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In retrospect - would you have still developed all the features? What is the benefit you see?

Or, was there an earlier point you recognize today you should have focused on marketing? If yes - how could you recognize a point like this next time?

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I built the early prototype for me (I wanted it, dogfooding etc) and I tried to market it. Not a huge success, but enough for me to add some paid-for features. Got a few customers, got some feedback on what was missing, added a few more features. Kept doing that, but at a certain point where I felt it was definitely good enough, I started focusing a lot more on marketing – outreach on forums, a bit of advertising, SEO optimisation etc.

So it has been incremental, add stuff, market stuff, get customer feedback (where did they find it, what were they looking for etc)... then rinse and repeat. Not sure how useful this is, maybe doesn't quite answer your questions.

Ultimately you need to know who your early market is and try and double down on that, get people into the top of the funnel basically. If your funnel is dry, you have no chance.

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