Please say hello to Chance 👋

What are you working on these days? 🧩 puzzles related to optimally matching learners / founders at an EdTech startup I work at 👾 a project-based learning collab platform for software devs. 💡 thinking about other experiments / projects to try out in the EdTech space

What can the WIP community help you with right now? Just seeing people on WIP build & ship cool projects is a big help. I'm also looking forward to becoming a part of the community and helping others where I can & getting feedback.

What can you help others with? Collaboration design, community management, cohort-based learning, cohort-based courses, asking questions

Something else you want to share? All mammals get about a billion heartbeats per lifetime, with some exceptions. (learned from a book called Scale by Geoffrey West)

Generalist • Dad • I talk too much about silence. Building HIGHSCORE.domains

welcome to WIP :)

Thanks @onerinas

Tweets on building in public. I'm experimenting with daily tweets on #BuildInPublic for April-May 2021 and sharing my learnings

Welcome Chance 👋👋

Currently working on thundercontent.com

Welcome to WIP Chance 👋🚧

Thanks for the warm welcome @Paul and @kimsia. Super excited to be here. Any tips on how to do best leverage WIP? :)

Marc Köhlbrugge

Maker of WIP amongst other things.

Hey Chance! Given your background (cohort-based learning, etc) I'd be curious to get your feedback on WIP once you are settled in :)

Cheers @marc - I'm always happy to jam on cohort based learning! I'm joining a few in May (I join them to study how they are being run, organized etc. - and to learn their material, of course ;p )

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Please say hello to Vlad 👋

What are you working on these days? Currently, I'm working on my SaaS service - juggler.dev. In my dreams, it should be the easiest way to add A/B testing on your site :)

What can the WIP community help you with right now? I really need to get some feedback about my service: UI review, bug issues, or any other misunderstanding in the workflow with juggler.dev. I've noticed that my first users from outside aren't able to start any A/B test and it's important to know where is main pain point for them.

What can you help others with? I have almost 8 years of professional experience in frontend development. I've Built applications of different scales. I can consult people about web technologies and programming in particular. Currently, since the pandemic has started, my hobby is growing new products and learning about them as much as possible. I'm paying special attention to SaaS services.

Something else you want to share? I'm really glad to be part of this well-known community! I appreciate any help from members and I hope my advice will be useful for you as well!

Marc Köhlbrugge

Maker of WIP amongst other things.

Hey Vlad, welcome to the community!

I imagine the hardest part with a tool like Juggler, is getting people onboarded. It requires quite a bit of upfront time investment from a customer to start getting results.

A SaaS product has a more gradual onboarding process. You sign up for a free trial, look around, start using the product a bit, get some value, and eventually you will upgrade to a paid plan. As you use the tool more and more, you tend to start paying more.

With Juggler I think I first need to install the code right? That raises all kinds of questions about privacy, reliability, etc. Is that the type of feedback you get from current users? I wonder how similar services solve that.

Founder http://juggler.dev and http://justintime.pw. Frontend developer. Father. Space dreamer.

The most valuable feedback I got from my friends, but it could be feedback from another side due to they know me. I think you are right regarding the privacy question, and necessary to add some engaging text regarding this step. I plan to change my landing page to a new version (juggler.unicornplatform.com/) to make it more standard for SaaS industry (customer habits) and clarify more on each step of configuration. What do you think?

Tweets on building in public. I'm experimenting with daily tweets on #BuildInPublic for April-May 2021 and sharing my learnings

Hey Vlad welcome 👋

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Please say hello to Carlos 👋

What are you working on these days? From 10 am to 10 pm (Monday to Friday): I work for an early-stage startup growing fast (on the road to Series A). We are only two tech people there (so weekend work is assured) The rest of my time: I spend my time learning new things and building tech projects. My making vibes are strong for now, so I'd like to find my freedom building some highly automated profitable side projects.

What can the WIP community help you with right now? I have so many questions that are not covered by podcasts or blogs. The Joe Rogan format tried by @levelsio with @roxkstar74 was good. It'd be awesome to have AMA's with some members that found freedom by making. This q has been in my mind: How is your personal life affected by your work? Would you suggest to indie make while staying anonymous? (I like the @ajlkn style)

What can you help others with? I'm open to help you with anything, even with emotional support, burnout is real. I got some experience coding, designing and doing marketing/growth

Something else you want to share? After 5 years doing or working for startups, I'm ready to quit that life for the indie hacker one. I have to thanks everyone for being so open about your work. I discovered this world in 2015 because @levelsio 12 startups. The open movement is evertyhing. PS: My Twitter handle is @palars, I'm relatively new to Twitter, so suggestions are more than welcome

🤔 learning/devtools/productivity products. Can offer help with: Coding/JS/CSS. Could use with help with: finding customers, building an audience 😅

Hey Carlos!

Making products to free me from my current job at a high growth rate startup (interesting yet too stressful)

Hey David! How is it going? I see that you have used tailwind for codebird, a very nice choice!

🤔 learning/devtools/productivity products. Can offer help with: Coding/JS/CSS. Could use with help with: finding customers, building an audience 😅

Doing well thx! I'm curious what your startup does?

Making products to free me from my current job at a high growth rate startup (interesting yet too stressful)

Sorry I've been off for a while. Embedpolls helps you to create minimalist polls that can be used anywhere, for the moment I use it to add polls to blog posts (in Ghost) and landing pages (the embedpolls.com landing page itself)

Marc Köhlbrugge

Maker of WIP amongst other things.

Welcome! 👋

Great idea to have some AMAs on WIP. Actually, @rpish and I will be hosting a live audio chat on Telegram soon. Probably this Friday. Would love for you to join us if you got a chance. We'll announce the details shortly. The idea is to just have a chat amongst makers, but I can see us doing some AMAs in the future too.

To answer your questions:

How is your personal life affected by your work?

For me they are highly intertwined. I don't have a clear boundary between personal life and work. Many of my work peers are also friends and vice versa.

Would you suggest to indie make while staying anonymous? (I like the @ajlkn style)

I think doing things anonymously will make it harder to connect with people. Talking to a pseudonym or abstract avatar just isn't the same. But I guess depending on your personal situation it could be worth the trade-off.

P.S.
Is that an alpaca, llama, or something else? What's the story behind it? 👀

Making products to free me from my current job at a high growth rate startup (interesting yet too stressful)

I just saw the audio chat announcement, I'm at work at that hour but I'll try to join the audio for at least some minutes.

Thanks for the answers. I read this last year tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-t… and I've been wondering what is the point where mixed work and personal life can go wrong. I guess, in the future, there'll be some products to solve that issue by creating online personas, I have seen some like rosebud.ai/ and pinscreen.com/facereplacement/. The thought of building something like that has crossed my mind a couple of times (because it's still early for that), but the learning curve is really high, for the moment I'm learning about GAN's just for fun. Do you know some makers working with computer vision tech? It is an interesting space.

I tried to edit the photo today. It has not changed yet, I'm not sure if it's going to change, maybe there is some approval to be done 😅. The original image was a Peruvian alpaca (the one with cold green background colors), the new one is an Argentinian llama (the one that has warmer colors). Well, I did a sort of short nomading mvp back in 2019 (2 months between Cusco Peru and Salta Argentina).

The alpaca: One day I was walking down the street in Cusco city and then somehow and end up in the middle of Sacsayhuamán ruins, I was a bit tired so I chill out with the alpacas (because they looked so relaxed (aspirational grade level relaxed)) for a couple of hours just contemplating life, the one in the photo is called Juan Pedro.

The llama: I was on the road to Cafayate (Argentina) but the bus took some stops. One of them was at some winery place and after some wine tasting I saw llamas outside and I was a bit surprised, anyways I took some food for llamas and went to know them, I did not find out their names tho.

Marc Köhlbrugge

Maker of WIP amongst other things.

Haha great stories on the alpaca and llama. I do indeed still see the old photo. I'll have a look what happened to the other one.

Regarding GAN, I remember Sarv was working on GAN a few years ago. I don't know him very well, but met him at a Stripe talk a few years ago. I suggest reaching out to him.

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Please say hello to Karl 👋

What are you working on these days? I cofounded a consulting firm called Dignified. I also build side projects. I'm currently preparing 3 possible products. I'll likely need your help choosing. My personal website can tell you more karlclement.com.

What can the WIP community help you with right now? I'll need your help to keep me focused. Help me choose which one to start. Here are my options: 1: Password security startup, 2: Novel domain registrar, 3: Stock buying tool for trends

What can you help others with? I'm a senior fullstack engineer and virtual CTO to many companies. I can help you build your product (almost anything).

Something else you want to share? I live on the road. I'm currently in Vancouver for the winter. I have a Shiba Inu named Gina. I love peanut butter.

Marc Köhlbrugge

Maker of WIP amongst other things.

Hey Karl. Welcome to WIP!

I think one of the common mistakes makers make is to focus on their ideas rather than the problem they are trying to solve. If you've found a real problem, you can take different stabs at solving it. And as you do this, you learn more and more about the problem space and your solutions are more likely to succeed. The reverse doesn't really work. You can't start with a product, and then try to apply it to different problems until you find one that matches.

So I'd rephrase your question to "which problem should I solve?" – and to answer that I'd look at 1) how real is the problem (are people already spending money trying to solve it?), and 2) how passionate and knowledgable are you about this problem?

Gina is hella cute btw! 😍

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Please say hello to Rik 👋

What are you working on these days? Doka Image Editor and FilePond, both highly interactive web components.

What can the WIP community help you with right now? Mostly need help on the topics of copywriting and coming up with marketing texts. I try to not be awkward but I tend to overthink casual conversation.

What can you help others with? I love giving product page feedback and can help you with anything front-end tech related (html, css, js).

Something else you want to share? After two years on WIP I finally found some time to do this intro :D I’m a dad of two young kids, work from home, not the best at sports but loves casual snowboarding down and next to not to steep slopes 🏂 Also enjoys the occasional single malt 🥃 Something on your mind? Ask me anything. I love to chat about indie product development and am very open about how I got here.

Marc Köhlbrugge

Maker of WIP amongst other things.

Hey Rik, feel free to share any copywriting questions you have in the chat or in the Q&A section of the website.

I personally tend to use conversational language. So however I'd talk to a customer in real life, I'd try to mimic that for my copywriting. I think the trap is indeed over thinking these things. Many people end up writing completely differently than they'd speak in person or over instant messaging. But if you just talk out lout, transcribe that, and make some edits so it flows better that's probably a great starting point.

https://twitter.com/rikschennink

Thanks Marc, good idea to say it out loud, that's often a very good way to find out if a presentation flows so will probably also work for marketing text.
Going to give it a try!

Klim Yadrintsev

Was CEO at @elyts.ru now #maker and self-employed

Rik I have much experience in high end marketing and copywriting! If you would like any feedback feel free to @ me!

https://twitter.com/rikschennink

Thanks Klim! I'm currently working on a new product page, I'll send over a screenshot next week!

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Please say hello to Luke 👋

What are you working on these days? Entice.com - A paid networking platform with the world on speed dial.

What can the WIP community help you with right now? Improving the design and functionality of our platform, as well as the messaging, overall solution, and market fit.

What can you help others with? Sales growth and strategy, lead gen, etc. Considering your first sales hire? I can help you know what to look for and what to consider. Marketing content and creative strategy as well as video production.

Something else you want to share? Hey everyone! Love helping others and excited to learn from this community. Digital nomad for over 3 years so you never know when we might meet IRL.

Engineer, YC founder, and Product Manager. Currently building a startup in public at themvpsprint.com

Welcome, Luke! Love the concept behind Entice (and an amazing domain name!).

What have been your favorite nomad spots? Any ideas for 2021? I'm planning on going nomadic starting early next year.

Co-Founder @ Entice. Building startups and surfing waves.

@timjones Thanks Tim! Finding the perfect name (with an available domain) was a blast.
I view traveling as a self-growth hack so the first thing to ask yourself is what would you be looking for with the trip? Fun and light work load or high productivity and healthy lifestyle?

Engineer, YC founder, and Product Manager. Currently building a startup in public at themvpsprint.com

Mostly the latter - medium-to-high productivity and healthy (but hopefully a good amount of fun mixed in there too).

I got a Gold Card visa for Taiwan so I'm planning on riding out COVID there until May or June, then maybe South/Central America.

Co-Founder @ Entice. Building startups and surfing waves.

Antigua, Guatemala, Santa Teresa, CR or Puerto Escondido are my pick for you then. Weekends are a lot of fun but nothing really to do weekdays but surf, workout, hike, be healthy. All Digital nomad spots too. For anywhere- if there's a Selina, there's a workspace and they do understand how to have good wifi so it works as a good anchor/trust if you haven't been before. WIFI will be a problem if you don't do research first.

Engineer, YC founder, and Product Manager. Currently building a startup in public at themvpsprint.com

Nice, those haven't really been on my radar but I think they'd be a nice change of pace from they typical cities. Thanks for the rec's

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Please say hello to Martin 👋

What are you working on these days? My main product is naas.ai which is a cloud solution for tech savvy people. Write simple script in Python and it run everyday. I also have side project: a French podcast named Indie Makers where we talk about talk about independent makers and their projects. I also work on Captime, a cross-fit app that's available on Apple App Store.

What can the WIP community help you with right now? I would like to learn more about how to detect where I should put my energy. Some projects look promising but not all will make good money. How to figure out which is which? I also need to continue to learn how to sell well.

What can you help others with? I can help on the tech side. I'm an expert in JS, Nodejs, Ionic, Docker, and Firebase.

Something else you want to share? I'm also a nomad and love to meet others. If you are in Portugal send me a message!

Marc Köhlbrugge

Maker of WIP amongst other things.

Hi Martin welcome to WIP!

Great questions about which projects to focus your energy on.

In my experience some projects require you to keep pushing forward. They take up more energy than they provide. You're constantly trying to figure out which features to build, how to monetize, etc.

Then there are the other type of projects. These projects pull you into their own direction. It will be obvious what to work on next. Users will tell you which features they want, or what problems they are running into. Monetization is often, but not always, more obvious as well. As you'll be able start to see patterns emerge and you recognize the type of customer that get the most value of your product. And what they might be willing to pay for.

Keep experimenting until you find that second type of project.

The quickest way to find those, is to try a lot of different things. But for us bootstrappers, it's helpful to focus on B2B subscription-based software. As there are generally easier to monetize.

Martin Donadieu

🚀Maker | 🎙Podcaster | 🧞‍♀️ Life Goal : Make 20% of the world 20% happier #business #people #happiness #podcast https://msha.ke/martindonadieu

Thank’s @marc se could have same convo about love ! Interesting point .
if you look Captime my app, it make money but i don’t know what to improve, people are happy with it now, but many have it already buy it so it make 200-300 by month ans that it , I pushed in app purchase in it past month and change not than much.
it look live the project do it’s own life 😂

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Please say hello to Bjorn 👋

What are you working on these days? Since YouTube has restricted access to their API and it was useless to continue working on #YTCount, I started CardMapr. CardMapr will be the best tool to find credit card accepted locations nearby. In the Netherlands it’s very hard to find these locations. I have an American Express credit card and I prefer to use it everywhere because it allows me to save for free flights.

What can the WIP community help you with right now? I remember the days (2018) when I was working on YTCount while I was in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas. I opened WIP every day to see what everyone was doing. This gave me a huge energy boost. It's great to see what everyone is working on.

What can you help others with? Like Damon, I am a self-taught designer, full-stack developer and marketer. If you want to hear my story or need any help, feel free to send me a message.

Something else you want to share? Hopefully 2021 will be the year that I can quit my 9-5 part-time job.    I will close my WIP Intro with some screenshots of the new CardMapr app that I have been working on in the last few months.

FullStack dev - Maker of justmandala.com #3 Product of the day french.dev - French devs directory OMC.dev - Learn to code (in French)

Hey, really nice intro @Bjornftw 👋

Would love to hear your story! Looks like you are a globe trotter, you have a job that requires some travel?

Love the design of your app! But Google Maps don't make the same thing? 🤔 Really curious about your competitors!

🇳🇱 | Founder of YTCount.com & CardMapr.nl | Freelance designer and developer

In 2018 I did freelance design/web stuff and YTCount was my job.

The credit card feature in Google Maps is boring, so I decide to make it my own haha.

Engineer, YC founder, and Product Manager. Currently building a startup in public at themvpsprint.com

App looks great! I think 2021 will be a better year for everyone; hopefully you hit that milestone 💪

Marc Köhlbrugge

Maker of WIP amongst other things.

The app looks great indeed! Is it a common problem for people wanting to pay with credit card only? I find myself paying with Apple Pay in most places now. At least in the Netherlands, and the other countries that support it.

🇳🇱 | Founder of YTCount.com & CardMapr.nl | Freelance designer and developer

Thank you @marc. Yes, I started this adventure with one of my own problems: "Where can I pay with my American Express". Many other users in the Netherlands also have this problem. The backend/app is future-proof, so we can expand to other countries.

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Please say hello to Florian 👋

What are you working on these days? I'm mainly focused on two products : https://www.mistralcss.com/ that provides Makers pre-made TailwindCSS blocks to bootstrap all your projects. (WIP) http://omc.dev/ that is a Scrimba like platform focused on French. I tried to pre-launch OMC, but it failed hard. Meh. I'm still a learner, will do a better job next time!

What can the WIP community help you with right now? Right now, WIP is already helping me! Sharing your TODOs publicly is truly some source of motivation for me. I love to read your TODOs, and he makes me feels like a part of this community. Sounds weird, huh?

What can you help others with? I can't tell that I'm a successful maker. I try, and I try, and I hope someday one of my products allows me to quit my #9to5 job! I won't be really helpful in marketing stuff or giving advice. BUT I'm a FullStack dev (VueJS/NuxtJS/Node/MongoDB/Firebase), so if you need something related to JS, I will be more than happy to help! Please send me a DM on Telegram or comments on this Intro. 😊

Something else you want to share? Random facts about me : - We have 3 horses - I have a boring job, but it keeps motivating me on my Sides projects - I have a dog named Daryl 🐶 😍😍😍😍😍 - Feeding the horses, training, working, waking up at 6 am, working on my side projects is exhausting sometimes 😓 - My first Side was #3 Product of the Day ( justmandala.com ). It was fun. "50% of something is better than 100% of nothing."

Jankees van Woezik

Maker of things on the internet

👋🏻 Welcome to WIP

FullStack dev - Maker of justmandala.com #3 Product of the day french.dev - French devs directory OMC.dev - Learn to code (in French)

Thanks @Jankeesvw !

Jankees van Woezik

Maker of things on the internet

How do you like Tailwind? Do you use it for every project?

FullStack dev - Maker of justmandala.com #3 Product of the day french.dev - French devs directory OMC.dev - Learn to code (in French)

I use it on 99.9% of my projects yeah, TailwindCSS is a no brainer for me.

I have everything I need in a single CSS Framework (Animations, great colors schema for accessibility, pre-made shadow box, media queries, etc...)! And with PurgeCSS, it's really lightweight.

I use it so much, and I'm so confident with it that I've decided to create MistralCSS (still WIP)

Self-taught web dev, created IndieLog.com, Channel.so and more.

Hey Florian, you have 3 horses? 😱 Are they a family, father, mother and kid? Haha 😅

I just checked JustMandala, had so much fun with it. Looking forward to seeing your updates in this community!

FullStack dev - Maker of justmandala.com #3 Product of the day french.dev - French devs directory OMC.dev - Learn to code (in French)

Glad you liked JustMandala! That was my very first Side Project as a Maker! 😄 I had so much fun making it! That I never knew how to monetize it (I'm terrible at this part... )

Self-taught web dev, created IndieLog.com, Channel.so and more.

How about export the drawing to PNG or SVG?

FullStack dev - Maker of justmandala.com #3 Product of the day french.dev - French devs directory OMC.dev - Learn to code (in French)

You can already do this ;) !

screenshot-www.justmandala.com-2020.11.29-06_28_54.png

remove

Self-taught web dev, created IndieLog.com, Channel.so and more.

Then charge money, free for low resolution, paid for high resolution 🤔

Engineer, YC founder, and Product Manager. Currently building a startup in public at themvpsprint.com

Love those horses!

FullStack dev - Maker of justmandala.com #3 Product of the day french.dev - French devs directory OMC.dev - Learn to code (in French)

They like you too 🐴🐴🐴

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Please say hello to Tim 👋

What are you working on these days? I'm building HelloHailey.io to help coworkers on distributed teams strengthen personal connections. And I'm sharing everything in public in a process I'm calling The MVP Sprint - https://www.themvpsprint.com/. I'll be sharing all my decisions, product strategies, success, and failures.

What can the WIP community help you with right now? Since I'm building a product for remote, distributed teams, I need insights from remote workers. How do you stay connected with remote team members distributed across time zones?

What can you help others with? In past lives, I've been a YC founder, head of growth, engineer, and product manager. I can help with product strategy, fundraising, a *little* bit of sales/marketing, and Rails development.

Something else you want to share? After 4 brain surgeries in 2 months (Dec/Jan '20) and a long medical leave, I left my job as a PM in SF to go full-time as an Indie Hacker. I'm planning to travel the world while building my startup as soon as it's safe to do so. I'd love to connect with other WIP'ers on Twitter - @anothertimjones.

Marc Köhlbrugge

Maker of WIP amongst other things.

Hey Tim and welcome to WIP!

You seem to put a lot of effort into The MVP Sprint. I'm curious how you find the time while also building the actual product itself? Or do you consider it as a marketing channel for it as well?

I know many indie makers struggle marketing their product (opposed to building something), but "building in public" is become more and more common. I, and I'm sure many with me, am curious to more about how fruitful writing about your progress has been and if you've been able to quantify the ROI of it?

Engineer, YC founder, and Product Manager. Currently building a startup in public at themvpsprint.com

Thanks, Marc!

My initial motivation was twofold: (1) Build an audience that I can funnel into the product I'm building (as you said), and (2) Build lasting equity in something that I can take with me even if this idea fails.

A third benefit has been huge for me - building in public has given me external motivation to make progress every week. It's also forced me to articulate my thoughts and justify my decisions. I had to do this as a product manager when I had a boss, but you can easily get by without it as a solo founder.

I'll probably shift eventually to a 2-week sprint schedule. I can easily justify spending 25%+ of my time writing updates and promoting my content if it turns out to be a primary marketing channel.

A month into it, I have ~45k article reads, almost 500 subscribers, and about 50-60 waitlist signups for my product.

In terms of ROI - these are really just vanity metrics until I get paying users, so we'll see. I'm going to start building in a couple weeks and timebox an MVP to a month or less.

Marc Köhlbrugge

Maker of WIP amongst other things.

Makers perfect sense. I also like the manager example. I've never had a manager, but since I started hiring people I've become a better planner. I need to assign them tasks, so I need to think more strategically whereas if you're working just by yourself you can go weeks or even months doing busy work without really thinking about the bigger picture.

FullStack dev - Maker of justmandala.com #3 Product of the day french.dev - French devs directory OMC.dev - Learn to code (in French)

Hey @timjones, nice to meet you!

Hope everything is okay today, after all those surgeries 🙏

2020 is probably not the best year to travel, unfortunately, I guess 2021 will be YOUR year!

Engineer, YC founder, and Product Manager. Currently building a startup in public at themvpsprint.com

Thanks, Florian! Yes I'm optimistic about 2021 for sure. I actually applied for a Taiwanese gold card visa - hoping to ride out COVID there starting in January!

Self-taught web dev, created IndieLog.com, Channel.so and more.

Hey Tim, welcome to WIP and nice to meet you 🤗

You are crazily strong and optimistic. Just connected you on Twitter and hope to hear more updates from you. Best wishes 🙏

Engineer, YC founder, and Product Manager. Currently building a startup in public at themvpsprint.com

Thanks a lot, Damon! Just followed you back. Love the idea behind IndieLog

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