I was scrolling through X today when one of my X friends shared screenshots of two employees who recently moved from Anthropic to OpenAI.
We had an era when people were leaving OpenAI for Anthropic in large numbers, Sam Altman was becoming the second most-hated Mark Zuckerberg, and Anthropic was attracting talent from OpenAI.
My most valuable '23 lesson you can not grow without trying something new. We reached Ramen profitability with https://www.makerbox.club/ (marketing resources for Solopreneurs) in '22 and decided to double down on what works. The formula was clear: 1. come up with a new product idea
2. build it in public on Twitter
3. launch on Product Hunt
4. acquire users with tweeting, newsletter featurings, writing guest articles, and being active in communities (Indie Hackers & Product Hunt discussions)
5. write valuable content on Twitter The problem is that this formula only worked to get 5K/Monthly. No further growth. In April, we changed the approach and decided to try something new: - double down on email marketing (free newsletters, content freebies, email chains)
- launch a new product type - AI wrapper (paid tool - marketing strategy generator https://founderpal.ai/marketing-...)
- launch free AI wrappers to collect emails & upsell paid products. That was the most successful experiment cause we got SEO & Influencer marketing on autopilot. Millions of views without any effort and sponsorships: TikTok, Reels, Shorts, Newsletters. Tools we launched: 1. Value proposition generator (https://founderpal.ai/value-prop...)
2. User persona generator (https://founderpal.ai/user-perso...)
3. Business ideas generator (https://founderpal.ai/business-i...) Now, we're going to double down on these channels. BUT as soon as we reach the new plateau, we'll return to the experiment stage
There are a million books on how to become successful and what entrepreneurs do/don't do, and it's kind of attributed to that. Whether it's waking up early, meditating, or other practices.
Wednesdays are usually the most challenging day to stay focussed for me and I was wondering how you manage to remain productive/motivated on an off day.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about the difference between testing a product and validating it.
When you're building software, there are so many things you can measure. Does the functionality work? Are the calculations correct? Can users complete the workflow? Are the security controls working as intended?
Those are important questions, and you can spend months getting them right.
But there's another question that technical testing can't fully answer:
