šŖ Do you use your own product every day?
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For us, RunEvr is the environment where we actually build RunEvr =)
For me, thatās one of the most beautiful parts of having a product - using it while continuing to build and improve it.
We do our everyday calls there, share ideas, chat, store files, do reviews, complete tasksā¦
And all of this is happening inside the same environment weāre building to help other teams do exactly that!
Kind of a mirror within a mirror =D
So Iām curious:
Do you use your own product every day?
Or do you mostly interact with it through the code while building it for further use, or for only users use?
Would love to hear how it works for you
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Yes, every day, and it's pretty much my whole method. I run a small AI consulting practice, and anything I set up for a client I've usually lived with myself for a few weeks first.
Right now that's an agent that turns my meeting notes into tasks with deadlines, and a small app that runs breakout room topics and a turn timer for a networking group I'm part of on Zoom. Whatever annoys me in week two is usually what a client would hit in week one.
@or_emergyĀ Thatās really cool! It makes a lot of sense to use and test things yourself before giving them to clients. Does the agent work in a separate environment where it creates tasks for you, or how does it work?
@adanaĀ No separate app, it works inside the tools I already use. After a meeting it reads my notes, pulls out every task, ranks them by priority and spreads them across the coming days with deadlines in my CRM. The truly urgent ones also land on my calendar. Writing into my existing system was the key, otherwise it's just one more place to check.
I use my product every single day, although, I actually built it just for me initially, as a way to keep and relive my WhatsApp messages with my best friend after she passed. And then I realised that so many other people would love to do the same. And so EM Keep grew and evolved into what it is today :)
@chantal_rĀ Ohā¦ thatās such a personal reason to create a product <3
Are you planning to launch it?
@adanaĀ yes it currently live with about 40 users to date and ready for the big PH launch this Saturday, 24th October :D
Taking a product from personal use to being market ready was quite the experience I wasn't prepared for, I didn't need features like encryption and sign in for myself, so the pivot was a real one.
But at the same time as I was building and reliving my messages from multiple conversations that I uploaded every day, the more I believed in it and how much something like this will resonate with so many, so I'm really excited for this launch <3
@chantal_rĀ That's great, we're all here for any support on your launch day =)
I do, mainly because all my products start as a solution to one of the problems my other projects have. Its a beautiful and deadly circle.
@frank_apapĀ Thatās interesting! =) And canāt you find an existing solution for those problems?
Yes, and that's the only reason some of them exist.
I built a set of browser-based calculators and converters.
The ones I actually use are the boring ones ā percentage,
date difference, unit conversion ā and those are the ones I
keep polishing. The clever features I was proud of get opened
once a month.
One blind spot though: building for yourself means you never
hit the onboarding problem, because you already know where
everything is.
@ankushchauhandevĀ Haha =) Yes, I agree about the onboarding!
Are you planning to launch any of your tools publicly?
@adanaĀ Yes ā Monday, here on Product Hunt.
It's called Toolore: 78 browser-based calculators, converters,
text and PDF tools. Everything runs on your device, nothing is
uploaded, no account needed.
And the onboarding blind spot I mentioned is exactly what I'm
nervous about. I know where all 78 things are. Nobody else does.
@ankushchauhandevĀ looking forward to your launch!
And are you working on the onboarding now?
@adanaĀ Thanks! Monday, 12:30 IST.
Honestly, less than I should be. The site has five categories
and a search, which works fine once you know what you're
looking for ā but someone landing cold has no idea there are
78 tools in there at all.
Right now I'm weighing a dropdown that exposes everything from
the header against keeping the homepage calm. Leaning towards
the dropdown, because "calm" is only calm if you already know
the place.
Yes, I use my budgeting tool for my own household money. The first thing it showed me was that "money left" can mean different things. A mortgage balance isn't money you can spend, so it doesn't count - I think the big players call this "dog-fooding"?
@matthewabbottdevĀ good =) and is it live?
@adanaĀ It's work in progress, and I'm building in public too. I do have a demo available online for people to play around with. Let's catch up on LinkedIn so I can show you around?
@matthewabbottdevĀ Of course, thatās interesting!
just noticed that weāre already connected on LinkedIn, so letās stay in touch!
I am currently building two products, one is for teams and one for your personal mental health, and since they are in a state to be used I actually use them on a daily basis. This is imho the best way to test your products to the core and to see if it's really fun to use them :)
@tuc0wĀ And could you please share some more details about the mental health product?
I made all my products for myself first and am using them extensively before releasing them.
I have never learned touchtyping (48yo now) and found the learning tools out there either too riddled with ads, or too handholdy, so I created my own that prompts me a few times a day when I am at my computer. It has really been working for me so far - I'm almost ready to release it here as donationware (I believe in the value for value system)
It's called Typecoach and is available at usefulisms.com
@son_thomsenĀ Cool! =) usefulisms.com has an interesting approach. I like the idea of a tiny apps store where each app does one thing well.
Is it your platform, or did you just publish Typecoach there?
@adanaĀ it's my platform - that is not saying much I don't really have customers there :) The main reason I put it up us because I wanted to share these apps with my friends, and then I realised two things:
there might be some value here for people outside my friends circle
I can't give the AI API-using ones away for free because that would just cost me money
so I built in the serial number generator and linked them up to a stripe account.
I have about ten apps ready to go that are not quite tested enough yet - need to find more time!
Also apple is being a bit of a pain at the moment with the registration - I was using an ancient apple ID historically for signing apps, and that always worked fine, but now they have cut off my access to it and getting it back is proving to be a bit of work with waiting periods and such. I want to get these apps into the apple app store as well so I need that developer account ID active again.
Anyway - that is the story so far - I really enjoy vibecoding the apps and the creative outlet they bring, and the ability to solve specific problems I have in a quick and efficient way.
I also believe that I will not be able to make money off of them because it is going to be so easy for everybody to make their own very soon (or maybe that is there already)
Will keep going though - I am really enjoying finally having an email client that does fast regex search with my Sift app :)
@son_thomsenĀ wish you lots of success ! =)
@adanaĀ update - I have just launched TypeCoach on product hunt too (https://www.producthunt.com/products/typecoach-2?utm_source=other&utm_medium=social) - also did some extra updates to it, I felt like it was keeping me on certain keys longer than necessary, and it turned out to be a bug, where it was weighing average key accuracy since the very beginning, instead of looking at your past few days/weeks.
Now I am waiting for Apple to give me access to my old Apple ID that I have not been using in years but is still the account holder for my Developer account. I need to accept their new agreement with it but can't get into the account and they have all sorts of long waiting periods (10+days) that prevent me from updating these apps now - fingers crossed I regain access at the end of my current waiting period, on the 30th!
The CommandX extension I built is the extension I use the most ā maybe I'm the only one who uses it š But building for yourself changes how you catch bugs. You don't need user reports for the things that actually bother you.
@avinashbussaĀ What problem does it solve ?
yes for me, springwinter is hosted on springwinter infra. a lot of devs use it everyday for building and managing their infrastructure on AWS.
@angsak6Ā Cool! Are you planning to launch it here on PH?
@adanaĀ yes!! I'm super new to launching on product hunt.
Gathering some feedback, hopefully it'll be on product hunt next week.
meanwhile if use vercel/railway/render -> you can try out https://springwinter.dev
@angsak6Ā thanks for sharing! And wish you lots of success with the launch =)
I have a slightly different opinion here. Yes, using your own product everyday is useful to spot new useful features and notice bugs in the system before others BUT are you as a user type / persona the only one using it? Could there other user types / personas which you may be pivoting away from without realising? Is there an element of blindness which comes from daily usage of your own product? I'd rather ask a new person or even user type / persona to use my app daily and get a fresh perspective. That way you are constantly adapting, innovating and investigating potential new user types. What do we think?
@a_s71Ā Agree with the blind zone =)
Sometimes we just don't see things from other people's perspectiveā¦
So ig user feedback is a part of building itself.
But using your own product every day and actually getting value from it is proof to yourself that it works!