We Had to Fire Our Customers

When we opened up our doors to the public, we got all sorts of people with all sorts of problems. Some people tried to hijack our product to solve a problem we didn't intend to solve. We then realized these hijackers were users we didn't want.

They came to @typedreamHQ with all these fancy feature requests that beat our purpose of being a simple website builder.

They didn't understand what we offer.

We then learned not to be afraid to mention competitors. If what they want is fancy design capability, then we'd refer them to Webflow. "Hiding" your competitor just delays the process of them moving away from your product. It wouldn't stop them from doing so in the future.

However, sometimes these hijackers are users you want Video gamers "hijacked" Twitch but the Twitch founders eventually decided to cater their product to these hijackers.

Discuss with your cofounders, do a deeper research: - Do these hijackers represent a larger market? - Do these hijackers represent an even better opportunity for you to grow your business?

If you decide these hijackers are not your customers, SAY NO! - Being good at customer service ≠ serving every customer - Make a small group of people happy than doing a shitty job trying to make a lot of people happy. Focus on your niche.

In our case, we listened to the many feature requests and decided to reach feature parity with other website builders. However, we built each feature with our own twist. We call this "growing complex but simply".

Example: people wanted us to add analytics to Typedream websites. Instead of following Google Analytics, we decided to make our own simple analytics to stick to our premise of being simple & easy to use.