If you told me a year ago when I read this book that I would be creating a tool for Hobby Lobby shoppers, I would have said you're mad. Here I am, 2 weeks into developing a Saas too for arts and crafters out of all people. I have tried several ideas over my 22 years alive, and only a few have really made any income.
Since it's summer break and I'm entering my senior year of college, I figured that sitting around playing games or waiting for the perfect idea just wasn't going to do it, since that hasn't worked for me yet. The college atmosphere is sad during this time of year, many of my peers who just graduated a week ago find themselves scared to "enter the real world," as everyone says. I am going the software engineering route, and the light at the end of the tunnel is starting to dim over time. My biggest revelation came when I saw that Apple held an open interview last year, and over 1000 people flew to Palo Alto to line up. A friend of mine who codes in Swift, Apple's programming language, emailed Apple about a bug he found. They flew him out to headquarters to discuss it, and STILL DIDN'T OFFER HIM A JOB. Entrepreneurship is my only way to get what I want out of life, and I'd rather die trying than participate in that.
Anyway, enough introduction, change has happened for me. I sat down and typed this into ChatGPT
ChatGPT said I should start a SAAS. Great! Then, using the research feature that combs through real academic data, I asked it to find pain points. One of them caught my eye.
DONE! I have never done arts and crafts in my life, but I can ask people who have. Nobody will think my idea sounds cool, but that's why it's perfect for me. There is no room for giving up on the idea because I didn't like the niche from the start, but I like the idea, and I can do with it.
Now, per AI's request, I went on Reddit threads and started asking basic questions like "How do I get organized while crafting?" Only one Reddit thread got approved, but it didn't matter because I woke up to 3.5k views and 15 comments with crafters giving organization ideas. I manually sent DMs telling them that I'm planning on making an app and gauging interest. Four people responded. Over the next 48 hours, I sat at a computer and built the MVP, and an appealing waitlist page, "or so I thought." I recorded a video of myself with my face included walking through the app and urged people to give an email for the waitlist. I replied to existing Reddit posts about people asking for organizational help (about 4-5). Now here we are today, I woke up with 200 page views and 0 emails given. As soon as I realized this I got on and fixed my landing page, adding testimonials, pain points, and a few bonuses people get for signing up. That was this morning. An hour ago I got my first email sign up!
This almost doesn't feel like work to me. The dopamine hit of getting even just one lead as a direct result of something I created makes me proud of myself. Even though I don't like the idea, I enjoy the process of solving people's problems and setting up systems.
I am about to start social media content systems today. I want to create 4 main types of content that are easy to create and provide value to the people who see them, even though I own no crafting supplies. I also need to incorporate payment so people can preorder or get a discounted lifetime membership during release. The more I do the more things I feel I have to be on top of.
Thanks for reading my post if you made it this far. I haven't put anything out on this forum since I haven't really had anything worth posting. I plan to update this post in a few weeks when the project is more developed. If you know anyone in your life who has a disorganized craft stash, or if you sell on Etsy yourself, craftory.site might be able to help.
Since it's summer break and I'm entering my senior year of college, I figured that sitting around playing games or waiting for the perfect idea just wasn't going to do it, since that hasn't worked for me yet. The college atmosphere is sad during this time of year, many of my peers who just graduated a week ago find themselves scared to "enter the real world," as everyone says. I am going the software engineering route, and the light at the end of the tunnel is starting to dim over time. My biggest revelation came when I saw that Apple held an open interview last year, and over 1000 people flew to Palo Alto to line up. A friend of mine who codes in Swift, Apple's programming language, emailed Apple about a bug he found. They flew him out to headquarters to discuss it, and STILL DIDN'T OFFER HIM A JOB. Entrepreneurship is my only way to get what I want out of life, and I'd rather die trying than participate in that.
Anyway, enough introduction, change has happened for me. I sat down and typed this into ChatGPT
ChatGPT said I should start a SAAS. Great! Then, using the research feature that combs through real academic data, I asked it to find pain points. One of them caught my eye.
DONE! I have never done arts and crafts in my life, but I can ask people who have. Nobody will think my idea sounds cool, but that's why it's perfect for me. There is no room for giving up on the idea because I didn't like the niche from the start, but I like the idea, and I can do with it.
Now, per AI's request, I went on Reddit threads and started asking basic questions like "How do I get organized while crafting?" Only one Reddit thread got approved, but it didn't matter because I woke up to 3.5k views and 15 comments with crafters giving organization ideas. I manually sent DMs telling them that I'm planning on making an app and gauging interest. Four people responded. Over the next 48 hours, I sat at a computer and built the MVP, and an appealing waitlist page, "or so I thought." I recorded a video of myself with my face included walking through the app and urged people to give an email for the waitlist. I replied to existing Reddit posts about people asking for organizational help (about 4-5). Now here we are today, I woke up with 200 page views and 0 emails given. As soon as I realized this I got on and fixed my landing page, adding testimonials, pain points, and a few bonuses people get for signing up. That was this morning. An hour ago I got my first email sign up!
This almost doesn't feel like work to me. The dopamine hit of getting even just one lead as a direct result of something I created makes me proud of myself. Even though I don't like the idea, I enjoy the process of solving people's problems and setting up systems.
I am about to start social media content systems today. I want to create 4 main types of content that are easy to create and provide value to the people who see them, even though I own no crafting supplies. I also need to incorporate payment so people can preorder or get a discounted lifetime membership during release. The more I do the more things I feel I have to be on top of.
Thanks for reading my post if you made it this far. I haven't put anything out on this forum since I haven't really had anything worth posting. I plan to update this post in a few weeks when the project is more developed. If you know anyone in your life who has a disorganized craft stash, or if you sell on Etsy yourself, craftory.site might be able to help.
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