"Getting traffic is really really difficult. We completely underestimated how difficult it would be, largely because I’d never had a problem with it in the past."
For anyone else building a startup without a concrete plan to get traffic, remember this post. Getting traffic will ALWAYS take more time and money than you think. The "if we build it they will come" mentality is a recipe for failure.
This a thousand times. I understand that not all traffic is created equally, but there's no value in no traffic. Technology problems can be surmounted. Solving the traffic problem is hard.
I think a lot of startups get that mentality that what they are building is good enough that people will just come. Also many startups don't want to have to pay for traffic and are banking on launch publicity to kickstart things.
I think though if you have the money, or you can at least break even on the users you are paying for it is going to give you a much better start than just hoping people learn about the site from press/ word of mouth.
Comments
"Getting traffic is really really difficult. We completely underestimated how difficult it would be, largely because I’d never had a problem with it in the past."
For anyone else building a startup without a concrete plan to get traffic, remember this post. Getting traffic will ALWAYS take more time and money than you think. The "if we build it they will come" mentality is a recipe for failure.
This a thousand times. I understand that not all traffic is created equally, but there's no value in no traffic. Technology problems can be surmounted. Solving the traffic problem is hard.
I think a lot of startups get that mentality that what they are building is good enough that people will just come. Also many startups don't want to have to pay for traffic and are banking on launch publicity to kickstart things.
I think though if you have the money, or you can at least break even on the users you are paying for it is going to give you a much better start than just hoping people learn about the site from press/ word of mouth.