From Side Project to Full-Fledged Platform: Lessons from Building Modeldraw
Modeldraw started as a side hobby of one passionate developer and has since grown into a full-fledged diagramming platform. We officially launched this spring, and the journey has been a masterclass in hard-won lessons. I'd like to share a few of the biggest takeaways and, in return, would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on our journey so far. My Hard-Won Lessons: Your Users Will Tell You What to Build (and What to Fix): I quickly learned that user feedback is invaluable. The users who actually tried to use the app for their work revealed our biggest friction points. Listening to them has been the single most effective way to improve the product and mitigate our user churn. Marketing is Harder Than Coding: For a technical person, marketing is by far more difficult than building the product itself. The results aren't predictable; they require constant testing and iteration to find what works. This has been a humbling but essential lesson. Paid Ads are a Boost, But ...