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I gave my self a weekend to launch and build a product. 2 Weeks later it's actually ready for launch. Looking for feedback and launch tips

So over the last year or so I have been in side project analysis-paralysis in that I will start something, get half way through building it and then start questioning if there is going to be an actual market for it, will it be good enough, what will go wrong etc.

To combat this, I instead decided to give my self a weekend to build and launch a product. Whilst I was overly ambitious with that timeframe, I am now two weekends down and starting my third and am ready to launch an MVP. My goal is not over analyse, over optimise and try and make the perfect product straight of the bat and instead test ideas, get something released and get feeedback. Super proud of myself for getting over my slump and doubt and actually getting something releasable.

The last product I launched was over 2 years ago (https://talkery.io) which was aimed at devs and was really only ever meant to a free service. This time around I wanted to make something that could actually be a product in which customers were charged for.

The idea came from another idea I had, where as apart of the product I was going to let customers vote and suggest new 'insights' (a core part of the product) for the app. I then took this and decided to build something a bit more generic - a service which helps product companies build features that their customers actually want.

The idea is that users are able to suggest and vote on new features for a companies product, while the company also is able to engage with their community and get them excited and invested in building the best product possible. I've got a heap more features planned (visible product roadmap, changelogs etc.) but that was the limitation I put for the mvp (feature creep is a huge problem of mine).

Here is the (semi finished) version:

Home Page

https://kampsite.co

Demo Feature page
https://test.kampsite.co

Now I haven't properly setup the demo page so instead to actually see a demo version visit https://test.kampsite.co.

This weekend I'm still going to be making a few changes:

  • App style changes (thinking about ditching the card per suggestion style and instead have a single card with a list of suggestions.. thoughts?)
  • Bug fixing
  • Performance fixes (caching etc.)
  • Polish (minor animations etc.)

Competitors

  • I did see another website during my initial research that in my opionion executed this idea pretty poorly and charged a huge amount for offering
  • Since then I've found one or two more direct competitors who are from the looks of it doing well, however again at a much higher price point and slightly different feature set to where I want to go. I know having a cheaper product is really the best value prop, but the idea is that I start targeting a lot of smaller early stage businesses and get on as many sites as possible, which will in turn lead to a network growth effect.

Need help with:

  • I'm really not sure on how to word the pricing of the free tier. I want it to say $0 but also want to say that it's $5 p/m after 100 suggestions. I want to necessarily have a third pricing tier.
  • General copy feedback - copy isn't my strong suit.
  • Launch strategy (see below)

Launch Strategy

For the launch I plan on the following:

  • Reaching out to get someone to launch on product hunt
  • Do the standard product hunt checklist (feature button, comments, standout etc.)
  • Contact early stage startups and offer to reserve their subdomain
  • Finding some communities to help get the initial traction on product hunt
  • See if I can find some people on twitter to help promote the product
on November 16, 2019
  1. 4

    Forgot to add the tech stack for those interested:

    • Front end

      • React
      • Rebass (styled-components + system)
    • Backend

      • Elixir/Phoenix
      • PG
    • Infra

      • Backend (render.com <- highly recommend)
      • Frontend Netlify
    1. 1

      Same stack I have for flowist.io! Loved, loved, loved Elixir/Phoenix workflow. React - meh.

      Netlify is awesome, use it for flowist.io's frontend and my personal site.

      However I deployed my backend on gigalixer.com but considered render.com - How smooth was the setup? I might use it for my next app!

      1. 2

        Also forgot to say - i love the idea behind flowist. The problem you outline in the why section is definitely a common one across various different companies. Daily standups where half the people forget what they did yesterday and half the people are on their phones. Keep up the good work :)

        1. 1

          Thanks for saying this, man! It gets a bit lonely and tiring building stuff with only a bit of validation. So this goes further than you know. Hopefully I can keep pushing just like you :) Signing up kampsite too! Just what I was looking for a bit ago, and almost built it - but you did it better than I could have!

      2. 2

        Haha exact same opinion, I've been using elixir for the last two years in my day job and love every second of it, it makes backend dev so easy.

        Render had one of the easiest setups i've been through for getting a distributed elixir cluster running. I'm running 1.9 so just setup the releases.exs file, chucked in the right env vars, setup my release to do migrations post boot and bam - done. Total setup time < 30 mins. They also have super good support and really active slack channel

        1. 1

          It’s really does make backend work easy!

          Oh wow that’s super good to hear. I’ll give it a try for my next app - whatever that may be. Thanks for the tip!

    2. 1

      Would be curious to hear why you chose to use render for backend over Netlify functions.

      1. 2

        @Gabe

        So there's a few reasons I decided not to go with serverless functions/netlify functions. Mainly I'm not the biggest fan of the lamda/serverless paradigm generally due to the fact that they lead to some sort of vendor lockin and heavily reduced flexibility. Although, the benefit is reduced dev time, so I can understand why it is becoming more popular. Also, since I am a huge BEAM (elixir/erlang VM) fan which can mean having lots of long running processes in a distributed cluster, serverless functions which die after each request aren't ideal.

        Half the benefit of using serverless functions is the fact that you don't need to manage infrastructure and complex setups , at the cost of reduced flexibilty in what runs and how it runs. Which is why I chose render because the provide a really good middle ground and provide a super simple setup with some really good docs (I had my app up and running through automatic github deploys in < 30 mins). Plus the team has a really fast response rate if you jump on their slack and are happy to help out whenever. Shoutout to @anuragg (Founder) and the team!

        1. 1

          Gotcha, that makes sense! Thanks for explaining. Im pretty happy with serverless so far (using ZEIT NOW), but it makes sense that it wouldn't be a good fit if you have long-running processes or need extra flexibility.

          1. 1

            Oh nice, I was actually going to swap to zeit to take advantage of the free Willard subdomains, it was really impressed with netlify(prerendering, auto compression + optimisation) that I was considering paying for their version. How have you found zeit so far?

            1. 1

              @hlucas thanks for the shoutout! ICYMI, Render has free wildcard subdomains for static sites (and backend sites as well):

              https://render.com/docs/custom-domains#adding-a-wildcard-custom-domain

            2. 1

              Huge fan of Zeit. It's especially nice in conjunction with Next.js, as you can declare data dependencies per-route with Next.js (using the getInitialProps method) and Zeit automatically deploys those routes as serverless functions instead of static files so they can be server-rendered with data. Outside of Next.js, not sure there is a huge difference between Netlify and Zeit, but I don't see myself moving any time soon.

  2. 1

    Congratulations on your MVP. I really like you front end design/style. I would like to create a page with the same CSS style. How could I do it?

  3. 1

    This is great. I'll be using it. Once it's up and running on https://www.bitcompare.net, I'll let you know. Hopefully it helps with our roadmap and user engagement.

    1. 1

      Hey dean, how did you end up going getting this running on Bitcompare? Was there any issues or feedback?

    2. 1

      That's great to here! If you need any help at all just let me know.

      1. 1

        We want to. We're just struggling with developer bandwidth.

  4. 1

    Love it 😊
    I'll be using it for sure.

    For now, you should try the Let's Encrypt SSL for subdomains, because when I tried accessing mine (https://upti.kampsite.co/) I got an SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN error - it uses netlify SSL cert at the moment...

    It renders fine whatsoever 👌 I love the simplicity and speed.

    1. 1

      When connecting with Slack, I get the following error:
      OAuth Error: invalid_team_for_non_distributed_app
      Not sure if this has something to do with your app or with slack...

      1. 2

        I've just enabled public distribtion on the slack app - feel free to try again! Sorry about this bug!

      2. 2

        Ok just realised I hadn't enabled public distribution :( Done now - so feel free to try again!

      3. 2

        Oh right - thanks for the feedback. In regards to the ssl - it is using let's encrypt via netlify the problem is that it takes a few minutes to propogate correctly. I just check on https://upti.kampsite.co and i'm now seeing the Let's encrpt cert. I'm currently in the process with netlify of getting to turn on wildcard sumdomains so this process might be a bit rocky atm.

        Slack 100% a bug. I will look into it - thanks for pointing it out!

        1. 1

          Glad you resolved them 🥳

    1. 1

      Oh nice thanks for sharing - I’d seen canny but not votrmojo before!

  5. 1

    Looks like a great start for a couple weeks of work! As I was reading your post I thought to myself "I think this already exists" but then you mentioned some direct competitors, and I couldn't think of them myself so it's not like they "own" the space.
    The key now of course is to keep plugging away at the MVP feature set and growing the user base.

    How about another update in two more weeks?

    1. 1

      Thanks! And yeah you're right there are definitely some competitors in the space - but I think I can provide a unique value prop + better execution (hopefully) to help take some of the market.

      Yep - will definitely be another update soon :)