Non-technical regrets at Spectrum

In hindsight, these are the things I wish we had done differently at Spectrum.

We should have focused on our niche

Wanted to build for our use case, open knowledge communities (e.g. open source)
Needed to make money, so built business features
Businesses were not interested, and had we focused on our core niche use case we would have grown much faster
Easier to raise money if necessary, more satisfying, ultimately more momentum and higher chance at success

It's better to have 100 true fans who love the product than 10,000 barely interested users.

Spend too much time on building new, shiny features
Should have spent more time on marketing, typical engineering mistake
Not just social media, but also in-product growth marketing, marketing pages on the website, etc.

Do way more marketing and sales than you think you need to do.

Branding was good and unique
Brand did not have minimum viable personality https://avc.com/2011/09/minimum-viable-personality/
It differentiates you from the "big guys" as they cannot have a story as personal as you in most cases
For example, The Practical Dev (dev.to) is doing a great job at this

Tell your story, it differentiates you from the big players in a crowded market

Launches are great for marketing, every new release excites customers
Shipped tons of stuff without ever announcing it
Missed opportunity to showcase a new feature and get more users at the same time

Launch before you think you are ready and then again and again and again.

Stick with the minimum viable technology setup until you feel product-market fit. You will know in your heart if you have it.

Went into a hole and built a shiny feature for months (e.g. WYSIWYG editing) without talking to users about their priorities
Ended up wasting valuable time and adding a lot of unnessary tech debt

Talk with your users, they should be your guiding star.