Launching a startup in 3days — a story about fighting founder procrastination

Marc Lou
19 replies
Hey Hunters 👋 Marc here, building startups from Bali 🥥 Last week I had a startup idea, bought a domain name, and imagined tons of features. After procrastinating for 24h, I realized I was falling into the perfectionism trap... So I scheduled a Product Hunt lunch in 3 days with 0 lines of code and committed publically on Twitter. Here is a recap of the story, and why you should set up short deadlines to boost productivity. --- Day 1: Building I wanted to show the compound effect of tiny habits. For instance, if you read 10 minutes a day, you'll finish 12 books in 2023. I manage to get an ugly prototype working by the end of the day but I'm already late on the schedule. --- Day 2: Instagrammable Showing the compound effect of habits is great. But it won't be enough to motivate people to stick to it. I must find something else... So I create a sharable Habits Grid with fancy gradients: New Year resolutions here we go! --- Day 3: Joe Rogan To compete on Product Hunt, I need to stand out. But I'm a poor indie hacker with no employees. So I make a simple, hopefully fun, YouTube video using clips from Joe Rogan's podcast. I also build a feature so users can directly import their habits to my gamified habit tracker—Habits Garden 🌱 https://habitsgarden.com/ --- That's it! Building a startup is hard. It's easy to get trapped, slack, or procrastinate. I really recommend you add constraints to your workflow for better productivity. My app is live today on Product Hunt, if you have a minute, I'd love your support ❤️ https://www.producthunt.com/post...

Replies

Richard Gao
Love your story! I can relate to the delay part. We thought we could have the product out much faster, but then we encounter dozens of little roadblocks here and there and it drags it out. Congrats on 4th place!
Julia Doronina
We plan to launch soon too! Good luck!
Dhoorjati Varma
Your story is definitely inspiring for someone like me who is looking to build my first product. Just tested habits garden. It looks great. Will start using it to keep track of my goals. All the best for your product!
Ekaterina Arbuzova
That's inspiring! I wish you good luck with your new product :)
Sebastian Acevedo
Can relate to the perfectionism trap, well done Marc!
Nick Mazikov
Launch a startup in 3 days - done! Finding funding in 3 days - in progress! We will solve your issues with finding funding in the shortest possible time! We look forward to seeing you all at the demo
Dávid Sipos
good luck and share your launch in our PH group : https://www.linkedin.com/groups/...
Tin S.
Rooting for you!
Iuliia Shnai
Launching today MarbleFlows Generator which we build in last week! Definitely, the launch is like a sprint to test smth! After we saw ChatGPT magic our team decided to add it to our form and pages builder. So now the form can be generated for your sector and call to action.
Jake 050
keep pushing! love your product!