How did we end up NOT burning money? Killed product - building in public with in-depth outtakes. What's next?

We just decided to kill our product, before we even launched. I will be describing what it was about, why did we choose to kill it, what were the key outtakes and what will the following steps be - the next products. This is going to be a very packed article with as in-depth content as possible including research, plans, prototype, mistakes, issues, and even sessions with advisors.

0️⃣ What was the product about?

The idea originated from looking at a couple of running solutions on the market and the problems we had. Here we already made a mistake, but let's describe the product first.

Landing page - https://jacubsvoboda.wixsite.com/my-site-1

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   We wanted to grab what's already running on the market and put it all together in a more "user-friendly/easier" solution. This originated from the issue that I took a screenshot of a LinkedIn post and was looking for it 3 months later when it was relevant to me.

You wouldn't have to go create any task, description, or even name it. You would just follow natural human behavior since there isn't always the right time to do something, and you will just postpone it, without creating some to-do.

1️⃣ Mistake #1 Market research building pillars

We went through a lot of solutions and decided that our main building stone of this whole app will be something, where the value proposition is low. Also, this app was launched by WeTransfer that already has one very important and costly necessity for app solved - storage servers which would financially eat us alive.

Written down in the first document before we even started building it
We wanted to launch a product built on a solution that we considered low value and was the most important part of it + with a lot of competitors where you can do the same for free (to-do apps). We would find users, but is our value proposition of having an easier process strong enough to make them pay for it?

2️⃣ Mistake #2 Cofounder dilemma with venture building approach

I had a selection of a couple of tech cofounders. The one that I went with already has one app running (which took a long time to launch) and could tell me NO, which I still think is a great trait unless it starts costing time & money.

The difference in approach was that I am okay with launching just some sheets that people are willing to pay for. What I care the most about is launching and having traction ASAP. His approach was to have everything perfect before launch, taking more than a couple of months to launch.

I wanted to put a prototype together from UI app templates in 1 weekend. The requirement of having something "perfect" made me hire and manage a UI designer. The outcome was a normal-looking UI design, which I had to finish myself either way, waited weeks for, and burnt money on.

The prototype could have been finished in 1 weekend and we could validate it. We will still cooperate together just in a slightly different way than until now.

Feel free to try the prototype and share your thoughts. Worth reviving?
Prototype link - https://www.figma.com/proto/Z9KKSQvP5kUXaYiaqndSp2/prototype?page-id=8%3A12936&type=design&node-id=25-7447&viewport=543%2C1611%2C0.18&scaling=scale-down&starting-point-node-id=25%3A7447

3️⃣ Mistake #3 Validating slowly and the reason behind killing it

We did things too slowly. Shouldn't have waited for weeks for UI design. What we were supposed to do is put something together quickly and start asking people what do they think about it.

The first people that I started asking were a founder with multiple global exits, a branding & marketing strategist (hello B2C), and some of my other founder friends. Gained a lot of pieces of advice & also gathered feedback on the product.

The product is still in the process of validation, instead of burning money on marketing campaigns, I just use free solutions (personal network, forums, even this newsletter - feel free to share your thoughts) but the outcome is probably going to be a death.

The key issue with his product is that people might be using it, but the feedback was that they wouldn't be paying for it. Connected with the storage server costs, this project would be just an unprofitable "Cash-burning Cow". There are still ways to make money out of it, they just aren't the ones I would like to undergo.

🆕 What's next?

With this product being at the stage of "3/4 scratched off", a couple of lessons learned, comes the new approach. Build even more and build even faster. This was the main advice from the founder with multiple global exits.

Instead of going all-out and betting everything on 1 move, try to launch a new product every single month and see what takes off. Just a way to minimize risks.

This whole process of building will be completely public. Articles and videos. Why? To build an audience up. I will try to share everything as detailed as possible - since it's something that I would personally be interested in, but please let me know your thoughts on it. You can sort of count it as a product too.

With all of this said, thank you for making it this far, and I hope you enjoyed this read-through. If you tried the prototype my DMs/comments are waiting for you :)

P.S.: I don't know how to make titles here... and here's my newsletter with images - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-did-we-end-up-burning-money-killed-product-building-svoboda/?trackingId=t55vsJd2Q3KRRm2%2FmIPxVA%3D%3D