Hello my fellow IndieHackers,
This is actually my first post so please bear with me, this post is based on a feeling/hunch i have, in that its time for me to open up a bit more and ask for feedback and help.
Im one of the two co-founders of www.bueno.nu, we started in 2019 and have come quite a long way. We are both based and working from Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
My question is that we are currently facing growth problems... we are in the situation that we are losing new customers because i'm unable to build the requested features. But to build to features I would need at least one extra developer, but to get that extra developer I would need more customers. How did you guys solve this chicken and egg problem?
What you have is the classic product death cycle.
If you have paying customers, and they are leaving, they are not leaving because your product is missing a feature or two. They paid because they found value.
I saw your site, your feature-set is pretty comprehensive, it does not look like you have a missing "deal-breaker" feature. If I had paying users I would slow down to learn more from my users. More features is never equal to a better product.
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I strongly suggest talking to you paying customers, both active and churned, and try to understand why they are using the product. Don't directly ask them why they are leaving, the answer will always be grass was greener on the other side. Try to figure out their business and how your product fits into it.
If you want to have a longer conversation, my email is in my profile.
Thanks for the advice. I will definitively slow down on building new 'features' and focus more on improving the existing ones. The only downside of this is slower growth of new customers.
+1 to this advice. Chatting with as many initial users as possible is key. Understanding what their main problem is and then prioritizing these against your feature build is what seems like the most important thing for you right now.
Best of luck with it.
hey fellow Amsterdamer π,
Don't focus on building the stuff your client suggests, I guarantee that most people who ask for features won't become a customer even if you build it. I worked on a project where the owner just accepted every request the customers had for him and in the end the product was a disgusting mess that was forever stuck in this stupid limbo.
Follow the advice in the other comments, even if it hurts, focus on the customers who stay and find out who they are / how they use your product. Ignore the ones that leave.
Heey Fellow Amsterdammer, tnx for reaching out.
I indeed try to separate the sound from the noise by only building the critical features. I have decided to slow down on that part as well but the downside is that it also slows the growth of new customers. How would you handle that?
You will never have all the features that customers would like, but if you have none of the features that they need, focus more on product development and less on acquiring new customers. It's easier to build the core features of your product with a small number of customers when you are short on human resources. Growth should be financed with money coming as a result of reaching the product-market fit stage - unles you use investors' money. If your revenue is not growing you should focus on product development until you achieve product-market fit.
To summarise things: you have leads and they are not converting to customers because they don't have the features that they want.
There can be several reasons for that:
The solution to your problem is a better understanding of your customers. Talk to them, and ask them why they are not converting. Call them and understand their concerns, budget, ways of operating...
If you have already been working on it since 2019, I would assume you've focused on the most valuable features.
Its mostly because of "Lack of features" compared to my competition. I know what I need to do the make my product more attractive but in order for me to make it more attractive i need to improve it. But since the speed of development is slow... I'm stuck on "how to increase the speed of development"
And since its a "Chicken and Egg" problem, i dont really know how to tackle this problem, unless for some reason i can find a fellow co-founder/developer who is willing to help out.
I'd say you gotta make a calculated risk either way, either on time or money,
assuming you're confident about the metrics, the churn and its origin. π
Can you tell me a bit more what you mean with "calculated risk"?