Mistakes I made that you should avoid as a founder 👇🏼
Some news:
Hey IH community. It's been a while since I posted something here, but I wanted to share some news and lessons that hopefully will help other founders/makers.
After multiple pivots and not making much progress, I have decided to shut down Blubi AI 😔
For context:
This is not the outcome I wanted but it's best to move on and not spend too much on one thing!
Some mistakes I made that you should avoid as a founder and what I’m brewing next 👇🏼
- Don’t commit to building complex solutions:
After getting a ton of feedback, Blubi quickly became complex.
It all made sense in theory, but when building the actual solution, we realized it takes a ton of time - signing up for this makes you lose enormous momentum, which means losing interest from users.
- Don’t spend too much on the waitlist:
Waitlists are cool, but IMO, they only work when there is sustainable hype - in my case I lacked that.
We had 1100+ people on the waitlist and we never leveraged them.
My biggest advice is to spend a short time building hype by letting users in and gaining social proof from them.
- Ship a simple MVP as fast as you can:
One of the biggest mistakes I made is that we never shipped an MVP when we had a decent one - partly I thought the MVP itself is not valuable.
I guess this should come from users. Don’t leave anything for assumptions.
- Validate with pricing from day one:
We would have saved so much time if we had a paywall with some pricing. This instantly validates whether we are building something people want.
You don’t need many paid users. Just 1 or 2 are OK to get the ✅
- No momentum = Your product is dead:
If you are not talking about your product from day 0, come to the conclusion that your product is dead.
Momentum is the oxygen for any startup.
- Pivot fast:
It’s good to talk to users but balance it out while building what you hear. Move fast and test in public - something I missed big time.
- Avoid yeses that don’t convert:
Many people signaled that they wanted to become paying customers - while it feels good but in reality, they are either being nice or giving you hope.
A complete transaction counts; everything else doesn't - we should have had a pricing page that clears things off.
- Ideas are enticing, and execution is deal-breaking:
This is the trap and it's an easy one to fall in.
Attach to building and detach from ideating.
What’s next for me: Learning from this experience, I want to build small products solving simple problems - and I’m working on one already 🚀
Stay tuned and follow me on X for more updates 🙌🏼
This time, I promise I won’t repeat any of these mistakes 💪🏼
Also, here's the original thread:
Even after building and selling a SaaS product for 6 figures, I made easily avoidable mistakes.
I’m not perfect, and I’m still learning. I felt I could build a solution that solves writer's block but in reality, it didn’t work out.
I appreciate y'all for showing support 🙏🏼❤️
