òtító

August has been the most successful month on record, in a few ways:

• 30 signups n 29 days (which is not a huge amount but a massive improvement from the monthly average)
• Got 3 donors/patrons, contributing $19 of MRR
• Relaunched the web app as a vue.js single page application (which massively improved speed and performance)
• Redesigned UI to improve user experience
• Featured on ProductHunt
• Received unsolicited outreach from potential partners
• Experimentation with AI capabilities to reduce the burden of research and content contribution on users
• Visibility in search engines has more than doubled and organic traffic is growing

This continues the slow but upward trajectory of key metrics.

No wonder only two projects targeting misinformation have been launched on ProductHunt... It's damn hard work! Everybody criticises you and believes misinformation comes only from the "other side". They're obsessed with the question of how you'll get rid of the "other side", not how you'll get rid of the bigger problem. So, you constantly have to give people medicine that they don't want to take. How do you build stickiness and a community when you're swimming against the current?

Please check out the new app/site and provide feedback here: www.otito.io

We need users/researchers/contributors, so please sign up to òtító if you believe in what we're doing!

This month was complicated for so many reasons. But, again, some good came out of it in the form of the first people who have paid for my app—2 users to be precise.

Not a huge amount revenue-wise, (see screenshot) but it's great validation.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10FaCTwAIS2132_T08495hArcF_URqyXj/view?usp=sharing

Been working on this project for almost 2 years now and I launched the web app almost exactly 1 year ago—it's been very hard.

I quit my job at Facebook because the company wouldn't let me do this while working there. I joined the leadership team of another AI startup (a very intense role) that allows me to do both. There've been arguments. Criticisms. Frustrations. Insecurities.

But there've also been surprising moments of joy. Like unsolicited messages from users, VCs and other founders expressing appreciation and admiration for the product. This unsolicited message I received from someone at Sequoia was particularly satisfying:

"Hi, I am [redacted] from [redacted], a leading VC [redacted]. I love the idea of Otito and would love to know more about the product, the team, and your plan for the future. Is there any way I can get into touch with the founder? Many thanks."

I'm not interested in VC money because my vision is atypical and my monetisation strategy is longer-term (3-5 years), so I think I need to retain control.

Although growth has been modest (but steady and accelerating), I'd been feeling a bit downtrodden for a while. But I looked through the numbers a few days ago and realised we've had our best month ever—we've also crossed 100 signed up users (for anyone who doesn't know, getting signed up contributors is very hard for platforms where users generate and moderate content, without social elements—Jimmy Wales has failed at it with Wikitribune). And we've had our best month ever in terms of search engines (which are a big part of the growth strategy).

All in all, I'm saying, if you're feeling down in the dumps, keep going. As long as things keep moving in the right direction (growing not shrinking), you'll eventually cross your milestones.

A year ago, I had no product (just an idea). 0 people in my database. 0 traffic. Today, I have a product loved by some. almost 300 people in my marketing database and an average of 650 visitors per month. It's not huge but it means everything to me!

Onward and upward!

Today, we reached our 40th user/contributor signup on òtító, 2 months after launching. This is a big deal because getting users for a platform like ours is hard, since users are essentially also contributors (who are working for free).

We also saw our highest ever figures for both organic weekly website visitors (which represents a 640% increase from when we launched) and monthly user interactions (such as votes, adding of claims and submission of sources).

We're also getting an increasing stream of users from search engines.

This is the first time since we launched that I've seen a pattern of organic growth in any of our metrics.

It feels great. One of those moments when you feel that it's all been worth it and that you might be on to something after all!

Onward and upward!

I always imagined that the first time I would get to share a working version of òtító with the world would be a high point. But it wasn't.

I felt depressed immediately after sharing the beta of the platform with a select group of people. All I could see and think of was all the ways in which it was imperfect.

However, this was a great and critical step for me to take—to expose myself to that danger of publicly falling short and coming through it anyway. Days after, I felt proud of myself for having taken that step—too many ideas die young because their owners are too scared of criticism, imperfection and failure.

The positive feedback I got also reminded me of what is good about the platform and fuelled my desire to make it a success.

The first version of òtító was not easy to build–I tried to find developers (including on IndieHackers) who would build the platform in exchange for equity. I had loads of takers, ran interviews and even hired a team of 4 developers. But they turned out to be time wasters who spent about 5 months doing nothing.

In the end, I severed our relationship and paid a fantastic developer in Pakistan to build it for me (just cash, no equity). That went much better.

What I learned from that experience is that loads of people want to be part of a great story, but very few have the character to help create one from scratch and against the odds.

While writing one of several (eventually viral) political articles for Medium, I became disheartened.

I knew loads of people would read my article and tell me how much they agreed with it. How right I was. How brilliant I was. I also knew loads of people would tell me how much they disagreed with me. How wrong I was. How I was nothing more than a Nazi (true story).

But, crucially, no one ever seemed to learn anything or change their minds. It was always the same people who agreed with me and the same people who disagreed. An exemplification of our age of political/ideological polarisation and echo chambers.

In the moment when I was writing that article, I didn’t feel like a dreamer wielding a mighty pen. I felt like a narcissist adding to the noise. Like a part of the problem.

What the world needed wasn’t another giant ego who thought he’d worked it all out—and everyone who disagreed with him was not only wrong but also evil.

What the world needed was a way for people to exchange ideas across political divides and extract useful facts from different perspectives.

Once I came to that realisation, I put down my (metaphorical) pen and designed the software tool I’m sharing with you—òtító.