5 regrets on the day of our Product Hunt Launch

After 7 months we have finally launched Meco newsletter reader on Product Hunt - https://www.producthunt.com/posts/meco

Launch day seems as good a time as ever to reflect back on the journey so far and share where went wrong.

Here are our regrets:

1. We waited too long to launch on Product Hunt
Why? We were scared. What if our messaging wasn’t perfect? Do we have enough of a network to support us? Will we get any upvotes apart from my mum? (Honest fear and she still hasn’t even upvoted yet). Really the key focus for us is getting more feedback on our product so PH should have been done sooner.

2. We were too scared to ask for help
My overthinking brain always thinks everyone else is too busy to help or speak to me. When I finally took the leap in reaching out to newsletter publishers they couldn’t have been nicer and lots have become really good friends.

3. We wasted time worrying about competitors
Everyday it felt like another newsletter app would pop up or announce their intent to work in the space. After some time wasted focusing on what they were doing, we realised that if we focus on what our users want, nothing else really matters. In fact the more people championing newsletters can only be a great thing.

4. We lost our silliness in meetings
When we used to work in the same office back in the day we used to do all sorts of silly stuff all the time. Playing danger catch with something that was very fragile and expensive was a personal fav. When things moved to working from home we fell into a routine of only talking business. We still haven’t figured out the solution but we know that we need to bring back the little silly moments to inject more laughs through the day.

5. An investment opportunity derailed our focus
We almost got funded. We had $ signs in our eyes. As soon as there was a potential offer on the table we forgot all about improving the app and pushing for growth. The offer wasn’t quite right and we ended up losing the most valuable thing… time.

Even though we did lots wrong, we also did a lot right and we are still super proud of our product and where we’ve got to in such a short period of time in a stressful time.

Big thank you to the Indie Hackers community for providing us so much feedback, friends and learnings along the way!

Sean