Accidentally made a digital business card app, potentially a product?
tl;dr - I accidentally made a web app for making profile pages/digital business cards :
long version: last year while I was working on initial ideas for my 'main' project, I was playing with Phoenix LiveView to assess if I should use it, I quickly had to make some irl business cards because of an upcoming event... (you may have heard about the importance of business cards when doing business in Japan - it's all true!)
I wanted to put a link on my business card that linked to more info about me rather than clutter the card with too much info.
Rather than doing what I knew I should do (i.e. throwing up some static html), I decided to quickly make a small app to make & edit the page, and give me a link & QR code, using "it's good LiveView practice" as an excuse (but really just avoiding the other work I knew I should be doing). So made a little app, stuck the QR code it generated on my business card and went back to working on my main work.
However, since then, I've had a surprising number of people comment that they liked my page and ask if they could make a card like it. I felt like the app was way too simple to launch as "a thing", and mostly dismissed it. But those people have brought it up quite a few times since then and I'm like 🤔 wait, is this an audience?
So, I spent a few evenings over the past couple of weeks tidying it up and I put it up with a quick landing page. You can use it to make free cards like mine (https://linkspeed.io/alanb) in seconds.
Naturally, the page is great for putting in your social media profile, as you can easily link to all your other personal places on the internet. The QR code is great to put onto things like business cards or product flyers.
Obviously, there's a bunch of 'link page' services out there, but I wanted something more professional and this solved it for me.
So now that my immediate task of going from 'little app I made for myself' to 'little app that other people can use', I've started wondering if there is an actual product in there.
I never intended to release it at all, and especially never considered that it might be something people might pay for in some way, but the initial good responses have got me thinking that there might be some a small something in there after all.
I would be incredibly grateful for any feedback - both about the landing page and the app!
Alan, here it is - https://carrd.co/, $1M ARR. It was in IH newsletter from Dec 12, 2021. Hope it helps.
Hi Alan. This is quite interesting.
My initial reaction was ... there is already linkedin. But, no, your card is different. It has things LinkedIn doesn't.
Is it a JP-specific thing?
I am in NZ. I communicate with people all over the world. Where would I use it?
Would I use that or my Lin profile? Probably Lin.
If I did use it, would it be regular or would I churn?
I think if I used it I'd stick with it.
Products like that have a distribution advantage - there is virality built in by design. That's a bonus.
It definitely needs a designer touch. It has to be at the level of SuperHuman to be taken seriously.
Is there a particular niche where this would catch on more than anywhere else?
Who is the target market? Who would use it often enough to require premium features?
You can always sell their data, but that would pay peanuts and is not a good business model.
Basically, the app is a single page website builder with a business-card like template.
Does anything like that exist? Who tried and failed?
I've been thinking of something similar for my stackmuncher.com project. Generate a mini-CV with your stack and keep it automatically updated. Take a look at stackmuncher.com/about if you have a minute. It's a hidden page, but explains the project in more detail.
Read The Mom Test book. Given your current trajectory it may save you A LOT of grief.