What are the biggest challenges you faced when launching your product?
Shaur ul Asar
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Vincent Lonij@vincentropy
Thread - Wireframe Generator
In the beginning it's really hard do both product development and customer acquisition. You need users to find out what product you're supposed to build but it's really hard to get attention of potential users if you don't have any product yet.
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Heights Platform
@vincentropy I agree that figuring out how and when to switch between building and marketing is a hard one.
@vincentropy This is a really good point. There's so much to juggle, and no maps on how to do things properly.
@vincentropy That is correct. I think the right way to go about it is to build an MVP and get it in the hands of a few early users of your product. Take feedback from them and build the first version of your complete product i.e. it should solve the problem which your company wanted to.
Now since your product is built, try to scale it and get users for it.
No need to add more features now because you would want to first know that the product you've built is something people truely want.
If it is, then awesome! Tell the users what you more features you are going to add, take user feedback, refine the feature you had planned, build it and release it! Next, keep iterating on this process!
That is what we are trying to do at Quido!
Working under tight timelines.
Getting people to do things in sync along with other moving parts.
Insumo AI
Determining the exact needs and wants of our target market was harder than we anticipated. Making something people want is not that easy.
WeCooked
Making a good product. This is probably one of the hardest things most people forget to make— yeah you have a problem but your solution to it sucks. I think people forget to realise that if you yourself have the problem you can be the judge of what makes it great, keeping things simple and minimal and adding things that add value. Too many times have I personally done this where I’ve added things and forget that I am the end user and I wouldn’t use it so why would I expect others. We can judge ourselves quite a bit but you just know when it’s good enough to launch. MVPs are flawed in that way in today’s world, I think you need to think MVE (minimum viable experience)
Business Valuation for Shopify Apps
I think we did all the right things before the launch and we were certainly off to a great launch to begin with. Most of our clients and partners are based in Europe and Asia and less so in the US/Americas so morning and early afternoon were awesome for us in terms of keeping 3rd and 5th place but late afternoon has become a hard work for us as less and less people were coming to support us and other products with larger US audience were definitely taking a lion share of attention later in the day...
Mentor.AI
Launching our edtech app, ProApp, was an exhilarating journey filled with valuable lessons. One of the biggest challenges we encountered was gaining initial traction and visibility in a competitive market. We had to strategize creative ways to reach our target audience effectively. Additionally, ensuring a seamless user experience demanded meticulous attention to every detail, leading to iterative improvements.
Feedback played a crucial role in refining our product and understanding user needs. Engaging with the community, like here on Product Hunt, was instrumental in shaping ProApp's success. We're thrilled to be the Product of the day and would love to connect further. Feel free to reach out to us on Product Hunt to share your experiences or explore potential collaborations
Comment Deleted
Development always takes 10 times longer than projected.
Callegram
Safe the mainline after few years and keep building with fun
Finding the balance between product development, sales, and fundraising. All are important, but the challenge is learning how to prioritize among the 3 and ensure building a good product is always top of mind.
@cosmicyeti 1+ Totally relate to that struggle! I feel right I can handle well for product development, but when it comes to sales and marketing, I often feel out of my depth. Sometimes, I think about finding a co-founder who excels in those areas to strike the perfect balance.
@goff_jira Let's connect, I'm a business founder so would be happy to share any tips on GTM & strategy to help you out.
OkFeedback
The biggest challenge by far is getting the initial traction and those first customers. As a solo founder without a big marketing budget, It is really a challenge
@sarvpriy_arya 100% it's always the biggest challenge to get that early traction, especially when you have so few people to give you feedback on things.
NotesNudge
every product launch comes with its own unique challenges. for me, the biggest one was managing expectations - both my own and those of others.
it's easy to get caught up in the launch excitement and to start dreaming of overnight success. reality, though, often looks different.
building and launching a product is a process, a marathon, not a sprint. instant success is rare; most products need time to gain traction and grow.
then there's the challenge of feedback. launch day usually means a flood of comments, suggestions, and critiques. some of it is invaluable, some of it is noise.
learning to discern between the two, to take what's useful and let the rest slide, is an art in itself.
and lastly, dealing with the post-launch slump. after the initial rush, there's often a dip in energy and motivation. it's important to anticipate this and to have a plan for what comes next.
these challenges are tough but they are also growth opportunities. each one teaches us something about our product, our audience, and ourselves.
embrace the challenges, they are part of the journey.
Finding product-market fit
Developing a marketing strategy
Building and managing a team
Securing funding
Dealing with competition
Scaling the business
When we launched AiToolsKit.ai (Productive AI, Seo, Writing, Social media & Marketing Tools all-in-one platform) on Product hunt, our biggest challenge was that we had no social following, not a big team to do marketing, not so much brand authority, still we did it because products quality were our main focus and still too we are focusing to make it better day by day.
Do checkout https://www.producthunt.com/post... and give your valuable feedbacks to make our tools better for you.
QuikFlow
We are good at developing products, but not very experienced when it comes to marketing them, so we need to do a lot of experimentation and go out of our comfort zone to spread the word.
@kevin_brendel what brought the most results for you guys?
QuikFlow
@joao_nina_matos We are still trying out a lot of new things, but surprisingly, making posts on Reddit did bring very good immediate results, so far.
@kevin_brendel that's quite interesting– I thought reddit usually talks down posts that promote products & things, did you guys face that at all?
QuikFlow
@joao_nina_matos Yes, this can happen, because Reddit has a very critical audience.
But we did our research about each subreddit's rules and only chose those that explicitly allow self-promotion and made sure to strictly fulfill the necessary conditions for being allowed to self-promote. We were also very transparent about our affiliation with the app in each post and comment. We also looked at other self-promo posts that received a lot of upvotes to see what people like.
This lead to the posts being very well received with a good amount of upvotes and positive comments and 80% and 98% upvote rate on the two largest subreddits we posted on.
Surprisingly, we discovered that mentioning our app in relevant contexts via comments (with a clear disclaimer that we are the devs) also led to a positive response and follow up comments from people interested in it.
@kevin_brendel that's quite cool, really interesting stuff. Appreciate you sharing. Out of curiosity, do you mind if I ask which were the 2 largest subreddits you guys posted on?
But really appreciate you sharing that strategy, that's quite interesting.
We are just preparing for the launch, but even now I can say that it is necessary to start preparing for the launch several months in advance. I didn't expect this much work, to be honest.
@iren_ivashchinenko What have you spent most of your time working on?
@joao_nina_matos product management.
Securing adequate funding to develop, produce, and market the product can be a significant hurdle for startups and small businesses.
@carter_nelson particularly for SaaS and tech companies. I think PMF & early pre-orders are most important, because they ultimately make fund-raising a lot easier
FirstHR
Fix all bugs 😄
Zeko AI
We launched yesterday. We were not expecting such a competition. It was a good challenge to have: https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Marketing and Promotion was the hardest part
@ross_brighttail I share the same opinion! I’m planning to launch my own product as well, and I have no idea what kind of situations I might encounter.
@levi_collins what helped you make the most progress on that front?
@levi_collins I agree! Marketing and promotion can be quite challenging. I also remember trying to get the first reviewer to test my products and write reviews, and it took much more time than I anticipated!