Feeling demotivated by a negative feedback
Hello everyone,
I am in a phase where it's feeling like a roller coaster ride. I sometimes get too excited to solve a problem, and the next day, I didn't feel the potential in it. I recently came up with an idea that I truly believe in, and I start to ask some people about it, most of them never replied back and someone says that it might not be a good idea as this X company's aim is to do this.
I always lose hope in this kind of situation, there is nobody that I can talk to who can tell me whether what I am doing is good or wrong. I researched a lot about this idea, and I am not sure what else should I do to come up with something that everyone wants.
And I also get demotivated when after everything, research and all, I find a company doing the same thing that I want to do with the same vision that I was thinking. This happens to me a lot of times.
I really need some advice from someone who had gone through this phase and can really advise me on what can I do here.
Thank you :)
if x company's doing this so i should abandon it is not the right attitude. If x company is doing it than it is good let them exhaust the resources in validating the product and educating the market about the new product. Your goal is to replicate it and compete with them where you can compete better. May be you can win customers by responding better, providing same product for cheaper price or marketing better.
Getting disappointed with negative feedback . It is good that you got the feedback before working on the product you saved time and more disappointment so it is positive thing don't turn it into something negative.
My advice is to find out your own strength (development/marketing/social) etc. find existing product where you can leverage them and then start a business.
Thank you so much for sharing,
But sometimes, the competitors are market leaders, like if I want to build something that would enable a person to build their own website and have X functionality, but then I found out that platforms like Squarespace, wix provide the same feature. Is it a smart move to compete here?
it depends . as a indiehacker we are not interested in building billion dollar company what we need is 1000 customers who can pay 50$/month. For example if i am in some industry that requires auditing of code that is running the website due to regulatory requirement than i will need exactly the same functionality as wix/squarespace however i can't use them since they don't provide their code for auditing so you can enter this market with exactly same functionality but with your differentiation of providing the code.
Consider it as a constructive criticism even from those who haven't replied. You can think of it in these ways:
If other companies are solving a problem, that's a good sign! There's money to be made.
The question at that point is: how is my startup different? Can I reach a different audience than they are? etc.
Negative comments are going to happen regardless of where you are in this journey. I had someone tell me one of my games looked like a college project once. That same game sold hundreds of copies and continues to sell to this day.
First, make sure you are asking the right target (not everyone has to love your idea).
So try to find your real potential fast and don't get stuck either in frustration or either with the idea. Pivoting is hard, but always better on time.
Good luck!
***For this one or any other idea ups and downs will always be around.
Thank you so much for sharing,
I was trying to build something in the creator economy space and my target audience was creators who had some following. So, as it was hard to connect with creators that had followings on social media, I joined a discord group and asked the questions to creators that were just starting.
I see, well sometimes we need to keep going for a bit longer or just get the learning and continue with the next idea, good luck Remy!
Hey Remy,
Have gone through this phase multiple times (on my second startup journey now). Few pointers that have helped me -
Focus on the problem, not the solution - find a problem that you can get validation of, solutions can vary and it's very unlikely that you hit a great solution to a big problem right away. Don't get discouraged if the solution is not getting good feedback, try to attack the problem from a different angle.
Increase the sample size of the survey - most problems are burning needs of only a subset of your target group, you need to find sufficient number & type of people to validate / invalidate your idea. People are busy, not everyone will reply - lot of my good friends often evade my questionnaires. Persistence is needed to create something new.
Thank you so much for the advice,
I need one more piece of advice, so when trying to find a problem, I can see a pattern going around with it, I know the problem is out there, but it's not like a one-to-go product that can be made out of it, there are existing products out there, but something needs to be changed, in these types of cases, what would you recommend? What should our focus be on? And most importantly, how to validate the solutions in these situations where we believe there is something wrong, and this should be done X way because people in these cases people won't believe until we show them what we got?
I would strongly suggest figuring out whether your product is a feature addition in existing products or a new way to solve? Lot of times, better solution might not work out because of switching cost if the improvement is not significant ( 10x better colloquially speaking)
Also, I think sharing the context, the problem and existing solution would be better for everyone to understand the issue better.
You do need to have reality check. But if the number works out, you should go for it. You can use this financial modeling tool that i wrote:
https://increnovation.azurewebsites.net/fermi/highlevel
It's a life of startups... look at this image: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/70/91/0d/70910d75bc1a6213d99994c314334ac5--flowchart-trivia.jpg
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Thank you for sharing,
If I don't listen to people's feedback, then how can I validate the idea? And even after a single negative comment, or cases where no one replied, my gut feeling says to quit this idea
This comment was deleted 4 years ago