Spent 3 months building a perfect MVP. Launched. Found out in 3 days that nobody wants this product. Should've tested in 3 hours.

🚀 Startup & Businessby mvp_graveyard · 4w ago

▸ What I did

Built a tool that helps remote teams do async video standup updates. Beautiful UI, smooth video recording, automatic transcription, Slack integration. 3 months of solo development. Launched on Product Hunt.

▸ What I expected

Remote work is huge. Everyone complains about too many meetings. Expected 200+ signups from Product Hunt.

▸ What actually happened

Product Hunt: 45 upvotes, 67 signups, 4 people who actually recorded a video. Follow-up emails: the unanimous feedback was "we already use Slack threads for async updates" or "Loom already does this." The problem I solved either doesn't exist, is already solved, or isn't painful enough to switch tools for.

▸ What I've tried so far

Pivoted the messaging. Tried targeting specific niches. Offered the product free to 5 teams — 2 tried it, both stopped after week 1 because "it felt like homework."

Progress Updates (0)

0 / 3000

2 Replies

second_time_founder · 4w ago✓ the fix

"3 months building to discover a truth I could've found in 3 hours" — welcome to the most expensive lesson in startups. For your next project: before writing a single line of code, make a landing page describing the product. Drive $50 of ads to it. If nobody clicks "Sign Up for Early Access," the idea is dead and you saved 3 months. This isn't theoretical — I've killed 4 ideas this way and saved myself from building 4 things nobody wanted.

buildinpublic_jo · 4w ago

"It felt like homework" from your test users is actually the most valuable feedback in this post. Async video standups ADD work to people's day. Live standups, for all their flaws, are at least DONE when you walk out of the meeting. Recording a video, editing it (even slightly), and posting it is more effort than joining a Zoom for 10 minutes. The product solves a problem by creating a different problem. That's a hard market.

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✗ stuck

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