Hello people! #12Months12Startups is a challenge I decided to undertake in order to practice the principle I hear a lot "fail fast, learn fast". The challenge is to create a SAAS every month until one of them becomes profitable, I think it'd be a nice learning experience overall, even the failures count as learning. That said, here is the first failure of the year and what I've learned
Month 1, My Attempt At Joining The AI Train (https://www.practici.ca) :
I came up with the idea after discussing with a classmate how hard it is to study considering most of our classes don't offer past papers and a lot of study guides always recommend using past papers as an aid, and so Practici was born. Practici helps students convert PDFs into test questions efficiently, allowing easier studying and practice through the use of active learning. After getting only 3 upvotes on ProductHunt, only 2 runs of the trial version, 37 impressions with 0 clicks as per Google, I've decided that Practici has failed to be a profitable venture. Here's what I've learned in creating it:
1) Building something you want and something a lot of other people want and are willing to pay for, are 2 different things
2) B2C is seemingly harder than B2B
3) Marketing matters, your product won't sell itself. I tried promoting Practici via the GetStudying subreddit and got banned a couple hours later, despite the post getting a lot of views, nobody used the product (I look at API usage to gauge if people try and generate questions).
The ban deterred me from posting on other relevant subreddits such as r/college and so I went and posted a simple TikTok showing a straightforward product demo, the post got 66 views, no usage, no signups. I tweeted about the MVP, got 200+ views, not a lot of interest either, posted the semi-finished product, even less views.
4) I learned about hosting and a bit about Stripe and feel more confident in using it for future projects.
5) Learned about TailwindCSS and TailwindComponents since I suck at design
In conclusion, I failed the first month of my own challenge but at the end of the day, I made the decision to build something I thought would be useful and in doing so I learned a lot. I must say, it feels good to have actually executed something rather than spending all my energy thinking about doing something. If anybody else is interested in doing this challenge, starting at month 2, just post your progress here or on Twitter with the hashtag #12months12startups. Thanks for reading! All the best if you choose to undergo this challenge too. I have a part 2 of this story which I describe I got Practici up to 60+ users currently
Top comments (1)
woah this is actually such a cool idea!! i mean, even if you fail, you've just learned SO MUCH. and doing it for 12 months straight would require so much commitment BUT IT SOUNDS SO EXCITING!!! i can't wait for part 2!!