they labeled me adam. i focus on graphic design, especially ux/ui, marketing, and full-stack web development. in my free time, i launch micro startups and create posters.
Recently I launched Yazero. A simple AI tool that helps you validate your startup ideas. Before building and launching it, I:
Now the first bullet point speaks directly to probably my biggest lesson.
I was stuck for MONTHS. Courses, blogs, tutorials.. books even! Nothing. Open code editor. Stare. Type. Err. Delete. Close. Back to YouTube.
I came up with an app that had business potential. This app seemed like bench-pressing the Earth. Somehow I dived in head first.
Step by step, feature by feature. I Googled, I used AI (GPT3.5), docs opened at all times. 34 days. And Yazero went from not existing to existing. This opened my eyes. You don’t need to learn to code before building your product, but instead, building is the best way to learn. Just start, figure out. Also, coding is probably the highest ROI activity when building a startup.
Coding taught me that any problem, however big, can be solved if you just keep pushing and solving relentlessly. Then it suddenly feels small. Forever.
Want money? Help people. Genuinely. Solve problems. Urgent, frequent, real problems. Or add game-changing value. Crafting a strong marketing offer for is much more difficult when your product is a “nice-to-have”.
Lose your ego. What might not look like a painkiller to you, might be a painkiller to others. Use research, job experience, and the people around you to find problems. Don’t care about money? Build something cool and fun.
Focus on building one feature crucial to the marketability of your product. I am not encouraging you to compromise on quality. Quite the contrary. By focusing on a single feature, you can make it really good, save time, avoid engineering complexity, and easily articulate exactly what your product does. Once you get your first users or customers, you can see if this product has potential and proceed to implement more features.
Your first product is most likely not gonna be the million dollar one. And that’s okay. Don’t spend months figuring how to scale something that is destined to be a 300$MRR gig. Think of it a stepping stone. Make sure that every next product kills even a bigger pain, the launch is even mightier, and your developer experience better. Once you have a product that is a strong market fit, you will know. That’s what they say at least. I hope I can tell you myself one day.
If you build it, they won’t come. Driving relevant traffic without losing the momentum is the challenge here. Unless you have budget for ads, you will need to promote organically.
The best and easiest way is to launch on popular platforms like Product Hunt, Hacker News, and Reddit. The good thing? These channels work. One casual PH launch drove over 1k visitors and resulted in 12 sales. So it’s best to think “how will I market this product?” as early as the ideation phase.
That’s all for today. To sum it up: