Show & Tell: Share with others what are you working on and one lesson you learned from it. GO πŸ‘Š

Sharath Kuruganty
63 replies

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Tom Shorrocks
I'm working on my free soccer/football newsletter, The Tactical View (https://thetacticalview.com/), where we interview elite coaches and players in the game. We also provide analysis, trivia and latest news. The biggest lesson I have taken from it is that consistency is key. Ensuring that the content is ready each week is not easy, but finding a routine that suits you is the best way to manage this.
Felix Scholz
I'm working on a Twitter thread scheduling application (threadstart.io) and the single biggest learning was to quickly release new things and iterate. I've previously tried to launch a SaaS but spent a year overengineering a solution that never made it to production. This time I'm shipping quickly, trying to get feedback as soon as possible and then improve the product based on the feedback. 5 months in and I'm way further than I would have imagined back when I first started.
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Sharath Kuruganty
Hey @fscholz Been following your journey on Threadstart. I totally agree with you on shipping things fast without dwelling too much. It allows you to form tight feedback loops and quick iteration cycles.
Felix Scholz
@5harath Yes, exactly! I also think waiting too long makes the eventual release even more scary. When shipping quickly it is much more about small improvements and those are very easy to release.
Sergio Cardenas
@fscholz hey. Can I ask why you haven't launched on PH?
Devanand Premkumar
@fscholz I certainly can understand that. I am also guilty of the same mistake. But I'm taking corrective action now to avoid such things is going to help me lots. Thanks for sharing this to all to benefit the community.
Abhisek Pattnaik
@fscholz Do you provide affiliate program?
Ryan Gilbert
I've been curating a weekly newsletter called Workspaces (https://www.workspaces.xyz/) that brings you inside the workspace of a creative, founder, artist, etc each week! The main lesson I've learned is that consistency is key! Growth has been steady and open rates have remained >50% per newsletter and I think a key reason for this is that subscribers know to expect the newsletter every Sunday morning.
rinas πŸ§‘β€πŸ’»
@ryangilbert That's a good idea. I should start sending the weekly emails which I'm supposed to do πŸ˜…
Devanand Premkumar
@ryangilbert Congratulations on having such high open rates. I think there is sure a lesson to learn and use it as a model. Consistency is the magic word here. Kudos.
rinas πŸ§‘β€πŸ’»
Hey @5harath πŸ‘‹ I'm working on HIGHSCORE.domains and the biggest thing I learned after the PH launch is - we never really know what user wants unless we launch or start accepting beta users. I thought my customers would be interested in tools like website monitor (get alert when website down), Coming soon landing pages for the unused domains. Looks like most PRO customers are interested ins selling their unused domains So yes - launch early get feedback. Btw, listening to your racket audio where you mentioned about not worrying too much about PH motivated me to launch early (just launched without any plan) and it turned out well :) thanks πŸ˜‡
Carlo Thissen
@5harath @onerinas absolutely love this learning. Always keep a beginner's mindset, an an always-learning mentality and confirmation bias alert on.
Devanand Premkumar
@5harath @onerinas Launch and learn :) So simple but so effective. Keep learning and keep growing more. Wishes to you.
Mayank Mishra
Hey we're building Poppins, a Slack app for founders, leaders & managers to make Slack actionable. (Https://poppins.me ) It was an internal tool for us until we saw a huge demand from our founder friends. We decided to launch it on Slack app directory. Within 2 weeks of our launch, We have 70+ teams using it Poppins app featured as number #1 productivity app on Slack app directory Our users are loving it, they're able to save ~ an hour of their time. We're planning to launch on PH soon.. Check it out at Poppins.me
Carlo Thissen
@mishra_mayank looks interesting! What would you say was your biggest learning from this process?
Mayank Mishra
@carlo_thissen "building to solve our own problem", we never imagined this would help other founders too but here we are 70+ teams in a week of launch.
Joshua Dance
Working on an app that will give you the actual numbers and scientific facts behind getting in shape. https://thisappwillgiveyouabs.co... Learned a lot. Biggest thing is using objects. Putting the details a user enters into an object makes it easier to refactor and improve.
Fritz Brumder
We are working on Zipcan. Beta customers that signed up through Product Hunt have now gotten access to the full product πŸ’₯ I agree with @5harath and @fscholz that shipping early and often is the right approach. Going deeper on that, we have built in stages ALPHA (people we already knew) > BETA (Public release on Product Hunt) > FULL RELEASE INVITE (All beta customers + targeted marketing for invite only) > PUBLIC RELEASE (This is where we are now). The whole process has taken about 7 months.
Carlo Thissen
Working on tl;dv (https://tldv.io/) since 2020 to empower people to feel emotionally safe when declining meetings and to quickly catch up with the most important bits async. The biggest learning: don't confuse (even overwhelmingly) positive reactions with product validation. As founders we are naturally excited about our products and can quickly spark excitement while talking to people in customer calls. My takeaway: in product discovery, I always ask for a form of "currency" Tier 1: Time - are they willing to test my product? Tier 2: Reputation - are they willing to recommend it to colleagues? Tier 3: Money - are they willing to pay for it? As hard as it is: always be brutally honest with yourself - false validation is a real threat & time killer.
Wilhelm Rahn
Hey @5harath πŸ‘‹ We're building Sideby, an 1-click way to guide your users through any issue on your app. Made for startups focused on SaaS. Biggest lesson so far: planning is important, but understanding your users is a matter of hard work. You can't plan being nice and gathering feedback πŸ˜‰ We'll be launching on PH soon after closed beta is over :) Would love to have your feedback! https://www.sideby.io/
Devanand Premkumar
@5harath @wilhelmr Hard work pays off. The more passionate your about solving a problem, the better you will be able to. Congrats and good luck on your launch. Looking forward :)
Kevin Chandra
Hey @5harath, I built Typedream (https://typedream.com/), a Notion-like website builder, and learned how to solve a problem with the least amount of technology and features. After numerous other projects, my team and I spent the least amount of engineering time on Typedream. Instead, we spent most of our time with our users and they not only love that we're listening to them but they're also simping for us.
Devanand Premkumar
@5harath @kevinchandra Learnt something new Kevin. Simp for us is super cool. I was looking at your site and then only it struck me. Nice reach, for sure it got my attention and it is sure to get more as well. Good for you. I am sure going to make use of this in future. Thanks again.
Natalie Karakina
I am working on pre-launch InAppStory on Product Hunt (Ship) Lesson: Ship is not for community building, you have to be visible on other channels to gain followers on your project. It was a push for us to start building.
Samuel Crosland
@nataliekarakina Hey Natalie! What other channels have you found worked for you?
Chris Tweten
Building GrowSurf 2.0 to $1M ARR, we're a referral marketing SaaS that makes it easy for tech startups to launch their own rewards program. After my 1st month as CMO, I've found that going after your target market isn't just about defining your ideal customer, but also excluding non-ideal customers from your marketing. We had a bit over 9% churn last month, which is too high for comfort. Lots of our churn came from non-ideal customers so it's not less of a worry and more of a wakeup call to laser focus our content.
Mark Grimes
Working on a lifestyle weightloss program for founders and entrepreneurs. Personally lost 57lbs so far this year. A1c from 7.3 to 5.0. BMI from 32.50 to 24.5. All based on food and nutrition changes. Built many startups in the past, trying to figure out exactly what this product/service might be for maximum impact for founders/entrepreneurs.
Harsh Gupta
been working on automl product for last 11 months, trying to get the perfect product out. Its going to launch in 1 week, but i could have been faster 3-4 months alteast by accepting little imperfection.
Sheiryl Jose
Our team is currently working with https://lessandra.com.ph/loan-ca.... Biggest lesson is that to continue work on innovations like this :) It will help a lot of home buyers to compare and decide which type of home they are qualified to avail.
Sunder
Hello @5harath - I’m working on an application that brings all your documents in one place so it’s easy to find (hive.squadworks.io). I have worked at large companies building products that reached 100s of millions, so building something on my own itself has been a huge learning experience! There are no product managers, engineers, designers, marketers - it’s all just my partner and me. We have our MVP, trying to figure out best way to get feedback from users.
Artem Smirnov
We are working on a language learning app, and the biggest lesson so far is that we needed to focus on our main USP instead of throwing in as many benefits as possible. Part of it is being afraid to focus on a specific niche and "lose" the rest of the market. I would strongly suggest to have a mentor look at your landing page so that a fresh and experienced pair of eyes could spot things like that. We were trying to attract both "busy" and "lazy" people, not realizing that these categories need different things, and even the design can probably be different.
Sergey Turin
I'm working on Talenteria career site builder (https://www.talenteria.com/) I learned that employer branding & recruitment marketing professionals in big companies are very dependent on the marketing department. They need more flexibility and authority when it comes to recruitment campaigns. So we launched a microsites feature to help create and manage campaigns on go independently. BTW you can share some support with us - https://www.producthunt.com/post...