so I go over how to get a SIM and service closest to the point of arrival, and also send everything electronically - particularly useful with the maps, since they're Google Maps based. I'm considering adding a Slack channel to ask questions, but I can't come up with a reasonable SLA on responses other than "best efforts".
This is basically for the crowd that is willing to pay a bit to filter out the noise in the online reviews and arrive at a plan so that they can go enjoy, whatever enjoyable means to them I work with. I also do pretty well with families with children.
That said, I am planning for an initial consult, phone, IM, whatever is easiest for the client. We through length of trip, pace, preferences/travel style and budget. I come back with suggested accommodations, things to see and do, where to eat. I'm trying to stick to Italy because I've traveled it a bunch, Italian is my first language and I still speak a couple of dialects, and I have a pretty solid network of folks there who can help me fill in the gaps on what's good, what's a tourist trap, and what used to be good but has become a tourist trap (that last category sucks). Totally custom, though, meaning I'm not running out the same PDF for each city or anything. While I do project initially to get a lot of Rome-Florence-Venice first timers, which is great, I'm hoping I can help some repeat clients with trips in the South, which is massively under-explored by American tourists.
Your travel style sounds a lot like mine. So far I've mostly worked with clients that want to basically live somewhere else for a couple of weeks. For instance, in Rome I'd probably suggest a couple of AirBnbs in Monti, a neighborhood close to the sights but not really touristy, or out in Trastevere if you're cooler than me and don't mind crossing the river to see stuff. And food recs for each day, as well as how to score a reservation, etc. For some I get more hands on and do some of the legwork, but I'm leaving that out of the MVP for the web presence.
I'll do a ShowHN once I get the technical side to look better than shit.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7617048
My one fear, as far as what you're describing, is that making every single trip customized would require a lot of your time (assuming you're also managing the business end). But, that being said, it's of course possible to create client types/profiles with the data already plugged in. For ex, "High-end Adventurous" which would then be matched up with the City profile. The initial consult could work in tandem with the "data-driven" side, sort of like how translators use Translation Memory programs to ease the load.
In bocca al lupo, mi sembra un'idea figa.
Now that I am on my third start-up I could see what different things I could have done with my previous 2. 1. Build a product that solves a problem, however small, for a big audience. This means that you have to work on your product until you find that problem. If there is none, it will not work. I remember I read something about finding questions before finding answers. Questions are more important than finding answers. 2. Once you know you have the solution, go aggressive with user-acquisition and then fine-tune the product. People will complain about missing features, but you want scale before you go for product enhancements if you are solving a real problem.
What an incredibly self-centered way to think about your failure.
Sounds like you not only misread your customers but are hostile towards them as well. Never a recipe for success.
In retrospect I should have been smarter about the politics of business.
You do have to get used to being told you suck. I've got customers who have been using my software every day, for almost a decade, who still complain. Just had a call with one this past week and for the first time ever, he didn't say it sucked.
But then I got an email from him two days later and the suck was back.
This is life. Don't let it get you down. Every piece of feedback is a "dot" creating the pointillist painting of what your market wants.
The idea was simple: scheduling meetings is a pain, shouldn't this be simple by now. E.g. I don't care when or where I just want to meet with Susan tomorrow for 15 mins. You're my Corporate calendar and you know both our availability. Go figure, I'm busy. It was a search engine of sorts for meetings: "Susan tomorrow 15 mins".
Whilst this solution never intended to replace existing calendering or email, etc and just serve as a front-end, I came to the conclusion that companies already have solutions to booking meetings. The existing system works so why pay more. My USP was in time savings made => less cost. I gotta say in writing this it's making me think perhaps there is still something here I should pursue.. and I later found out another company was doing something similar after I shelved this.
I knew from day 1 I should have been validating my idea but it was so much easier to build stuff. I learnt a lot from failing this way: 1) You may have solved a problem, but it could be insignificant to the target market. 2) You have to listen to people and build meaningful human relationships in order to be successful. 3) Find someone else's problem to solve and you're likely to be on to something. 4) Fail fast, learn more
I just launched https://conciergeapp.uk on the August 5th, after a month of development and then spent a week feeling miserable because nobody will sign up or reply to emails. It's a simple tool for facilities to take utility meter readings in private residential apartment blocks. This tool notifies the residents of their readings, as they cannot get to the meters themselves in order to tell their energy suppliers. As a resident it's certainly useful for me.
This is potentially another failed product because it's not important for facilities management. it's a great tool but it doesn't solve any of their main problems. This all came about because of a conversation in which I got excited about something and then engineered a solution for a non-existent problem. I should have prodded some more to find the real pains.
In the space of 1 month and a week I find myself failing again, but this time I failed much faster and have learnt the following: 1) Find the right problem to solve and validate it before you write a single line of code. 2) Listen more. 3) Get up-front financial commitment prior to writing a single line of code
Ask HN: Ever launched a failed desktop app? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12286883