CoderNotes
Cache your brain
I'm building CoderNotes to solve my own frustration as a developer - I want an easy way to store, record, and most importantly easily find code snippets, from both myself and my team.
Okay, this is weird... CoderNotes.io launched five days ago. But today, for whatever reason, I woke up to hundreds of new users to the application.
It seems that, somehow, CoderNotes.io has become the top app of the day on ProductHunt!
Well, I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth! I’ll add an update when all the craziness is over!
Today, is CoderNote’s official beta release!
https://betalist.com/startups/codernotes
My hand was somewhat forced today, as a product for developers would be better to release on a weekday, not a weekend. Hopefully we still get some attention from the betalist page. What I’m really hoping for is just a couple backlinks in order to build up the site’s reputation, and maybe help the blog rank a bit higher on Google.
Since the Alpha launch in early March, here are some of the features that have been added to CoderNotes:
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Comments on notes, which allows for a more community-feel for public notes
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Full IDE-like experience when making a note. This includes simple things like syntax highlighting for over 100 languages, but also error and warning messages, just like in an IDE.
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Tags - Another helpful way to categorize notes. With this, CoderNotes now analyzes your note across six unique attributes, which makes searching for a note extremely consistent and accurate.
I’ve noticed a bit of a “tipping point” with these features being added, where people no longer feel like it’s missing core features, and it feels like a full-fledged app. It’s pretty cool to see something I’ve built reach that status!
Lessons Learned
Some lessons that I’ve learned getting here, that you should consider if you are planning on launching a beta:
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You’ll want to build the product as quick as possible. But don’t be afraid to take it slower and focus on marketing. You know that you can build your product, given enough time and effort. What you don’t know is if people will be interested. Focus on customers first, then the product.
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Consider doing pre-sales.
Like I mentioned above, I wish I had done a bit more customer-focused development after I decided to work on CoderNotes. If I could do it again, I would get at least 10 developers to commit to putting some amount down as a pre-purchase, just to have a really good focus on what people are actually looking for.
- Get people in as quick as possible.
Some people waited on my email list for over a month before they were finally able to access the beta. By then, they had lost interest. In retrospect, I think I should have let anyone in who wanted in, even as the product was still really rough. I would have been able to have conversations with the people who really liked the product (and those who didn’t to see what could be better!), and had even more motivation as I was developing.
Big milestone today, strangers are using codernotes.io :)
I just finished a major UI redesign using Adam Wathan's TailwindUI, and I'm happy to say that it's ready to share with some early adopters!
The first CoderNotes commit was Febrary 6th, which means that I was able to build the core product in one day short of a month. I'm super proud of that, especially since my last product took 8 months of development, and I never even released it!
The big takeaway is to release as early as possible. Getting feedback is critical, and it's so easy for us as developers to work in our little box and not expose our products to the world.
Today, I published my first blog post for CoderNotes: A Day With CoderNotes
I wanted to have a longer post that explained to developers exactly how my product can be used, and how it can be used to save them a ton of headache.
I'm super happy with the post, and I'm glad to have a resource to direct people to now to give them an idea of how to use CoderNotes.
What do you think? Do I do a good job of explaining the use-case of my product?
I'm super excited to announce that I've developed CoderNotes to the point that it's ready to be tested by people besides myself!
Lessons learned:
1) Build less than the minimum.
Right now, I'm missing features like deleting and editing. But I have the main reason someone would use the product, and that's good enough.
2) Spend as little time building it as possible.
Now that I can get real feedback, I'm even more motivated to work on it. Plus, I'll get a real good idea of how much people like the product.
3) Finding the right people is a challenge.
In an alpha, the app isn't ready for the whole world. Ideally, you'd find early adopters who want the product so bad that they don't care it crashes half of the time. However, I've found that it takes a lot of effort to find those people. Because of that, I don't have as many alpha users as I'd like.
On the last point, how do you all go about finding early adopters? Should I be more focused on cold outreach?
(P.S. If you'd be interested in trying out CoderNotes, send me an email and we can see if you'd be a good fit! Alternatively, if you'd rather wait for a more refined beta, you can sign up at the link above.)
First Time Founder episode two is out! I've been working hard on the product and the podcast, so I hope this episode is a bit better than the previous one. TLDR of the podcast:
- Product is one feature away from the Alpha
- Beta will come after a redesign of the UI, and will be open to the public
- Podcast format will begin to normalize starting episode three - for now, it stays free-form!
Hope you all enjoy!
Today, the codernotes beta landing page is officially open! I'm excited to feel like it's at a place where I'm ready to show it off.
Super thanks to Landen.co to allow me to just focus on the copy instead of the design of the page. I am definitely a happy customer and highly recommend them to anyone here who is trying to rapidly create a high-quality landing page.
Here's the landing page, check it out!
https://codernotes.io
I've also started a founder podcast - the first episode is finally released and on spotify! Apple/iTunes will be coming shortly. If you are as obsessed with these kind of podcasts as I am, here's another one where I will be building CoderNotes in public, and sharing the highs and lows.
https://open.spotify.com/show/648TRHNblfKZAfNrTdFAfR
If you have any questions about landing pages, podcast recording/hosting, or general feedback about CoderNotes, I'd love to hear it!
Yesterday, I shared my problem page: https://codingcourseproblem.landen.co/
I don't have a solution, but I wanted to find out what other devs had a similar problem, and if it was painful enough to solve. Thanks to everyone! Expect numbers shortly :)