Why I abandoned my project 36 hours post-launch (and you should too)
On March 18th, I made a post about how I launched my new project, RPG Campaign Starter (link). 36 hours later, I shut down the website. Here's what happened!
RPG Campaign Starter was my first fully-fledged product that I released that accepted payments; this felt great to me, even if it was just a rough MVP. I was excited to get some users and build something that they'd love!
After announcing the launch on Twitter to my enormous group of followers (I'm joking - I have a measly 375), I headed over to Reddit to post in some subreddits that I thought would be interested by the free usage I was offering to new users. I got a tiny bit of traction in a small subreddit, leading to ~12 users in 24h. I wanted to let the post sit for a few hours, then come back and check out the feedback.
I got some feedback, alright.
I definitely wouldn't call the feedback "negative", just a reality check. I built a product with a focus on RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Starfinder, etc. but didn't actually play any of them myself; I wouldn't even call myself interested in them. I built the project to solve a problem that my brother was experiencing, then I proceeded to do exactly 30 minutes of validation on the idea and got to work.
Based on that feedback, I realized that I made a pretty fundamental error; most of the content in this community that's similar to my product was either completely free or way more fleshed out than what I was offering. People were writing content every day and posting it to Reddit free of charge.
TL;DR - The feedback that I received from my target niche called out that this product wasn't providing anything of value that wasn't already available for free, or dirt cheap.
Given that feedback, I decided to shut the website down; I was originally going to say "and never look back", but that would mean this project was for nought. Here are some learnings that I'm taking from this project that I think are important for me to consider moving forward:
- Be interested in the solution and community that I'm offering the product to. I was more interested in the technology and the feeling of solving a problem than actually solving a problem for this community. I got dopamine hits from the wrong source.
- Do research about existing products in the community before deciding to pursue an idea. The questions that I was unable to answer were:
- "Are people willing to pay for products like this at all?"
- "What paid products already exist in this space?"
- If your project is clearly not fit for a given community, it's okay to abandon it and save yourself both time and money. Real problems happen when you get emotionally attached to a solution and try to turn water into wine for too long.
At the end of the day, I'll still chalk this experience up as a win. I learned how to integrate payments into a SaaS offering, I tried marketing a product for the first time, and I learned what I can improve for the next project.
Until then, I'm looking for problems to solve in the communities that I'm interested in - competitive Call of Duty, gaming, SaaS, social media, Ruby/Rails, and fitness. This is way easier said than done, but I'm hopeful that my next project is a bit more successful than RPG Campaign Starter.
Onto the next thing!
Thanks for the post. Sometimes, knowing when to quit is even more important than not quitting when things get hard.
Hard knowing sometimes when we were building Evoke haha
Interesting post-mortem analysis.
Being interested in what you're building should be rule number 1.
Another thing would be not focusing on charging before having validated your product. You looked a bit too greedy in finding a niche you weren't familiar with and trying to monetize it from day 0.
You could also have sent a survey to your potential customers.
I don't think that "greedy" is the correct adjective to use here, but I understand what you mean.
Validating, even minimally, is important; but as they say, there's no real validation except for people paying you for something.
Of course, saying you were "greedy" is a provocation.
Building a product is almost always an iterative process, and in the beginning, the most valuable asset you get from your users is feedback.
Putting a paying wall in front of it reduces this validation process dramatically.
Thanks for sharing, learned from your learnings.
As for the questions to answer during the research about existing products, I'd like to add one more: "How my product is 10x better than the existing products ?" That's one of my learnings from my latest project.
The problem with MVPs is sometimes they’re too minimal and the competition swamps you. The keyword you mentioned is value. Something can be cool but offer no value. If you can offer value then you’re on to something.
This is a great take. Not gonna lie, something similar has happened to me before and I'm glad you take this as a win/good lesson.
Many projects though exist that solve a real problem that a very few people experience. You can tackle that with a proper research, but it's interesting how super common it actually is
Oh man, with no offense, you sound so negative and demotivated. Do not get me wrong, but with such a mindset, I am not sure you can make it. What worries me is that you jumped the gun here and rushed the decision. I am not saying that you should have stayed either. The problem is how you compare all the other products to yours and say your product provides no value at all. Was it not your job to create that additional value on top? Shouldn't you try to stay in and find a way to provide that additional value?
This way, you can apply your formula to absolutely any undertaking in life and draw the same conclusion every single time. Using this approach, no idea is ever worth taking the risk. You can use this to discard absolutely anything even before you ever start.
Hi there - I’m definitely not feeling negative or demotivated, and I think writing off someone’s future successes based on one project is intensely shortsighted.
As for positives, check out the bottom of the post with some valuable learnings that I’m taking away!
Something that I could’ve highlighted better in this post is that this niche is not of much interest to me. I built the project to solve my brother’s problem.
Thanks for the feedback
I am sorry and apologize if you got under the impression I was writing you off. Quite the opposite, I encourage you to punch it with even more force, energy, commitment, and persistence next time. Good luck. I am sure you can make it.
No worries, sorry if my reply was abrasive. Likewise, best of luck on your projects ❤️
Hi Ryan,
I'm glad to suggestion here
It's not uncommon for people to abandon their projects soon after launching them. In fact, there are several reasons why this happens. Here are a few possible reasons why you may have abandoned your project:
Unrealistic expectations: Sometimes, people have unrealistic expectations about their projects. They may expect immediate success, but when that doesn't happen, they may lose motivation and abandon the project.
Lack of planning: Without proper planning, it's easy to become overwhelmed and lose track of what needs to be done. This can make it difficult to move forward with the project and may lead to abandonment.
Poor execution: Even with a good plan, poor execution can lead to failure. If you don't have the skills or resources to execute the project effectively, you may become frustrated and abandon it.
Lack of passion: It's difficult to stay motivated and committed to a project if you don't have a genuine passion for it. If you're not excited about the project, it's easy to lose interest and abandon it.
In general, it's important to have realistic expectations, a solid plan, the skills and resources to execute the project, and a genuine passion for it. Without these things, it's easy to become overwhelmed and lose motivation. If you find yourself in this situation, it may be best to reassess your goals and either make adjustments or consider abandoning the project altogether.
12 weeks from today calculatable. For calculation 12 weeks from today visit:https://weeksfromtoday.com/
Did ChatGPT write this?
I don't necessarily agree with this post at all. You barely did any evaluations besides a reddit post and called it quits? Instead of asking just "would you pay, yes or no" you should be asking "Would you pay? Yes? Yes, if it did x, y or z? No?"
I also am a DM And am super interested in this space. I think you just need to find the niche in your niche. One thing I think I was going to try and build was NPC chatbots for campaigns that you can train by writing a brief description of who the NPC is.
Hi, thanks for the comment!
One of the main reasons I quit is the fact that I’m not interested in this space at all. I am not a DM; I don’t play DnD and don’t have any interest in picking it up.
With that context then I totally agree, you've definitely gotta have that passion to grind through the space before it's profitable
Your story reminds me of a project I started once. I was looking for something to work on and my girlfriend described a problem in the a aquarell painting community to me. Without hesitation I went and build a tiny website for it. My Reddit post about it in a relevant subreddit did only receive one very critical response. To be honest my product was probably a lot worse than yours.
Since then I observed that a common success pattern for indie hackers is solving your own problems. I don't think you can only your own problems but then you have to be very deligent with validation. Solving your own problems is usually a validation hack.
Thanks for sharing!
I completely agree about being interested in the solution and the community for whom you're making the product, that's exactly how ruttl came into existence.
My co-founder and I were just so tired of collecting feedback on our designs through screenshots and email, we decided to develop our own visual feedback tool where our clients could comment directly on live websites, web apps, PDFs and images.
And now we have expanded to bug tracking as well, it was all possible cause we ourselves were a part of the community and understood the struggles of our fellow designers and developers.
Very much a win. Experiment, learn, try again. Keep going. Don't get married to any particular idea...
I'm slowly wrapping my head around this concept. I took an open source project and created a saas hosting platform. Received no signups.. but the open source project is doing fine. I'm starting to understand the group of people using the open source project that find interest in the project can manage hosting themselves. The major advantages to using the framework rely on the ability to code and extend the carefully laid out features. Marketing it differently to a more general group would be a better market fit test.
In your case I might consider marketing to cosplay facebook groups. They may not have access to the content a reddit user has.
This comment was deleted 8 months ago.