For every one of these stories though, is there a 'we pushed too hard too soon, the product wasn't ready, people were already turned off it by the time it was'?
This is the whole point. You go out there and get lambasted by customers so you know what to improve upon. If you sit in the shadows tinkering until its 'perfect,' it will only be perfect to you. Whereas if you are iterating against customer and stakeholder feedback, you will end up with a refined product fit for market that may even not look like what you initially expected the perfect product to look like.
Coca-Cola’s New Coke may be an example of this, though New Coke may have actually been the best marketing campaign possible for Coke Classic.
Crystal Pepsi was another example. Budgets couldn’t overcome the fact it tasted like nutmeg.
Modern era, I worked for a startup that got national media coverage before it was ready. I’m not convinced it was the right product and I know the founder could have spent way more time talking to customers in the ideation stage. But national media coverage created some bad months. I remember a several week stretch with more than 100 support requests in queue.
Fun times, in the Dwarf Fortress sense of the term.
> For every one of these stories though, is there a 'we pushed too hard too soon, the product wasn't ready, people were already turned off it by the time it was'?
In gaming industry you can't swing a dead cat without hitting one.
Anthem, Marvel Avengers, Fallout 76, that game with 2042 at the end, Amiga CD32, Ouya. A lot of games as a service(and for most of them you pay upfront and afterwards). Everything is so much hyped to be the best thing since sliced bread.
What I mean is if it's not ready enough, not a good MVP essentially, and then people who see it in that stage might not be inclined to try it again later when you're still pushing it but it is more developed enough now.
I get your point and provided a couple of examples of failed products. But there’s always another path. Depending on your personality, one approach is to take the people who complain and level with them. Yeah, this product sucks. It’s brand new. But does the problem exist? Is it important enough to you to want to solve?
If so, how can the founding team save the relationship? If someone is motivated enough to tell you your product sucks, they’re potentially great beta users!!
Yeah that's the lean startup model. You intentionally find people who are early adopters and offer to bring them into the beta to improve the software. Its a win win situation because the feedback gives them what they want, and gives you a marketable product.
There is always a risk that the market won't like it. If you want a steady paycheque then entrepreneurship isn't for you (or isn't for you right now).
That may be true for massive companies like Google with huge exposure. But if you are some startup no-one has heard of then you are going to be doing really well if 0.1% of your potential market has even heard of you in the first year, let alone tried your product.
You don't need to start with a $1M+ Super Bowl Ad. Find 10 people, call them, learn what they need, educate them about your offer, take their feedback back to your product. The earlier you can start that process the better, without exception.
I'm not sure 'call 10 people' is the up-thread intended marketing push though? Maybe it is, but certainly not the way I read it (and hence framed my response).
It's a start. You start with 10 calls. You learn from them and build an email to send to 100 people. You book more calls and then take the feedback and put it into a social media post and get 1000 more. Then you take what you learn there and turn it into an ad to show to 10K sets of eyeballs. The up-thread focus is on starting this process early.
