Sendgrid is the best/easiest I’ve used for transactional emails like this.

For marketing you’ll want to use a separate service and from address. Lots of good email marketing services out there. Kit is one I’ve used a lot, Bento Mail is the new one people are excited about.

The important thing is to keep your marketing and your transactional emails separate. People will endless click the “never fucking email me again” button on marketing emails then get super pissy with you for not sending them an invoice email.

The only journaling app that has ever stuck long-term and never stopped feeling pleasant to use is a moleskine notebook. I get the hard cover special editions for this and just pick one that speaks to me when the current notebook starts running out.

Currently on a ~1700 day streak of writing 2 to 3 pages every morning

An old quote I always liked:
First time founder focuses on product (building)
Second time founder focuses on distribution (marketing)
Third time founder focuses on culture (delegating)

Ultimately I think it depends on what kind of thing you’re creating. Some businesses need more building, others need more marketing. The more complete your product (does everything customers need), the more you’re just doing marketing.

I do all my tasks on the website. Works much better for me because I rarely open chat apps and spend all my days in browsers

iA Writer
everything else I’ve tried gets too in the way of what really matters: putting words down

at least for the first draft you need something with max flexibility and least distraction

If you have to ask “Do I have product market fit?”, then you don’t have product market fit. PMF smacks you in the face and the market pulls you along kicking and screaming.

You need both ingredients. The product/idea and the market. Many great ideas look meh when presented to the wrong market.

Just use Notion?

Easy to edit and organize, supports links and embeds, decent search, access controls.

Many founders get so used to grinding and hustling that they forget to stop when it’s no longer appropriate and may in fact be harmful. Tired people make awful decisions.

It sounds like money/uncertainty is a big source of this stress. Istrongly recommend reading Profit First and following its principles when relying on eat-what-you-kill for main income. It helped me immensely.

And yes like you said - timebox all the things.

Like @nikspyratos said, you should read Stark’s stuff. What a maker wants to pay you depends on the value you bring.

I have a page getting hella traffic with good conversions but 50% of users get an error and can’t buy? I’ll pay you a bunch to fix that for me.

I have a product with zero users and low interest? Giving you even 10 bucks feels like a lot.

To give a more concrete example: I have a bunch of problems on my blog that I’d really love to fix but it isn’t worth my time. Would love to pay someone to do it for me, but there isn’t nearly enough work to even begin talking about a /month price.