It’s been a couple of years since I sold Sendible so I took time to reflect on the poor decisions we made that impaired our growth. Here are the 7 product decisions that turned out to be costly mistakes.
Thanks for sharing Gavin - some good tips here. I fear you are being a little harsh on yourself in places. Some of these decisions are very hard to rally against in the heat of the moment. It is very nuanced - after all - user feedback influencing a roadmap is sensible, as is an attempting to reduce churn (-;
Thanks Alan. Of course listening to customer feedback was crucial to our success, but in hindsight, we should've also allocated a small percentage of time towards pursuing innovation. We were 100% committed to delivering what customers were asking for and neglected our long term vision.
What great insight! In our work, we preach Customer Discovery before all other business building activities. It truly dictates what services you offer, how much you charge, and the marketing strategy. It is so costly to go back and add customer discovery after launch!
The rest of your points are going into our things to think about as my business partner and I build our or new venture. We do fight adding new features just because a few vocal user what them instead of looking at our big picture.
Customer discovery is crucial. I also think it's important identify market trends and predict where things are going so you can steer the ship in the right direction (a direction your customers might not always see).
Thanks for sharing Gavin - some good tips here. I fear you are being a little harsh on yourself in places. Some of these decisions are very hard to rally against in the heat of the moment. It is very nuanced - after all - user feedback influencing a roadmap is sensible, as is an attempting to reduce churn (-;
Thanks Alan. Of course listening to customer feedback was crucial to our success, but in hindsight, we should've also allocated a small percentage of time towards pursuing innovation. We were 100% committed to delivering what customers were asking for and neglected our long term vision.
What great insight! In our work, we preach Customer Discovery before all other business building activities. It truly dictates what services you offer, how much you charge, and the marketing strategy. It is so costly to go back and add customer discovery after launch!
The rest of your points are going into our things to think about as my business partner and I build our or new venture. We do fight adding new features just because a few vocal user what them instead of looking at our big picture.
Thanks for sharing!
Customer discovery is crucial. I also think it's important identify market trends and predict where things are going so you can steer the ship in the right direction (a direction your customers might not always see).
Spot on! You have to know your industry.