Reflecting on my first failed product

I find these kind of articles really insightful. It's very nice to see people reflect on failures as you're much more likely to make similar mistakes. One part of the piece is really important to me:

I spent a few thousand pounds on various marketing exercises for Parable with little payoff, and so I decided to do what I should have done to begin with, and talk to writers about the product.

Knowing what people actually want and need is imperative. Just going to your potential market and asking around what their pains are, what their needs are, etc. is extremely insightful. I think a lot of the time we have an idea and we go "this is so good, everyone will love it" because it would be useful to us and sometimes that's the case but it is probably not.

But this was a really good exercise from the author!