Nice work man! It's fun going from idea to customers so quickly. We did the same thing in 10 days.
How I went from idea to product (with paying customers) in 7 days
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Re: How I went from idea to product (with paying customers) in 7 days
#12Great post. Did you do this in tandem with a full time job?
Also did you just stumble on the guy's request? Or were you looking.
Re: How I went from idea to product (with paying customers) in 7 days
#13Great post. Did you do this in tandem with a full time job? Also did you just stumble on the guy's request? Or were you looking.
I'm glad you liked it!
I have a "day job". I run another company with a dozen employees. I love creating things, too. I'm like a construction foreman that loves what he does so much that he builds birdhouses on the weekends. Most of the work was done in the morning, over the weekend or at night while watching MasterChef on Hulu with my wife.
I've been following Patrick Rhone for years. He was begging for a letter.ly replacement for a while. Each time he asked, I always thought it was fascinating that no one was taking him up on it.
I built HappyLetter for the fun and sport of it. I saw it as an opportunity to practice some things I need to do more often and better, like writing, sharing, teaching, being transparent, accepting constraints, accepting perfection isn't always necessary, etc. I'm as proud of the HappyLetter blog as I am the product. There are many hard-learned lessons buried in those posts.
I've built many things like HappyLetter that never saw the light of day. Blogging about it forced me to ship.
Re: How I went from idea to product (with paying customers) in 7 days
#14Wow, impressive! Will be interested to see how things progress.
Re: How I went from idea to product (with paying customers) in 7 days
#15Why a monkey icon? Hard for me to not relate to MailChimp.
Re: How I went from idea to product (with paying customers) in 7 days
#16Great way of thinking and building the product in a very lean fashion !
My biggest issue would be : why would people pay to subscribe to a newsletter ? Do you have specific use cases ? (I guess that letter.ly closed for a reason?)
I'm sure that spending a week to build it and see if people would use it is one of the best ways to answer that question though. I'm just wondering what you, as a developer, think.
Re: How I went from idea to product (with paying customers) in 7 days
#17Great way of thinking and building the product in a very lean fashion ! My biggest issue would be : why would people pay to subscribe to a newsletter ? Do you have specific use cases ? (I guess that letter.ly closed for a reason?) I'm sure that spending a week to build it and see if people would use it is one of the best ways to answer that question though. I'm just wondering what you, as a developer, think.
I think I answered that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6600121
There are people out there who love the bloggers/writers they follow and will support them. A newsletter is a great way to trade exclusive access for money.
The kind of newsletters that publishers will use HappyLetter for aren't the marketingy kind you're used to. These publishers probably won't have a different product to sell where a newsletter is part of a lead scoring or funnel process. To them, the newsletter is the product.
Re: How I went from idea to product (with paying customers) in 7 days
#18Why a monkey icon? Hard for me to not relate to MailChimp.
That'll change. Someone is building out the identity right now. But I have a thing for monkeys. Don't judge.