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Four learnings from 4 years of a side-project

4 years ago today I started Product Disrupt, my side-project to help people learn product design from the internet for free.

Quite a lot of my growth in these 4 years can be attributed to this little side-project. Let me share my 4 top learnings running this side-project…

1/ Launch it before it's ready.

Perfection is no friend of productivity. If you wait for it to be perfect, you might miss the right opportunity. Or worse, you might lose motivation and never launch it. My v1 was built from a template over a week's time (~2 hrs/day).

For the curious ones, here's the link to v1 of Product Disrupt. It was the #1 product of the day on Product Hunt.

2/ Build in public.

I didn't build v1 in public, I wasn't aware. But I built v2 in public and the advantages were clear. Building in public is a great way to build up anticipation for your project and grow an audience. This way, you don't end up shooting in the dark.

I created a Twitter thread about building the v2 of Product Disrupt where I shared my process, struggles, learnings and progress leading up to the launch. This time, it bagged #2 on PH but with much higher votes.

3/ Build relations and grow together.

People who do similar stuff can be of great help to you. They'll be your early adopters, give you feedback, share ideas, tell their friends about your project & help you grow. Indie Hackers is full of kind people like that. Go make friends.

4/ Find ways to monetize early.

If you want to work on your project long enough, it has to become sustainable. You'll soon lose motivation to grow your project if it's not making any money. At least it should cover its costs and at best, maybe allow you to work on it full-time.

Bonus: Capture emails.

I'd no plans of working on PD after the launch. But I soon started a newsletter on public demand. It's grown to 3.7K+ now but I missed a huge opportunity on launch day by not having an email form. Irrespective of your plans, capturing email is always good.

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