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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I'm a Product Designer and I've worked at 5+ different start ups that built and launched successful products. I'd say the biggest lesson is that you will find the right features to build from outside your company, not within it. That is to say, talk to your users/customers/target audience. Don't sit in team meetings and guess what your users want. Then go out and test your assumptions and validate them.

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.

Focus on the problem, hold the solution lightly and always keep an open mind when starting to develop something that you may have to go back to the drawing board again and again but question why because it may beam underlying issue itself.

As a person who loves development I have made the mistake of getting addicted to the implementation and neglecting the business/marketing side. While our system was really good it was overenginnered and a lot of it we ended up not needing after actually getting customers. Now I know to follow the Lean startup method and minimize the implementation, but focus on the sales and finding PMF before developing an extensive backend

Also the Sunken Cost Fallacy, at some point your product is doomed and it’s hard to admit it as you’ve put so much time into it. The mistake is to keep working on it and being in denial

My previous product failed, coz I didn’t give enough importance to marketing. Thought the customer would just come and buy the product. The reality is different.

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

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

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)

Our product has just got 1000 users and the most important lesson is that you must be consistent with what you decided at first 😎

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.

that building is just 30% of effort needed and promoting is where most of the creators fail. speaking from experience 🥲

It is allowed to take a break. And things take time🕦 A lot of time.