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I quit my job at Google a little over a year ago to work full time on my product. I still don't make near half the salary, but that connection to my users using
by alixanderwang 6y ago
I quit my job at Google a little over a year ago to work full time on my product. I still don't make near half the salary, but that connection to my users using a product I built is something that, prior to this last year, I didn't know I'd be so attached to.
Users message me to appreciate some small look & feel improvements, they leave feedback and I fix things for them, I get excited about a new feature and it brings value to their work. I let them vote on the more experimental ideas.
I get happily excited for each new subscription, and it all feels earned, a stark contrast to how I felt about my biweekly paychecks at corporate life.
The product [0] launched on HN a year ago, and I've worked on it almost every day since then, and after having reached some threshold of MRR, I've since felt that I can keep working on it forever.
Tonight, I'm up late releasing another feature [1]. The motivation to do so feels effortless, as, it's my garden.
[0] https://terrastruct.com https://terrastruct.com
[1] Sync diagrams with a github repo, ~hacking the README as a presentation tool (https://github.com/terrastruct-bot/Demo https://github.com/terrastruct-bot/Demo)
- thejosh 6y agoWow. This looks extremely slick, and the landing page is awesome. Going to give it a whirl.
- huzaif 6y agoWow! This product is making my day. Great job. I am still hacking around on it. I would like to sign-up as a team, though I only have need for 3 seats.
- alixanderwang 6y agoThanks! If you send me an email (in my profile), happy to make that work for you
- koeng 6y agoterrastruct looks really awesome! Been looking for something like that for a while, I think I’ll test it out. The landing page is very well put together.
- playpause 6y ago> Users message me to appreciate some small look & feel improvements, they leave feedback and I fix things for them, I get excited about a new feature and it brings value to their work. This is great. But if you thrive on this kind of positive feedback, I'm curious to know, if you ever get the occasional bit of angry/negative feedback (e.g. from a user who is really pissed off about a feature change that broke their unique workflow), does it demotivate you? If not, how do you avoid it getting you down? Or is it just so rare that it's not a problem?
- alixanderwang 6y agoI do get churn, and have users unhappy about things, but it's just as valuable feedback, if not more, than the positive ones. The only demotivating thing would be silence. In the Show HN post, quite a number of people said it wasn't what they were looking for or it was lacking xyz. But that's a whole lot better than languishing in 3 upvotes and no comments at all.