Getting your product in front of a large audience is a milestone, but what comes next often defines its trajectory. The creator of PickTests, a platform offering six cognitive tests like reaction time and sequence memory, recently experienced this after a post about their development process hit the Indie Hackers front page. Rather than capitalizing on the momentum by rushing out new features, they made a deliberate choice to step back and improve the existing reaction test. This decision was driven by early user feedback that highlighted areas for improvement in the current experience. For indie hackers, this serves as a valuable reminder that post-launch iteration is not just about adding more, but about refining what already exists to build a solid foundation. The approach underscores the importance of listening to your initial users and using their insights to guide your roadmap, even when external validation might tempt you to scale quickly.
An indie hacker behind PickTests, an online cognitive testing site, shares how they prioritized refining their reaction test over shipping new features after gaining traction on Indie Hackers.