Thinking Things

Thinking Things is (almost) ready to take sign-ups. The stack that makes up the back-end is all hooked up. But there's still the front-end to construct, and I've held off on making the decision because locking in to a platform or no-platform is committing to a narrowed set of workflow options. I know that right now I want to be able to quickly throw up a site right now, and make changes (quick deployments), but my website platform needs are going to change quickly over the course of a year or two.

We're making sure that everything will work for a new Thinking Things member, and that their experience will be amazing. I want to get this part right. We're taking alpha signups during October, and beta signups during November and December. Launch day will be January 2020!

In September, my "mentor" challenged me to launch. I wasn't ready -- at all. But for some reason, I couldn't say "no" to him, so... I said "yes". With this deadline now fixed I worked vigorously to identify all the things I'd need to understand and hook up a working product, and put myself on a pre-launch program.

In August, I was encouraged to pick a project and work on it, and I chose Thinking Things. I'm an intuitive person, and sometimes -- as in this case -- when you know, you know. It was obvious by then that I'd been spending a spending a lot of time Thinking about Thinking Things, and that I'd be committed to the Thinking Things project for quite some time. It had a name and a clear community to serve -- a community that I new quite well, and would enjoy getting to know better.

Thinking Things was going to be a place for founders and makers to hang out. But I had to make stack and workflow decisions and decide which features were going to solve essential problems or become core features of the product, and which were just nice to have.

Branding is always where I begin. I ask myself what emotion I wanted to evoke, and what I want my product to be called. I gave some thought to how my product could grow and improve over the next few months, years, and beyond. What its core vision is, and who it's for. After some thinking, I came up with a name: Thinking Things.

I've been a member of Indie Hackers for months, and Product Hunt for years. There are online forums, courses, and Facebook groups. These are great for keeping on eye on the industry, but they aren't dedicated to launching your own product, especially if you're looking to work at least semi-privately. If there wasn't something that matched with my vision, I would create it.