Creating something new is thrilling.
As startup founders, we’ve faced this excitement three times.
Each time, we stumbled upon failure.
This is our tale of three failed products and the lessons we learned.
Our products weren’t the only ones in the market. Yet, there was no clear benchmark to measure success.
Raqib was our first product that caters to the market for senior citizens.
Favorsense is the second product that should solve the problems of citizen engagement for local councils.
Our third product was an alternative to Raqib, a mobile app called Dscover that can track users’ locations. But it is also meant for family members or friends who track each other’s activities.
We invested time, effort, money, and belief. Acknowledging their failure was tough.
Identifying a failing product is challenging. For us, the first red flag was steady low revenue.
Despite marketing efforts, the income was just a trickle, far from our expectations.
Letting go of our creations was hard. We had to stop supporting the failed products.
This harsh reality taught us to accept, learn, and move forward.
Here are the crucial lessons we learned from our missteps:
- Minimal Viable Product (MVP) Importance: Having an MVP helps test market waters before a deep dive. It allows for initial response assessment and iteration, saving hefty upfront investment in a possibly unviable full-fledged product.
- Value of Early Users: Early adopters are like a compass, their feedback is instrumental in refining the product to meet market demands.
- Securing Paying Customers Early: Early paying customers validate your product’s value and kickstart revenue generation.
- Having Reference Sites: Success stories or reference sites boost prospective customers’ confidence and enhance product credibility.
- Flexible Pricing Model: A rigid pricing can deter potential customers. Experimenting with various pricing models helps find a balance that attracts and retains the target audience.
Looking back, our failed products were stepping stones towards success.
Each failure illuminated new startup aspects.
Though the journey was challenging, it molded us into resilient, well-informed founders ready for future entrepreneurial hurdles.
Our fourth product seems to be our savior, and it has been gaining market traction. Now, it’s about time for us to scale up.
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Dr. Mazlan Abbas 