5 ms·

I will agree with the strategy of separating your product into sub-products, and working on and releasing them one at a time. A single, well-executed feature is

by Tarlen 10y ago

I will agree with the strategy of separating your product into sub-products, and working on and releasing them one at a time. A single, well-executed feature is often better than many mediocre ones. Especially as a solo founder (shameless plug: I run https://resend.io https://resend.io), I think this is the best way to both test your assumptions early, and to consistently ship improvements without spreading yourself too thin. I've taken this approach as I set out to compete with companies with 100s of millions in funding and 100s of employees who had built out very feature rich and elaborate product platforms. In my specific case, it went something like 1. build a shitty live chat plugin 2. make said shitty live chat plugin good 3. extend previously shitty live chat plugin with shitty automated messaging capabilities 4. make those shitty automated messaging capabilities good 5. and so on.. In between each step you should try and get people to use it, be shameless. You'll often be surprised that you can find users already at step 1, despite competitors already rocking well-established and mature solutions. Doing this long enough (I have been going hard for 9 months), all of a sudden you'll find yourself with your own platform, built slowly by stacking one brick on top of another, and sticking to it.

aembleton 10y ago
I just visited resend.io and got the following message: Message: TypeError: e.srcElement is undefined URL: https://resend.io/ https://resend.io/ Line: 75 Column: 28317 Stack: R</<.value@https://resend.io/:75:28317 https://resend.io/:75:28317
- Tarlen 10y ago
  Shame on me for testing on an outdated FF version. Deploying fix now.
glennbot 10y ago
Or just shamelessly ripping off intercom's product is another quick way to iterate and test your assumptions.
- Tarlen 10y ago
  If you can execute well and if the demand is there, that's definitely a viable strategy to get you off the ground - Ride the wave
  - pc86 10y ago
    The product looks really good. Is the design yours as well?
    - Tarlen 10y ago
      I wish, more like some weird amalgamation of other websites blended together with my caffeine trips and sleep deprivation. I once heard good artists borrow, great artists steal
- pc86 10y ago
  For all the cries on HN of "ideas are worthless! execution is everything!" people sure do get upset when someone executes a less-than-100%-novel idea...
ookblah 10y ago
i think the drawback to this approach is that maintenance and just "staying in place" starts to become a nightmare. development is circular in that you have to loop back around and make sure your good live chat plugin even better as time goes on. it's not just lay a brick and you're done. my experience has been that you either solve a problem that is very single minded (bonus if it's in the consumer space) and tries to solve for one or two problems, or be prepared to face reality in hiring and scaling. you might be able to compete on some level with the well funded companies, but you aren't going head to head with intercom or hubspot without more resources. not to mention that businesses don't want to deal with companies that don't seem like they have the capacity to support them.
- Tarlen 10y ago
  Definitely. You will reach a point where perhaps you will be spending 70% of your time building out novel features, while the remaining time is spent reiterating on your existing features to make sure they stay relevant. And the beauty of being a solo founder (even more so a digital nomad living sparingly) is that you don't have to go head to head with the giants, even if you were to just tickle them with a stick and steal 0.1% of their customers, you'd be doing very well for yourself. And since you cannot match their wallet, try to beat them in efficiency. With smart technology decisions, you can maintain incredibly low operational costs, while ensuring massive scalability (shout out to Elixir).
  - pc86 10y ago
    > even if you were to just tickle them with a stick and steal 0.1% of their customers Just be careful with this line of thinking. This is the fallacy of "it's a $2 trillion market, so if we get .001% of .001%...!"
    - ksarmentrout 10y ago
      What makes this a fallacy? Because it's encouraging low expectations? I've heard this reasoning before and it's always seemed optimistic to me.
SonicSoul 10y ago
hey your product looks good! any way you could share some info on how long first version took and if you made any money with it (or how long it took to start making money etc)? I find these side project cases very inspirational. for example my friends brother created http://www.mailaletter.com/ http://www.mailaletter.com/ and its always great to talk to him about it. (it was not making him much for the first year or so, but then it kind of exploded when people started using it in a way that he has not predicted. I forgot what it was exactly but something to do with companies needing to mail letters internationally and it being cheaper for them via his site)
- Tarlen 10y ago
  If I remember correctly, I pushed the barebones chat plugin out (it was embarrassingly bad at this point) after 1-2 months of development. At that point I was also working part-time and finishing my CS degree, so the amount of time I had to work on it was limited. Somehow I still managed to convince a few people to use it though
  - SonicSoul 10y ago
    so you charged right away ?
    - Tarlen 10y ago
      I charged when I had the first good feature, and that was about 1 months after the initial release

by Tarlen 10y ago

aembleton 10y ago

I just visited resend.io and got the following message: Message: TypeError: e.srcElement is undefined URL: https://resend.io/ https://resend.io/ Line: 75 Column: 28317 Stack: R</<.value@https://resend.io/:75:28317 https://resend.io/:75:28317

Tarlen 10y ago
Shame on me for testing on an outdated FF version. Deploying fix now.

glennbot 10y ago

Or just shamelessly ripping off intercom's product is another quick way to iterate and test your assumptions.

Tarlen 10y ago
If you can execute well and if the demand is there, that's definitely a viable strategy to get you off the ground - Ride the wave
- pc86 10y ago
  The product looks really good. Is the design yours as well?
  - Tarlen 10y ago
    I wish, more like some weird amalgamation of other websites blended together with my caffeine trips and sleep deprivation. I once heard good artists borrow, great artists steal
pc86 10y ago
For all the cries on HN of "ideas are worthless! execution is everything!" people sure do get upset when someone executes a less-than-100%-novel idea...

ookblah 10y ago

i think the drawback to this approach is that maintenance and just "staying in place" starts to become a nightmare. development is circular in that you have to loop back around and make sure your good live chat plugin even better as time goes on. it's not just lay a brick and you're done. my experience has been that you either solve a problem that is very single minded (bonus if it's in the consumer space) and tries to solve for one or two problems, or be prepared to face reality in hiring and scaling. you might be able to compete on some level with the well funded companies, but you aren't going head to head with intercom or hubspot without more resources. not to mention that businesses don't want to deal with companies that don't seem like they have the capacity to support them.

Tarlen 10y ago
Definitely. You will reach a point where perhaps you will be spending 70% of your time building out novel features, while the remaining time is spent reiterating on your existing features to make sure they stay relevant. And the beauty of being a solo founder (even more so a digital nomad living sparingly) is that you don't have to go head to head with the giants, even if you were to just tickle them with a stick and steal 0.1% of their customers, you'd be doing very well for yourself. And since you cannot match their wallet, try to beat them in efficiency. With smart technology decisions, you can maintain incredibly low operational costs, while ensuring massive scalability (shout out to Elixir).
- pc86 10y ago
  > even if you were to just tickle them with a stick and steal 0.1% of their customers Just be careful with this line of thinking. This is the fallacy of "it's a $2 trillion market, so if we get .001% of .001%...!"
  - ksarmentrout 10y ago
    What makes this a fallacy? Because it's encouraging low expectations? I've heard this reasoning before and it's always seemed optimistic to me.

SonicSoul 10y ago

hey your product looks good! any way you could share some info on how long first version took and if you made any money with it (or how long it took to start making money etc)? I find these side project cases very inspirational. for example my friends brother created http://www.mailaletter.com/ http://www.mailaletter.com/ and its always great to talk to him about it. (it was not making him much for the first year or so, but then it kind of exploded when people started using it in a way that he has not predicted. I forgot what it was exactly but something to do with companies needing to mail letters internationally and it being cheaper for them via his site)

Tarlen 10y ago
If I remember correctly, I pushed the barebones chat plugin out (it was embarrassingly bad at this point) after 1-2 months of development. At that point I was also working part-time and finishing my CS degree, so the amount of time I had to work on it was limited. Somehow I still managed to convince a few people to use it though
- SonicSoul 10y ago
  so you charged right away ?
  - Tarlen 10y ago
    I charged when I had the first good feature, and that was about 1 months after the initial release