Ask HN: We're going in circles, chasing shiny objects, now what?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1573196I'm working for a start up in which we started over a year ago building something that everyone was very excited about. From what we saw people wanted to use it, and were very excited about what it was going to bring. We launched it a few months later, and got mild attention. We stayed under the radar as we onboarded people, however it seemed like people would come, look around and leave.
Now we have over engineered as we tried to guess the market, with very little feedback. We have gotten to the point at one part we uncommented a line of code and brought a 'new' feature back. Basically we're now going in circles.
We admit the design of the product wasn't spectacular, however the very small feedback/interaction it would seem that the demand just isn't there, at least in the quantity we want it to be.
We listened to some potential customers and built their feature/product however after it was built few used it, despite it was what they said they wanted and worked as requested.
Now it seems we are just chasing after anything that seems to have a hope with the customers, and not keeping focus long enough.
We're at the crossroads where it feels like if we stay focused on our original focus, we might miss what we should adapt to after seeing the market more in depth.
Have you been in this situation? Do you have suggestions?