TL;DR, a few days ago I launched a new project bannerbear.com effectively pivoting away from the "mojosaas" brand mentioned in my milestone updates prior to this.
Lesson learned: By trying to do everything, you end up achieving nothing.
On Wednesday I launched Bannerbear.com which so far has had an awesome response:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/bannerbear
Bannerbear scans your website and helps you auto generate Instagram Stories, Pinterest Pins as well as Open Graph images. It is the spiritual successor to another product I built (Previewmojo), which only did Open Graph. In startup parlance, this is a "pivot" :)
https://www.bannerbear.com/resources/introducing-bannerbear/
It's been a rocky path for me over the last year. I've gone through one of the most prolific periods of my life, launching 9 products in the space of 12 months. I even enjoyed some success towards the end of 2019 as two of my products were acquired!
https://blog.yongfook.com/promomatic-and-montage-have-been-acquired.html
However, Previewmojo kind of flopped. It was a tool that auto generated open graph images. In the two months it was live, it struggled to find market fit. This was a shame to me as it's in a space I find really interesting - automated design tools.
The good news was that I got a ton of great feedback from early users. And that's what led to this pivot. This is how startups work - you have an idea, sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong. But regardless, the way forwards is the same: get your idea in front of people, get their feedback, iterate and improve.
I've written up a full post on the pivot over at mojosaas, with more reasons why, including why start a whole new brand:
https://www.mojosaas.com/articles/the-pivot/
Bannerbear is the successor to mojosaas / previewmojo. I was trying to do too many things with mojosaas. For Mojosaas, the original intention was to create a few distinct products, each with its own little marketing ecosystem, and to document the entire journey transparently on the mojosaas site along with hopefully noting down some helpful advice along the way. Now I realise what a crazy stupid amount of work that is and how by trying to do everything I was achieving nothing.
From now on, instead of drip-feeding app and blog updates across multiple products, I'm focusing on Bannerbear.
In 2020, I just want to do this One Thing Well.
2020 is the year that I have to make this indie hacker life sustainable. It's time to focus and grow, or fail! Wish me luck.
And yes, I'm still keeping things open and transparent - Bannerbear has an Open Startup page :) With a Mojo Meter (TM) showing my progress towards 100k ARR
https://www.bannerbear.com/open/
Happy New Year!
Jon
Big Bear @ Bannerbear.com