What is one piece of advice you'd give to yourself a year ago in your product building journey?

Question

Technical answers welcome - curious about how people may have developed their stack in a different way to avoid legacy code / headaches down the road.

Jonni Gani · Accepted Answer

Have a plan for distribution.

Codebase and fanbase should be developed in parallel.

Jonni Gani · Answer

@michaelshoup This is a good one. Often we have aversion to negative feedback, but it's better than none at all.

Michael Shoup · Answer

Launch faster, even if it’s dirty. Negative user feedback is always better than no user feedback and often catapults you product learning 10x.

Michael Shoup · Answer

@jgani On point.  I work with so many founders who miss this part and finish the product before they've begun distribution.

Olivia · Answer

Engagement is key of success!

Felix Scholz · Answer

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.

Daniel Zaitzow · Answer

@fscholz couldn't agree more - Feature creep is a terrifying thing that I think we're all victim to - If it only had x y z - it would be perfect...

Answer

I would 100% tell myself to have a clearer timeline for delivery. My technical partner did not know how much went into this and we are way later on it than we wanted. Also, let’s follow each other! Whoever follows me, I’ll send one back and I’m always open to help provide feedback on products

Vertika Nigam · Answer

Building an awesome product is important.

But,

Marketing is equally important. Don't skip this.

Michael Shoup · Answer

@dzaitzow I have - often I'll do a private Alpha, then Public Beta to establish feature set and value pricing, then increase prices as we move out of Beta.

My thought is too much feedback is a better problem to have than no one knocking on the door.

Daniel Zaitzow · Answer

@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.

Daniel Zaitzow · Answer

@logan_smiley just sent over a follow! I think a clearer timeline for delivery is huge. Launch and the ethos behind it / bandwidth to do it properly can take months to plan and months to action.

Answer

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Daniel Zaitzow · Answer

@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!

Daniel Zaitzow · Answer

@jgani I might steal that "Codebase and fanbase should be developed in parallel." I'd like a t-shirt with that on the back!

What is one piece of advice you'd give to yourself a year ago in your product building journey?

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