Lessons learned from launching my first product, as a non-technical founder.
Boy,
What a journey it has been. Over the years I have always struggled to be consistent on one project, but after many trials, I finally found a routine and product that kept me persistent and consistent. Today I launched
Which is a place to discover emails from industry-leading companies without the inbox clutter. It also lets you keep an eye on competitors' email communications.
Here are 5 things I learned along the way that will hopefully help someone else in their journey.
- Whatever you think your MVP is go at least 50% smaller.
I started thinking about what an MVP could look like and as we got into the development I quickly learned how fast things can scope creep if you try to think of every edge case. I added things like categories, filters, search and image download features, and more. the list goes on. Go SMALL and add on.
- Be very clear when communicating with developers
My day job is a full-time product designer and I am used to communicating designs with developers, but the level of details and expectation settings when working with overseas devs is another level (I'm in the US) I quickly learned to explain every detail, use case, edge case, interaction, scrolling pattern in more....otherwise you will get a very sub-par result.
- Activity within communities plays a HUGE role.
This was some of my first exposure to the online communities where tech founders and tech nerds spend their time. I learned that when I was the most active in these communications were the times I got the most signups to my Pre-launch site. This leads me to point 4.
- Put up a pre-launch site ASAP to test interest
The single best thing I did was get a web flow site up in like 2-3 hours and then start trying to get people to sign up, with just the idea. This I found valuable because it helped tell me if people had an interest in the idea without having to spend any money or time getting a developer to build the site if there was no product market fit.
- Delays are the name of the game, so take a deep breath
There were so many delays along the way which forced me to push out my launch date at least 5 times. I learned to take a deep breath and realize that building a product is a marathon, not a sprint. Many of the delays are out of your control. Enjoy the process.
