Day 576: target audience???

product

i think the biggest question for me to figure out with browserflow in the next few months is who my target audience is

i discovered (yet another) browser automation company that’s extremely similar to browserflow in that they provide both a local and cloud offering and a low-code tool to build flows, and i did what i’ve seen most people do with browserflow: skip all the instructions and start clicking around

even as someone who’s built a whole browser automation platform, i couldn’t figure any of it out and now i’m looking at their site full of tutorials and it’s incredibly daunting

this is what it must feel like for most people who install browserflow

the learning curve is incredibly steep, which means i need to do one of two things:

  1. target people who are willing to go through the learning curve
  2. lower the learning curve

option 1 is keeping the product general-purpose and targeting developers + somewhat technical users who are used to learning new tools. i would have to focus on making it compelling enough for them to learn browserflow either through impressive demos or incredible word-of-mouth.

  • examples: retool, integromat, airtable, zapier

option 2 is to narrow the tool so that there’s very little to figure out. this can be accomplished through plug-and-play templates (this is how companies like airtable and retool have made it easier to start) or by targeting a small niche so that the solution could be more focused

  • examples: basically everything else

this is the question i’ve been grappling with for a while now and i still have no idea which option makes more sense. the engineer in me has a strong preference for option 1 because it is simply the cooler one, but the product/business side of me thinks option 2 is way more promising from a business perspective because you know who your target audience is and can build for them

i really wanna launch on hacker news so that i can find out how much promise option 1 has (b/c if it does well on hacker news and there still isn’t meaning traction among tinkerers and hackers, it’d be a good indicator that it’s just too difficult) but alas, i will wait until next month when i’ve finished my retreat