Customer Feedback

Hey, fellow Indie Hackers! 👋

I'm here to share a story about a lot of wasted coffee, late nights, and the crushing realization that we spent so many time building things nobody actually needed. My journey took me through five different SaaS projects—all centered around social media marketing, management, or analytics. Sounds productive, right? Well, it was but not in the way you think.

The build-first, ask-later trap

Our first 2 projects followed the same great playbook. We’d spot a "gap" in the social media market (or what we thought was a gap), get a brilliant idea over our morning espresso, and immediately dive into coding.

Early stage was hard but everything came from a specific request from our first early adopter. Without asking too much we started working on that and it luckily got a great adoption. Even higher than what we actually expected so we felt we knew what and how to do the rest.

Working on our second SaaS (Postcron) we got that big epiphany: we clearly saw that all those who were already working on Social Media would also need a new email marketing tool (that nobody asked) to run their campaigns.

Our Social Media scheduler were being used by >500k users daily. Trust me, much more than we were able to manage. But none of them neither arrived to our new 'Email Scheduler' page. Simply, nobody wanted it.

This failure, I’d sink 9-12 months of our life, a good chunk of our savings, and all our emotional energy. We’d launch to crickets, then wonder why the world wasn't ready for our "genius."

The common denominator in this flop wasn't bad tech or poor marketing; it was a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem I was trying to solve. I was building solutions without having clearly defined pain points.

The Hard Truth: We was too busy listening to the loud, confident voice in our own head—the one that said, "This is what they should want!"

The epiphany: Less code, more conversation

By the time I started thinking about keep building SaaS, I was burned out but determined. I made a pact with myself: I would not write a single line of production code until I had spoken to at least 20 potential users who confirmed they would pay for the proposed feature today.

I changed my approach entirely. I shifted from a Builder to a Detective.

Here’s what I did differently:

1. Stop Selling, Start Interviewing: I didn’t pitch my idea. I asked questions like:

   • "What is the most frustrating part of creating monthly reports for clients?"

   • "How much time did you spend on reporting last week?"

   • "If you had a magic wand to fix one thing in your workflow, what would it be?"

2. Look for the 'Workaround': The most valuable insights came from hearing about their manual hacks. A bunch of agencies were downloading raw data, copying it into a spreadsheet, manually calculating engagement rates, and then creating a PDF for the client. THAT was the pain. They weren't looking for 3D graphs; they were looking to automate the spreadsheet part.

3. Validate Pricing Early: I started asking, "If a tool saved you 5 hours a month on this task, what would you be willing to pay?" I got real numbers, not just "That sounds cool!"

It was a modest success. It solved a real, tedious problem and started generating revenue but finally I decided to close it down cause it involved a customized service that I wasn't willing to offer. A personal matter.

The Breakthrough: The Power of Continuous Feedback 📈

Based on those failures and success, SaaS #5 (an all-in-one tool to understand what customers really want) truly nailed it. The difference this time was that listening wasn't a pre-launch activity; it became the core of the product lifecycle.

• Alpha Users as Co-Founders: I gave 10 early users free lifetime access in exchange for a mandatory weekly feedback call. This wasn't just "bug hunting"; it was about understanding their evolving needs.

• The Feature Graveyard: I got countless suggestions for complex features I thought were "must-haves." I now have a Feature Wishlist—a list of cool, shiny ideas I will never build because my users told me they were distractions from the core problem. This saved me months of coding time.

• Measuring Value, Not Just Usage: I stopped obsessing over daily active users (DAU) and started asking, "Did the tool save you time today, and did you tell your boss/client about it?" If the answer was consistently yes, I knew I was building value.

Avoiding the Energy Drain 🧘

The true importance of listening wasn't just about making money; it was about avoiding the brutal energy drain of building in a vacuum.

Think about the waste:

If I could go back and talk to my "Year 1" self, the advice would be simple: Your ego is an expensive co-founder. Don't spend your time and energy coding what you think is cool; spend it talking to people and coding what they need.

If you're stuck on a project right now, pause the coding. Go find 10 people in your target audience today and just listen to them complain. Their frustration is your product roadmap.

What's the one feature you built that you thought was brilliant, but your users ignored? Let me know in the comments! 👇