cornbreadfed614
New member
Warning: If you have shiny object syndrome and get distracted easily, don’t take my advice here lolWanted to share a lesson from a launch that came way too late: Do the obvious thing.
Lack of focus kills startups. We’ve all seen the founders so distracted by shiny objects that nobody understands their product anymore. I was afraid of this too.
For the past 3 years, me and my team built our SaaS (stuff like no-code nudges, onboarding, cmd+k search, support chatbot etc.) for desktop and web apps only. We resisted building for mobile: we needed to laser-focus, the problem was big enough on desktop, the team didn’t have mobile experience, etc.
BUT: Hyper-focusing can blind you to obvious opportunities. That’s what mobile was for us: A big opportunity, right in front of our eyes, that we still couldn’t see.
Mobile UX is worse on smaller screens, pop-ups fill up the screen, users are less patient, engineers are even more scarce, you name it.
It’s the most obvious thing to build, especially because we already have a brand and product in the space!
We finally launched our SDKs on mobile today, but I regret not doing it earlier. Time will tell but I really think we could have a bigger mobile business in 2 years than desktop.
There are probably things like this in every SaaS business: Obvious things you could/should be doing, but aren’t. I get it, as founder/entrepreneur types we always want to innovate and create some dazzling new thing. But it’s sometimes the obvious thing that moves you forward the most.
Same way most people don’t need some crazy supplement, but to eat more veggies.
If you want to spot some of these obvious things, a few places to look:
- Things (potential) users/customers keep asking you for
- Requests/suggestions that make you think “they just don’t get it”
- Things that make you think “we haven’t done that before” or “that’d be so boring”
And then do that thing with the same excitement as if you’re building that crazy out-of-left-field thing!
P.S.: If this post was somewhat useful I’d appreciate if you took 0.28 seconds to upvote our mobile launch on ProductHunt
Lack of focus kills startups. We’ve all seen the founders so distracted by shiny objects that nobody understands their product anymore. I was afraid of this too.
For the past 3 years, me and my team built our SaaS (stuff like no-code nudges, onboarding, cmd+k search, support chatbot etc.) for desktop and web apps only. We resisted building for mobile: we needed to laser-focus, the problem was big enough on desktop, the team didn’t have mobile experience, etc.
BUT: Hyper-focusing can blind you to obvious opportunities. That’s what mobile was for us: A big opportunity, right in front of our eyes, that we still couldn’t see.
Mobile UX is worse on smaller screens, pop-ups fill up the screen, users are less patient, engineers are even more scarce, you name it.
It’s the most obvious thing to build, especially because we already have a brand and product in the space!
We finally launched our SDKs on mobile today, but I regret not doing it earlier. Time will tell but I really think we could have a bigger mobile business in 2 years than desktop.
There are probably things like this in every SaaS business: Obvious things you could/should be doing, but aren’t. I get it, as founder/entrepreneur types we always want to innovate and create some dazzling new thing. But it’s sometimes the obvious thing that moves you forward the most.
Same way most people don’t need some crazy supplement, but to eat more veggies.
If you want to spot some of these obvious things, a few places to look:
- Things (potential) users/customers keep asking you for
- Requests/suggestions that make you think “they just don’t get it”
- Things that make you think “we haven’t done that before” or “that’d be so boring”
And then do that thing with the same excitement as if you’re building that crazy out-of-left-field thing!
P.S.: If this post was somewhat useful I’d appreciate if you took 0.28 seconds to upvote our mobile launch on ProductHunt