What I learned from building a simple tool: the hard part isn't always the product
I’ve been building Boldifont, a small tool that turns regular text into bold and styled text that people can copy and use across the web.
One thing this project has made me think about is how different building a simple product feels from building a complicated one.
The core functionality is straightforward. But once the basic product works, the interesting questions begin:
How do you decide which features are actually worth adding?
How do you get your first users without spending heavily on advertising?
How do you distinguish useful feedback from feature requests that would make the product unnecessarily complicated?
At what point should a simple utility become a broader product?
My current approach is to keep the core experience extremely simple and let actual user behavior guide what I build next.
I’m curious about other makers here:
When you launched a simple product, what did you learn that you didn't expect before launch?
I'd especially like to hear about things you changed—or deliberately chose not to change—because of early user feedback.
Replies