Start with Why: Week 1 of Building in Public
A week ago I announced here I was starting to build Slash.cafe, here are the first seven days report, also posted on twitter!
What did I do for this first week? Thinking.
Days 1-3
I decided to think and start drawing what the product is, and the natural question is what itch I'm trying to scratch? Here are some:
- It feels exhausting keeping up with tech news.
- Lots of tech news are also business news.
- It is hard to find good tech content, when you find tech content they are either really basic or it is hard to determine how good the content actually is.
Days 4-5
Validating, let's ask friends about this, see how they react, if they would pay for a digital curation of content related to tech news.
Looking up it is not uncommon to see tweets like this:
700+ comments, something is up.
Days 5-7
Product building, business model, tech picking, domain setup, next steps, Notion:
- A place for tech people to start their research about a certain topic, something like MacRumors Roundups. Each technology could have a "landing page" with all info, timeline, good courses, and so on. As time progress it will have a larger and larger content body.
- Business model: lichess style, you pay to have a profile with a flare that shows you are a patreon. No other exclusive perks for now, all content is free. No ads monetization as well.
- Tech picking: simples stuff, Next.js + Cloudflare Pages.
- Domain set up: https://slash.cafe/
- Notion and next steps: I decided to open up everything I'm doing in Notion, so I don't have to write giant posts here on IH, but will keep posting! :-) Here's the Notion link.
I feel like I can share the first alpha/beta for the product this week now that I know where I am going. Once I launch it for real will do a proper post to the community.
