The Startup

No Code Resource Page: Click Here

I wrote about how No Code is impacting lean startups in my last newsletter. As part of it, I went the extra mile to create a Notion Page for newbies, that I would update over time with external suggestions. I just posted the newsletter and resource to Hackernews separately, resulting in about 1300+ page views across two days.

The Startup has hit another milestone!

Updates:

• I've taken a step back from aggressive short-term growth techniques (Reddit posts etc.) and have started investing in other long term funnels.
• I create a lot of graphs, so I'm trying out Pinterest (which is getting about 200+ views per month at the moment) and Instagram (which is about 70 followers so far).
• Also, I've started to mix of news and educational info to reduce cognitive overload.
• Becoming more visible on Clubhouse also resulted on more people trickling in.

My growth rate over the last week has been the fastest it's ever been, which is excellent!

I'm getting more organic shares from people I don't know and also realising that there's a lot of power in just being visible - without necessarily marketing yourself. Giving others their flowers now seems to result in people giving you yours! 😅

This got a great shoutout and a new friend on Twitter which gave me about ten extra subscribers.

Building in public has also been a great help. People reward vulnerability and openness with support!

Next steps:

• Start reaching out to founders who wanted to feature!
• Continue growing my Twitter audience (which has helped my newsletter growth).
• Include updates on other thing's I'm working on and how it's going.

I posted my first newsletter just under two weeks ago, so things are going well so far!

I've mainly grown via LinkedIn and Twitter.

I've yet to find a consistent way to market it, so I'm currently just posting occasionally about it on each, especially when I make a new post.

I'll try to do more on Indiehackers, Reddit, Instagram and Facebook in due time.

Thanks for the support everyone!

Posted my first newsletter on "Focus".

Was very well received by the market, and received a lot of encouraging messages from people who I had no idea who knew about it. This was a helpful bit of validation. Over the next few weeks, I hope to hone in on the best bits and see how far organic growth takes me.

Did a few preliminary IH posts asking how to get the initial subscribers. The responses to these posts gave me some inspiration. It also encouraged me to be a lot more vocal about the platform launch than I am usually comfortable with on the socials.

LinkedIn worked out much better than expected. I forget that I have quite a large number of connections. Twitter and IndieHackers were also helpful. Finally, I also made some use of numerous subreddits.

The idea of building in public also helped in the build-up to the launch.

I quit my job 15 months back to begin working on my startup. Since then, I've got involved in the tech ecosystem and worked alongside some fantastic people. I've done a lot of reading, building, investing, speaking and mentoring. But I also want to make what I'm doing and learning more publicly accessible.

I already document my thoughts and learnings on Roam Research, so I've decided to structure and share them. So, I decided to start a newsletter this week to help startups, investors and anyone else who's interested - regardless of their stage. They'll be short pieces summarising a lot of content that I'm learning from personal experiences and the books I'm reading. I'll also be covering the highs and lows of building a business.