Project failure lessons (let's learn together)

2 points by DarwinMailApp 6 years ago | 1 comment

I think we spend a lot of time congratulating ourselves and others when our projects succeed.

This is a great way to build up positive reinforcement but as we all know there are at least 5 failures for every 'success'. Sometimes this number is more like 50:1 or more.

Success can mean anything like getting your first paying customer, reaching 500 users or being featured in a large publication.

On the other hand, failure can happen for a plethora of reasons and usually is caused by more than one factor. I personally wouldn't even know of many of the reasons why my old projects failed. I want to learn from your experiences and I want everyone else on Indie Hackers to be able to learn too.

If you please;

- list one or more reasons why projects of yours failed in the past (possibly telling us how you found out/fixed it).

DarwinMailApp 6 years ago |

I think many of my past projects failed because I spent too much time developing them before releasing them or asking potential users for feedback.

In the end I didn't know what users really wanted and was instead developing the features I thought users would want.

I think many of my past projects failed because I spent too much time developing them before releasing them or asking potential users for feedback.

Any overall projects or idea or features can be tested with your potential customers.

See would they pay for it, how usable it is, or do they even like it!

Please validate your projects with real users as early and as often as possible.