>The vendor abandoned their technology, and our generous free services attracted people who proved hard to convert to paying customers.
This line rings very true. At my company our first product was offered for free. We had thousands of users, but after months and months of work we realized only a small fraction of our user base was going to be converted into paying customers. (Like OP, I began to feel burnt out at this point)
When we launched our second product, we realized we needed to answer the question: "Will people pay for what we build?" as fast as possible. We charged users to pre-order our alpha and when we realized people were willing to pay for it, we poured ourselves into the product.
I think many founders are scared to ask for money (We were). But if you're building a product that you would eventually like to charge people for, you really have to force yourself to ask those hard questions as soon as possible.
Don't forget the other half of this statement: I've always been concerned with basing a product on a locked-in technology from an unproven vendor.
And vendors do shut down. I've seen it happen many times. Sometimes they get eaten up by a "bigger fish" that wants to use their technology internally, and they then shut down the external service you were so fond of.
Author here: In our case the vendor was very proven, but the tech and their approach to it was not. What actually happened is a bit more complicated than _abandoned_, but those words got the point across without delving into the irrelevant.
Needless to say, I am _very_ leery now of the motives of open-source products that aren't run like open-source projects.
This line rings very true. At my company our first product was offered for free. We had thousands of users, but after months and months of work we realized only a small fraction of our user base was going to be converted into paying customers. (Like OP, I began to feel burnt out at this point)
When we launched our second product, we realized we needed to answer the question: "Will people pay for what we build?" as fast as possible. We charged users to pre-order our alpha and when we realized people were willing to pay for it, we poured ourselves into the product.
I think many founders are scared to ask for money (We were). But if you're building a product that you would eventually like to charge people for, you really have to force yourself to ask those hard questions as soon as possible.