Moneystack

• Templates - the app is embedded in the webflow site, Josh wrote some code that can pull JSON from the page and pass it into the iframe. When the app sees the JSON data it updates.
• Duncan kicked off user interviews; first with a high school personal finance teacher. Second with a friend who buys and rents real estate. We got great insights.
• We reviewed proposed workflows and compared using the Webflow API with using the post message iframe feature (where the json data is passed directly to the iframe.) We landed on the post method in the end.
• Why? We Don’t need to call the webflow API every time a page loads, the API limits are low so as soon as we get traction we’d run into problems.

• Marketing site template update - made changes to the homepage with responsive design, tabs, copy instructions, features, videos, testimonials, FAQ’s, a footer, filters, template creation, ensuring user-friendly experience.
• Got templates working for drag and drop and added the ability to download/share the template.
• Marketing site brainstorm - feature landing pages, directory, templates, blog, homepage.
• Run through a few ideas to give us some more space to work with in the expense / income rows.
• Domain decisions.
• Simple forum made.

• Content update; started working on blog posts; a simple financial jargon directory; lot's of keyword research and programmatic seo ideas.
• Started posting on forums - we got banned on a subReddit. Good reminder 😅
• New plan is to build up some trust on a single forum before we continue sharing links. Plus post on sites like Indie Hackers.
• Setup posthog for analytics.
• App updates: added a money sign to the amount input, changed modal colour, check any weird spacing issues
• Focus on user onboarding; record simple onboarding tutorial.
• Had team holidays and illness so delayed Product Hunt launch by 4 working days.

Week 1 + 2 Updates -

• After a 31 message slack thread we settled on the name - MoneyStack
• We kicked off the first of the designs.
• The build began, we spent around 2 days and a couple of calls trying to figure out how each person would be excited and could get involved with the build - trying to play to each different strength and skillset
• That call resulted in 3 versions of the product.

• 24 hours later we decided to cut version 3. Why?
• We only had 3 working days to finish multiple versions of the same product.
• It would double the work for Josh and Tyler and they'd need to learn a new set of tools, help us to push through blockers, and do a bunch more research in general to figure out how to create a performance, scalable, reactive, and maintainable web app using Webflow.
• It’s possible (see version 2) but that workload plus building the Svelte version was too much for them to do in just 3 days.
• 1 week later we also cut version 2 so we are now purely focused on building in Svelte.

Note:
Julian did get version 2 with Webflow up and running - we'll dive into the pros and cons in a separate post.

• 1 week later..we have a functioning product 🎊
• We've added support for multiple models, editing, and deleting models, styling updates and a new date selector
• The code is optimised for faster calculations, and a profile feature is now functional
• The marketing site has been built
• The templates are working for drag and drop along with the ability to download and share the template
• User interviews are underway

We're live on PH today 🎉 We're trying to take YC's advice and launching as early and as often as possible without getting too in our heads about it.

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/moneystack

There's a bunch of stuff we want to add and improve, but we're launching anyway. We don't need to be top 5 (although that would be awesome) and we don't need to hear positive feedback from every person who stops by.

We want feedback and we want to learn. Those are our two mains goals. Which means we can't fail 😁 And it's working so far!! I'm pleasantly surprised with the number of comments and upvotes we have after just 6 hours of being live. PH is such a valuable resource to this community.

This quarter the Memberstack Team are building 3 products in 3 months.

Spending roughly 50% of our time on Memberstack tasks and 50% of our time on a new product.

Each team member pitched their product and we voted for the top 3.

Month 1, Product 1 - Introducing MoneyStack, a financial planning tool.

We're going to try to #buildinpublic and share our learnings as we go. Let us know if there's anything specific you want to see ⚡️