Unicorn Platform by John Rush

4 months ago we started a new big and the most wanted product update: blogs. We were literally overwhelmed with the requests. Often live chat inquires were ending up with "btw, when blogs? :)"

The waitlist for this feature contained over 150 users. People were dying to have the ability to run a blog under one roof with their landing page.

So we decided to make this update. But there were some unobvious issues:

1. Good UX requires good effort. It is easy to blame WP for unfriendly UI/UX but it is hard to make your own simple and scalable blogging platform. It took weeks to prepare a reliable codebase and interface for the blogs.

2. Lots of details. We wanted your blog to be forged well with your landing page created with Unicorn Platform. This includes the inheritance of styles, fonts, navigation, footer, form integrations. It took much time to do the fundamental changes to make both worlds paired well.

3. The content editor. The biggest pain in the ass. We tried all top WYSIWYG and decided to go with SlateJS. It a very powerful and flexible framework to create your own content editor. it works pretty well out of the box, except for images. Images are bad: they are jumpy, not focusing, duplicating, and missing. We tried to create ad-hoc solutions for those bugs but the problem is way too complex and deeper than it turned out. We are waiting for official updates. Meanwhile, a page refresh cures all the image-related problems.

It took 4 months of a front-end developer (thanks for the job well done, Artem!) to solve all the issues. The cost of the work is $6,000. I also had work full time for about 2 months to help Artem (which is +$2,000 to the costs of the feature).

We have many crucial features to add: multi-user access, new integrations, favorite components, pre-designed templates. All those I planned to finish by 2021 because I thought blogs will take at most 2 months. But it took 4 whole months.

Even though blogs are a must, in the long run, the features listed above are more important for the business. So I regret I initiated the blog feature building process. It led to the freezing of the Unicorn Platform main product development for a whole quarter and blocked getting new audiences.

Anyway, all I feel now is happy because I can finally blog again! Yeaaah!
I just love writing, but - with all respect - I hate WordPress.
It just sucks. You know what I mean.
We were never friends with the big clumsy old man.

So now I can create articles again! Cool!

Our plans for the nearest future:

1. Have some rest and celebrate the milestone.
2. Plan the next updates: multi-user access, more form integrations, and pre-designed templates.
3. Make some blog posts aww yeah! 🤠

You can see live blog examples here:

Our affiliate network partner made a sale recently. This is the very first sale among all affiliates.

The partner will be getting $2.34 each month as long as their user continues the subscription.

I believe a strong affiliate network is a key to steady growth.

We constantly work on improving the Unicorn Platform brand awareness and trust. For example, we ask our users to leave feedback on listing websites such as Trustpilot and G2. We also plan to start buying Instagram ads to make people aware of our brand. This will boost the conversion and the revenue of our partners.
It is a win-win in the long run.

I did this. I deleted a user website. Permanently and irreversibly. It was published and accessible for visitors from the Internet and I killed it.

The story begins in the morning. I woke up and noticed that server was getting too many requests in the past few hours. I checked the database and discovered a population of fake users and websites. Someone passed our protection and was able to programmatically create hundreds of new records.
I spent some time improving the filter and clearing the database from bots.

Even though I was as focused as a SpaceX Dragon pilot while deleting those rows, I did a mistake and accidentally erased a real website made by a real user.

The reaction from the owner came a little later:

Me:

Thank goodness, we make daily and weekly backups and regularly test the restoring functionality. So I was able to get the website back in a few minutes after we got the message.

Lesson learned: the less manual action you do, the fewer risks you have. We constantly add improvements in our processes to do as little manual operations as possible.

What is up

We are working hard to ship the most wanted update ever: the blogs.
You can become the first user by joining this waitlist https://unicornplatform.com/create-blog/.
Or by following our company Telegram https://t.me/unicornplatform or Twitter https://twitter.com/unicornplatform/

Entrepreneurs are constantly fighting against their fears, doubts, and mental conflicts.

My biggest fear had always been delegating: for years, I had been scared to start investing $ in programmers.

I was afraid of these particular things:

1. The hiring process will take much time and $.
2. The hired coder will burn my budget without any significant benefit for the project.
3. The code will be unmaintainable.
4. I will f**k up with managing the employee.
5. The coder will take all my free time and instead of having more time I will eventually get less of it.
6. The coder will not provide a brilliant result.
7. etc etc.

A month ago I finally got over myself and hired a talented developer on a full-time basis.

Meet Artem.
Artem is an Indie Hacker and an experienced frontend developer. We met at a local IH meetup which I used to organize before the pandemic.

He has already shown great results by making the Google Sheet form integration from scratch (Google API is a mess).

My new colleague (oh boy, I finally have got a real colleague! 😭 after all the years of working solo!) has a great design taste and is very pro-active.
I understand that this is just a beginning and we still need to see how good he is in the long-term, but I'm very optimistic.

Latest Unicorn Platform updates:

1. Google Sheet integration.
   Your Unicorn Platform form now can send visitors' emails and other data straight into your Google Sheet spreadsheet. Works like a charm!

2. Alts for images.
   You can now set ALT attributes for images. Good for SEO.

3. Cache.
   From now on, we cache each page for 5 minutes. It allows us to serve websites faster.

Read the update on Broadwise.org: https://broadwise.org/t/unicorn-platform-landing-page-builder-for-startups/126/6

Coming next:

1. BLOGS!
   We are actively working on the blogging functionality. It will be a simple and lightweight solution for both personal and corporate blogs. Join the waitlist to try it first:
   https://unicornplatform.com/create-blog/

2. Modern image formats (WebP, Jpeg200) for even faster loading speed.

Hey guys.

I'm excited to announce one of the most wanted updates ever: realistic devices mockups.
Now you can put your screenshots inside one of 13 desktop devices and 19 mobile phones (including colors)! iPhones 8, 11 Pro Max, XR, SE 2020, Google Pixel 4, iMac, MacBook, and many more.

Even though I have erased all logos and trademarked words, I'm still uncertain whether I'm allowed to use the pictures of the corporations' devices. I have seen hundreds of websites that use Apple's devices' pictures to present their interfaces. Some even kept the logos.

Personally I believe it will be fine: all the devices are flippin’ rectangles nowadays. Should I tweak a phone's border-radius from 3% to 5% to make it look less like a trademarked iPhone?
I doubt so. It will still look iPhonish. They all look iPhonish.

What do you think about it?

Some other sweet Unicorn Platform updates:

Lazy load:
We added native lazy load for all images and iframes by default. What is lazy loading and what does the word 'native' mean?

Lazy images loading means downloading the assets on-demand. We do not load all website pages' images when a user opens your website. Instead, we load images gradually as user scrolls the page. This trick reduces the amount of data transferred and therefore increases your website loading speed.

~A year ago the Chrome team announced the native lazy loading feature. Now images and embeds can be lazy-loaded without JS hacks and 'data-src' magic. You can learn more here: https://addyosmani.com/blog/lazy-loading

This feature works on 64% of web browsers. Safari already has this but under a flag, so in the future, the % will be even bigger.

Sup!

My SaaS was hacked by a Russian hacker. He figured out how to trick the websites limit and was able to create 2 websites on a free plan.
The case actually ended good and it turns out he will work with me on Unicorn Platform.

But how did it happen? Let me tell you the whole story.

It was the first day when I started to come out of my 2 months long isolation. The first thing I did is moved to coworking.
I can live without a GYM, without a barbershop, without a night club, without a food market, but I can not live without a separate place to work. All those "set up a context", "make a schedule" things just do not work because I rent the smallest possible room to live and re-invest all the revenue back to my project.

So I moved to coworking. And I worked for 6 whole hours.
Man, that was awesome! Doing your work productively is the best feeling in the world. It makes me feel alive.

After the working day, I left my laptop in the coworking because I use a heavy Macbook Pro 2012 and do not want my back hurt. Besides, leaving a laptop at work (https://t.me/serene_startup/37) helps me to get more quality rest at home.

I skateboarded at home and when I fell on my sofa I saw this:
It means: "look at what I can do))".

I pushed the panic button!
Dozens of ideas instantly came up. What can possibly go wrong and how to prevent it.
The first thing I decided to do is to just talk to him. After all, if a hacker wrote first, he wants to talk. It gives me a chance to make him stop his games.

So we talked. He turned out to be a friendly and cool man. He hacks startups for fun, not for cash or glory.
I asked him to tell more about himself. The hacker is actually interested in the startup community and wants to build a product too, but he knows too little about marketing. I promised to teach him how to promote products in exchange for a security consultancy.

He already gave a couple of valuable security and performance insights.
I hope we will continue working together to make each other happier!

🤓

Unicorn Platform got some pretty updates:

301 redirects:
Now you can set up redirects.
It is very useful if you moved to Unicorn Platform from another website builder.

Here is how it works: open our Notion-based changelog: https://unicornplatform.com/changelog

Bye Google!
I decided to quit Google Analytics. It has many disadvantages: Google does not respect data privacy, GA has a steep learning curve, GA is blocked by adblockers. So I'm now a happy user of Fathom.
Check out our sweet public analytics page: https://app.usefathom.com/share/svwhbfnj/unicornplatform.com

View this update on Broadwise.org https://broadwise.org/t/unicorn-platform-landing-page-builder-for-startups/126/10]

or on Twitter https://twitter.com/unicornplatform/status/1263053305527361536

We got the chance to talk to Indie Hackers about our road so far. It’s been a long journey with a lot of ups and downs, but we’re proud of how far we’ve come. Check out the interview to learn more about how we got started and what challenges we’ve faced.

Hey guys, I hope you feel good.

I want to complain a little. I do not feel good.
At the end of each winter I feel like a zombie because Russian winters mean no sun, no walks, no fruits/vegs, and freezing for 3-6 months in a row.
And now this winter ends with 2+ months of isolation which is a challenge to me. I have as little as 2-4 enormously caffeinated hours to work and ship the most wanted updates and give support. And then my productivity, emotions, and actually the day ends.
Fun fact: it took a whole week to compose this post.

OK, enough of crying. Pardon me.

I want to celebrate something special today. Unicorn Platform hit 3,500 websites.
Well, I do not feel anything special about it (because I do not feel anything). But I think this is a solid signal that the project I'm fully dedicating myself to is needed. I'm curious to see what impact will Unicorn Platform do in 3-5 years from now.

The MRR of the project today is $2,664.
This means what every website brings me $2,664/3,500 = $0.76. Does this mean the more websites I have the MRR is? I think yes.
That is why I decided to encourage new visitors to sign up. I give each new user a free pack of illustrations made by Craftwork (https://craftwork.design/). This epic team crafts amazing premium illustrations, icons, and UI assets.
Thanks, guys for your awesomeness and for the partnership!

(づ￣ ³￣)づ🏆

Some of the coolest product updates of April:

1) HTML editor
You can now edit text like a boss: make it bold, add links, lists and headers, and emoji.

2) CDN
We have the mighty Amazon Cloudfront on our side now.
Let the assets fly!

Thanks for your attention.

Finally, I'm not alone! The most exciting milestone ever!

I'm so happy to introduce Asad. This young man will help me with customer support from now. I would never accent a random guy for this position because customer support is a huge part of my product.
But Asad is not a random guy. He has an outstanding experience in Craftwork - the best design crew in the world. Asad also has a unique set of skills that will help him in providing top-notch support: frontend development experience, patience, curiosity and a natural desire to help others.

I feel a huge potential in Asad. This makes me believe he will cover more and more parts of Unicorn Platform in the future including marketing and product development.

I've taken a short interview with Asad and posted it on my product's thread on Broadwise.org: https://broadwise.org/t/unicorn-platform-landing-page-builder-for-startups/126/6

🦄

Also, there is something new and cool added to Unicorn Platform product: custom colors and fonts!
I've been asked for these features for so many times and it is finally here.

I've already seen people using this. The results are fantastic!
I will get the best websites' owners permission to showcase their works and how you the best of them later.

Thanks for your attention! Have a great day!