markd.co

A year after we released markd.co, we realised some major limitations to the tech stack we were using.

We wanted the backend to be faster, front-end to be more responsive, and the whole system to be more secure and scalable.

We realised we needed to build the whole thing from ground up again using different tech. That isn't too difficult of a choice to make once we realised what we need to do to achieve our goals.

However the part that made the decision difficult was that after the upgrade, all users will need to reset their passwords.

We knew we'd lose users, potentially a lot of them. It was a scary decision.

But we knew it had to be done, and it's better done sooner than later. So we rebuild it, notified our users, and hoped for the best.

We kept most of our users, and ended up with a much better product. :)

Email to our users at the time: https://mailchi.mp/d829227c09f1/markd-2-is-here-what-you-need-to-know

While I was traveling in Asia during Christmas 2016, I woke up to a message from the developer on the project with a screenshot of the top products on ProductHunt that day. And there it is, Markd, at the number 4 featuring spot, just beating the latest Amazon FireTV. Someone had found markd.co and submitted it to ProductHunt in our sleep!

I was overjoyed and anxious at the same time. Being featured on ProductHunt had always been a personal goal but I never knew how we'd get there. I also knew that the product was not polished for public consumption. Sure it was made public as soon as it was functional, but I knew there were bugs and lots of improvements we wanted to make. In fact we had just defined our third milestone for the project just a few days prior. (The product had only gone through two milestones at the point.)

Incredibly exciting to read people's comments on ProductHunt. It showed me that there are many others with the same pain point that I had (remembering people we found online). It was a tool I wanted for myself and it was very cool to see it resonating with others.

ProductHunt page: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/markd-2

I wanted a simple tool to remember people I find online. I find incredibly talented people on Twitter, Dribbble, Behance, GitHub...etc., many of them I'd like to reach out to in the future for various product ideas (games usually). I used Twitter Lists but it was inconvenient. Not everyone is on Twitter, and it's a feature Twitter has largely ignored.

I used Pocket daily, and imagined something similar to it but instead of saving articles, I can use it to save people's profiles.

I told my wife about the idea. It's one of a few ideas that I can explain clearly in a few simple sentences. She got it right away. She was working at a marketing agency and had to manage external developers/designers, and thought this would have been a great tool for her work too.

It took another 10-11 month before I took any real action towards getting it built. But I always remember that conversation I had with her in the coffee shop that day. My first validation for the idea.