5 Lessons I Learned as a First-time Tech Product Founder
By: Charles Dairo
Tags: Saas Tools, Founder Stories, Product Management, Founder Advice, Product Development

5 Lessons I Learned as a First-time Tech Product Founder

I saw a problem. Customers are frustrated by delays at barbershops. I decided to solve this problem: an app that helps customers book appointments and pay ahead. We built the product. Called it Rizevo. It was all very exciting. Everything looked right.

Then we launched. And faced reality. Lol.

It was my first time building a tech product. I learned a lot in the process, and I am sharing my lessons in this article. Hopefully, this will help other people looking to build products.

1. Build only what is absolutely necessary

I knew what a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was. I had read articles and watched videos on this topic. I even read the The Lean Startup book.

To be honest, I actually thought we were building an MVP. We had cut out so many features.

However, looking back now, I see that we could have built even less.

Here’s one example. In the MVP for Rizevo, we added team feature. Businesses could invite their employees into the product. Employees could then receive and manage appointments. It was such a cool feature, and it seemed like a good decision to add it to the product.

Six months after we launched, not a single customer had used this feature. Ouch!

Now I see that this feature should not have been added to our MVP. Of what good was the team feature when we didn’t even know for sure that businesses would use the product?

Here’s another thing. We would have launched our MVP much faster and spent less money, if we had removed this feature. We should have built this only when we confirmed that our customers actually needed it.

Here are the lessons:

Properly define your MVP scope by cutting out “everything” that isn’t absolutely necessary at launch .

. Resist the temptation to build for the future. Build for launch.

The more the features you have in your MVP, the longer it will take to launch.

Sometimes, you don’t even need to build an MVP to know if an idea is worth pursuing. You simply need to ask the right questions.

Don’t assume that customers will use a feature. Confirm.

2. Talk to customers “before” you build anything

As a first-time founder, I was excited about my idea. I couldn’t wait to get started. I was passionate about the problem to be solved. As a potential user, I needed this product to exist. So I did just that. I built the product.

I completely disregarded the fact that for a product of this nature, the business is the ultimate gatekeeper. Without buy-in from the business, you don’t get the users. I was focused on the users, and not the real customer (the business).

After launching, I realized that many businesses weren’t interested. Some of them agreed that their customers would love the product, but using Rizevo would involve a significant change in their operations, and they weren’t ready for this. Another bitter truth I learned was that many of them just didn’t care that customers were delayed. Ouch!

I should have spoken to businesses before building. I should have tried to understand their context, their challenges, and then, decide if the product was still worth building.

So here are the lessons:

Understand the difference between customers and users.

Talk to customers before you build anything.

Your idea may be great, your execution may be flawless. At the end of the day, what matters is how much value your customer gets from the product. Nothing else will matter if you build something customers don’t actually want.

3. Really consider how you will get customers

I was so excited about the product I was building, that I didn’t put much thought into how we would get customers. I naively assumed we could get customers via social media.

When we launched, I realized that while the users of the product could easily be found online, our actual customers (barbers) were a lot more difficult to reach. Most of them weren’t active on social media, and there wasn’t any reliable barber community that we could leverage. Reaching them would involve a lot of manual effort such as going to their shops, one after the other. Ouch!

Considering that we didn’t have the time or resources for this approach, we couldn’t make much progress.

So here are the lessons.

You need a clear, actionable plan on how you will get customers.

Start thinking of customer acquisition early. Don’t wait till launch.

If getting customers involves meeting with them physically, consider the time and cost that this will require.

Build something you can execute completely. Work on an idea that is commensurate with the level of resources you have.

4. Listen to your early users

Finally, some good news.

Despite the fact that we had built Rizevo for barbershops, we noticed that some other types of businesses had signed up. Apparently, there’s a general problem with appointment scheduling. Businesses were looking for a software they could use to manage appointments, and get paid.

A makeup artist got in touch to complain that we didn’t have a particular feature (publicly accessible booking pages). We built the feature, and shared with this customer to confirm it was in line with their requirements. It was.

Once we launched the Booking Page feature, different types of businesses started to sign up: consultants, beauty professionals, barbershops, spas, and others. Exciting!

This new demand encouraged us to reposition Rizevo as an appointment scheduling software for businesses.

Here are the lessons:

Make it easy for customers to contact you.

Listen to your early customers.

Involve customers in your product development process.

5. Don’t settle until you find product-market fit

This is where we are at the moment. We are on the journey of finding product-market fit.

We started as an appointment booking app focused on helping customers avoid delays at the barbershop. Now, we are an appointment management app for businesses.

In terms of quantity, we have more customers in the beauty industry. In terms of revenue, however, we have only earned from consultants. Do we really want to be the appointment booking app for consultants? I’m not sure.

As a founder, I am obviously not satisfied. We are still working to determine the best type of customers to serve.

We don’t want customers that will tolerate Rizevo. We don’t want customers that will simply like Rizevo.

We want customers that will love Rizevo. Those that will be happy to pay for Rizevo. We want customers that see Rizevo as a painkiller not a vitamin.

It’s better to have 100 people that love you than a million people that just sort of like you. Find 100 people that love you.

~ Paul Graham

So here are the lessons: