Lessons Learned from the rise and fall of Sonar

by christophe971 • 13 years ago

65 5 13 years ago

calinet6• 13 years ago

On an initial read this sounds like a lot of hot air, but it has some good points.

"*Hint: If you did, you would already have traction." -- what does that even mean? You're trying to sound cool but you just sound ambiguous.

"If you build it, they will come (and pay)." Um, no, not always.

"Growth is the only thing that matters if you are building a social network. Period." -- there was a better HN post today, that was completely solid. Read, compare, take what you will. http://insideintercom.io/if-its-important-dont-hack-it/

"Media and social networking companies should double down on analytics to find, observe, and build for actual user behavior." - Analytics, eh? Sure, you can dive through numbers all you want, but how about user research that's designed to actually tell you this? All you need is 10 people trying to solve the same problem and a well-made survey. Once you have a product, do the same thing and see how well it solves it. This will tell you more than numbers.

"Avoid bad relationships like the plague but when you inevitably find yourself in a difficult partnership, don’t waste precious energy wailing against it." -- Couldn't agree more. If the partnership is too volatile (you'll know), fix it fast or jump ship.

"We started Sonar with a belief that everyone has the potential to be amazing and that technology can unlock that potential." Well, I think I see your problem. How about starting with something more concrete? (I kid, I kid.)

Lots of good takeaways. Most of them are very specific to your case, and a lot of it is emotionally charged. It's an interesting read as a case study, but I think you're too close to it for the experience to bear real wisdom yet. Revisit in 6 months, a year, two years, and see how you look back on it. Your perspective will constantly evolve and change. Never ceases to amaze me.

It's like a bad relationship—you can't see it from close up. While you're in deep it seems like you belong there and have to keep working through it, but when you leave you just can't believe how many signs there were early on and throughout the experience that should have led you to do something differently, or just start fresh. But if you find the right person (or start with them) then it's a whole new world—it becomes easy, and the problems you worry about are the right ones. I think that's the main factor of success. Finding the right people, having the right idea, and (perhaps most importantly) knowing yourself—all at the same time.

leggo2m• 13 years ago

I thought it was a frank and useful post-mortem. I learned something.

JoeDoyle23• 13 years ago

There was a lot of good take aways from this. I have to say the one thing that I didn't really see was how they actually planned to make money. I know there's the hope of being the next Facebook or Twitter, but couldn't much of that been pushed through if you were turning a profit or generating any revenue?

wellboy• 13 years ago

This is why social discovery doesn't work the way it is right now. How to make it work?

1. Solve a problem to be a pain killer

2. Leverage an existing community to reduce critical mass and make your users fall in love with your app

3. Lazzer focus

ternaryoperator• 13 years ago

I'm surprised that after learning all those lessons, he still writes: "We started Sonar with a belief that everyone has the potential to be amazing and that technology can unlock that potential." And doesn't take away any lesson from that.

Building your business on making everyone amazing through technology is a conceit. Most people I know have no desire to become "amazing." They want to make ends meet, they want to be good parents to their children, they want to make the world a little bit better. Being amazing is nowhere on their list of priorities.

Maybe he should focus on a start-up that solves problems people face in everyday life and do that with technology.

Lessons Learned from the rise and fall of Sonar

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