

Ask HN: We're going in circles, chasing shiny objects, now what? - throwaway11

I'm working for a start up in which we started over a year ago building something that everyone was very excited about.  From what we saw people wanted to use it, and were very excited about what it was going to bring.  We launched it a few months later, and got mild attention.  We stayed under the radar as we onboarded people, however it seemed like people would come, look around and leave.<p>Now we have over engineered as we tried to guess the market, with very little feedback.  We have gotten to the point at one part we uncommented a line of code and brought a 'new' feature back.  Basically we're now going in circles.<p>We admit the design of the product wasn't spectacular, however the very small feedback/interaction it would seem that the demand just isn't there, at least in the quantity we want it to be.<p>We listened to some potential customers and built their feature/product however after it was built few used it, despite it was what they said they wanted and worked as requested.<p>Now it seems we are just chasing after anything that seems to have a hope with the customers, and not keeping focus long enough.<p>We're at the crossroads where it feels like if we stay focused on our original focus, we might miss what we should adapt to after seeing the market more in depth.<p>Have you been in this situation?  Do you have suggestions?
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jaxc
Hi,

If you could you freeze development for a small amount of time (other than
keeping servers/lights on) and take some time out and basiclly take deep
breath and relook over everything.

Its kind of hard to talk generalised and understand why you need to be
secretive but financially long term if it is not flying then sometimes the
easiet thing to do is pull the plug and work on something else whilst using
the code/tool/ and most importantly knowledge and experience you gained.

If you've been working 20 hours a day, 7 days a week and perhaps feeled burn
out then take deep breath and take time out, perhaps get some perspective on
whats happening.

You could alwatys do like a weekend thing, get some beers/drink/pizzas/bbq,
and relax and go over things with everyone being able to talk freely about
what they think. Trying to get as many opinions as you can, different
perspectives on where you and your other founders/team ideas are.

You don't have to set anything in stone but like a focus group and make it as
informal as possible. Just for one brief weekend forget about stress/burnout
and just focus on the future.

Think about whats working, whats not working, where do you want your start up
to be in 6 weeks, 1 year, 5 years etc.

Then Marketing wise, is your site doing well in google/bing organiclly? Can
you improve it with better marketing? Have you looked into SEO stuff, making
sure your not missing anything?

Is your business idea sound or does it need to be reworked?

Sometimes you can a really good idea and your just going about it in the wrong
way, execution wise? (sorry im not trying to be blunt but these things do
happen.)

Then there is minute things like is your signup page asking too many
questions? Do? you have a trial/free evaulation? Are you publishing prices or
are you having people directly contacting your sales team so there is a delay
in people signing up/paying for your widget? Does your site work in "the
browser that shall not be named" aka IE6 or is it just one giant fancy flash
thingy bob that takes 5 years to download when a simple static html page could
do same job in 0.005 seconds of a time ?

If your business is making some money, could you afford to let developers work
on things they want for 20% of time like say at google in the hopes of
incubating new ideas. You'd be surprised at how many things get developed out
of someones spare time that just grow or startups changing their business and
model mid stream.

To be honest there's so many things that can be preventing your startup from
suceeding without knowing more or you could be doing everything perfectly and
its just not working such has no real customers. It happens.

Just take some time out, reveulate everything. If things have to change
because they are not working then its better to make changes when your small
and nimble(?)then when your a mega corp with shareholders.

Just be honest, don't hide away from awkward questions and just remember your
not loosing anything by having a rethink. You have all the experience, code
and technology that you have gained working on your startup. People often
think they've failed because it didn't work out but don't realise what they
gained through experience.

~~~
throwaway11
We have actually done this a couple of times. I think the problem is that we
each time sit there thinking oh we could just make it simpler. But in realty
what our original idea was and what we need to be are different. it'd seem the
market is not rich enough for what we want, and that we need to try another
approach, even if it does abandon our original 'core idea'. I look at it like
many of the start up stories which are we started with idea X and ended with
A.

The original idea is sound, however we cannot find a way yet to engage the
user enough to make it work. I stress yet, as we all agree there is a way, we
just aren't sure the way to flip it so the user is engaged. it is a hot topic,
just a difficult one to get people to act on.

We keep rethinking our idea, and is just apparent that at least while we try
to get the original idea some spice, we need to deviate for a while to raise
money. I understand this isn't optimal, but made need to be done.

------
watmough
Will people pay for your web-service?

Will charging increase the perceived value?

The DropBox article that was posted a couple of weeks back was interesting,
since they were able to monetize the service at differing tiers depending on
how people entered the site.

~~~
throwaway11
I think that the non-original idea we can definitely get paid for. The
original idea is different though, it requires a community before people will
pay for it.

------
dman
Any link to the product?

~~~
eclark
He's on a throwaway account; I would venture a guess that anonymity is
valuable to him/her.

~~~
dman
Indeed.

