Ask HN: Failed to Bootstrap, Now What?

I would suggest that you:

(1) Talk with / survey your customers to find out what's actually going on. Based on your description, it doesn't seem like you've actually talked with them. You should find out why they're not spending the required time on the site, and / or why they're not renewing their subscriptions.

Figure out why they initially used the site, and what value they thought they'd get; and also why they don't feel that they're getting that value any more.

Base your questions on the one found at http://survey.io .

(2) Figure out the root of the problems that are causing these support requests, and fix them. (E.g. could you clarify the wording on some pages? Are people not using the site properly?). This way, you don't have to spend so much time on support.

But I do agree with some of the others, a pivot of some sort sounds like it could help. Otherwise, if _after_ you've talked with your customers, you don't feel that you should keep this going, move onto something else.

Edit: Also, remember that the growth really comes down to the marketing. Have you been in touch with bloggers? How are you advertising it? Doing any SEO? Or is it purely word of mouth? And if it's word of mouth, do you have any viral components in there to help people spread the word?

Initially I would say pivot, but I always wouldn't force a pivot (e.g. try to think of a similar idea, make that instead). The fact that your product is well-known in your niche means that you've got a slightly easier job at marketing a similar project.

Other options you could consider: A) How technical is the support you get caught doing? Is it something only you can do? Would hiring a technical support "employee" via oDesk or Elance make sense? Would an open forum for support (if it doesn't already exist) help users solve simpler problems? Can you reasonably charge a support / maintenance fee (Charging for exceeding X hours of support per month)? B) Are there other ways to encourage the time commitment and get churches to keep using? Are there small features or changes you could make to encourage involvement?

What's your motivation for creating the product? If you really believe in it, you could find ways to minimize your current involvement while building another smaller service that may not mean as much to you but generate more cashflow and allow you to pursue projects.

Most of those questions are rhetorical but hopefully they help you narrow down the issue and possible solutions.

Good questions. Thanks!

Pivot the product toward something less social that provides immediate value to church staff/leaders

I would go with this one, if you still care about the space. You probably have a lot of customer understanding and a good network.

Remember, though, that pivoting doesn't just mean tweaking the features. Sometimes it means throwing the thing out entirely and going after a totally different customer/problem with new focus.

What would you do if you poured every spare hour into something for an Internet eon, and came to the realization that what you're doing isn't going to pay off?

Speaking entirely personally, I would toss the product and build something new on top of what I've learned about customer needs. Keep the old site around long enough to cross-sell and upsell existing audience into the new offering which is solving a problem they [presumably] have and reveals its value quicker than the current product. Then you're only losing your development time, but you've been able to keep all of your sales, conversation, and strategy time.

Well, you are competing with a behemoth with Zondervan publishing and The City (http://www.onthecity.org), and your pricing seems to be only marginally better (for hosting.. I just now noticed the part at the bottom about being able to host it yourself for free). Do you know how many people are using it for free vs. paying for it? You may want to re-think the open source model, though I can't imagine there are TOO many churches that would want to bother hosting it themselves.

You may be better served finding a smaller niche and doing it really well, rather than having such a huge feature set that may be overwhelming to people on their first visit. You don't necessarily have to pivot to something less social, but I'm sure you can do some research and find out something that you already provide that church staff think could be much easier, and make that an emphasis.

Yes, the product is open source, and there are a handful of churches using (or trying to use) the self-hosted option. I don't have good numbers on that, but I think you're right -- more churches are paying me to host than doing it themselves.

The City, and just recently, The Table are both bigger competitors.

...so you're saying, reduce the feature set and make the smaller product more focused? That's a good idea; thanks for the advice!

You don't have to reduce the feature set by a lot, but you can at least put the technical features under an 'advanced' section or something so non-technical users are not intimidated.. or you can take them off completely. Facebook integration would also help, I'm sure.. Can't tell if you have it or not from the site but it looks like just twitter. The ability to share events and such on FB that would take members to your site would help (I would think).

You're right: no Facebook integration yet.

I've been so discouraged about the whole thing lately, thinking I need to shut it down and do something else. Though, it sounds like, you're saying I'd be better off making some significant changes in my approach and seeing if that works.

I just wonder... when do I say, this isn't going to work. I guess that's the whole point of entrepreneurship... not giving up. :-)

[edit: not sure why I thought HN might advise me to give up. :-) ]

I agree with acrum, a niche would probably serve you best. You have a lot of features, but the benefits aren't crystal clear. Solve a real problem, which I'm sure you have insight into, and you'll be on your way.

Having more features is actually a big problem, since it dilutes your core value, and creates customer confusion, as most will have differing ideas about what's "core".

>"walled online directory and social network for their members."

Maybe a walled online directory is a good idea. A walled social network is stillborn - you might as well do a private list-serve and save people the trouble of logging in.

Well, the idea was to synchronize member info with churches' existing membership database, so that everyone is already ON the network -- they just have to create a password.

It really worked with our own church, but took some effort to promote among the Sunday School classes and small groups -- they were really the driving force for adoption.

Point is: it took some effort outside of just paying a hosting bill -- that's what most churches don't stick around long enough to see it pay off.

[edit: oh, and the product does have a email-based list-serve feature as well, which is one way a lot of members use the product]

...and maybe there's an option I'm overlooking...

Since you know exactly what the issue is (assuming your analysis is correct), maybe you could work on resolving that and see if it takes off. Here is the issue you identified:

It turns out that getting churches to initially part with their money isn't nearly as hard as convincing them that the investment of TIME is worth it for them and their members. Building an online community takes effort on the part of the church to promote it, and most give up within months. It's not unlike a forum or Facebook group; just sticking something out there doesn't draw in anyone.

Every time I see something like this, I wish I could figure out how to capitalize on (ie monetize) my ability to get conversation going and keep conversation going in online forums. My ability to do that is ironic since I actually suck at starting conversations of my own (see my submissions on HN for an example of how lame I am at that). Yet, I know how to respond to other people and shape the forum culture to make it warm and welcoming and encourage people to open up. I have had repeated experiences where I joined some existing list or forum which had very little traffic in spite of significant membership and within a few months of joining traffic and membership increased significantly. Typically, the owner then says something along the lines of "I have no idea what happened but all of a sudden we are growing". I know exactly what happened and never get credit for it.

Anyway, my only point is that it is possible to intentionally make community happen and increase traffic, usefulness, etc. Teaching members how to do that would make this stickier. And probably would take less time and energy than the three years you have already sunk into this.

Peace and good luck.

There probably is a business in there for you if you want it! Call yourself a "community engagement strategist" or something similar. Build a platform - write a few online articles, maybe have a video on Youtube and a blog you write to about community engagement.

Plenty of people are building online communities and sinking lots of money into development, design, and content, but never getting over the chicken and egg problem.

I don't know if you have a software background, but the way to really go about making this a business would be to create a community analytics tool that you could use to quantify your success.

No, I don't have a software background. I think one of the problems that many forums run into is that the folks qualified to write the software and deal with the technical support are frequently not the best people for dealing with people. Then they try to come up with technical solutions to people problems and it really doesn't work. The other issue is that most people I have met who are both people-person's and highly socially insightful tend to be master manipulators. This will get you some initial success but in the long run it is a poison pill.

I don't meet too many people who are both highly socially observant and have no goal of manipulating and maneuvering people. Fostering community requires you to be socially aware and also good at respecting people's boundaries. Those two things seem to not coincide too often. So I am not sure how well I could teach people to do what I do (though I know I could put some info together to help others with this and have done so on occasion for previous forums I belonged to). I sometimes fantasize about having people pay me to join their forum for a few months (edit: or review what they are doing and give them feedback on improving it). My experience has been that once critical mass is achieved, the culture becomes self-perpetuating. I can breathe life into it but it does not die just because I leave. On one email list, I returned after a two year absence and cultural things I had started were still there. (Technically, that's the only place I ever got any significant recognition for what I do. I was a moderator and people very much noticed how the place went from a cold atmosphere with anemic traffic to warm and lively in just a week once I began moderating.)

Someone told me today I have "no business sense". That's probably true. I can't for the life of me figure out how to turn this into a business opportunity in spite of how frequently this type of problem gets discussed on HN (or rears its ugly head in various forums).

What it sounds like you want to do is be one step up from the "community manager" job.

It's definitely possible to self-create your own role here - I would imagine there are probably 50 people on this board who would pay you to do exactly that job on a limited basis. You just need to be out in front of them with exactly what you can do.

That takes a little self-marketing - what if you worked with the original poster here to turn around several of his largest customers?

I'm not a religious person, so I'm not sure how viable it would be to work with church groups. Maybe it would be fine. I just don't know.

It isn't that I want to be a community manager. It's just that community building is a little like raising kids: "Do as I say, not as I do" is one of the most ineffective (and even counterproductive) ways to try to pursue the goal. So what you see a lot of in public forums is that moderators and owners get frustrated with bad behavior and then publicly get all over someone's case for it in an effort to "improve" the situation. This typically amounts to putting out the fire with gasoline.

Anyway, the point is that giving people examples is the single most effective means to foster community. Way more effective, efficient, and fast than trying to tell people what to do. So I am not sure that it would be reproducible to simply put together an information packet or peruse the forum and critique what they are doing. Those might offer some improvements but the single most effective, efficient, long-lasting means I know of to breathe life into a forum and turn a little pile of twigs into an impressive bonfire is to just be there myself and do what I do. I have no idea how I would price that or how well that would work for forums on topics I have zero knowledge about.

But, yes, I have been seriously considering trying to find some means to turn this into a business opportunity because it does appear to be an unusual skill and there is clearly a "market" (ie people who need this and don't know how to do it themselves). Researching that and thinking on it is the real reason for this submission of mine: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126209

Thank you for the feedback.