When to give up on an idea?
Hi!
After realizing many people use social media to share code snippets (frequently with Carbon or Snappify), it struck me how limited the experience was.
I thought that content creators and their audience would enjoy executing these code snippets as opposed to just reading bare images.
Then I ended up creating an extension that creates a whole new experience inside Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook:
Positive Feedback (?)
The point is that many people claim "Oh, that's incredible, very nice" (and similar), but in the end, they don't really use it.
It's crazy how what people say differs from what people do.
Some people came to me asking for more features, but still, I feel the issue is not "lack of features" and I don't want to keep working on something that won't bring real value to the community.
Working or Dropping it
I had many ideas:
- Supporting Javascript (easy to be done)
- Supporting Firefox Addons (to be released soon, rn only Chrome is available)
- Creating some sort of ranking to make it fun to take challenges
- Showing metrics to creators to see how many people execute their snippets
But again, I'm not so confident that's what will make it thrive.
Please, I'd love to have your genuine opinion (even if it's a harsh truth) so I can decide what to do next.
Would you work more on it, or drop it and move to the next product?
If you want to try it by yourself, you can install the Chrome extension here
For sharing code on social I was using ray.so so far. It looks very similar in terms of the editing experience.
To me, the question really is: does it solve a big enough problem?
If it would (I'm not saying it doesn't), people would use it, even despite a potential lack in features.
Another point of view is that maybe you're not talking to the right people just yet.
What I would suggest doing is talk to the people who you know have tried the product already, and then base your decision on what they say. Given there is a representative amount.
I agree, I also don't see that it solves a big enough problem.
It sounds like a "nice to have" tool but appearently even that isn't consistently used by your users.
I can't see anyone paying for this tool. I mean, maybe you can get a handful of customers eventually but OP, I think you should invest your time and energy in a more useful product.
I recently covered Snappify interview on FounderBeats.
It took me sometime to understand what your extension is doing. Yeah, again as everyone says it's cool to see something like this. Sounds like this could be useful to some influencers with good following.
Did you try posting this to some tech communities or talk to some influencers/Youtube content creators to take this a little further?
I tried talking to some content creators in Twitter.
Since I don't want to be pushy (i.e. if you don't want to use, don't, and we can still be friends nonetheless) I don't get back to them to ask why they didn't create anything yet.
That reminder me of Vitamins vs Painkillers
In this case, may be you are building a vitamin but not a painkiller. Note that Vitamins are still not bad, but just need right audience.
This looks cool! But then I thought about it, and have some questions. I never need to execute a snippet, I just copy the code. Besides, a lot of snippets that I see are not really complete, or out of context. For example, react snippets.
I agree. This is true for React snippets as you mentioned.
I believe there're some pure Python/Javascript snippets that can be executed as is though.
Ah Gui,
We've all been led to believe that building a great product means you'll be able to generate lots of revenue and customers.
But it's not true.
You can have a great product and a very happy customer base & still struggle to grow (look at Apple in 1997 for example).
You can create massive revenue growth and build a wildly passionate customer base with a product that "sucks" (HubSpot) and you can do the same with no product (Bullet Journal).
The problem is rarely the product. If other companies are making money selling a similar solution type (and it seems they are - snappify?) then there is existing demand & that's all you need.
The problem is therefore your marketing (or lack of).
My suggestion (though I am biased) is to copy the marketing strategy of companies like Apple, Bullet Journal, and others like them (what I call The BLUNT Method - I write about it here and share case studies etc. on my website).
If you have questions, then happy to chat here :-)
You made good points. Did you forget to add the link? I was curious to also read.
It's not a competitor for snappify, I'd say they complement each other.
Hey, sure - you can find all the case studies plus detailed explanations of why it works here - www.thebluntmethod.com.
Understood re. snappify. What I mean is that, if people are paying money already for these "types" of solution then it's never a product problem it's always a marketing problem.
Obviously, if there is no market demand for the solution type you sell then your problem might be the product.
But this, as I've just said doesn't seem to be the case. In fact, it rarely is the problem. Even companies like Apple, viewed as innovative were never creating new product categories. iPhone, AppStore, etc. all had other companies selling similar products (smartphones like Blackberry and mobile apps like Nokia's Appstore).
Only you know what the answer is and can decide to persist on this idea on move on to the next one.
Before taking any decision though, I think you need to gain a deep understanding of who your users are and the real pain you are trying to solve.
Your extension looks really cool but you must answer some of these questions before progressing further:
Maybe the pain is not acute enough or the usage not frequent enough, or maybe it is. In any case, try to speak to 5-10 users at least to better understand them. I recommend you write a short discussion guide to add more structure to your user interviews and extract richer information from your users.
Good luck!
Ok, this is truly helpful advice!
I haven't talked to any users yet. I'll take your advice and see if there's space to do anything else.
Glad it’s helpful.
Let me know if you have any questions on how you can prepare/structure your questions ahead of your calls with users.
Happy to help 👍🏿
I'm unclear, is the extension for "receivers" of the tweet? That would make sense right because they are the one seeing the code. but it requires a pyrun hashtag on the tweet so you also require the poster to use pyrun. It starts to be a bit convoluted. There might be ways to pivot but as is it does seem quite hard as you'd have to convince a whole community to use it. On the other side it's pretty cool as a concept. Not sure what you should do really
Yes, the receivers of the tweet. It's a loop that requires both the creator and the audience.
The hashtag is required to show the extension your tweet is compatible with it.
I'm afraid that if I "make all tweets compatible" they might break a lot making it frustrating to the users.
I've been receiving this sort of feedback a lot: "It's pretty cool". I wonder if it's a good signal or not.
I mean I get that, I've had similar feedback for my app (https://travelboard.app) but I have yet to see a user put their wallet where their mouth is.
Honestly people saying something is cool is not enough of an indicator. They often lack knowledge of limitations etc.
For instance in your case "It's pretty cool.... (If it works on my phone from my twitter app on every single tweet)"
Interesting! Thank you for the feedback. Can you share how much you sold so far?
By the way, I also think yours is genuinely cool and interesting.
I wonder whether it supports planning flights as well.
That would be a big fat zero, although I have a potential customer that has been testing the trial...
but at £5 per holiday, I'm quite far from making it worth it to have turned my job into a part time to pursue that :|
Without knowing anything about your marketing efforts thus far... I'll offer this.. It would be cool if you had a few "sample" destinations and itineraries available as a demo so people can see what they might be signing themselves up for.
It's an interesting technical challenge depending on the way I approach it. I'll have a think about that thanks.
Let the data decide. Is it possible to measure how many people you could reach and what your conversion rate was? If the product did not reach enough number of people yet, the issue is not a product market fit problem, it is rather a marketing problem in my opinion.
That's a good question.
That's what's making me think I built something nobody wants. I don't know if this number/launch is enough to evaluate that.
I am not really knowledgeable in the domain of extensions. Yet, I cannot recommend whether you should quit it or not.
I have though very little confidence about Product Hunt as I do not necessarily think that it is your potential customers who are voting your product there. People just share their opinions whether it is a good idea or not. I actually wonder how many of those products getting top of the list really survive a year later.
The same dilemma may apply Twitter as well. Those people who saw your product on Twitter... Are they really the ones who potentially need your solution?
I find it a lot easier to measure with mobile apps. Someone searches something, say that your product/app appears in the search results. => And this means that your product - at this point in time - is facing someone who is looking for a solution for his/her problem that your product can potentially provide. Then the funnel starts.. How many users have seen your app in search results? How many clicked on it? How many installed it? And how many made a purchase?
Well, it is yet fairly difficult to come up in search results, that is another challenge.. But the measurement part is fairly easy.
I don't know how many have seen your product in Product Hunt, but the 4583 Twitter impressions may not necessarily have statistical significance.
By not being knowledgeable in the extensions domain - as I mentioned -, I guess your problem is to reach people first. And I interpret it as the same problem will still be there even with another extension you may build. How do you measure your conversion rates?
Hey Gui,
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Don't ask for 'future hypotheticals'. Ask for 'concrete past'
For example don't ask 'Would you use this?' Ask 'when was the last time you dealt with a code snippet?'
Figure out what they are doing that is hard and you can make better.
I understand the confusion, Gui. It's not easy to give up on the idea but also not easy to keep going when you don't have the direction.
Would it be helpful for you to chat with some experienced professionals who can mentor you through this process 1:1. Feel free to check out https://geeksandexperts.com/ and see if there are any mentors you want to connect with - happy to set up a complementary consultation!