After four long years of grinding, building, fundraising, and hiring, we decided to pivot. I wanted to write down my thought process and timeline because I wish I d seen more honest pivot stories when we were stuck. Not just we pivoted and everything was instantly great but the real version where we kept trying to make the original idea work for way too long because we already put so much into it.
I went through YC S20 (the first COVID batch) as a solo founder working on @Basedash. After YC, I did what you re supposed to do. I talked to users. I built product. I did founder-led sales. I hired a great team. It felt like progress because I was constantly busy and the product kept getting better.
My top 3 for this week! I'm sure a lot more things will come up. 1. Building brand awareness
2. Working on several thought pieces
3. Client acquisitions
I had a super unconventional journey into tech startups. I worked on the product teams at various Fortune 500s for years before I discovered my love for building products myself. I spent countless hours browsing through Product Hunt but only as a lurker and occasionally commenting on others' work. Eventually, frustrated by my lack of action and inability to write code, I stepped up in 2018 (thanks to the book Atomic Habits) and decided to build tiny teeny projects with no-code. Shipped my 1st project Do Things That Don't Scale in 5 days that became the #1 Product Of The Day which gave me the impetus to continue building a portfolio of over 10 projects
Go ask it for the best tool in your category. If you're not in the answer the reason is likely not your product.
Surfer put out a study in September. They went through 289,105 pages that AI answers cite. The more of those pages mention a brand the higher it sits in the answer. ChatGPT showed this the strongest. And the mentions that count most are in regular blog posts even though blogs are under a third of what gets cited.
Not a pity post I've recovered and I'm launching again in six weeks. But I want to write down the post-mortem while it's still fresh, because I made three mistakes that I now see everywhere in other people's launches.
Mistake one: I treated the launch as the marketing, not a moment in an existing marketing motion. I had no list, no audience, no warm network on PH. 63 upvotes was basically my friends plus luck.
Mistake two: my tagline described the category ("AI-powered project management") instead of a result. Nobody clicks a category.
Mistake three: I launched on a Tuesday because "Tuesday sounds good." I had no idea what else was launching that day. Two well-known companies launched the same day and I was invisible.
Hi Makers! Post your product in this thread if you are: (1) launching soon or recently launched (2) looking for feedback on your landing page
(3) looking for someone to beta-test your product and give feedback on the product before launch I believe in giving before asking. Start by helping someone who have posted their product, help them with their question, give a suggestion, write a review or a comment on their launch page. Once you have helped someone else out, share your product link here and clearly state what kind of help you need.
Today, and actually yesterday, the X platform started spreading the news that a Chinese startup is coming up with a revolutionary solution we will be able to understand animals.
"A Chinese startup has developed an AI collar that translates barks and meows into complete sentences.
95% accuracy. Cost: $118. 10,000 people have already pre-ordered it. It uses microphones, motion sensors, and AI to analyse body language and vocalisations."
