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Indie Hackers podcast + COVID lockdown = Product Hunt launch

Hey Indie Hackers!

Sharing our story of how we were inspired by an Indie Hackers podcast episode to launch our project, Product HQ, on Product Hunt.

The backstory

A few months ago we were listening to Courtland chat with Chris and Eathan on Run With It about business ideas for 2021 and then later on the follow-up Indie Hackers episode. The trio discussed how other Indie Hackers have seen success (shout out Janel!) in building and shipping Notion dashboards in areas they specialise in. As serial Notion users ourselves with a background in sourcing/selling products we saw an opportunity and seized at it!

The podcast we were inspired by

Two days after listening to the podcast and discussing it over a bike ride we were pumped about the idea of building a Notion dashboard. Given our experience in sourcing and developing products to sell online we thought it would be the perfect match.

Then lockdown hit. Whilst the rest of the world was opening up, Australia was diving headfirst into an ever-lasting lockdown. We dusted off the Zoom accounts, set up a Google Drive and built a rough project management framework on Notion. With what seemed like the next few months confirmed to be stuck inside we decided to commit any spare second we had to build, developing and shipping our dashboard.

How we knew this was a problem worth solving?

We have ideated, sourced and ordered numerous products over the past few years and always found the process had a very high barrier to entry. Throughout these projects, we had gathered dozens of documents and resources to help us fast-track the process. This included things such as saved articles, google sheet models, supplier contacting scripts and product spec documents. These were all spread throughout our Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox and even the odd physical hard drive (screenshot shown below). What a mess!

On top of this, we also found it difficult to keep up to date with the ever-changing content online about the best practices for sourcing and ordering products from manufacturers.

Our mess of a system

We shared our concerns with other product builders online through channels like IH, Reddit, Quora and Discord. We found there to be strong support from others who faced a similar barrier in collating and organising everything under one roof as well as keeping up to date with the latest practices.

This paired with the success of other Notion creators in creating dashboards we knew there was something worth building here... so we got to work!

The idea was to build a dashboard that would hold the entrepreneurs' hand through the lengthy process of getting a product to market, from ideating and designing to sourcing and ordering it. It would be for any stage across the product lifecycle, whether that is a new line of merch, a side project, or your next Kickstarter campaign.

How we built Product HQ

On the first day of lockdown we got to work with a brainstorming session. We figured that we needed 6x weekly sprints to build Product HQ. With 4x weekly sprints allocated to build and test the dashboard + 2x weekly sprints allocated to market and launch Product HQ.

Our visionary planning session soon crumbled once we realised we had completely underestimated the workload that this monster of a dashboard required. Our 6x weekly sprints quickly turned into an 8 then 10 and finally 12 before we found ourselves (present-day!) ready to launch. This was truly the combination of underestimating the workload, ambitious timelines, the struggles balancing a full-time job with a side project, one of us moving overseas during this window and the brain fog that comes with weeks and weeks of endless lockdown!

Our system to build Product HQ

Though in hindsight, had we not set the ambitious goals we'd probably not be here ready to launch today.

Along the way, we shared our dashboard with beta testers, received some critical feedback to drive improvements, got in touch with past creators of dashboards for advice and spent far too many hours inside of Notion!

It's time to launch!

Post 12x weekly sprints and hundreds of hours put into building the dashboard we are finally in a position to launch Product HQ.

Product HQ website

We've ticked all the boxes and have scheduled our Product Hunt listing to go live this coming Friday (September the 10th!). Be sure to look out for a discount code on launch day that will reduce the already heavily discounted prices!

In the meantime, you can check out all the details of Product HQ here. If you have any questions please reach out to us at any time by leaving a comment below, sending us an email or reach out on Twitter.

Good luck building IH!

p.s. are you interested in our Tech stack that we used to build, market and launch Product HQ? Let us know below and we can write up a separate article on how we launched Product HQ for under $50.

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