The Product
A tool that helped content creators schedule and repurpose posts across platforms. We built it because we needed it ourselves. We assumed other people needed it too.
We were wrong. Not about the problem — other people did need it. We were wrong about how much they needed it and whether they would pay specifically us for it.
Mistake 1: We Validated With Enthusiasm, Not Behaviour
We showed the idea to 50 people. 47 of them said "that sounds great, I'd definitely use that." We took that as validation.
Asking someone if they'd use a product costs them nothing. They say yes to be polite. The real validation is: did they give us their email? Did they put in a credit card for early access? Did they ask "when can I start?"
Of our 47 "definitely interested" people, 3 signed up when we launched. 1 stayed past 30 days.
Mistake 2: We Built Everything Before Talking to Customers
8 months of building. Scheduling, analytics, repurposing, templates, team collaboration, API access. We shipped everything.
Nobody asked for any of it.
One person who used the tool asked us if it could post to LinkedIn. That was a 2-day feature. We had built 40 features nobody asked for and hadn't built the one feature someone actually needed.
Mistake 3: We Thought Distribution Would Figure Itself Out
We posted on Product Hunt. Got 200 upvotes. Got a spike of 80 signups. Felt amazing.
Within 2 weeks: 12 active users. Within 1 month: 4 paying customers at $9/month. $36 MRR. On 8 months of work.
Product Hunt is not distribution. It is a moment of attention. Without a distribution channel that you own and feed consistently, a Product Hunt launch is a sugar spike with a crash.
What We Should Have Done
Talked to 20 potential customers before writing a single line of code. Built the one feature 3 of them said they couldn't live without. Charged $49/month from day one. Built distribution (a newsletter, a community, a YouTube channel) 6 months before launching.
The Actual Lesson
The product wasn't the problem. The process of building the product was the problem. We optimised for shipping features instead of solving a specific pain for a specific person.
