Learning as You Go
What I really love about building web applications is watching them take on a life of their own. Feed My Inbox was our first real experiment with web apps, and it's been an incredibly fun experience. What started as a way for my Mom to read my personal twitter feed has now evolved into a legitimate business that is now supporting nearly 15,000 customers and counting. We're really proud of that, and won't be letting up anytime soon.
If there is anything I have learned as part of this process, it is to create the most simple iteration of your product and launch. Strip it down to the bare bones features; and launch.
This has a few crucial benefits for any small, self-funded company:
- It's easier to see light at the end of the tunnel, and do what it takes to launch a product without losing momentum.
- If your app is a bust, the time and money you spent on it is minimal.
- Less features to start means a more manageable learning curve for people to get started using it.
- Most importantly, you can count on your customers to tell you what features are really important, instead of trusting your own personal opinion.
Since Feed My Inbox launched, we have learned a TON. My best thinking 6 months ago would be ridiculous compared to what I know now about the app, our customers, and where we're headed. For instance, I thought from the beginning that we could support the service with advertising. Boy was I wrong about that. We WILL in fact monetize the service, but it will look nothing like what I had originally thought. What a waste of time it would have been for us to build anything out to support that original business model.
I want to be clear that this article is not about being anti-features. It's about being anti- business plans and pricing charts and complicated wireframes and wasteful marketing plans before your app even has any legs. Let your software breathe, listen to your customers, THEN make the best decisions you can about what's next.
Bottom line, screw what anyone else thinks and launch it. If you make mistakes, that makes you human. The quickest way to expose and fix them is to launch the project. On the web, nothing is permanent. If it's wrong, change it. If it's great, make the most of it. Either way, just get it out there and it's okay to learn as you go.
2 Comments
1. Marie
It would be nice to be able to get the whole post, or at least know the name of the person posting to the blog.
I use this rather than straight RSS feed for the digest feature.
2. Nick
Unfortunately we are only able to send you whatever is in the feed as part of the email. So if the feed only publishes part of the post (which is common), and does not include the name of the author, unfortunately we have no way of publishing it as part of the email.
I would encourage you to contact whomever runs the blog at your work and ask for them to publish the whole post as part of the feed, and it will be corrected in your email. Thanks!
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