What is one piece of advice you'd give to yourself a year ago in your product building journey?
Daniel Zaitzow
12 replies
Technical answers welcome - curious about how people may have developed their stack in a different way to avoid legacy code / headaches down the road.
Replies
Michael Shoup@michaelshoup
Launch faster, even if it’s dirty. Negative user feedback is always better than no user feedback and often catapults you product learning 10x.
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@michaelshoup This is a good one. Often we have aversion to negative feedback, but it's better than none at all.
Launching soon!
@michaelshoup have you ever launched a beta before a public launch. We worry that getting too much feedback that you can't implement on is worse than a lot of power users giving you more granular / practical insight.
Launching soon!
@michaelshoup yea I share that sentiment - but oftentimes the ones building the product have a different set of expectations for themselves / their vision - always a fun back and fourth!
Have a plan for distribution.
Codebase and fanbase should be developed in parallel.
Launching soon!
I have two pieces:
1. focus on the M of MVP
Think deeply about what the minimal viable version needs to have and cut EVERYTHING ELSE. It's so easy to go from one feature to next one adding more and more stuff, when one should actually focus on getting the initial product out of the door and then validate whether it is worth pursuing.
2. don't sabotage your validation
You need to be brutally honest when validating your product / idea. That's not the time to sugarcoat results. There's no point in promising potential customers the world and giving them 90% discount codes, just to be able to say you have PMF. It will just skew your results and have you focus on the wrong things.
Launching soon!
Engagement is key of success!
Building an awesome product is important.
But,
Marketing is equally important. Don't skip this.