Screenlapse

The homepage has been very basic for a very long time. And it didn't speak to the pain/problem and benefits much at all - it listed a few use cases but mostly spoke about features.

I gave the page a visual refresh and wrote much better copy, trying to speak to pain points and benefits people will get by using Screenlapse. It's nowhere near perfect, but it's a decent iteration.

Next, I'll be redesigning a landing page template and writing 3-5 solid landing pages. Then I'll be working on writing a few blog posts and recording video guides for the app.

Check it out here: https://screenlapse.com

I received a notification from the live chat widget on my website. Someone had specific questions about what Screenlapse could do.

They needed a few very minor features to be able to start using Screenlapse within their company, which I quickly added that night.

They also had a few bigger functionality requirements, which I agreed to implement within the next couple of weeks, so they signed up for a paid account!

I have since implemented the additional features they needed, which were thankfully broad enough to be useful to many other customers in the future.

I've barely worked on Screenlapse since I bought the .com domain last year, but getting my first customer is exciting and I'm more motivated than ever to actually start marketing it properly.

MY NEXT GOAL: 2 paying customers! 🤘🏻

When I originally launched Screenlapse, the ".com" domain was taken. The website hosted there seemed old and unmaintained, but I had to settle for "screenlapse.io" instead.

A few weeks ago I discovered that the ".com" variant had finally gone up for sale and I've been debating whether or not to buy it since then.

Without any paying customers, it's hard to justify spending $1,600 on a domain name. I've barely even touched Screenlapse in the last two years.

However, Autumn is on its way, which always brings me a renewed sense of energy, optimism, and creativity. I've been growing increasingly eager to work on the app and to begin marketing it.

This Tweet by Daniel Vassallo also encouraged me to keep working on the product, despite the fact that competition exists: https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1436043441922666496?s=20

So, here's the new domain: screenlapse.com

I'm setting a goal to get my first paying customer before the end of 2021. Now I just have to break that goal down into smaller habitual tasks. Wish me luck!

To get an MVP out as quickly as possible Screenlapse required a credit card on signup, with the 2-week trial handled completely by Stripe.

But to reduce trial signup friction I spend a day building a trial period into the app's code itself, so users can signup without a credit card and only need to put one in once their trial has ended.

After only 3 weeks of development I launched a minimal viable product. Screenlapse.io is now available to the general public.

After getting the initial Flask and MongoDB API built out I decided to package that up and share as open source code on GitHub: https://github.com/LukePeters/flask-mongo-api-boilerplate

I'll also personally use this boilerplate for future web apps in my 12-startups-in-12-months challenge, so it seemed like a good idea to spend a little time tidying it up for ease of reuse.

In talking to a few people about the photo time-lapse prototype I built (and in doing some simple math), I realized that it wasn't a great idea. Just creating a short 30-second time-lapse video would require uploading ~9 gigabytes of photos (30 fps * 30 seconds * ~10 MB/high-res photo).

Average user upload speeds and the immense server storage requirements alone would make it very challenging and unlikely to catch on.

But through this experiment I came up with the another idea: An automated website screenshot service. The similarities were in being able to see a time-lapse view of a website as it changes over time.

I started developing the app (React, Python/Flask, MongoDB) and took a day to design a simple logo, a landing page, email capture form, etc.

I began February with the intention of building and launching a web app product by the end of the month.

My initial idea was to make a time-lapse video generator for photographers. I built a prototype and started talking to people about it: https://twitter.com/MoonlightLuke/status/1092912043156484097