I stayed at my company for about five years and spent all my time on one project. It was a machine—not exactly a robot—that could help people connect across the world. Someone could stay at home, control the machine through an app, and see video from another place. You could be in a Chinese home and watch a show in the United States. I thought it was very interesting, so I gave it my time.
There were many difficult technical details. We overcame them. The video could travel through the network, and the machine could be controlled by the app. We finally showed the device on the web. Then one year passed, and two years, and three years. No one wanted to buy it.
The painful part is that we designed the feature before we really analyzed the market. We did not collect users’ thoughts. We did not even know whether the machine was useful. My friends and family probably did not want to hurt me, so they told me it was useful. But they were not real users or customers. I had no one giving me the truth that it was not useful.
Finally, we will close the company. Now, when someone wants to design something new or start a company, I want to tell them: analyze the market first. Listen to what users want. Know whether your features really help people, and what the main value is. We solved the technical problems. We just did not first solve the question of whether anyone needed what we had made.
I stayed at my company for about five years and spent all my time on one project. It was a machine—not exactly a robot—that could help people connect across the world. Someone could stay at home, control the machine through an app, and see video from another place. You could be in a Chinese home and watch a show in the United States. I thought it was very interesting, so I gave it my time.
There were many difficult technical details. We overcame them. The video could travel through the network, and the machine could be controlled by the app. We finally showed the device on the web. Then one year passed, and two years, and three years. No one wanted to buy it.
The painful part is that we designed the feature before we really analyzed the market. We did not collect users’ thoughts. We did not even know whether the machine was useful. My friends and family probably did not want to hurt me, so they told me it was useful. But they were not real users or customers. I had no one giving me the truth that it was not useful.
Finally, we will close the company. Now, when someone wants to design something new or start a company, I want to tell them: analyze the market first. Listen to what users want. Know whether your features really help people, and what the main value is. We solved the technical problems. We just did not first solve the question of whether anyone needed what we had made.
