Share One Failure and Your Lesson Learned...so we can all grow together.
I thought it would be a good idea to curate a list of mistakes or failures we have made as an Indie Hackers in the past that we have learned from.... so we can all grow together.
While not all of us are on the same journey, I think we can always learn from one another’s mistakes.
I’ll go first.
One thing I have learned the hard way is to build community while building your product (If not before). So many times in the past I have tried to launch projects to no audience and was left wondering how to begin generating my first leads and customers. I was using a “build it and they will come approach.”
The importance of building community and your first advocates can’t be underestimated. This is especially the case in an online world where social proof for your product or service is so important.
What is one mistake you have made and your lesson learned?
Biggest mistake that I made as an engineer was thinking like this.
"I build awesome products. If I build an awesome product with all the coolest features, I will get customers."
Stepping away from that mentality has been the biggest growth for me. It's now all about validating ideas by talking to people. I make sure that there is enough demand. I make sure that it will solve a problem for enough people. I make sure that a market exists.
I do all of this before writing a single line of code!
For anyone else out there that's looking to start a business, validate your idea and TALK to people before you start.
Even though time spent on the product I built wasn't wasted (I learned a lot), and it's processing way over $10 million per year for our customers, the pricing model and market is not large enough to make good money without further growing that payment processing revenue.
That's why with our current company, we spent MONTHS talking to people and validating the idea before writing our first line of code. :)
Thanks for sharing this @hassanprocesslogic. I think this is a great point that is so often overlooked bu builders, including myself, as I eluded to in the original post. Are you still actively talking with customers and people everyday to get feedback on your product, now that it is built?
For the old product, yes and no. With that I've mostly accepted that there will be large sales cycles so I go after bigger clients. Bigger clients come with custom needs and require a few custom builds before they sign.
For the current product, YES! We are about to launch our beta for anyone looking to drastically improve the selling experience for their sales team and buyers.
If you have a product that you demo to potential customers, we'd love to interview you.
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A while back I spent months developing a community-based project. Once the initial development was complete, I brought in 25 closed beta testers to test and review it so they could provide me with feedback that would help me improve it before publicly launching it.
The initial tester reviews were amazing with most of them coming away very impressed and saying it was definitely something they would use regularly, which of course was great to hear after a long development process.
Then I asked specifically what they liked about it, and that is where everything changed.
It turns out that what everyone really liked about it was not the service itself, but the test data I had acquired to create a working demo. The test data of course had nothing to do with the service itself. I was completely caught off guard, which rarely happens to me.
When I explained the test data was not part of the service and the service itself would likely not have that type or level of quality given it would be driven by user generated content, their interest in the service changed considerably. So much so, that I never even publicly launched the service despite the time I spent creating it.
The failure was not in creating the wrong thing. The failure was me not realizing the testers were telling me what they really liked and wanted and I was too tunnel-visioned and could not see how great of an opportunity that was despite the cost in time on a shelved project to learn that information.
Wow what a great example @zeras. I can definitely find myself in tunnel vision a lot of the time too. Learning to actually listen to the end user is a skill I am constantly trying to refine. Sometimes, I like to just hear what I want, rather than the pain point they are actually having. Thanks for sharing this great insight!
every builder has to go through this... multiple times.
the
multiple timespart is hard.Absolutly @8bit. Learning lessons the hard way is a bitter, but necessary medicine a lot of the time!
Not taking any time off. Constantly working. I eventually burned out and had to take some time off — definitely do not overwork yourself.
Thanks for this @muchkler. This is probably another aspect that many hackers and founders overlook. That burn out can creep up if one doesn't remain balanced!
"I cannot believe how much I used to think I could do alone"
I blurted those words out to my personal trainer, half way through my journey of losing 70 lbs and getting my life back.
It was a weird lesson that didn't really sink in until I thought about all the times I'd tried to do something -- and it wasn't until I had a partner or partners that stuff really happened.
But this lesson got cemented in my mind / heart / soul after my first business failed. I tried to do everything alone. I even had business partners, but I didn't share with them. I didn't work with them. I just .. worked alone beside them.
This is such a good point @StefanAllDay. I am certainly guilty of this some of the time. Learning to reach out and ask for help, or delegate certain parts of your business can not only relieve huge amounts of stress, but also make you wonder why you were not doing it before!.
Yup. I got so caught up on sticker price that I didn't think about
Definitely approached with a closed mindset before. Not to say I pay for everything now, but I at least ask the 2 questions above to do an honest analysis before just ploughing on and doing it myself
A valuable lesson learned. Thanks for sharing.
Here's a story similar to Gordon:
Starting with a Product: My Juicy $3000 Mistake
Lesson: Should've looked into what people want and build following about that instead of going for what can be made.
Thanks for sharing @witsuma. At least you gathered some great insights from your juicing venture!
Building a product without validating the idea. I realized I have a tendency to start building to make me feel "busy" because approaching customers (cold emailing/calling) makes me feel like I'm talking to a wall. As if I'm invisible to my target clients...
Such a good point @Osakalover. This seems to be a recurring theme for a lot of us. Not building community and conducting customer interviews before building often leads to the detriment of a project. Thanks for sharing.
Launching a new product without validating the demand and concept first!
Myself and a friend felt like we found the perfect solution to a problem we both faced. We fell into the trap of thinking if we have this problem others will (that's not a bad concept by the way but it's not an excuse not to validate your idea).
We spent months building out our app, using it, refining it - it felt great. We thought we had nailed it. Then launch day came - we did really well on product hunt, used our network and got around 800 sign ups in the first week.
Then we looked at our usage data... about 10 people were actually using the app 😬 - so I reached out to these people and realised that they would never pay for it. While it was a novel approach to a common problem and it had some promise, there were too many free alternatives out there for people to justify paying for our app.
All our energy went for the idea and I stopped using the app myself, before long we decided to close it down.
Sure we could have pursued the idea and maybe have pivoted to something that could have made money but our hearts just weren't in it anymore.
Now before the first thing, I do with any idea I think is worth pursuing is speak to people! I start by thinking of situations I think my idea would be useful in, then look at the types of people in those situations.
From there I find where they are hanging out online and try to understand their world a little more. Then I'll start reaching out to people and try gauge if they have similar problems and if so how do they currently solve it. That gives me a starting point to validate my idea.
Thanks for sharing this @docal56. This certainly seems to be a recurring theme in this thread. It is easy to waste so much energy into building a product when we are passionate about it, but not doing sufficient customer research and not building a community can ultimately lead to disappointment with product market fit. I have experienced this a few times myself. Appreciate you sharing your story!
All the time we dedicated to mobile. With social media marketing SaaS products, those that pay for them do so for the desktop experience; mobile app users are the most vicious in tearing you down (publicly - if they don't pay for it) and are never satisfied.
This is an interesting dynamic that i had not though about before. So you are saying that people who tend to use mobile app versions of SaaS products that don't meet their standards are inherently more vicious at publicly shaming the SaaS company than the Desktop users?
It's their expectations for all that should be free that's the problem, I suspect. dotcommunists.
I was cut from my High School basketball team in my Sophmore year. I wrote about it today. https://medium.com/@michael_68816/3-things-i-learned-from-getting-cut-from-my-high-school-basketball-team-7eb53b6d9102?sk=926a896c1e80354dc736521e41ac1cbf
This is a great insight @storycreator. I love how you say to use failure as a tool... "Success and failure in my opinion should be tools that help you navigate life". As long as we can take learnings from the things that did not work in our favour we can always come back stronger with new insights for our next attempt. Appreciate you sharing this!
Thanks, man. Your mind is a tool and nothing more.
One mistake that made a huge difference in my progress is lack of focus...
Making small progress in different directions, but never really reaching anywhere.
How am I dealing with it?
Have a clear goal, what do I really want to accomplish this year (quarterly)? -- this goal must be written somewhere so that I can keep going back to it.
And then have regular reviews (weekly, monthly, quarterly) on my progress based on the goal to re-align myself.
What I found is that naturally I would keep steering away -- but sometimes this was great because it lead me to new things I didn't know about before -- which I would pursue, as long as it aligns with my goal.
This is great @WebMedic. Focus is such an important skill that I am constantly trying to refine. I think regular reviews are a great tool to help refine focus. I need to get better at religiously sticking to my weekly reviews! Thanks for the reminder!
There was a time when I thought I had to write every single software that I needed myself. 🤷♂️
Haha this is great @mxmzb. I do not personally write code myself, but I often try to do too much myself and not get help or delegate. Always good to check yourself when you are trying to do too much!