Our first product

After 8 months of being digital nomads, we found we had something to share with other nomads and avid travellers through a comprehensive Travel Hub Notion template.

We poured months of effort and countless hours into its development, believing we were creating something revolutionary. It was a one-stop platform that would transform how people plan and experience their travels.

We improved it, revised it, gathered feedback from friends, tweaked it again, developed marketing collateral, and were excited to get it out into the world for others to use.

The launch that didn’t travel far.

We prepared loads of marketing collateral. Newsletters, instagram posts, reels, stories, website images, video tutorials, and PDF guidebooks. Each one had multiple drafts. Literally hundreds of hours poured into it all. We whole-heartedly believed we were ready.

Come the big day, we had high hopes things would go well and the product would be a hit. Well… minutes went by, hours went by, days went by, weeks went by. Not a single product was sold. Ouch.

If someone tells you your product is worth less, it doesn’t mean it’s worthless.

Before we launched, we sent the product around to friends who travelled often to see how they valued the tool. We wanted to gauge how valuable they all thought the tool was in order to inform our pricing strategy.

Almost all our reviewers valued our product far below what we thought it was worth. Reality set in that we had spent months developing a dud. It was a tough pill to swallow but inspired one of the biggest learnings of our business so far… the value perception gap.

If it were not for the perspective of 1 reviewer who saw the real potential of our product, and actually suggested that the product was undervalued, we would have likely believed the majority of our friends and underpriced our product.

It showed us that in order to convince someone there is value in something, you have to shown them the value. You cannot rely on them finding the value for themselves. We had failed on this front.

We learned that building a great product is only half the battle. The other half - and perhaps the more crucial one - is effectively communicating its value to potential customers. We had focused so intently on creating great features and functionalities that we had neglected to craft a compelling narrative about why the Travel Hub was going to solve every problem our target audience had with travel.

We had assumed that the value of the Travel Hub would be self-evident, but in reality, we needed to work harder to articulate its benefits and unique selling points.

Our underdog.

Interestingly, our experience with the Travel Hub stands in stark contrast to another product we launched. If the Travel Hub is our Goliath, a tool we poured our blood, sweat, and tears into. Then our P&L Tracker Notion template is our David, a tool we created on a whim, that selfishly helped us as entrepreneurs track our businesses income and expenses.

To our surprise, our P&L Tracker has become our most successful product, generating a substantial portion of our revenue. This unexpected outcome taught us a valuable lesson about market needs and product-market fit.

What the P&L Tracker taught us.

1. You can't force market acceptance: No matter how much you believe in your product, you can't make the market embrace it. The market decides what it needs and values.
2. Focus on solving real problems: Our successful product addressed a genuine need for us and that translated to a need in the market. It's crucial to create solutions to real, pressing problems rather than perceived ones.
3. Effective communication is key: It's not enough to build a great product; you must also effectively communicate its value. Your customers need to understand why your product is essential for them.
4. Don't underestimate the small projects: Sometimes, the most successful ideas come from addressing immediate, practical needs rather than grand visions.

Moving forward…

Our experience with the Travel Hub, while disappointing in some respects, was invaluable in shaping our approach to developing future products and marketing efforts. We've learned to balance our time for developing products with crafting a compelling narrative for selling the product.

We've definitely learned to embrace failure not as an outcome, but as an essential part of the entrepreneurial journey. And for some odd reason, we're excited to fail again.