Read back your old IH posts, they are eye-openers into why your project failed! (with a personal example why my app failed)

Here's what I learned from reading back this old IH post called "How I finally started and got customers".

I spotted 4 red flags foreshadowing why my app failed, can you spot them too? Comment them below.

The following quote contains two red flags.

For some reason I found it very hard to start.
I got loads of ideas, but when I started working on those ideas I saw all kinds of problems that I thought were hard to fix for me, so yeah you guessed what happened😂

Red Flag number 1: I thought I should be able to build the whole product without any bugs perfectly all by myself.

I talked about it more in this post, but basically, I restricted my ideas to only ideas I can build by myself, severely restricting the ideas I wanted to push forward with.

Red Flag number 2: Worrying about how to build it, instead of thinking about what problem you are solving for who.

Hidden in the quote above, you see I only worried about how to build it, not about what problem it is solving for who.

The following quote contains 2 red flags.

My idea was an app, for a pretty small market (people that work around inland shipping in the Netherlands) with all kinds of features that are hard to explain to people that aren't from that market. I know that market really well, because my dad works in it and I know they are, a few years behind in some things.

Red Flag number 3: Not being able to explain the app's purpose easily.

If you can't explain easily why someone should download your app, you are making it way too complicated! A user should almost always be able to measure results using your app by spending less time or money on something.

Red Flag number 4: Thinking you know what the market wants because you work in that market

In hindsight, I should have just created the app for my dad. This way I had immediate feedback, and once the app was actually good, I could start sharing it with his colleagues.

Yes, I got 100 signups, but because my idea was so vague, everyone had their own version of the app in their mind.

What I learned from my post

Having a few signups doesn't mean anything if you don't know how to build with customers. I was way too focused on building instead of problem-solving.

If you don't watch out, you will endlessly build features, procrastinate the launch, and completely forget about why someone should actually use it.

Now go to your profile and start learning from your past posts

And don't forget to share it with us!