1000 Pound Club

I've just about finished building this product now. I'm getting ready for launch in a few days, putting the finishing touches like social cards and analytics. I'm planning to launch on ProductHunt, HackerNews, and Reddit (on several subreddits).

All I need to do now is create some promotional images, write up posts, and watch my analytics to see if I get any users.

I'm not a designer by any means, but I'm not letting that stop me. I just finished putting together some initial designs for this product to give some direction and structure to my development work.

This was not the first step of the project for me, but is a major turning point. Now I know exactly what I'm working toward -- what done looks like (at least for MVP). I feel this is the first "real" result that has turned an idea into reality.

Since designing a product is a relatively big commitment (it took me 4 days for this rough version), I vetted the idea with a few other steps before design:

1. Product discovery

I made a quick summary about what the product is, who's the target audience, where I can market it, and what specific features the product should have.

2. Business plan

I wrote a quick document about how I plan to monetize the app (more on this in a later post). I want to make sure there is some potential for monetization before I commit my time to a project.

3. Prototype

Since I am a technical founder, code is easy (relatively speaking). I wanted a quick idea of what the technical part of the project looks like, so I spent 1 day to build a poorly-designed, barely functioning prototype.

After these 3 steps, I felt confident enough to commit time to designing the product! These early stages will be different for everyone because everyone has different skill sets and thinks about problems differently. But this is what I did.

After much brainstorming and ideation, I've decided to pursue this as my first indie hacking product!

I tried to have a good balance of specificity and impact, while catering to my strengths.

I'm excited to be on this journey and will be posting about my progress while I pursue this full-time!