Launching Findaside and finding users
Launching Findaside was a huge achievement for me. I tripped and stumbled along the way but finally I was able to put something out there that now has weekly users (no revenue yet) but I'm proud when I hear how it's helping that I can put my name behind it.
As I mentioned I did trip and stumble along the way. My first mistake was the amount of time I spent procrastinating and being a designer I was constantly refining and polishing the UI focusing too much on perfectionism instead of shipping. My second mistake was trying to build everything all at once, I thought I was building the MVP but really I needed to build an MVP of my original MVP. I spent €2k of my own money building the wrong thing and that was a result of copying other apps that were successful and thinking that I could apply the same business model. After the first release I realised that nobody was actually interested in using Findaside because it didn't allow for players to create their own games, only join existing ones.
I went back to the drawing board and spent some time discovering what the real pain points were for my users and what it was exactly that I was trying to help them achieve. I scrapped most of the original product in favour of a new one that gave players the most basic functionality, creating a game and collecting signups.
As someone who doesn't code I decided to use a no-code app so that I could do some of the development myself. I was ok with the front end having used Webflow and being familiar with css I got by with a lot of the frontend but quickly found myself out of my depth when I tried to create workflows. At that point I found a no-code developer on Upwork. My third mistake was not being clear with the developer or providing enough information about what I was trying to build. I was promised everything completed in 2 weeks which to me at the time sounded amazing but in reality it was too good to be true. What I got in the end was a very shoddy product that was build on sand and after they were paid up that all became apparent. Lesson learned but it didn't knock the wind out of my sails and I was determined to finish this thing that I had already spent so much time on.
I found another agency based in Pakistan and this time I took my time to make sure they were capable, discussed milestones and agreed payment terms with them. They were amazing to work with and delivered the project on time.
After the second version of the web app went live this time I started to contact my friends and games hosts that I knew. They were a bit reluctent to try but willing to help me out. That first game was 6 months ago and I'm pleased to say that they have been a weekly user ever since. I stayed in contact with them and learned about what value they were getting and their ideas for making it better and got too work designing the next phase with updates.
The app now caters to multiple sports and has new tools for creating teams from the player list. I'm really excited for the next chapter of Findaside and happy to finally be getting somewhere with it. I know that marketing the product is the next step but it's something I'm not familiar with doing so its just another hurdle for me to overcome. My vision is to be the go-to game organiser for casual games and one day have an app for better notifications.
