What was the 1 thing you wish you knew when you started creating your product?
I'm trying to understand what are some common issues that people face. What was your experience?
I'm trying to understand what are some common issues that people face. What was your experience?
I wish I'd known how much more time consuming it was to make screencasts than to write text-based tutorials or books.
what exactly is/was more time-consuming? I wanted to do one or two screencasts next week or so, so I am happy about some advice :)
You need to set up audio and video recording hardware and software. Even after your workflow with that is good, editing video is way more time-consuming than text.
That's fascinating, I would have thought it was the other way around.
There were a couple features I added to the product based on my first two customer interviews that I shouldn't have. I should have held off until I knew others had the same use-cases.
This is more about entrepreneurship than about product, but I wish I would have created my company as an LLC instead of a C Corporation. Many people recommended Delaware C Corp since it's more attractive to venture funds and the tax perks, but there are more hoops to jump through to stay compliant, which sucks for a tiny startup that's just trying to validate a product idea.
Also C-Corps are double taxed, whereas LLCS are pass-through entities. But if you want to raise VC funding or are aiming to go public, you pretty much have to have a C-Corp.
@krgraver you can convert a C-Corp. There is paperwork and potential taxes. But it you really know you want an LLC for the long term, better to do it sooner when tax implications are smaller. Conversion is typically treated as a sale so you pay taxes on gains, but those gains are probably very small or non-existent in the early stages of a business.
https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/should-you-convert-your-corporation-to-an-llc
Absolute gold here
One mistake is not accounting for teams in our SaaS. Planning for that would have saved a ton of time.
Do you mean you wished you had built your product for teams from the very start?
Just the backend. So instead of having pages assigned to a user i would have created a team of 1.
Also would have added roles, like admin, manager, viewer.
Later on I could have just updated the UI/UX, instead of rewriting the DB that is always a pain.
Thanks for the insight!
Great question. I would have definitely spent more time focusing on a traction channel and getting an audience ahead of time. Easier said than done.
I would reach out to channels looking for the core problems around a particular niche. Then I would have conducted user interviews. Then I would have asked the user if he/she would be interested in having a solution made.
I'd experiment with having them pay to get on an early access list.
I would read way more books on marketing and growth. Also books on business strategy. I got sucked into a product rabbit hole. The whole reason I built https://storycreatorapp.com/ was that I was curious to know what I could do with video technology.
Retrospectively I should have entered with a business-first mindset, then a technical problem-solving mindset. Definitely got it backward, but today is a new day to learn and change things for the better. I gotta break old habits and form newer better ones.
Heres to success!
exhaustively search for any competitors and why they failed, or how they're currently running
I would release a feature or a product earlier as it is and ask for feedback instead of spending a lot of time working on details.
How anyone (competition) can damage your business via fake charge backs
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Thanks for sharing! What are some things you did to get traction outside your circle of influence?