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Nulist weekly/monthly - 9/5 - 9/30

Hey, guys.

Long time no updates from me. I'm really inconsistent with my habits when I get in the "flow". I literally forget to eat and hydrate myself, which is far worse than the fact that I've forgotten to publish weekly updates on IH.

Please, don't judge 😆

Here's what happened with Nulist in these two weeks weeks.


The big picture

For those of you who've never heard of Nulist..

It's a web app for making lists. You can bundle information, knowledge or resources in a list and sell it on marketplaces like Gumroad or Flurly.


How's the development going

Slowly.

But I'm intentionally slowing it down.

I know the "build fast, ship fast" narrative is quite popular among indie hackers. And I totally get it.

But I also believe in critical thinking.

There are some things that MUST incubate for a while.

It's great to go fast, but it's pointless if you're rushing in the wrong direction.

I'm at that phase right now - thinking about the direction and experimenting/reflecting on the product's MVP. This is a process, that requires thinking and mindfulness on what's essential for the product I'm building.

It has nothing to do with speed.


The product roadmap

Couple of days ago I have outlined loose roadmap for Nulist. It's not public yet, but I plan to have a page with it on nuli.st once the MVP is out.

The key points there are:

  • Deploy a semi-functional MVP (just the list editor, no BE) + landing page and a waitlist
  • Build the BE (user auth, payments, transactional emails, etc.)
  • Closed beta with the people from the waitlist (here it is: nuli.st)
  • Public launch (Dec-Jan) + marketing endevours (which is a topic for a separate post)
  • Calibrate the plan in the end of the year and decide on the next steps

Landing page

I spent around one whole week coming up with the key value proposition and tinkering with the landing page.

I'm quite happy with the end result.

I'd say that the landing page is not that important in itself in the beginning.

What's important is to spend enough time reflecting on what's the key, essential thing that you want to say in one short sentence that describes your product and appeals the people you want to reach.

Here's how the landing page looks like now.

Nulist landing page


Editor

The heart of Nulist is the list editor.

It's the core component of my MVP, so that's where most of my effort is going.

Critical part of nulist's editor is the keyboard navigation and the hotkeys support.

Here's a short clip where I demonstrate the editor in action.

It's not there yet, but I'm getting closer to what I want.

Nulist demo


The MVP welcome message

As I plan to ship the MVP as a semi-functional app, I wanted to let the people who are going to try it know that it's semi-functional and just for demo purposes.

Here's the welcome message that will greet people on the list editor:

Nulist welcome message


The Quick Help dialog

The last thing I've been working on is the Quick Help dialog screen.

It's going to show the users the core functionalities of the list editor.

It's still a WIP, but here's a quick demo of what to expect.

Nulist help preview


Next steps

  • Ship the semi-functional MVP
  • Start working on the BE

Struggles

  • I forget to fucking EAT! Gotta do something about it 🤪
  1. 3

    Wow, awesome to see so much progress, the screenshots look great! I love that you're getting the beta out there already with the first features!

    Did you have thoughts about the pricing yet? I saw that 30 lists will be free. Just a thought, maybe reducing that gives a stronger signal if people really want the product?

    1. 2

      Thank you, Peter! Really appreciate your comment.

      I haven't thought about the pricing, yet. My current focus is to ship the MVP and the closed beta, which will be free.

      Reducing the lists count makes sense. It'll definitely show if there's a real need behind all of this.

      On the other hand, my hypothesis is that being a bit more generous with the lists count will help distribution as people will be making/sharing more lists. Also, it'll help me discover unexpected use cases, as the tool is quite flexible and free form, so more lists = more data for me.

      I think that initially I'll stick to something around 30 and adjust in the process. :)

  2. 2

    i should get into the flow to reduce my weight 😬

    jokes aside, enjoyed a lot reading this!

    1. 2

      Happy to hear that, man :)

      Wish you luck with your goal. 😊

  3. 1

    I'm really inconsistent with my habits when I get in the "flow". I literally forget to eat and hydrate myself

    Are we the same person? This is exactly what happens to me when I get into the zone.

    It's great to go fast, but it's pointless if you're rushing in the wrong direction.

    Bingo. We're not building startups here, we're building bootstrapped businesses. I realize the definitions of both startups and bootstrapped businesses are subjective (and more so than I am personally comfortable with), but what you're getting across here is absolutely spot-on.

    Startups - companies that raise large amounts of pre-seed and series A funding - must move quickly. They have investors who expect a certain return on that investment within a certain timeframe. Startups also can move quickly because they have the money to do so in a non-destructive way.

    Those of us self-funding our businesses don't have the luxury of being able to move at that speed, but we also enjoy the luxury of not having to worry about investors - it's a trade-off.

    1. 1

      Exactly my thoughts on the topic, Adam.

      That's the reason I'll never get the idea of build "12 startups in 12 months". Like...how exactly do you see it becoming a successful endeavour in the long run?

      It's like trying out 12 diets for 12 days in order to lose weight.

      Things need time to get in shape. Be it your body or a project we're working on. :)))

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