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Posted

Hello, my name is Will Olson

What are you working on these days?


Recently I have been interested in privacy and data ownership projects. Two of my ongoing projects are (1) An email newsletter service that doesn't spy on your readers and (2) a journaling app the uses local markdown files so users can own their own data. I have a background in building web applications with Ruby on Rails and React/TypeScript as well as iOS applications with SwiftUI.


What can the WIP community help you with right now?


My biggest problem right now is shipping and perfectionism. Because my product is perfect in my mind I don't ship, and after weeks/months of not shipping anything I inevitably find another interesting project and start that.


What can you help others with?


SaaS applications are something I can help. I have been building them for years now, both for small and large companies. The technologies I could be most helpful with are Ruby on Rails, JavaScript/TypeScript, and React.


Something else you want to share?


For the last 6 months I have been nomading around the US staying in NYC, Michigan, and now Austin TX 😁 Also I've included a picture of my boxer Smalls!


Will Olson
@thinkolson

👋 Join WIP to participate

Rich Taylor
@flyinghacker

Hey Will! Welcome aboard!! 👋🏼

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Will Olson
@thinkolson

Thanks Rich! Glad to be here 😁

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Hey Will, welcome to WIP.

I think we all struggle with shipping and the nagging feeling that shit don't work or are imperfect is scary to us all. For me, the most scary thing is if people won't like my work or think it's bad.

For me it helps to think that people don't care about my work, they just want to get a solution to some kind of problem they have and if I solve their problem in a nice way they will appreciate it.

But everyone is different and is motivated by different things, what I want most is the freedom aspect of being able to live of my own products to be able to wake up whenever I want, to work whenever I feel like it and to not be bound by societal aspects that is normal in a work environment.

I am not there yet but I have some ideas that I think will help me get there. Hit me up if you want to discuss ideas or similar. I work mainly with a JS tech stack. :)

PS. Your dog looks absolutely lovely, I have a german pinscher and usually my #life posts is about him.

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Pete Marcano
@marcano

Hi Will!

Also struggle with 'perfectionism' here. Trying to ship even just a small thing every day has been helpful for me.

I've also been nomading around the US for the past 6 months! How has bringing your dog along for the ride been? I imagine challenging 😅

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Hey Will, glad to have you onboard!

Perfectionism is a super common problem amongst founders. Especially if you're a solo-founder without investors, as nobody is holding you accoumtable to ship something within a specific timeframe.

I think a lot of perfectionism stems from being afraid of your incomplete product being judged by others as if it was the final product. You know many of its shortcomings, and you don't want other people to believe you're not seeing that.

So what has helped for me is to ship so early, it's obvious to anyone it's still very much a work in progress. This way people don't assume it's finished, but rather an early prototype. This lets you get away with unpolished details (in some sense, the worse it looks the better). It also turns perfectionism into a driving force to quickly improve. As your product is now out there and that drive you feel to make it perfect, forces you to quickly improve the issues that you get the most feedback on. This is exactly what a product needs to improve.

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Buck Buczkowski
@buck

This was great thank you

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