What's your biggest challenge?
Hi IH-ers,
Looking to understand what are some of the biggest challenges/problems IH-ers face and hoping to set some interviews up dive further.
At the end of it, I'll collect all the results and share back so hopefully we can all learn from each other.
Cheers!
#ask-ih
I am working on a new software product and my biggest challenge is to build an audience even before the product is available. How do I reach my target group without offering an unfinished product?
Assuming that you already have a good idea of what your target group looks like and how you might be able to reach them, there are various ways to build your audience including blogging, newsletters, customer development interviews, etc. Take an honest approach and have a discussion as opposed to trying to sell them something. Or if you do feel that the product already has some value, talk about how you can help them solve their problems.
A bit of my background: Back-end / desktop developer
I am in the initial stages of building my first product, so I will probably find larger challenges down the road, but here is mine:
Building a website. I find the tooling to be complex and I don't enjoy it all that much. So while I have the core of my product working, making it user accessible without pulling out what hair I have left, is tough.
The most difficult challenge is the one that's right in front of you :)
What's your website about? I'm always intrigued that there are 2 camps of website development - the super simple drag-and-drop but limited customizability to the incredibly powerful but incredibly complex.
It's a data generation / API generation tool with a sprinkling of ML (ML is coming in time, though).
My issue is that the website is the product, but I am just overwhelmed by it. Part of me wants to use technology I already know to get it up and running, but I don't want to paint myself into a corner by designing incorrectly.
So, basically, analysis paralysis
Interesting - would love to hear more about the product when it's ready. I'm in the ML space myself - we help data scientists deploy machine learning models quicker.
Advice I've been given is not to overly sweat too much about the technical choices. Certainly if it gives you an advantage, pick it but the biggest risk to any startup/product is market validation so speed to getting something out and keeping potential customers interested would be key.
Finding a paying customer even after 100 sign ups for your software product