What's the most important lesson you've learned about building a successful product?

One of the most important lessons I've learned about building a successful product is the significance of customer-centricity. It's crucial to deeply understand the needs, pain points, and preferences of your target audience. By actively listening to customer feedback, conducting user research, and iterating based on their insights, you can create a product that truly solves their problems and delivers value.

I certainly haven't learned my lesson yet, but I'm looking for an outlet :) how to find it, where to look, what to do :) if there are answers, hint

Still have tons to learn, but so far I've learned that it's important to think in the future but build in baby steps. If you think to far ahead while actually building you can skip important details, and overwhelm yourself because the end result feels so far away.

We don’t always stick to the initial plan till the end.

Know when to stop, if our idea and hypothesis doesn't work. And, start over it again. Those are the most priceless learning curve of being product builder

- Don't fall into the fun of design and building, test and learn to see if there's a market and need. Otherwise it's not a product, it's a hobby. - Keep your overhead small (tech stack, service stack, process, etc) so you can pivot as learnings come in. - Not comfortable selling? Get over it :-) your product depends on your voice. The stronger the voice, the bigger the audience the greater, the chance your product has to thrive.

You can't do everything everywhere all at once.

you can not be right all the time , so keep going 😀

Shared understanding and communication are pivotal. Taking the time to address and elaborate on tasks, scope, and changes make a world of difference. Don’t assume “well this is obvious”, or “I’m sure everyone on the team knows this.”

building a successful product? it's an art and a science, a dance between vision and reality. my biggest lesson has been to fall in love with the problem, not the solution. this keeps you nimble, open to pivot when needed. your solution may change, but the problem you're solving remains the anchor. listening is key. users may not always know what they want, but their feedback, their pain points, are nuggets of wisdom. observe, engage, empathize. they're not just users, they're co-creators of your journey. then there's simplicity. in an era of feature glut, less can indeed be more. value isn't about packing in features, but making the user's life easier, better. simplicity isn't just aesthetic, it's functional. finally, remember the human behind the screen. every click, every swipe, is a human seeking to fulfill a need, a desire. don't just build for users, build for people. weave in empathy, emotion, experiences. building a product is like growing a garden. it requires patience, care, and a lot of love. but the bloom, the harvest, is worth every effort. happy gardening!

Tech is your major cost but has no value. Only the product and more broadly your product offer matters for the user. So you should build your tech to be super modular, and be ready to pivot your product offer (messaging + pricing + branding + product ui/frontend) very often until it takes off.

Don't build/test anything without having the user (potential or actual) as the cornerstone of your process. Meaning that you should have an opened communication channel with users at all time. If you don't have that, you should spend all your energy on finding ways to get it.

Everything takes 3x the amount of time in your plan.

I think is the idea to share real value to users. Not just write content because we want to catch emails, not ads because we want the people to click but just the idea of SHARE VALUE. Try to ask your users how you can help them and give them value, give answers to more waste of time or useless information.

Solving a real problem for your customers is the key lesson I've learned. Create something that truly matters to them, and success will come knocking on your door.

i’ve learned that my procrastinating in school has turned into a massive gift in building product. instead of spending months internally coming up with ideas and building… i cram and get an MVP out the door as fast as possible, then listen to the feedback i get… and iterate forward based on it. you’ll end up finding the right solution to your target problem faster that way, rather than spending months on R&D, and wasting money trying to “get it perfect” the first time.

Snehe Nair

I don't have a successful product under my belt just yet but I do have a number of failed products. The only advise I can give is to get it out there as soon as possible and listen. No matter how much of an innovation you think your product will solve it means nothing if there are no customers willing to try it and potentially pay for it (if this is your goal)

Find the killing feature, focus on this and that will drive your growth

Far from being able to say it's successful, but the biggest learning while building https://kloudmate.com is that all the Product Marketing I thought I'd mastered in corporate work life, had to be 'unlearnt' so I could re-adjust to a new ICP (developers) and learn newer ways to approach and market at them.