I've been jealous of Nathan Barry for a while. He started ConvertKit in 2012, with his blog series, "The Web App Challenge". His goal was to build software as a service and earn $5,000 after 6 months. Today ConvertKit makes about $2.8 million per month. Like I said, jealous.
So in 2023 I'm going to build a SaaS. More importantly, I'm going to build it in public so you can follow along similar to the Web App Challenge.
Road to MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
Here are some of the questions I want to answer through this blog.
What problems am I trying to solve?
What audience needs this tooling?
What tech stack will I use & why?
Finding product market fit
Defining what features are a part of a minimum viable product
Why Build in Public
Building in public is a good way to get traction for the product. Traction that might come from fans, beta testers, partners, or product sales. Building a product is really hard, and having a supportive community around that makes everything easier.
In my mind, Nathan Barry with his “Starting a Web App Challenge” is the progenitor of building in public. He kicked off ConvertKit which is nearing its 10 year anniversary. Looking at their Baremetrics reporting, they are now close to 2.8 million USD MRR.
It’s been a repeated success though from the founders of Buffer, Product Hunt, and Ghost CMS.
Mostly though, I think it’s fun.
Communications Strategy
I have a few thoughts on how I'm going to share progress. If that sounds cool, follow me on a platform.
Monthly roundup thread on progress, problems, and plans.
Talk about revenue and costs
Share whatever is on my mind
Channels
Newsletters are generally a good idea. It's a good replacement for RSS feeds and allows people to get your content without having to remember to come back.
Twitter is where I post most of my random thoughts. You can catch me @signorcolt
I'm not currently active on LinkedIn but it seems like a good target channel. Colt on LinkedIn