quantumlotus
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- Aug 29, 2023
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Hi FLF!
I've been lurking on and off for a few months now and figured I'd finally give my intro and start my progress thread for my venture. The books and this forum have been huge for me over the past month, so I figured I might as well do my own tiny part and contribute something here. Also, I know that documenting the journey will help keep me motivated -- I've already learned that motivation can be pretty tough to come by sometimes. (Warning: this post is pretty long, but it's really just a way for me to keep myself honest and motivated. If you make it through the whole thing and want to give some feedback, I'd appreciate it immensely, but no worries at all if not!)
Quick intro on me: I did all the college stuff (advanced degrees in technical fields from fancy places) and then got some fancy finance jobs for several years that paid very well but sucked otherwise (worked/stressed all the time, worked with terrible people, etc.). After getting a decent enough nest egg (definitely not sail-off-into-the-sunset type stuff but enough to not have to worry for a while (even though I still worry all the friggin' time)), I finally quit my job to do...something. Wasn't sure what, maybe find another finance job, or a tech thing. I had a passion project (eCommerce idea, selling shirts about a topic I really like) that I set up in a few weeks but when it wasn't the case that everyone was banging down my digital door to buy my stuff, I lost interest and floundered for about a month.
It was in that month that I read Millionaire Fastlane and my eyes opened up to the world. Almost. It took another 4-6 weeks of me trying to think of ideas, researching some for a day or two, and then losing faith, before I finally "got it" (namely, that it's not the idea, it's the execution). I play piano as a hobby and during one of those floundering days I was talking to my wife (who's amazing for having put up with all this) about yet another business idea. During that talk I accidentally started talking about an issue that I had with practicing piano. And that sparked the "actual" idea that I'm now working on.
Progress Thread #1:
It was October 6th that I had the idea -- which is a business/app that helps musicians practice more effectively (and other stuff too) -- so I guess that means I'm about 4 months in.
I first used Adalo to slap the app together. While Adalo creates garbage apps IMO, it did allow me to put something together that I could give to some of my musician friends and allow them to give me some feedback. And man was this feedback valuable. I probably got about 4 beta testers and each one was worth their weight in gold.
Once I had a slightly better idea of what the (first version of the) app should be, I learned dart/flutter to be able to build a much more performant, flexible, and pretty version of the app. I chose flutter primarily because the one app that I view as a competitor (certainly the biggest competitor) is only available for iOS and flutter would easily allow me to put something together for both iOS and android (I learned along the way that android is ~80% of the smart-phone market, which was surprising, but also made me think that even if I just more-or-less built that competitor and released it on android, it'd be a step in the right direction (in any case, I think my thing is pretty different from the competitor)).
The Adalo+beta tester phase took about a month, and learning dart/flutter, re-building the app, and getting it in front of a few more testers took another 6-8 weeks. That brings us to about a month ago. Once I had something that I thought was ready for more users to see, I worked on publishing to the app stores. It's now on the apple app store, and the google play store is still pending. This process took/is taking a couple weeks because there's always fine print about that they want your app to abide by, but I'm pretty sure I'm in the final stages with Google Play (annoyingly, they take about a week to get back after each resubmission).
Now I'm getting a handful more users by a) DMing people directly on a couple specific platforms if I think they're the target audience, and that's been surprisingly effective, and b) building a social media presence for the company. I also started a newsletter that I think can add value for the same people who will (hopefully) use the app, and that's in its infancy too. I do worry a little that a) continuing to improve the app (i.e., the actual coding), b) doing social media things, and c) writing the newsletter, is stretching me a bit thin, and I don't want to end up not doing any of it well, but for now it seems like b) and c) are helping me get some traction so I'll stick with all 3 (a, b, and c) for another, say, 2 weeks before reassessing.
My next goals: I'm currently at about 3-5 daily active users for the app and 5 subscribers to the newsletter. I'd love to have a goal like "in a month I want 100 DAUs and 100 subscribers" but since DAUs and subscribers are not in my direct control, I'll just give the following goals:
1) app-improvement: there are 2 features that I know need to be added and should make the app noticeably better. I'll have those added and updated (to the stores) in the next 10 days.
2) social-media: at least one post of original content a day, and continuing to have genuine interactions with >= 15 people per day (commenting out of genuine interest/excitement/positivity has helped build some interesting connections on social media (I don't use social media for my personal life at all so this was a pleasant surprise)).
3) newsletter: One article every other day, and at least one "collaboration" per week (the collabs should help the company gain a following by piggy-backing off the followings of the collaborators).
My hope is that by the time I do have ~50 DAUs I'll be getting so much good feedback that it'll be clearer where to go next. For now, I'm just trying to build traction -- any traction, whether it's social media, newsletter, or the app -- and it's slow, laborious, and sometimes super demoralizing. It's a constant battle of not knowing whether I just need to work at it for a bit longer, or try something different with the app/social media/newsletter.
Things I've noticed: There are definitely a lot of very difficult moments. A lot of "this is a garbage idea" thoughts. They come, and they go, and that's the important part: they go. I've found that they often come late at night after a day of slogging through stuff, and that usually after a decent night's sleep or a few hours of taking a genuine break, the positivity/motivation comes back. Social media is also a blessing and a curse. It can be a great source of motivation and inspiration to connect with people there, but it can also be really demoralizing to see all the great content out there and know that yours is not that.
The ups and downs are huge, with the downs definitely being bigger in general, at least at this stage when I feel like I still don't really have the concrete traction that I can sink my teeth in to. I know that there'll always be downs, but the "downs" of this phase -- a lot of work has been put in and not a lot to show for it yet -- is a particularly evil, sadistic kind of "down". Hence me starting this thread a way for me to keep myself motivated. Apologies for the rambling post here, and if you've made it this far, thanks for reading!
This forum is truly one of the great ones out there, y'all are much appreciated.
I've been lurking on and off for a few months now and figured I'd finally give my intro and start my progress thread for my venture. The books and this forum have been huge for me over the past month, so I figured I might as well do my own tiny part and contribute something here. Also, I know that documenting the journey will help keep me motivated -- I've already learned that motivation can be pretty tough to come by sometimes. (Warning: this post is pretty long, but it's really just a way for me to keep myself honest and motivated. If you make it through the whole thing and want to give some feedback, I'd appreciate it immensely, but no worries at all if not!)
Quick intro on me: I did all the college stuff (advanced degrees in technical fields from fancy places) and then got some fancy finance jobs for several years that paid very well but sucked otherwise (worked/stressed all the time, worked with terrible people, etc.). After getting a decent enough nest egg (definitely not sail-off-into-the-sunset type stuff but enough to not have to worry for a while (even though I still worry all the friggin' time)), I finally quit my job to do...something. Wasn't sure what, maybe find another finance job, or a tech thing. I had a passion project (eCommerce idea, selling shirts about a topic I really like) that I set up in a few weeks but when it wasn't the case that everyone was banging down my digital door to buy my stuff, I lost interest and floundered for about a month.
It was in that month that I read Millionaire Fastlane and my eyes opened up to the world. Almost. It took another 4-6 weeks of me trying to think of ideas, researching some for a day or two, and then losing faith, before I finally "got it" (namely, that it's not the idea, it's the execution). I play piano as a hobby and during one of those floundering days I was talking to my wife (who's amazing for having put up with all this) about yet another business idea. During that talk I accidentally started talking about an issue that I had with practicing piano. And that sparked the "actual" idea that I'm now working on.
Progress Thread #1:
It was October 6th that I had the idea -- which is a business/app that helps musicians practice more effectively (and other stuff too) -- so I guess that means I'm about 4 months in.
I first used Adalo to slap the app together. While Adalo creates garbage apps IMO, it did allow me to put something together that I could give to some of my musician friends and allow them to give me some feedback. And man was this feedback valuable. I probably got about 4 beta testers and each one was worth their weight in gold.
Once I had a slightly better idea of what the (first version of the) app should be, I learned dart/flutter to be able to build a much more performant, flexible, and pretty version of the app. I chose flutter primarily because the one app that I view as a competitor (certainly the biggest competitor) is only available for iOS and flutter would easily allow me to put something together for both iOS and android (I learned along the way that android is ~80% of the smart-phone market, which was surprising, but also made me think that even if I just more-or-less built that competitor and released it on android, it'd be a step in the right direction (in any case, I think my thing is pretty different from the competitor)).
The Adalo+beta tester phase took about a month, and learning dart/flutter, re-building the app, and getting it in front of a few more testers took another 6-8 weeks. That brings us to about a month ago. Once I had something that I thought was ready for more users to see, I worked on publishing to the app stores. It's now on the apple app store, and the google play store is still pending. This process took/is taking a couple weeks because there's always fine print about that they want your app to abide by, but I'm pretty sure I'm in the final stages with Google Play (annoyingly, they take about a week to get back after each resubmission).
Now I'm getting a handful more users by a) DMing people directly on a couple specific platforms if I think they're the target audience, and that's been surprisingly effective, and b) building a social media presence for the company. I also started a newsletter that I think can add value for the same people who will (hopefully) use the app, and that's in its infancy too. I do worry a little that a) continuing to improve the app (i.e., the actual coding), b) doing social media things, and c) writing the newsletter, is stretching me a bit thin, and I don't want to end up not doing any of it well, but for now it seems like b) and c) are helping me get some traction so I'll stick with all 3 (a, b, and c) for another, say, 2 weeks before reassessing.
My next goals: I'm currently at about 3-5 daily active users for the app and 5 subscribers to the newsletter. I'd love to have a goal like "in a month I want 100 DAUs and 100 subscribers" but since DAUs and subscribers are not in my direct control, I'll just give the following goals:
1) app-improvement: there are 2 features that I know need to be added and should make the app noticeably better. I'll have those added and updated (to the stores) in the next 10 days.
2) social-media: at least one post of original content a day, and continuing to have genuine interactions with >= 15 people per day (commenting out of genuine interest/excitement/positivity has helped build some interesting connections on social media (I don't use social media for my personal life at all so this was a pleasant surprise)).
3) newsletter: One article every other day, and at least one "collaboration" per week (the collabs should help the company gain a following by piggy-backing off the followings of the collaborators).
My hope is that by the time I do have ~50 DAUs I'll be getting so much good feedback that it'll be clearer where to go next. For now, I'm just trying to build traction -- any traction, whether it's social media, newsletter, or the app -- and it's slow, laborious, and sometimes super demoralizing. It's a constant battle of not knowing whether I just need to work at it for a bit longer, or try something different with the app/social media/newsletter.
Things I've noticed: There are definitely a lot of very difficult moments. A lot of "this is a garbage idea" thoughts. They come, and they go, and that's the important part: they go. I've found that they often come late at night after a day of slogging through stuff, and that usually after a decent night's sleep or a few hours of taking a genuine break, the positivity/motivation comes back. Social media is also a blessing and a curse. It can be a great source of motivation and inspiration to connect with people there, but it can also be really demoralizing to see all the great content out there and know that yours is not that.
The ups and downs are huge, with the downs definitely being bigger in general, at least at this stage when I feel like I still don't really have the concrete traction that I can sink my teeth in to. I know that there'll always be downs, but the "downs" of this phase -- a lot of work has been put in and not a lot to show for it yet -- is a particularly evil, sadistic kind of "down". Hence me starting this thread a way for me to keep myself motivated. Apologies for the rambling post here, and if you've made it this far, thanks for reading!
This forum is truly one of the great ones out there, y'all are much appreciated.
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