Built the product I wanted as a buyer. Now I'm thinking about killing it.
A year ago I was the customer. Needed a proper AI chatbot.
Talked to market leader's sales guy - quality was excellent, pricing was enterprise-only. Similar leading SaaS, same story. Too expensive with features I didn't need. Went down-market to cheaper solutions, self-service, no sales teams, roughly 10x cheaper, but I was constantly tweaking settings and pinging support to get anywhere close to market leader's quality.
The middle didn't exist, so I prototyped it. It took me 9 months, 8 hours a day. The result is better than I originally expected.
Today (2 months from launch): two paying customers who love it. A trial more generous than competitors offer. Almost nobody signing up. Nobody even used the free trial yet. BUT costs higher than I can sustain.
The trap: the customer is happy enough that pulling the plug feels like a betrayal of someone who actually trusts the product and is heavily using it. But the math is the math and "I would buy this" turns out not to scale to "others will buy this" or "others will at least try it".
For anyone who's been at this decision point. What pushed you one way or the other?