The beginning of my building journey

I have always believed that if we observe our surroundings attentively, there is invariably something that can be improved.

Since my sophomore year, I’ve put this belief into practice, particularly by developing a used book trading platform for university students. Back then, textbooks were quite expensive, and I think that was true for many students, not just me. There also weren’t many options for buying used books; the only place I knew about was a Facebook group. The frustrating thing about trading this way was the timing – I’d often see posts selling books when I didn’t need them, but when I was actually looking for a specific book, it was hard to find someone selling it. Also, when a needed book was posted on the group, everyone could see it. By the time I saw the post, I had to dig through lots of comments and replies, or message the seller directly, just to figure out if the book had already been sold. Often, I found it really difficult to know if a book was still available.

I thought there must be a better way to handle this. So, the idea of a platform to easily connect buyers and sellers started to form in my mind. The goal was for buyers to quickly find the books they needed and instantly see if they were available to buy. At the same time, sellers wouldn’t have the hassle of responding to lots of comments from different buyers or having to manually take down their posts after a sale to avoid getting the same questions over and over.

I shared this idea with my best friend, and we were both excited about what such a platform could do, so we started the journey of building it. We learned many lessons, and I will now share the top four most valuable things I learned throughout this project, which lasted from my sophomore year until two years after college graduation.

Number One: The Importance of Measurement

As Eric Ries mentioned in his book, The Lean Startup: “The MVP is that version of the product that enables a full turn of the Build-Measure-Learn loop with a minimum amount of effort and the least amount of development time.” We didn’t fully understand the importance of measurement back then. It wasn’t until I worked for a while in the data science industry that I truly got how important it was. Also, due to the quick fixes we chose to quickly show our idea, we didn’t know how to build proper measurement into our product. For instance, we couldn’t tell if two users actually met up after clicking “buy” because we used email for sharing contact info, meaning they had to contact each other on their own for the trade. In other words, our platform only helped with the first online connection.  

All ideas are guesses at first, and good measurement is crucial to test our ideas and see if they’re right. Because we lacked this measurement, our next ideas for improvement were kind of random guesses based on feedback from a forum we shared at our university and some direct user feedback. However, we saw it as a positive first step, as we gained a deeper understanding of our product and came up with more informed ideas for our next version. We aimed for the next version to include careful measurement to accurately understand what our users needed.

Implementing effective measurement was harder than just talking about it, requiring time to figure out the best approach. This completely changed how we built our product and how we came up with clear ideas for testing. This transition was the start of another phase, where I learned another valuable lesson.

Number Two: The importance of details

We tackled the issues from the previous phase by bringing in a highly experienced member from the tech industry. He was a colleague of mine in 2019, had lots of technical expertise, and was interested in seeing a project succeed from the start, so he agreed to join our team. He used his knowledge to improve the platform’s technology, taught us a great deal, and we really enjoyed working together. In just a short period of time, he helped us set up a product much better than our first ‘toy’ version. We felt confident in the product at this stage, so we invited another member to manage communication and marketing. She was brilliant, coming up with many ideas to go viral, particularly within our university – our initial target market. With the support of many other contributors, we were thrilled to see thousands of users visit our site and hundreds register on our platform for the first time. We were also selected for our university’s incubator hub, where we learned a lot and connected with people working on fascinating projects.

We knew how to measure our product better, but we soon realized the importance of improving the small details. There were many details we wanted to improve. Given the limited time and resources for this side project, combined with the flexible customization offered by our chosen technology and framework, we ultimately found it hard to make improvements to our product. I learned that the step from a workable product to a great product (one that truly meets user needs) involves lots of detailed changes. At the time of writing, I understand more than ever what Jack Dorsey – the former CEO of Twitter – shared about the rule for success in building things: “Make every single detail perfect and limit the number of details”.

At this phase, it was ironic that we knew where we needed to improve to meet our users’ expectations, but we just weren’t able to execute those changes. With a product lacking that crucial attention to detail, we saw only a few users coming back. Then, things became even more challenging when the two core members left, and my friend and I struggled to figure out what we were going to do next.

Number Three: The importance of the revenue model

We thought the inflexibility in the framework we used was the main reason that made it hard for us to make detailed improvements. I wanted to change the way we built our product; we didn’t want to rely on an e-commerce platform anymore. We wanted to build everything from the ground up to ensure we had the most flexibility for customization and changes. Then I invited one of my friends from my master’s degree studies. He loved what we were building and agreed on a direction that prioritized flexibility over speed. We also brought in another member to fill the communication and marketing gap left by the previous member.

But at this time, we were challenged by the incubator about our revenue model. We had to think about how to generate revenue and not rely on our limited personal funds. This is when we knew how hard it was to make a really viable product. With the used book trading focus, we couldn’t charge much money on every transaction. And with the low number of transactions we had, we decided to come up with other ideas to make a revenue model work. We tried other features like test preps and study guides, but it turned out we couldn’t get students to pay for these features.

Everyone in our core team had different goals for this side project. And once again, the two new members gave up on trying new things to find a viable revenue model. And my friend and I once again sat down to think about what we were going to do next. But eventually, I decided to stop this journey here. The reason is the number four lesson I am going to share.

Number Four: The importance of owning technology

We could have greatly improved our product in every detail to attract more users. We could have tried many other ideas to test for a viable revenue model. But because my friend and I lacked the technical capability ourselves, we couldn’t fully take charge. We were the ones shaping the product’s direction, but the actual building was handled by other members. We had commitment, we had passion for the project, but we had to rely on others for the technology development.

This lesson is one of the reasons that pushed me to pursue a master’s degree in computer science. I wanted to handle the technology better the next time. And with the advancements in AI assistance nowadays, I’m excited to see what challenges will come next and what lessons I can learn from them.

Even though these lessons might not be completely new, I feel fortunate to have experienced them firsthand. One of my former managers once told me, “Acquiring knowledge is relatively easy nowadays; the crucial part is putting that knowledge into practice.” He shared this insight within a technical context, but I’ve found it holds true in all areas of my life.

This chapter of my building journey has wrapped up, but it laid the foundation for everything I’m doing now — and taught me lessons I’ll carry into every project I pursue next.