Post Mortem Week 1: Nomad Confessions

It is my hope that these honest posts about the struggle of trying to build something useful will be help people who are also on the path, "in the arena", and also be funny to look back on one day when I've finally found PMF.

All in all I think the app release went pretty well given it went from idea to production in just a week. Try it out here: https://nomad-confessions.vercel.app

Nomad Confessions
What went well:
Fully functional app that people I reached out to were like, “oh that’s cool! I’ll check it out!”
Collected more emails through this than through Dreamteam
This is my first time using the 7 Sins approach to build an app. I supposed it hit the Pride or Envy sin because people keep these things hidden to be a member of society, but we all need a place to vent and connect through our shared flaws.
What Could Go Better
My Product Hunt release was actually awful. Surprisingly it just seems like it went completely under the radar compared to Dreamteam, despite the more positive response from people I DM’ed.
Didn’t really talk to users to build it — I really just wanted this for myself, and for the people I saw using Reddit or NomadList for the same use case. It doesn’t exactly solve a burning problem or make people money.
What’s the point? — one of the people I sent it to was like, “I have soo much tea to spill! But like what’s the point of it?” And really there is no point. For them it’s a place to gossip and have fun, while for me it’s a way to collect some feedback and complaints, and maybe get some new ideas.
I was using Supabase Magic Links to verify users when they want to spill a confession, but a lot of those links went to spam. Apparently, I have to add my own SMTP to get around this, however….for an MVP that would be kinda costly (I think).
The Results
Product Hunt: Only 3 upvotes. Awful. But on the brightside my worst fear has been met and it really didn’t hurt so bad.
Twitter: Screaming into the void. Nobody really engaged at all. Nobody cares.
Instagram DMs: Seems a lot of potential users are on Instagram, and that’s where most of the traffic did come from.
Stickiness: eh.

as you can see, a lot came from instagram and then…bounced
Next Steps
I wouldn’t call this validation, but I wouldn’t call it a failure either. There’s something there.

Explore Instagram and Tiktok as marketing channels. My girlfriend is experimenting with social media anyway, so she wants to help get the word out a bit more.
Make Confessions more shareable on Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok. There is viral potential here, but only if it’s made available.
Fake it till you make it — I’ll add some automated scripts to generate spoof confessions to make it feel more alive. There will also be more realtime updates and notifications for the same purpose.
I need to move on, but I think this is worth 1-3 hours a week of consistent small improvements. It’s an easy enough CRUD app at the end of the day, would be kind of a relaxing side project compared to the other stuff.
Self Critique
Market Validation Score: 4/10
Idea Validation Score: 7/10
Technical Execution Score: 7/10
Marketing Execution Score: 5/10
Overall Score: 57.5%
that’s a D- hahaah…ah FML

Too bad. You live you learn. I’ll move on to the next idea to validate for next week. A week is really not enough time to really be sure but that is the exercise afterall. It doesn’t feel as devastating because I know I didn’t sink as much time and energy and money into it as the last one. The learnings will be carried into the next idea. Might not even write any code for this next one at all.

If you liked this blog post and want to support my journey, give me a follow on Twitter (X)!