Co-founded egghead, now building ScriptKit. AMA!
Hi IH đ,
egghead.io
I co-founded https://egghead.io with Joel Hooks almost 10 years ago (we still own 100% of the business after all these years). The Indie Hackers podcast episode with Joel has a ton of valuable information about Joelâs business-side of things at egghead: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/075-joel-hooks-of-egghead .
I created the original 50 videos on egghead that we sold as the very first bundle while Joel and I traveled around training people on AngularJS 1.0. Now we have 369 people in our #instructor-support Slack channel and a quick Postgres query shows we have > 8,000 lessons and growing each day!
Script Kit
Last year, after going through Amy Hoyâs https://30x500.com/academy/, I did a lot of research into how developers use workflow tools like Alfred, Better Touch Tool, Keyboard Maestro, Raycast, and many others. I found that there are two types of users:
- The ânormalâ user who liked to use each tool without ever digging deeper
- The âpowerâ user who dug deep into each tool and wrote/shared/downloaded custom workflows to match their day
I built Script Kit (https://scriptkit.com) to cater to the âpower usersâ (thatâs probably you đ) of workflow tools. Those who want to script away the friction of their day.
Script Kit is 3 open-source products that work together:
- Kit.app - Launch/edit/share scripts and provides UIs for input/output
- Kit core - The sdk on top of which scripts are built. Enables scripts to run in the app, terminal, package.json scripts, github actions, and even your favorite tools like Alfred, BTT, etc.
- https://scriptkit.com - The community where you can browse, share, and add scripts you like
So far, Iâve had >2,700 installs of the Kit.app. Iâm still working on the docs, the âGetting Startedâ guide, and polishing up the site before I ship a â1.0â, but that hasnât stopped our wonderful community from sharing their scripts: https://www.scriptkit.com/scripts . On a tech note, the site is driven by treating GitHub discussions as a public CMS and parsing/feeding the data in a static Next.js site.
"But John, how will you make money?" Great question! Since Script Kit can essentially do âanythingâ, the opportunity for me to create educational content is unlimited. Iâve made somewhere around 1,000 lessons on othersâ various tools and technologies over the years and I am extremely excited to be able to teach about tools that I built myself. I can teach about using Script Kit for personal workflows, for enterprise workflows (like internal tools), for building tools for your favorite APIs (GitHub, Slack, Twitter, etc, etc), the list is endless!
People will also be able to purchase premium versions of Script Kit that support theming, enhanced UIs for input/output, and other âsuper power userâ features. Inputs like screenshots, audio clips, and many more will people supported in the future.
Iâm aiming to launch Script Kit 1.0 in November (with a Windows version following around the end of the year) so I can switch focus to supporting the community and creating the educational materials.
Hey John! Thanks for this :)
What was your biggest challenge in producing videos for egghead in the early days? How has working with other instructors, partners & teammates changed that?
Made my day! Can't wait to start hacking with it đ
I learned coding, marketing. designing and UI(basics) & currently polishing do you think I need experience before I do any startup? BTW I am freelancing to make some money
How is egghead doing MRR/ARR wise? really awesome site for anyone learning code like myself. congrats on the success and waiting on Script Kit's release. cheers.
What are your thoughts on Web 3.0 in the context of starting an open-source tool?
MRR/ARR is a bit of complicated answer because we've been investing a lot into products with other partners that aren't directly part of the egghead revenue stream. A few being raging successes with big windfalls of money, but I wouldn't be comfortable sharing due to the partnership nature of the products. The transcript of Joel's conversation over here sheds some more light on "egghead proper"'s revenue streams:
https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/075-joel-hooks-of-egghead
RE: Web 3.0, I don't have any strongly formed opinions. Keeping an eye on it, but haven't personally invested any time into it.
you mentioned your focused on documentation - how important is documentation when your creating an education product?
I'd say it depends on the product. Some products are familiar and people are good at fumbling through them (like a Google docs, Dropbox paper, maps, etc) because they approach the product with a specific goal in mind.
Script Kit is different since it's literally a "Kit". Like handing someone a bag of Lego bricks and telling them to build whatever they want. If I don't provide proper examples, docs, and guides, people won't even know where to start and will completely miss the potential of what Script Kit can do for their day.
How long did it take to produce the 50 videos? any tips with tools that streamline the process?
Well, the original 50 was ~10 years ago, so I can't really say. It will always depend on how well-planned/scripted each lesson is going into it. At this point in my career, I usually just hit the record button, do a few takes, and see what sticks. I'm very experienced at working in "takes".
We put together a guide on our processes over here: https://howtoegghead.com/
Cool to this project seeing the light. I was among the first to try it when it was Simple. Looking forward to making more use of it now that there is this library of scripts.
Awesome! Glad to see you hear. Always happy to help out with Script ideas over in the Kit discussions ;) https://github.com/johnlindquist/kit/discussions