How we failed with 500 people on our waitlist
We failed with 500 people on our waitlist
Before HockeyStack, we were working on a product analytics tool
It was focused on why people are converting from free trial to a paid plan
By knowing patterns, we were giving them recommendations
(Of course, with AI 😝)
We grew the waitlist to 500+ people in 2 months
The problem was, we needed a data-set to train the algorithms
So we needed to integrate with a SaaS to understand whether the product can give meaningful recommendations
Nobody agreed to integrate it (even with an NDA)
Totally understandable, but painful too
We pivoted the idea, and everything is going smooth
But since then, I strongly believe building on an existing platform or needing external help for your product is extremely dangerous
The platform can ban your product
You can burn out while getting that external help
I love Twitter scheduling, LinkedIn automation, and Facebook analytics tool, but I would never work on a product that relies on external resources
What about you?
Yeah, it's all risk management. At one point you can expand the original platform in ways that never were possible. You also have this big user base. Yet, it can ban/limit you any day.
I have a project that's built on top of Google Analytics and has the same blessing/problem. The target audience is enormous. But it can fail any day, for seemingly random stuff like Google API downtime 🤯 not to mention random policy changes, or GA implementing the same functionality 🙃