#AppDevelopment #StartupFailures #EntrepreneurshipStruggles
📅 How I Spent a Year Building an App and Failed
As an experienced web developer, I’ve always been passionate about bringing my ideas to life through app development. But as I embarked on a journey to build a new platform called Taskwer, I encountered numerous challenges and setbacks that ultimately led to its failure. Here’s a detailed account of my experience and the valuable lessons I learned along the way.
## The Problem: Identifying a Need
Two years ago, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and escalating inflation, I observed a growing need for individuals to seek additional sources of income to cover their financial burdens. Existing platforms like TaskRabbit and GoFundMe were dominated by established service providers, leaving little room for newcomers to gain traction. This inspired me to conceptualize Taskwer – a unique platform where users could offer their services to their local communities in exchange for monetary support.
## Building Taskwer: Features and Development
With the vision of Taskwer in mind, I dedicated a significant amount of time to develop its fundamental features. The platform’s campaign builder allowed users to create compelling stories, set funding goals, and showcase their skills through images and videos. I also prioritized the inclusion of a cash payment system to ensure swift transactions without any fees. However, despite the initial positive feedback from friends and acquaintances, I encountered challenges in reaching my target audience due to my limited social network.
## Lessons Learned: Reflecting on Failure
### Ideas are Seductive
Embracing a vision for our products is invigorating, but it’s imperative to validate and seek feedback to ensure alignment with the needs of our target audience.
### Launching is Not that Hard
Procrastination in launching a product often stems from self-doubt, when in reality, a Minimum Viable Product is sufficient to initiate user feedback and refine the offering.
### People are Important
Despite the challenges of engaging with unfamiliar individuals, the value of connecting with others is paramount in the entrepreneurial journey.
## Final Thoughts
The journey of building Taskwer was fraught with challenges and ultimately led to its closure due to the inability to reach its intended audience. However, the valuable lessons learned have enriched my perspective as an entrepreneur, reinforcing the importance of validation, timely launches, and the significance of human connections. The failure of Taskwer has not deterred my passion for developing innovative solutions, but instead, has equipped me with a deeper understanding of the complexities of entrepreneurship.
In conclusion, while the failure of Taskwer may seem disheartening, it has provided invaluable insights that will undoubtedly shape my future endeavors in app development, and remain an essential part of my entrepreneurial journey.
Why did you choose such a weird name? Also why would want to limit the people to only those you know when that’s such a small pool of people? Capitalism is about turning selfish motives into good so there’s no shame in just catering to people’s selfishness imo as money for service is simple and not complicated. Anyway thanks for sharing.
did you put more effort into this post then the app?
A lot of times the hardest part of an app like this is to just keep going, I launched [Nimbus](https://nimbuseditor.com) and had 0 users for 2 months and I was so discouraged I almost gave up. I kept pushing on it though and making improvements and I slowly got more and more users and now it has over 1000 users!
The hardest part of this entire journey is not the idea, the execution or anything else, it’s persistence. Keep going!
I enjoyed your post. Thanks for this
I think you should consider selling the code somewhere. I am not sure where, but i am sure some would be social platform could salvage your code!
Can share your app ? I want to check it out .
>After a few months of development, I felt it was time to talk to people…
If only you had switched these two steps.
As a business guy, I think the trouble is all in this line: “…and the word would spread organically.”
So it’s like kickstarter, but instead of giving a product + perks, people pay for your dream/goal, and you give them ‘work’ in return?
I do like the concept, I see the use case more with familymembers. Little niece/nephew wants to go to city x (schooltrip), needs money to go, offers to mow lawn for every 25$ donated, washing car for every 10$ and so on…
If it’s well integrated into socials, like the facebook birthday money request thing…
The website is amazing! Altough I understand the withholding from potential user. It made me feel like it is mandatory to “share my goal”. What if I just want to make money? Personally I would focus more on the service offering side of things, dont let people put in a reason why they “need” the money and also dont add goals to a campaign. Make it some kind of gig finding app. What I would recommend is pivot more to the businessplan of Fiverr but find a mistake in their plan and simply make it better.
Just leave out the “why do you need the money” part.
Here’s my POV. You assumed there’s value in this idea without actually validating it before you start development and that’s a huge no no. Your users is your lifeblood and how you will take your product from step A to step B. Without that feedback it’s basically only being validated by yourself which is pretty fool hardy imo. You should have found a user, test the product scenario on the most basic ugly MVP that will take you 1 week or less to build. If that user finds value then continue to build on top of the idea. I cannot personally imagine building an idea without validating the need first and it seems like you skipped this part of the product iteration process in full.
How long ago did you actually launch the app? Acquiring users isn’t easy and takes a long time but you should keep trying.
Also, I saw a few people comment on the name. I don’t mind it actually
Or sell it
I’m one of those ‘turned to Taskrabbit in Covid to help with finances guys’ and I think there are a few flaws with this to be honest.
One – clients often don’t care about the intention. When I started, I didn’t have a car. Not a problem, I live in a city and have a push bike – so I pushed the green angle of this, and no parking requirements. Do you know how many, out of hundreds of customers cared? None. Well, one did. About 0.3% of my customer base at the time. If you did a survey, I’d bet more people would *say* they care, but they just want an efficient service.
Two. As a tasker, it doesn’t sound like your platform provides a great solution to ongoing need. My bills are monthly, so a fixed fundraising goal doesn’t work. Leads me to…
Three. Yes, building up from the bottom is bloody tough. However, once you have built up, it means I have a reasonably reliable income stream that I can adjust as needed.
Four – to be honest, as a tasker, I’d actually be a tiny bit embarrassed to use your platform. I get the goodwill aspect and it’s not asking for handouts, but I’m proud of my success I’ve built on my own – and even though your strategy has the best of intention I just think it’s a tiny bit demeaning in a way to say ‘Hey, Giles is poor but maybe you could let him put up a shelf for you so he can buy some food’. You don’t mean it like that, clients wouldn’t see it like that, but that’s how it would feel to me.
Your initial problem statement sounds decent – existing platforms *do* heavily slant towards established taskers (although Taskrabbit are trying to move away from this) and I do think there is a space for a platform that focussed more on hyper local tasks, neighbours helping neighbours for some extra money, but I think in its current incarnation it’s trying to do a bit too much. One way around the ‘no tasks, no reviews pit’ a lot of taskers find themselves in would be to not have *quantity* based metrics publicly showing – so show an aggregated review score but not have how many reviews that is, show their most recent 3 reviews but no more, that kind of thing, so that somebody with 3 tasks under their belt is on a level playing field with somebody who has done 300. Maybe even use AI to summarise all the reviews on a profile to an aggregate review (look at what Amazon are now doing – when it says ‘customers love yadayadayada’) and hide the individual ones.
The big problem is though, most consumers that want a task doing, primarily just care about getting it done. The rest is all secondary.
Just my rambling thoughts though.
Having read your post and all of the comments and taken a look at your site, I really think you should pivot to people raising money for mission trips. These are generally high school or college aged students. They have a specific dollar amount in mind. They won’t feel embarrassed by being on here asking for money or the opportunity to work for payment. If you could partner with one local church that is planning a mission trip, you would automatically get 20-30 users. And some churches plan them every year.
Another angle is to go after kids wanting to go to summer camp. My daughters baked and sold cinnamon rolls last spring to pay for summer camp. We talked to coworkers but also went door to door in our neighborhood. We did cash or checks, but could have just as easily used a service like yours to process payments. The camp they go to is affiliated with our church, so once again, getting one partnership could produce hundreds of users. Partner with a camp, and they will do the marketing for you. If they are telling their campers parents that this service is available, they could market it like crazy. That way maybe grandma puts in $20 towards the cost of camp, rather than the parents paying all of it. Similar to above, there is no shame in asking for donations or the ability to work, as everybody believes kids should be able to attend summer camp. Good luck.
Good lessons here!
Been on the same boat with ecommerce marketplace ideas. Also introvert programmer that tends to keep idea to self / keep coding more features til it’s perfect.
2-sided marketplaces are the hardest – chicken and egg problem.
I have now moved onto simpler SaaS projects so it’s quicker to build and fail rather than spending months/years on something too big to fail.
Also start learning some branding/marketing basics and actually trying to reach out to the potential users in a helpful/free way rather than “sign up and pay and you won’t regret it” mentality.
Your transparency about the challenges faced in developing Taskwer is refreshing. It’s a reminder that the journey of entrepreneurship is filled with valuable lessons. Wishing you the best in your future endeavors.
Good on you for sharing this experience. Please leave your post up.
At least you enjoy making apps so even though it failed, you got to spend time doing what you enjoy which is the real success IMO.