Uncloud: A retrospective

status
dsq_thread_id
When went well
  • browser parrot
    • scratched our own itch and gave us an initial product to use to grab attention
    • Show HN was successful, 150 downloads
      • while HN success is unpredictable and likely un-repeatable, this was still a win and something we didn’t do (!) for pairwise.
    • Discord link on the website was key to start community building
      • Discord > Slack unless your market is already all over slack
  • uncloud page directed to our existing discord
  • featured a form in order to get the download
    • ask your beta users for info. that’s the price of admission
Meh
  • user testing (via usertesting.com, i think)
    • we did not find a way to make these insights actionable
    • we were not systematic (should have prob read the mom test first)
Didn’t go well
  • we could have done so much more on the marketing front
  • we never made use of the emails collected from our beta signup form
    • founder disagreement was increasing as these efforts were paying off, thus we didn’t take advantage
  • cofounder fit
    • nik didn’t want to do venture backed. this could have been sussed out MUCH earlier
    • lack of ‘trust’
      • not in the sense of cofounder is going to intentionally harm the company, but…
      • in the sense that I didn’t trust Nik’s product thinking. maybe trust isn’t the right word. I thought the decisions he made around product were not good, and thus wanted full decision making for myself. however, that would alienate nik and ruin his productivity + motivation
      • by ‘trust’ i mean whatever is necesary for a disagree and commit strategy to work. if we disagreed i didnt’ want to commit to his ideas and he didn’t want to commit to mine