I Lost over $200k
Today, I am sharing the learning lessons so that you do not make the mistakes I made.
1. Do not trust people blindly, especially your team:
This was the number mistake my cofounder Oscar, and I made. We trusted our team blindly.
2. Don't launch an unstable product:
My product was in the alpha stage, and I fell for someone's trap who asked me to launch my product early, leading to many angry and upset customers.
3. Do not build an ALL-IN-ONE product:
Time and time, even at PitchGround, we see founders having a large vision and wanting to BUILD an all-in-one tool.
It's a recipe for disaster because it's very difficult to manage the repo if the scope is too large.
Instead, split the large vision into multiple smaller projects if you want. It's easier to manage, maintain, grow and kill if things are not working out.
4. Follow a systematic launch cycle:
- Idea: Validate your idea with at least 80 out of 100 people who have paid you $1 for your idea. - Build JUST one MOST REQUESTED FEATURE by your buyers in your idea stage. - Test, TEst, TESt, TEST...and KEEP testing.
Many companies need to understand the importance of QA during early-stage. You don't want frustrated users.
5. Focus on stability and not UI/UX:
Your MVP should focus on stability and not UI and UX because your initial set of customers won't care how fancy your product looks, but what they care about is whether their problem is getting solved or not.
6. Sell to at least 1k paying users before building more:
We made a huge mistake by building more, leading to more stability issues and unsatisfied users.
7. Build an audience before building a product:
I wish someone had told me this 5-6 years ago. Please only build a product if you have an audience.
Spend at least six months building enough audience, so your initial distribution becomes very easy.
I have learned more valuable lessons, which I will share in the future, but I hope these lessons help you build better & smarter.
Let me know your thoughts in the comment below.
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Edit:
Since many of you requested to share more details, here is the short backstory:
I started working on my SaaS somewhere in 2016, and the first thing I did was hired a CTO.
The person had around 3+ years of experience.
Not only was I paying a good salary, but I was also paying for his rent. When we started building the initial set of products, the overall product development kept getting delayed. He said we needed more developers, so we hired around 6-7+ developers.
All the developers were reporting my ex-CTO, and as per our mutual understanding, I was not allowed to have any say in how the product will be developed, and he will be offered full support and resources.
I agreed to that.
Several months passed, and the product was not ready, but I was also losing cash quickly. I was already under heavy stress because there was no flow of income for the product.
I met someone during this time who told me that I should launch my product, and some people will even buy during the alpha stage. I found it skeptical but fell for that trap because I was desperate to bring in more cash to keep the funding going on for the project.
This is where I made another mistake because I unknowingly ended up overpromising, and my team failed to deliver a quality product.
Over 1.5 years passed, and we still needed a stable product.
Over two years went by, and I still did not have a stable product, and this is when my ex-CTO quit, and a few other developers quit along with him when I realized that he used my resources to build his product and shortly flew out of the country.
..I ended up hiring an outside dev team with the little more money I had to keep my promise to the customers, but that did not go well either.
I had no money left; I had to shut the project completely because I had deep into reds and had gotten into heavy clinical depression.