If you're working on a productivity app or thinking about starting one, I would like to offer my first-hand experience. I have also spoken to quite a few founders in this space. And their experiences resonate as well.

I spent months working on Rumin , a tool that I had thought would amplify intelligence, accelerate intellectual discoveries, and unleash creative potentials for humankind . Now I have put it in maintenance mode. I failed. And I'm ready to move on.

I don't wish to find excuses or blame the circumstances. After all, failures tend to be overdetermined . But the challenges from my experience can hopefully be instructive to others.

For many people, developing a productivity tool can be a dangerous waste of time. Dangerous partly because it checks so many boxes of conventional startup advice. Dangerous because it is usually a sexy problem. Dangerous because it can take a long time before you realize this isn't going anywhere.

If this feels overly pessimistic, it's because I'm playing a counter-melody to balance your likely overconfidence in your idea. It rarely hurts to consider other perspectives .



"Solve a Problem You Have"

It is now part of conventional wisdom that your startup should solve a real problem, preferably one that you have . This great advice in many cases. It is more practical than building a solution and then looking for a problem.

Your productivity app will pass that test, easily.

For any given workflow, there are bound to be parts that feel clunky to you. And the more nitpicky you go, the more "problems" you will notice.

But here is a hidden pitfall — other people may not care about that same problem to the same extent you do. And chances are, you would have a hard time reaching others who feel the same way.

Once you have a working-ish solution for yourself, bringing that clunky solution to others can be harder than you think.



"Pick an Existing Market"

Many people advocate starting with a market that already exists because it ensures that you are not working on a made-up problem. This is great advice, especially for founders who are bootstrapping .

Your idea checks this box too.

"Productivity software" is a huge market, with billions of annual revenue and tech giants playing an active role in it. Note-taking, to-do list, documentation, calendar, personal CRM etc.

There appears to be a real need. And all you have to do is to carve out a piece for yourself, right?



User Expectations in a Competitive Market

Hmm, how do I sugarcoat this? Competition in productivity software is f**king intense. There is little barrier to entry — a to-do list app is often a tutorial example for beginners learning to program.

Most users expect free apps. And these free apps are good. Damn good. Like feature-rich and polished good. Like 10x better than your crappy prototype good.

Many of these apps do have a "Freemium" model. But even then, they don't charge much. For instance, bookmark managers tend to charge $2-3/month. To make just $5,000/month in revenue at that price point, you would need 1500-2500 paying customers. With a freemium model and 5% of your users paying, that's 30,000-50,000 users.

I don't know about you, but getting thousands of users isn't trivial. It is not impossible to monetize. But that can be a big challenge unless you have a robust way to grow, or already have an audience.



Switching Cost

There is always a switching cost for someone to adopt a new tool. But in the case of productivity apps, the switching cost is even more pronounced.

Almost everyone has a note-taking app and to-do list of some form, and a workflow they use them in. You are introducing a new tool that takes time to understand, time to adopt, time to migrate from the old way, and time to master.

For someone to switch over from their existing tool, their perceived gains need to far exceed the perceived cost. Unfortunately, this is usually not the case. This takes us to our next points.



User Retention

You may find that getting sign-ups isn't too difficult. People may sign up to try it out based on a flashy demo or well-articulated promise on your landing page.

But getting them to stay can be an order of magnitude harder.

When your users don't come back, it can be due to a whole host of reasons. Perhaps your product is not as good. Perhaps your targeting needs to be narrowed. Perhaps your users just don't get how your app is a brilliant new solution. You may have to iterate both the product and the target audience.

Another factor that affects retention is that your initial users likely the early adopters who will try an unproven new product. These people seek novelty and an edge to get ahead. But the same reason they signed up to try your app will be the same reason they will leave you for the next shiny object.



Unique Insights & Table Stakes

If you are starting a productivity app, presumably you have a unique insight about why your approach is better. It might be your superhuman level of craftsmanship, an ingenious approach to UX, or what have you.

But then due to the expectations mentioned in previous sections, your unique insight is often not enough. In order to bet on your insight, you likely need table stakes — functionalities that are essential to a workflow, that all of your competitors have, and that your users expect.

By all means, release a light first version of your product to a specific audience. Focus ruthlessly. Stay disciplined. And keep things simple. If you can do it, more power to you. But in practice, it may not be so easy.



User Education/Onboarding

You may be introducing new concepts, metaphors, or a new approach altogether. If you are presenting a novel solution to a problem, it will take time for users to understand and adopt it.

People won't use your innovative solution unless they first understand it. And if it takes too long for them to get to the "aha" moment, they will just leave. It is much easier to just leave (and never come back), than to power through the confusing mess (and let's face it — non-existent or outdated tutorials).

To add to the challenge, productivity tools tend to be by nature generic and horizontal. They are "versatile". They are "all-in-one". This can make your communication and marketing extra tricky.

From articulating the unique value to getting new users up to speed and form habits, user education turned out to be harder than I had expected.



Bag of Doorknobs

If you're not careful, there is a natural tendency for your initially minimal prototype to sprawl. It can sprawl into "a bag of doorknobs" — loosely-related products and features that don’t add up to a coherent whole.

This is common partly because cool new ideas often come from aimlessly tinkering, or dogfooding your prototype for long enough.

Another force that pulls you in this direction is "iterating based on user feedback". After trying the first version of your product, your users will likely tell you that it's missing feature X, or how it would be really useful to integrate with product Y. And it doesn't help that you're likely trying to "move fast" and make decisions on the fly.

Next thing you know, you end up with a byzantine product. Beware of that. Stay disciplined.



Spamming Your Friends Isn't a Distribution Channel

Your friends may try your app and politely give you feedback, along with a few words of encouragement. But they are most likely not your users. Besides, it's annoying to keep pestering them to use your clunky app.

Similarly, posting on Hacker News or launching on Product Hunt isn't much of a distribution strategy either. These days, it is closer to a lottery. If you rely on this, you are banking on hope. And hope is not a strategy.

A more robust approach may be to narrow down your target audience and know where to reach them. Or maybe invest in content marketing and SEO in advance. Or maybe build a community or audience. Just don't count on spamming your friends, or on the one launch.



Parting Words

There are a few high-profile examples of productivity apps that really took off — Notion, Roam Research, and like came to mind. Hats off to those who pulled it off. And my condolences for the many more corpses of now-defunct productivity projects.

If you're anything like me, you would nod to the above points but do it anyway. This time it's different, you might say. Your insights are unique. The stars are aligned for you.

If you do decide to work on a productivity app, drop me a note on Twitter and let me see where I can help. I'll also make more of my code open source over time, so you don't end up building the same thing.

All the best.