Sense of defeat

Hi Matthias. It looks like your journey to success will be much tougher than expected, I hope you can find the strength to soldier on. I visited your website. I think it looks too serious and it does not make learning Japanese seem fun and attractive. Learning Japanese is tough enough as it is, making it look so serious might lead some people to commit Seppuku! Ha, ha. In my humble opinion you should try to make the whole experience more fun and start with giving vistors more reasons to learn Japanese... I did not feel a hint of desire to learn Japanese after looking at your home page; you did not make me feel that I was missing out on something important - I did learn a few words of japanese a few years ago, just before I spent several months seriously learning to read and write Chinese (Hanyu 汉语). There's no excitement, no adventure, no fun, no reward in your presentation... People are motivated by rewards whether it's money, status or a surge of dopamine... Perhaps your target market is mature and serious people who are desperate to learn Japanese... My feedback is that you should review the design of your product and do more research - look at what competitors are doing. Make it more attractive and fun!

First, our first subscriber cancelled his subscription.

Churn always hurts, especially when they're one of your early supporters.

But even the best startups/companies have churn.

You probably have cancelled Netflix/Prime at least once.

Also, no new users have signed up today yet.

It's Saturday, dude. A lot of people are chilling today.

And most devastatingly, the contractor who has done some excellent work for us decided to not become a co-founder of Yomi.ai.

Finding a co-founder isn't something you want to rush through, trust me.

Shit happens. Keep your chin up. Soldier on!

Remember this you are going to war for your clients. You may have fair weather clients that run but the most important thing is to build a community around your product because as a business owner you choose the clients you want to work with. Learning Japanese there's probably a big market for it offer your product for free to get feedback and make a list of the things that will provide the biggest benefit with a smallest amount of effort from your side those are the best improvements to make at the beginning because they cost you the least and they create the biggest benefit. Ask your users what they want- everyone who says no to you is a benefit because it gives you information never let someone leave without telling you why ask ask ask ask ask-

Well, I just sent a link your site to a friend of mine who has been learning Japanese for a while - maybe he’ll sign up.

It’s part of the rollercoaster. I always tell myself not to take a single day’s performance and let it define the status of your whole mood for that day. Stay committed and be persistent with process of getting feedback, having clearly defined metrics and then iterating to improve your product

I get that it's not good. But it's not that bad either.
You now have your first critic who loved the idea and validated it by subscribing. Reaching out to him would get you unfiltered feedback and add so much perspective to your vision of the product.

Hang in there

I agree with what another user posted, that you should get as much feedback as possible. I wouldn't give up! Do you have have a way to sign users up for a premium account? I tried looking at that and couldn't really see how to do it or what the pricing was like. I would suggest some improvements to your overall look and feel, I don't know what programming language your site is in, but maybe there would be an inexpensive template you could use for that. Learning Japanese does interest me a little bit, but I was a bit confused when I went to sign up.

Maybe you can email your previous subscriber asking why he cancelled? This is information and you can use it to learn.

Hang in there buddy. I think your website looks impressive and you shouldn't feel like that.

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