So a little backdrop:
I launched Readory last month. It’s a platform where users can share links to any online written content, whether it be their own or something they enjoyed.
Like most founders, I did a lot of reading on the best ways to build/launch your startup, and some frequent notions that stuck were the following:
“Find a niche and slowly move out from there”
“Prototype and test the market heavily before launching”
“Build a minimal product and then add features based on your users”
I can understand why this is recommended, by starting in a niche you can own it thus the marketing will be easier. Also by building a minimal product you don’t waste as much time if the idea is not validatable and obviously adding features based on usage rather than a hypothesis is a safer bet.
But why did I and am I going to continue doing the opposite?
My reasons for this are the following and they are based on my own perspective.
None of the conventional wisdom matters, what worked for one startup won’t work for another, the only thing you can guarantee is that design and early consensus make the BIGGEST difference.
There are hundreds of ideas that failed or succeeded due to this, how many blogging platforms were there before Medium became trendy?
I’m not saying they are the only things, obviously you should solve a problem in some way or another but what I’m trying to say is this:
Most people don’t usually decide what they like in apps, products, clothing (see instagram) design and consensus do.
Thus, if you launch an app in a trendy way that fits the consensus and design aspects of the time (right now it is minimal) it should do well even if you haven’t validated your ideas or started niche. Plus, if it fails you may have saved more time than the time it takes to do all the testing and small growth that can eventually lead to nothing (see refind.com).
So now, to test my hypothesis.
I launched Readory successfully on Indiehackers, ProductHunt and Reddit last month and it is still growing considerably. Instead of doing a “Launching x apps in y weeks”. I’m going to push these standalone apps to Readory as features whilst launching them on Producthunt, IH, HN, and as many other places I can in the following manner “Bellydancers by Readory” or “SocialRank by Readory”.
No validation, no prototyping, not related to my Readory’s current usage
Even if it’s a total fail, it’s an interesting experiment and will bring in some level of growth to Readory.
Thus “launching X standalone apps as features in Y weeks”
As an example the first idea I have is a web influence ranking application based on Alexa API, social mentions API etcetera. I’ll tweak the idea to a ‘written content’ ranking application and add it to the Readory platform this week and see how it goes.