We spent 40 Days to build a product no one wants to use

[niceguy01]

@karenwnc Couldn't agree more! The valuable lesson here is to build a 'lander' earlier to drive traffic and validate the idea. I'm looking into examples of validating ideas at an early stage. Does anyone have any they can share?

 

[marlow1]

@niceguy01 I think you’re missing the point here. Sometimes products fail, and when they do you have to either exit or pivot. The popular online chat application discord was originally going to be a game before the company pivoted to making the application. pivots do happen in tech. You may be sitting on a technology that you can rep purpose into something that is more valuable so instead of trashing everything think of what you can take away from the experience.

I know it’s a bit cringe, but you need to think about things more like a skunk works where failure is embraced and learnt from a mindset of “its a failure so I’m not gonna do any more work.”

 

[niceguy01]

@marlow1

re missing the point here. Sometimes products fail, and when they do you have to either exit or pivot. The popular online chat application discord was originally going to be a game before the company pivoted to making the application. pivots do happen in tech. You may be sitting on a technology that you can rep purpose into someth

Thanks for your insight! My situation's a bit nuanced. It's not exactly a ghost town—I do have a handful of users showing up daily, but we're talking small numbers. I've poured a lot of effort into marketing already. Given this, I'm wrestling with whether to keep pushing this product. It's that tricky spot: not a total fail, but not the success I hoped for either. Your point about pivoting and learning from the process is well-taken. Just trying to figure out if persistence or a pivot is the right call here.

 

[beautifulchristianone]

@niceguy01 Can you list down what mistakes you made according to your analysis?

 

[niceguy01]

@beautifulchristianone for sure! That's a good idea. I am doing reflecting now! Let me draft some......

 

[renee2021]

@niceguy01 Well for one, this is like the 100th AI video summarized I’ve seen. Also it’s going to become obsolete since Google is going to build this directly into YouTube.

 

[graceelaaaa]

@niceguy01 Make it open source and see how and where people take it. Give back to the community

 

[niceguy01]

@graceelaaaa To be honest, we already considered it. If at the end still no one needs it, We will open source it

 

[pjfl]

@niceguy01 I second this. Use this as a way to build up your following and be the best open source solution for this niche + build a community around it (discord)?

 

[pjfl]

Allow people to self host the summarization back end then pay you otherwise to get videos summarized. You could experiment with offering an API for it to cater towards programmers also, and be a pay per summarization service. Tbh lots of directions you can take this to niche it further or continue experimenting.

 

[niceguy01]

@pjfl

Allow people to self host the summarization back end then pay you otherwise to get videos summarized. You could experiment with offering an API for it to cater towards programmers also, and be a pay per summarization service. Tbh lots of directions you can take this to niche it further or continue experimenting.

Offering a self-hosted summarization back-end with a pay-per-use model for video summaries is a viable idea. Would you like to test it if we Providing an API for developers ?

 

[niceguy01]

@pjfl Yes we do have a Discord link on our website. We even wondered to build a Discord bot video summarizer

 

[pjfl]

@niceguy01 Also growth hacking. Automate scraping the trending list on YouTube each day, summarize the videos and host a page for each video for SEO purposes over time. Automatically summarize and scrape popular YouTubers pages, comment summaries within 10 min of new uploads for large YouTubers. With a link back to your website in the channel. Etc etc

 

[niceguy01]

@pjfl

Also growth hacking. Automate scraping the trending list on YouTube each day, summarize the videos and host a page for each video for SEO purposes over time. Automatically summarize and scrape popular YouTubers pages, comment summaries within 10 min of new uploads for large YouTubers. With a link back to your website in the channel. Etc etc

Interesting idea! Leveraging automation for YouTube content analysis and SEO optimization could be a powerful growth hacking strategy. We are also testing it. But how could Google index so many pages from our website? What do you think?

 

[joegibson]

@niceguy01 It took us two months just to research what features the product should include and do technical validations, and it's already been six months since we released the MVP. Be patient.

 

[niceguy01]

@joegibson

us two months just to research what features the product should include and do technical validations, and it's already been six months since we released the MV

Is this normal case? Maybe I should wait a few more months?

 

[joegibson]

@niceguy01 It also depends on what kind of product you are making, but I don't think it's normal to have a large number of users in just one or two months. For a product that we previously developed successfully, it took almost a year to gain users, and then it took several months of iterations to experience customer growth.

 

[niceguy01]

@joegibson

It also depends on what kind of product you are making, but I don't think it's normal to have a large number of users in just one or two months. For a product that we previously developed successfully, it took almost a year to gain users, and then it took several months of iterations to experience customer growth.

A year!? Thanks for sharing! That's really motivating. Time to face reality. Maybe we were just too optimistic before.....

 

[blestman]

@niceguy01 Give "The Lean Startup" a read. Really useful in these situations.

 

[leroy25]

@blestman Maybe you can find a video summary and summarize that