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Congrats and thanks for sharing. Would love to hear the journey and thought process that you went through.

tnolet 5y ago
Thanks, it's a pretty long story and still very actively developing I guess. Let's try and boil it down: - Started working on the product to scratch an itch. Essentially couldn't find an easy, dev friendly synthetics solution. - Quit job, started freelancing. Coded first version on the side. - Launched on HN and Producthunt. No upvotes, no one noticed. - Kept working and working. Code -> Ship -> Talk to users. - First year had 10 customers. - Second year more and more traction. Some really cool customers joined. Zeit (now Vercel) etc. - Noticed that doing this all by yourself is crazy. Actively looked for co-founders. Got lucky and found two excellent ones. - Decided to turn the bootstrapped company into a VC backed one because of ambition and timeliness (e.g. organic takes too long to make a dent right now in a very busy market) - Raised a round. Hired basic team. Mostly engineers. - Spent ~12 months turning a one-man show into a real company. - Changed pricing model and got more and more traction. - Raised another round after figuring out the basics of marketing/distribution, product vision and customer traction. I guess you call that product market fit. - Right now ramping up the team and delivering on a vision. Most of this was done remote and basically right when Corona lock downs started happening.
- inferense 5y ago
  thank you for sharing, this was a fascinating read. Especially not giving up after a failed launch and turning it into something great.. Just wondering, when no one noticed on HN and PH, how did you get your first users and eventually grew bigger? My team and I launched a workflow tool which was not ready for the dev community yet, just recently [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28392756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28392756]. Low engagement on SHOW HN was somewhat expected, but similarly to your case, we're launching again soon.
  - tnolet 5y ago
    Blogging helped a lot. Really detailed, high value blogs. I was on the front page of HN many times because of the blogs.
    - simonswords82 5y ago
      Great product and agree that high value blogs work on HN but... It's only worth writing blogs and posting them to HN if this website is where your target audience hang out!
- testmasterflex 5y ago
  Can you share a bit more how you found your Co-founders?
  - tnolet 5y ago
    Sure. I got "lucky" but I mostly activated my tiny network. I just mentioned to everyone I was looking. I did get invites from some big players in the market quite early on for possible acquisitions (more acquihire...). One of those was a big player in the testing space. The general manager there asked me about my plans. I said "I'm looking for co-founders". He quite some months later and joined me.

Thanks, it's a pretty long story and still very actively developing I guess. Let's try and boil it down: - Started working on the product to scratch an itch. Essentially couldn't find an easy, dev friendly synthetics solution. - Quit job, started freelancing. Coded first version on the side. - Launched on HN and Producthunt. No upvotes, no one noticed. - Kept working and working. Code -> Ship -> Talk to users. - First year had 10 customers. - Second year more and more traction. Some really cool customers joined. Zeit (now Vercel) etc. - Noticed that doing this all by yourself is crazy. Actively looked for co-founders. Got lucky and found two excellent ones. - Decided to turn the bootstrapped company into a VC backed one because of ambition and timeliness (e.g. organic takes too long to make a dent right now in a very busy market) - Raised a round. Hired basic team. Mostly engineers. - Spent ~12 months turning a one-man show into a real company. - Changed pricing model and got more and more traction. - Raised another round after figuring out the basics of marketing/distribution, product vision and customer traction. I guess you call that product market fit. - Right now ramping up the team and delivering on a vision. Most of this was done remote and basically right when Corona lock downs started happening.

inferense 5y ago
thank you for sharing, this was a fascinating read. Especially not giving up after a failed launch and turning it into something great.. Just wondering, when no one noticed on HN and PH, how did you get your first users and eventually grew bigger? My team and I launched a workflow tool which was not ready for the dev community yet, just recently [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28392756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28392756]. Low engagement on SHOW HN was somewhat expected, but similarly to your case, we're launching again soon.
- tnolet 5y ago
  Blogging helped a lot. Really detailed, high value blogs. I was on the front page of HN many times because of the blogs.
  - simonswords82 5y ago
    Great product and agree that high value blogs work on HN but... It's only worth writing blogs and posting them to HN if this website is where your target audience hang out!
testmasterflex 5y ago
Can you share a bit more how you found your Co-founders?
- tnolet 5y ago
  Sure. I got "lucky" but I mostly activated my tiny network. I just mentioned to everyone I was looking. I did get invites from some big players in the market quite early on for possible acquisitions (more acquihire...). One of those was a big player in the testing space. The general manager there asked me about my plans. I said "I'm looking for co-founders". He quite some months later and joined me.