Two Years, Two Pivots, Three Product Hunt Launches, and 13 Painful Lessons Learned

Hey everyone, Today is our 4th launch on Product Hunt, the most important one! I'd appreciate your support: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/crm-chat Also, it's a great moment to reflect on what we accomplished and all the lessons we learned. I will try to make this post as useful as possible. Chapter 1. How we almost guessed the direction. Those who fully guessed it raised $30M from a16z and OpenAI Fund. We launched Hints in the summer of 2021. The problem we were solving and our vision sounded like this: There's too much information around us, we forget to save it, or save it chaotically, then can't find it, worry, and experience FOMO. Notion/ Evernote/ Obsidian requires too much discipline and effort. We need a product that allows saving info in any format (photos, links, pictures, videos, texts, quotes) in one click from anywhere and automatically structures it. Half a year after the launch, we found a very similar startup, Mem AI, which launched a few months before us. We were moving in the same direction independently of each other. Our messages were almost identical. Hints had "quick capturing and self-organized knowledge." Mem had a "quick capturing and self-organized workspace." The guys immediately went into B2B and successfully positioned themselves against Notion, eventually closing a ~$5M round from a16z. We bet on B2C and got about 5000 users for free three months after the launch, but we couldn't monetize them effectively. Besides making the right decision to go into B2B immediately, the guys made another more fortunate bet. Mem focused on the automatic organization of knowledge. We couldn't figure out how to do automatic organization well and focused on quick information capturing. For knowledge organization, we devised a temporary solution - using tags and a simple recommendation system. Mem's automatic knowledge organization wasn't ideal then, but they continued to delve into this problem and hire ML engineers. Then, “suddenly” GPT appeared. By August 2022, OpenAI Fund invested ~$20M in Mem. The problem of automatic knowledge organization was solved :) On August 8, 2022, Mem's founder contacted me and proposed a call to discuss white-labeling our quick capturing for Mem, but we were in the process of pivoting. I hold great respect for Mem and admire their long-term vision. Takeaways: —If you believe in something but don't know how to implement it, you must keep going. Technology might appear unexpectedly and solve your problems. —It's important to be close to the community and information. I assume, mem started communicating with OpenAI Fund in early 2022, when I didn't even know that OpenAI had its own fund. —Knowledge management is a very tricky niche. Users are perpetually dissatisfied with their tools and try to compensate for a lack of discipline with a new tool. Transitioning from Notion to Obsidian or from Evernote to Roam gives a false sense of order, but within half a year they clutter up the new tool and look for the next one. In this market, it's very easy to acquire new users, but very hard to retain and monetize them. —The rapid growth of free users does not guarantee product-market fit. —Community and friends' support is very important, i.e., your support. You've given me a lot of energy, advice, help in testing the product, and the first users. Chapter 2. About how lack of focus can kill a startup, even if revenue is growing. We realized that the product wasn't taking off, but we had cool technology for quick capturing. We decided to focus on it and pivot. We integrated with Notion, Trello, ClickUp, HubSpot, Jira, Obsidian, Pipedrive, and Google Calendar. Our vision was: through one bot in any messenger, users could manage all their productivity tools. Set tasks, update CRM, and send invites. This time, we focused on B2B and immediately included monetization. Four months after the launch, we already had $3,000 MRR and a 30% monthly growth. But... we were overwhelmed maintaining so many integrations. Overwhelmed by solving too many different problems for too many different user segments. Productivity geeks wanted to update tables in Notion and their knowledge graphs in Obsidian. Founders wanted to throw tasks into Trello by voice. Product teams - to throw comments into Jira tickets through a group chat. Sales - to update CRM by voice. We jumped from one problem to another, burning a lot of energy. In essence, we started making a platform without having made a product that fully solves one clear problem for one clear segment. Talking to users showed that the only acute problem we were solving was updating CRM. Everything else was nice to have. We decided to drop everything and focus only on CRM. Takeaways: —Frequent context switching and switching between different problems demotivate and burn a lot of energy. —Not doing nonsense is easy, but throwing out really cool stuff for the sake of maintaining focus is very difficult. —Fast revenue growth does not mean product market fit. —The most painful lesson: Don't scale your team until there's a solid product-market fit. In the experimentation and product discovery phase, each new team member slows down the process. A large team only adds speed when you know what to do and have a clear process. We had to part ways with half of the team, which was very painful. Everyone was doing great and was not to blame. We only kept the part of the team that was closer to CRM integration. Chapter 3. About how solving one problem for one segment makes you feel great. In the summer of 2023, we fully focused on CRM and B2B sales: we added Salesforce integration to Pipedrive and HubSpot. We gained a lot of strength. Every day, we learned something important about our users. Keeping a laser focus on CRM updating, helped us to improve the product tenfold. We acquired our first B2B clients. At this stage, our positioning was: Salespeople spend too much time filling out CRM, and with Hints, you can fill CRM with voice and text commands through any messenger. The main problem was that we had to build B2B sales from scratch, and this process was going slowly. Takeaways: —Focusing on one problem gives an energy boost: every day, you are closer to the solution. —Good relationships with investors are important. Despite the latest course change, our investors, especially Altair, strongly supported us. —Understanding the problem and having a solution is not enough for successful B2B sales. Part 4. About how for B2B sales, you need to primarily solve the problem of the one who pays. From August to September, we delved deeper into the problem, understood who our key corporate decision-makers were, and learned how to reach them. But deals were still closing sporadically, and we didn't have a clear way to scale sales. It turned out that decision-makers in the corporate accounts were much more concerned about the accuracy of forecasts in CRM and the speed of onboarding sales reps, rather than how much time sales reps spend filling out the CRM. Our main selling message became “Always accurate forecasting and fast sales reps onboarding.” We found the missing piece of the product. It turned out that sales reps don't fill out the CRM for two reasons: 1) inconvenient logistics 2) they don't know exactly what and how to fill. Hints already solved the first problem. To solve the second one, We came up with Playbooks - it's the sales process within CRM. We taught clients to quickly make custom playbooks through Hints (instead of spending months setting up CRM). We trained the bot to guide sales reps through these playbooks. Essentially, we significantly improved onboarding for the sales reps. Now, a sales rep can simply send a trigger to the bot to start the playbook and do what the bot tells him. The bot became proactive: advising what information was missing, guiding how to fill it out, catching duplicates, reminding about tasks, etc. As a result, in November, we received several pilots from companies with 100+ sales reps. Takeaways: —You need to sell to those who control the budget and frame the solution in a way that solves their problem. —Pro tip and main takeaway: You need to really love what you do, your team, and yourself. And don't be afraid to be open and ask for help ❤️