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Caroline Chiari

How do you define failure?

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Hi, fellow makers! I have been working on Koupi for a while and have yet to get my first follower. It's hard, and it takes effort. I regularly wonder whether Koupi is a failure or a success waiting to happen. So my question to you is the following: How do you qualify an idea/project/feature/launch as a failure/not a success? For my product, I would like to describe failure as a large proportion of users who never use my product. Since I don't have users, I don't qualify it as a failure, while at the same time, the prerequisite for my definition of failure isn't there.

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Rotimi
As Software Engineers, one major talent most of us lack is Marketing. I am currently going through a similar situation with my platform, KwickBox.. Getting userbase and followers is really hard nowadays. I just went through your product and it looks really good! You definitely just made a friend and got a new follower to help retweet and stuff. The hard truth is that most people don't care about your startup. They only care about it when: - You start posting job vacancies - You go IPO - Other people start talking about it To improve your userbase, post your app and link on sites such as betalist.com , reddit groups, facebook groups and get feedback, etc.. That should definitely improve the odds. Just a heads up, please include your startup's twitter/facebook page on your website :)
Caroline Chiari
@rotimi_je_suis I fully agree! the marketing part is the most difficult part. When you write code it lasts forever, for marketing, 1 h of work doesn't last long if you don't put another hour in.
Hussein Yahfoufi
It really depends on your goals. Some people fail to even get an MVP out, some fail after they have millions of users already. I checked out your site (koupi.io), it looks like a really good idea and seems like you have an MVP done. Now is the time to learn from users and tweak it to make it work better for them. Once thing that was not clear for me when looking at the site is what kinds of automation can I do and why? So maybe give some use case examples. Also it says automation for everyone but the site seems more technical so it is for developers? sysadmins? who is your real target? Automation for everyone is what Apple is trying to do with Shortcuts and what IFTTT and others are trying to do too. Maybe that is your market but know it will be hard to compete with them.
Caroline Chiari
@husseinyahfoufi Thanks a lot for the feedback, it's not the first time I hear this feedback today, I will definitely look into it. It's correct, I am trying to do the same type of no-code automation as those two except for desktop and server administration.
Hussein Yahfoufi
@caroline_chiari you have a really great idea and product but you just need some help in explaining it with a proper landing page. I've worked with many systems and devops engineers and they all write python scripts to automate tasks they have to always do. It creates a nightmare for companies when that engineer leaves because it's not a centrally managed or supported script. With your tool, companies can save themselves the headache and risk, while also saving the systems engineers time from writing scripts that already exist! Take a look at https://www.producthunt.com/post... by @blakebemal for some quick help
Caroline Chiari
@blakebemal This is amazing! I'll definitely book an analysis as soon as I get my tax break (and fix glaring gaps)! @husseinyahfoufi You are a gold mine!
Sergey Krasotin
@caroline_chiari I've checked your website as well and I'd say that a testimonial from the first users would also improve the overall impression of the landing page. When we were building a b2b automation tool for real estate developers adding a testimonial section on the landing page increased the conversion for 10%+, so it's definitely worth a shot. Something like. "I'm doing X and Koupi helped me with Y" should be enough to make the landing page more convincing.
JESUS VERMA
My failure not defined when I failed in something. I failed when I want to write code and I don't have beer in my fridge.
Daniela Passos
For me we all fail. Failure is the feeling when you are giving up of something or don't feel like you can have creative solution to take a next step and get out from where you are.
Caroline Chiari
@danielamoitinho I like that! I guess you could say that failure happens when you give up on moving forward.
Greg Oprendek
I always go by the old adage "The only failure is to not try." Simple, but is applies to nearly every situation. If you're struggling to improve a certain aspect of your business and feeling stuck, there is always a lesson to be learned or a new way to approach what you're doing. If you don't try to find that lesson or solution, then you'll never get over the hurdle. I think that's especially true when it comes to raising awareness about your product. There are so many apps and services and widgets and plugins available nowadays that consumers can get overwhelmed. As long as you confidently find the niche your product best serves then make that group aware of how you can help them, you haven't failed.