What To Do When Your Product Sucks

One fundamental truth about making your own product or service is that at first, “it will suck”. Understandably so, most founders keep pushing it. However, things start to get difficult after countless revision of the product but yet — it still sucks. When my co-founder & I built the first version of Jamout at the LAUNCH Festival Hackathon, we had the intended idea to set out and help musicians by allowing them to find a central place where they could connect to other artists by sending songs the same way you would send a Facebook friend request.

In theory, things sounded remarkable. Since my team and I were musicians, we naturally had a close connection to artists here in the Bay Area. The reason why I said it sounded good in theory is because when we asked our friends and family what they thought, we got the typical:

“That’s such a good idea!” — Everyone

Which encouraged us to pump out a Jamout prototype in less than 36 hours.

Jamout Hackathon

Now, the kiss of death for a great idea as a young founder is taking all of that into account and running with assumptions without thinking first. Upon building the minimum viable product (MVP; which was a playlist & add friend button), we were distraught when we saw that the website had almost no activity despite what our friends and family told us. When we launched more revisions, I found myself struggling to ask our musicians to get active on the platform and explaining what Jamout was. First, it wasn’t their fault that they weren’t using the platform. It was on us to build what they wanted. What was a perplexing issue was actually a lesson learned the hard way and a true blessing in disguise. In retrospect, there were many things we could have done to spare us the heartaches and headaches.

1. Take The Extra Step: When we went out and asked every soul related to the music industry what they thought of Jamout, we listened, recorded every response, and did a typical analysis of the feedback but it hardly made Jamout any better. Although the data was great, it was only until I followed users around to their gigs did I realize the issue we’re trying to fix. I’m sure that everyone has heard of the classic Steve Jobs allegory to Henry Ford’s “Model T” analogy, but not everyone seems to take it into heart. You can go on over 100 problem interviews and still get nowhere. The statement is true to where users will never tell you what their pain point is upfront. Most times, they don’t know themselves so It’s up to you as a founder or product designer to read between the lines and put the pieces together yourself.
2. Don’t Be Stubborn: I know that when you start your own product or service, criticism gets difficult. As Elon Musk stated in an interview as advice for budding entrepreneurs: “Always assume that you’re wrong” because in truth, you may just be. When starting a product we run off of assumptions that we as founders made, not facts. That being said, the more you talk to your golden users, you may discover things that can surprise you. The greatest technique of sales that I learned is to not talk, but listen. Again, the goal is to let the users vent and ONLY rebuttal statements if you are absolutely sure you can solve them. There is no shame in saying “Wow, I didn’t even think of that. Let me get back to you when we come up with something for it!”. Despite all of the research you may have done with Google, you’ll find that the real world is quite unorthodox. With that, it’s best to adopt the mindset that you are wrong most of the time and every version you make is less-wrong.
3. Tighten Your Learning Loop: In Lean methodology, there is a process that constantly pushes founders to test their assumptions. I won’t go over the actual process but the idea is iteration through your solutions. One issue I had along with other founders was that our learning loop was extremely long. Luckily, we discovered this as a flaw in our production early on. Remember that when in a start-up, time may be your only asset. So sitting around waiting for answers would be one of the biggest reasons your product/service would go down in flames. We noticed that time was extremely valuable to our initial users. That being said, we made a list of questions that wasn’t only worth their time but also gave us sufficient data to bring back and study. It’s pretty easy to differentiate what constitutes to good questions which are two simple questions therein: Did the question spark conversation? and could I have gotten this same information online or in a book? After we listened and observed, we came up with more theories; some proved to work while a lot of them didn’t go so well. Either way, whatever we did led to an increase of engagement with our users and more importantly helped us progress at a faster rate.
4. Start Really Small, Again: Jamout would never be in its position if it weren’t for the awesome support of our early users and partners. As I have said earlier, Jamout caught a lot of interest in it’s first push. Again, we only had about 10 users just testing the platform upon launch. By the time we hit the pivot of what made Jamout what it is today, we only had a handful of artists that we were working with. Thankfully, those artists were gracious enough to deal with our constant questions and requests. In turn, we did our best to treat them like gold. If your start up is where Jamout was at, then you have only a handful of users to work with, which is totally okay. As a matter of fact, it’s ideal. You want to be able to work closely with a few users at a time for a plethora of reasons. Two of them being 1) Easy to maintain testing logistics 2) You’re able to really control the starting point of your growth. Believe it or not, growing too fast can kill you just as much as not growing at all. If you’re in a position of exponential growth, you want to be sure that your product is right. Try testing it out with 5 people and ask them for references to who they know that would be great to test it next. Eventually, your product will grow on it’s own. As a pro-tip, early adopters will be your main source of knowledge on your product. Be sure to tell them that everything they said is under deep consideration, as it should be.
5. Rethink Timeline: We’re human, we have limits. Another reason why Jamout sucked at the beginning was because we timed it very poorly, which affects you in the long run. It’s great to think that you and your team have enough resources to pump out a functional & satisfying product in a Weekend but it sure does bite you back when it actually plays out in reality. People who have made startups before always understood that there are appropriate timelines for each company(i.e: New Nuclear Tech Company — 8 Years, Uber For Toilets — 8 Weeks). It’s important to understand where you are in relation to the industry you want to work in and the scope of your project. Then, navigate your resources accordingly. Even after testing, always let your users know when you readjust the small goals and metrics when experimenting. Keep in mind that although time is of the essence, it’s important for a team to stay on the same page throughout this entire process. Though the small missed weekly deadlines may seem like nothing, they add up later down the line. We’ve learned that holding weekly meetings by either phone, slack or video and bi-weekly in-person meetings seemed to be just about right for us to communicate and hit our deadlines effectively, especially with the flat management style we have.
6. Be Transparent: Whether founders admit it or not, breaking anything but good news to people is a tough job. So if for whatever reason your product didn’t go as well as planned and the team needs to reassess it’s situation, it’s best to let everyone know what’s happening; investors and users alike. This is just as important as being transparent with your team for early stage companies. Communication is huge in general but more so when your product is not performing to it’s expectations. Understandably so, founders are usually afraid to tell the people who have supported them that they have failed at something. Though it may be true that some may get upset, there are two truths that lie therein: 1. It’s kind of expected that startups will screw up at some point. 2. As long as you never let it happen again and you have a plan to turn this loss to a gain, you & your company will be fine. For those who do get upset, taking responsibility comes with the territory in being a founder.
7. LOVE The Problem, Not Solution: This piece of advice goes against most other resources online when learning about how to start a business. Empirically, I found this approach to be correct. When Jamout started we were a social network, but made the change to a full management tool for musicians instead. How did we come to those changes? Because we had an obsession over the actual issue at hand rather than thinking our first version of Jamout is gold. This idea sticks anywhere from major pivots to small features, building stages or scaling. What this will force you and your team to do is be flexible with the given options. Remember that only the greatest companies get that way by innovating around a problem. As a small start-up, this is probably the only thing you can really do at this point.

Jamout: Version One

Now, I know that this article may make it seem like startups are an endless cycle of iterative improvement, but that is because it is. As daunting as it seems, there is a silver lining. Even though this process sticks, the motivation changes as your company grows and progresses. Right now, what I’m describing to you is Jamout’s beginning, which is highly focused on building a product that fills the market need. However, the second phase that every startup goes through is this same iteration process, but focused more on growth. If you find your team discussing more on the latter, then congratulate yourself! It’s tough to get at that point.

Jamout Version 1.1

Because of how far we’ve come with being as diligent as possible, Jamout came from a simple artist connection website to a full out management platform to help artists & collectives handle their entire brand. At this point, my team and I look back in retrospect and appreciate the process but still remember that we have a long way to go. It’s important to embrace the small steps that you will take to make your product great. Remember that when you’re building a product, you’re also making a promise to people who plan on using your solution to fix their issues. It’s your duty, as a founder, to make it as awesome as possible FOR THEM. Also, keep in mind that this is a more of a process than it is an indicator of progress for a startup. Know that your product will always be lacking in something or will always need to be improved, which is okay. Truly, perfection is overrated; the priority is the users and making them happy. If your product works well and makes your user’s life easier, don’t be afraid to ship it out there. Trust in the process and you’ll do just fine!

Special thanks to the Jamout artists: Leon Cruz, Nate Guinto, Sean Rynhard, Sana Tolai, Manu Sosoatu, James Portillo, Rodney Manalo, Brian Dublin, Jeff Chazer and many more as well as our partners at Studio Circle Recordings, Resollective & Deptiv Media. Without you guys, we wouldn’t have gotten this far!