From Idea to 150 Users in 48 Hours (and I Still Don’t Know How to Code)

A while back, I was watching Star Trek with my (now) wife.
We’re a bye-lingual household. And when we watch media together we're always pausing to explain vocab to each other.
Not hard vocab - just weirdly specific stuff that you don’t learn in class. Like no I don't know the Vietnamese word for galaxy or starship captain, it weirdly never came up in class.

At one point I said:
“Wouldn't it be fucking nice if I could just drop in a YouTube link and get vocab flashcards from it?”

So I went looking for something like this on google. Because this definitely already exists, right?

Turns out it didn't.

So I figured...fine, I’ll make it. https://youtu.be/L_WoOkDAqbM

Step 1: Checking if I'm Just Crazy

I come from the advertising world - I’m a senior copywriter. No it's not really like MadMen. But it's a great industry as long as you're not at a big holding company. Point is, I know how to write commercials. Not apps.

So I did the one thing I could do:

• Wrote a clean one-pager on Squarespace

• Explained the idea in plain language

• Added an email form

• Posted it on Reddit

And surprisingly, the emails came in.
Turns out I wasn’t the only one who thought this would be cool. Turns out I'm not crazy. (someone please tell my wife)

So with the idea validated it was time for step 2.

Step 2: Learn to code? LOL

I signed up for a CS50 class.
I tried YouTube tutorials.
I followed devs and startups and indiehackers.

I gave sunk time and effort into learning to code.
I tried, I really did. But I just could not wrap my head around it.
What y'all do is actually wizardry.

Step 3: Life gets real

We moved.
I lost my job.
I went freelance.
We got married.
I got a new job.

As you can imagine, this past year got a bit busy, and I didn't have time to devote to mastering Rust.

And then - we found out we were having a baby.
Holy sit. I'm going to be a dad.
Holy shit my Vietnamese is B1 at best. And my English is barely passable.

As you can imagine that lit a fire under my ass.

Step 4: Vibe Coding

Apparently “vibe coding” is a bad word in dev circles. I get it.
But I wasn’t trying to be a dev. I was trying to make something that worked. and frankly as someone who has built their career as a writer and knows dozens of people in the arts...well...the shoe sure is on the other turntable.

I tried out one of the new AI coding platforms.
Figured out what an API is and how to call it.
Used GPT to troubleshoot when I got stuck.
Broke things, fixed things, broke them again.

But 24 hours later...it worked.

Drop in a YouTube link.
Get an interactive transcript.
Mouse over any word for a translation.
Auto-generate an anki style flashcard deck.

It was a little janky...but it WORKED. It was mine.

Step 5: Back to Reddit - this time with a working prototype

Now came the scary part.

Reddit is awesome. Reddit is also scary.
I’ve been a user for 13 years. I’ve seen what happens to anyone who dares to show up with something even slightly self-promotional. You get downvoted into oblivion. You get flamed. Called a shill. If you’re lucky, you get buried in ASCII dicks.

But I wasn’t promoting a product. I was sharing something I genuinely needed with people I considered my community.

So I posted it in /r/languagelearning.
Just hey, here's the story, here's what I did. Please give me feedback...

No joke - 150 people signed up on the website in 24 hours. I don't see this talked about much but google analytics realtime overview is a straight up dopamine.

More importantly, they weren’t just signing up. They were commenting.

Telling me what was broken.
Telling me what they featured they wanted.
And giving me all kinds of support and kind words. Not a single ascii amongus dick in the comments.

Real comments like
"I...wanted to rant about 'yet another fucking app', saying stuff like 'everyone and their mother is making apps on this subreddit' and so on.
But... I decided to give it a try before opening my big fat mouth. I'm glad I did.
Dude this shit is awesome. No additional comment."

"This is the app I never knew I needed. Typically I'm not a fan of flashcards but these are really good. Seeing the vocabulary used in context made me tear up with joy. Thank you very much, great idea and great app."

"Man this is some godly level thing just add an option to remove the useless decks which do not contain any important words ."

Step 6: Hotfixes from the airport

I was literally in the Da Nang airport at 11pm (vietjet is always delayed) reading through their bugs and requests and trying to fix them in real time.

I'm just standing there next to the gate holding my macbook in one hand just going through every comment one-by-one and troubleshooting my way to getting them integrated.

I added new languages. I added new features. I fixed bugs. I made this site better.

From the
~100,000 people who saw the post on r/languagelearning
~1,500 visited the site
~150 registered accounts
Thats 1.5% CTR on organic content with a 10% conversion.

So...now what?
I'm really not sure what to do from here. I guess that's why I'm posting. I don't know anyone in the startup world. I don't know anyone into indiehacking. Hell, I don't know a single person into coding. I guess I'm looking for some community and advice on what to do next...

In the mean time I'm going to work on fixing the language support so Chinese actually works...
Maybe adjust the way it pulls vocab so you can select the amount of most used words you want or even look specifically for specialized vocab instead of just frequency.

I'll build out some pages for SEO.

The sites free for now. Wife says I should charge $1 "for fun". But I don't know Still feels too early to me.

But hey, it works. And people are using it.

If you're non-technical, sitting on an idea you can't shake...
Just start with what you know you can do.
Write it out.
Share it.
And see who shows up.

Anyways, I'd love your advice.
Or roast me for being vibe-coding scum. That’s fine too. I'll shit on your ai-generated "art".

You can find me on twitter @kiir0shi