I just launched my first product & I made my first $ (talking to users)!

RoastMe - Give & receive reviews from users and experts

Hey everyone! 👋

I'm J.P.Aulet, solo-maker of roastMe.

"RoastMe helps makers, indie-hackers, product managers, designers, etc. get real feedback 🔥 and critics 🎯 from the community & expert users for your product / design / idea!"

This is my first product submitted to PH: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/roastme-4

History Roadmap:

I started developing roastMe about 1'5 months ago, when I realized that a lot of makers are seeking for feedback in the firsts-stages of their products in different applications like Twitter, Indie Hackers, PH or Slack groups (for instance, only in Indie Hackers there are more than 2500 articles asking for feedback). The main goal was to centralize all this feedback in a more specific platform.

You can see the development roadmap in this article I wrote in IH: https://www.indiehackers.com/@jp_aulet/roastme-feedback-as-a-service-ec584b2577 where I explain from the first MVP draft until the first launch of it.

Once published, I worked on new features, get more experts in the marketplace and increase the products submitted.

Then I started doing what everybody tells but it's really hard to do: "listen to your users".

I start chatting with some users and potential users in Twitter, and quickly I realize that some users are looking for different features that the ones I had planned, like:

Yeah, optional field for which aspects expert should focus on sounds great! But what you are building now i.e. being able to choose which experts roast you, is more important IMHO so once that's done, I will purchase a roasting session ;)

This makes me pivot and pivot again... From a feedback website to a feedback-as-a-service. From FaaS to a feedback marketplace, where you can choose experts in different areas to review your product. I feel nervous because I want to ship/launch fast, but then results start to come, more users registered, more experts in the marketplace, more products submitted, etc.

Then, the magic: Chatting with one user, he tell me that he want to upgrade his roast (pay for it) but he can't. I was excited & horrified! I made a bug in the Stripe form and nobody can upgrade... I solved it in a while, and created a personalized "Thank you" banner for all users.

Then, 1 month after starting building this project, I could celebrate my FIRST paying customer.

My (excited) tweet:

Listen to your users is the best! Today I updated my http://roastme.xyz with some nice #feedback: email notifications, improved design & colors, new widgets to generate more community, featured product..Also I'm veeery glad to announce our first costumer 🎉🙌🎉! Keep working

This gives me energy, confidence and today I'm launching to PH. Such a week!

Nowadays the platform is growing:
+ 4 experts/week
+ 3 products/week
· 250 unique users / week

And a bit more about roastMe features:

• Get critics/opinions from users.
• Get reviews from experts
• Receive professional review for your site (SEO, marketing, security, accessibility, UX/UI, possible improvements, etc.)
• Centralize all feedback (Twitter, Hacker News, Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, etc.) in one page
• Receive video-review of your products
• Promote your product to get more feedback
• Mentor ship
• As an expert, get paid for sharing your expertise and opinions while you help other's makers.
• Much more to come! Public roadmap here: https://trello.com/b/dQcanTpk/roastme-🔥-roadmap

Thank you for your time! I hope you enjoyed it.