The journey to build a journaling product started last month
My journey started because I wanted to build a tool for myself. I wanted someone to send me a text message everyday, encouraging me to write back and share my thoughts.
The first part of the tool took me about a week to build. At that point, everything I wrote and sent back via text messages was being saved to a database where I could come back later and read it.
It's been fun!
I share my emotions. I talk about what I did that day. When my family and I have great moments, I share those too. Sometimes I send pictures to document where I was or the scenery around me at the time of writing.
Over that time, I started thinking, "If this is useful for me, would this be useful for others?" I think the answer is yes, but that's something I'm still working out.
If I start letting people use the product, privacy will be a key piece of the puzzle and something I care deeply about. Everything must be encrypted. I want the product to be a safe place to share private thoughts. I should never be able to accidentally see what someone wrote in their journal.
My goal is to continue to validate the idea and launch a product before the ball drops on 2020. I'm excited to reach that point.
Hey Derek, I journal a lot and had the same idea last year and built https://somewordsfor.me
It works perfectly and (I think) is well designed and user friendly, but it has very few signups. Perhaps you’ll have better luck than me :)
Thanks for sharing Herman. I checked it out earlier and it looks great. Did you try to target specific groups? My hope is to start with small, targeted marketing based around the journal prompts I write. For example, for someone newly diagnosed with a chronic illness, I have ideas for 30 days of prompts to help them make sense of a disease they'll live with for the rest of their life.
By the way, congrats on your first hire!
Also, I think you may enjoy this piece I wrote https://herman.bearblog.dev/why-i-journal/
Yeah, I think if you can niche down it would be useful. I think the problem with Some words for me was that I am directly competing with pen and paper journals.
I'll give you a follow to see how goes your journey :)
This is really exciting. If you build a tool for yourself, then you are your main audience and you know what's good for it. Make sure that tool is perfect for you, and there's a good chance others will want to test it.
I enjoy journaling a lot as a way to reflect and to think. It's a great way to crystalize one's thoughts and learn by re-connecting with the events of the day. The difficult thing is consistency and willingness to keep at it, much like, say meditation. The benefits are real though.
Let us know when you have something we can test out!
Thanks! Not only has keeping a journal been immensely helpful for me, it gives me something technical to tinker around with at night. Will definitely keep in touch!
Also, it's funny you mention meditation - something I've recently started doing in the morning. What a great practice it is.