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Episode 5 of Morning Maker Show: Best failed ProductHunt launch, Moods, and Manual Tasks in a startup
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Summary
In this hilarious episode, we share our questionable Christmas mood, Sandra unveils she is in a Christmas newsletter mood, and we explore the joys of weekend work, manual tasks, and the best failed launch on Product Hunt. Join us for laughter, insights, and Sandra's newsletter secret.
Join the conversation & see the tweets/posts we read! Stop by our space 💬
Transcript
Dan: Good morning, everybody. Good morning,
Sandra: Dan. I'm so used to just saying Dan,
Dan: but good morning, everybody. I, uh, today's the day for change. I switched it up and, and went for everybody. We have, we have some, some wonderful people joining us. Hey, Charlie. Hey, Philippe. I believe that's, and, uh, hey, Serhii.
Oh, . Um, today I'm totally in the Christmas mood. I'm getting there. It's, you know, it's all around me. I cannot avoid anymore. What about you, Sandra? Are you in the Christmas mood?
Sandra: Absolutely. First of all, I'm so into Christmas mood, but I'm also so into Christmas newsletter mood. So it's been, I don't know if you know, but we are trying to collect crazy products, cool products people are using and sliding into people's DMs and asking for discounts and et cetera.
So I'm super excited for Friday newsletter.
Dan: Yeah. Um, you know, your, your newsletter this Saturday, I was driving and I got your text, you know, Just casual, Hey, there's a, there's something in your inbox. And I literally pulled over and had to read it just on the side of the road. Oh my God. It's so good. It's so good.
I would read this every day. Can you do this every day, please?
Sandra: Oh, but then I would become a real alcoholic person. And that would be
Dan: very questionable. Okay. Okay. Wait, once, once a week is fine. Then I, I don't know.
Sandra: I can become an alcoholic person.
Dan: Okay. I can enable that. No problem. Um, all right. Did you have a good weekend?
Sandra: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I cannot remember my weekend.
Dan: Yeah. That was a good one. Yeah. Do you ever, Yeah. You do? Yeah. But like serious work or, or just some things on the side? I don't know. I
Sandra: find the working on the weekend much more relaxing and enjoyable than during the week.
Dan: Yeah. Cause no one's bothering you on Slack.
Sandra: Yeah. Yeah. There's no pressure. There's nothing happening and I can just like do whatever I want and it's usually much more relaxing than
Dan: during the week. Do you think it's? Somewhat important to do that? Or like what, what's your take between people saying, well, you need momentum, you need to kind of do a little bit every day, versus you need to also take rest and, you know, sleep and, and be recharged.
Sandra: I mean, I fully agree, but like I do that, I do recharge and I, um, you know, take a rest. But majority of the time I don't do anything. , , it sounds. It's sad, but my life is quite empty, so the work kind of comes as an enjoyable thing.
Dan: I'm losing it, sorry. This is the best episode ever so far. All right. Um, I want to touch on, on, on one, uh, one topic.
So. So Philippe, he was trolling us earlier. He sent, um. It was so mean. It was so mean. He sent a chart that he just put two hashtags on it. He put, let me put this in the comments. He put, uh, Hashtag build in public hashtag morning maker show, by the way, apparently we have a hashtag Sandra congrats. And this chart is, you know, spiking on Monday and then spiking on Friday.
And I was, you know, I was ready to, to share this with the family to say, Hey, uh, you know, I made it. It was, it was not easy, but here we are. We made it look at this chart. We getting people to post. And then, uh, then Phillip said, this is actually fake. So, um, I did not, I did not, no, I, I think I asked you, do you think this is real?
But then I just assumed it's real because the show is so good. Yeah.
Sandra: I was like, of course we have these numbers. Two weeks in, of course, we did this.
Dan: Yeah. Okay. Let's get into the updates. I have a new rule. I'm, I'm full of surprises. You do, you have no ideas on there. So I have a new rule. When we read an update, we need to read the first and the last name.
If there's any, not just the first name. We had
Sandra: a problem reading a first name and now we are supposed to
Dan: read a second name. Yeah. So that's why we need to improve on this. We need to be better at it. So, the best way to do it is to get out of the comfort zone and to read both names, okay?
Sandra: Oh my, I can already see the first read.
Dan: So, Sandra, will you take the first read for me, please? Oh,
Sandra: no. Okay, guys, let's go into this. Um Hmm. Pontus Abrahamson.
Dan: Very well.
Sandra: He's saying 2023 is soon over, but I couldn't be more excited. 2. 5 months ago, I started my journey. And since then I got 850 signups, 8, 000 unique visitors, a ton of great feedback.
If you don't know, thanks. If you don't know, thanks for the inspiration. And he mentioned few people more built in public. Thank you guys. Whoa, someone had a really good year.
Dan: Yeah, that's amazing. Huh? Yeah. Two and a half months and 850 signups. I think that's, that's just crazy. So I wonder.
Sandra: The financial OS for your business.
Dan: A link would be amazing, but let me just try to open it up. Is there a link? There is no link. Click on the picture. On the picture. It's just a picture. Oh, it's a picture. Uh, I think it's called Midday, the product. Hey, uh, Pontus, pro tip, put a link somewhere. That would be fantastic. I would like to check it out.
Sounds very cool. And I think, you know, if you got 850 signups and he says 8, 000 unique visitors, it's like a 10 percent conversion. Wow. Nice job about that website. That's really good. Nice job. It might must be like very good Marketing, huh? Let's, let's analyze this later. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. So Philip is asking in the comments, if he replies, will it show up in the space comments?
Uh, yes, Philip, it does show up in the space comments. Thank you very much. Please, uh, add any comments and we'll try to address them in between. If you, if you have something clever to say, but no more fake, uh, Fake charts with, uh, you know, stats that we don't have, please, it's going to break my heart. All right, I take, uh, I take one by Karthik.
Yes. No, no second name. So taking a risk, we're going. All in on Launchpedia next year, shutting down our product by service and other products this month, as we want to give 100 percent of the time to Launchpedia in 2024. Hope that we won't regret this. Wish me luck. So this is quite interesting, especially, you know, from where I'm coming.
Um, I have quite a few things I have, you know, at least five things that I'm working on actively. And there's always the question, like, should you focus on fewer and go all in? Or should you cast more nets and diversify what you're doing and get more products and maybe, um, You know, that helps out figure out if one of the products will actually sell better than the others.
That's been my strategy. I'm trying different approaches, different types of products. And then I'm noticing, okay, this one definitely took off a lot better than the others. And then I focus on, on that once I find it. So maybe that's what happened with Karthik. He Launchpedia was the product for him that Seem to take off and then he went all in on it, but what do you think between this?
You know making a lot of things and focusing on one.
Sandra: Yeah. Well, I fully agree with you what you said I think it's great to launch Different things and then see what what kind of sticks the best and then put your focus and time and effort into that um So, but it takes time also to kind of recognize and the amount of time and effort you put in each product should be kind of the same to be, to have those realistic numbers to know what your next step is.
Um, the thing I don't like is like moving from one product to another without putting time and effort and kind of like just just pushing it out there.
Dan: Yeah. I think that's a great point. So to, to measure this correctly, to, to be able to say, Oh yeah, this has been a lot better than the previous products you have to, to have an equal amount of effort in each to have a, you know, a fair comparison. Yeah. And that could be quite tricky because some things you like working on more than others and some things you, you find, okay, this is actually not that fun as I thought it would be.
Okay. So. I'm going to move on to the next thing instead. Yeah, yeah,
Sandra: yeah. It's, it's very
Dan: tricky. Yeah. I, I also have this problem with being exciting, excited about ideas. And, you know, we, we can do things quite fast and then you think, well, I could try out this idea in a couple of days and see what happens.
And you make a quick. Landing page with Shipixen, of course, and then before you know it, it's a product or it's a show and that's very tempting sometimes. So for me, I have to pace myself and say, okay, you, you have plenty of things to work on. Can you please not make another one and do the things that you have already?
That's my problem.
Sandra: It's hard, but that's why you have me, and then I can tell you, please, Dan, stop, because we have a morning show, and you have so many things next, can you
Dan: just hold on? I have some responsibilities now. You
Sandra: have responsibilities, yes, you're not alone anymore.
Dan: Yeah. All right, you want to take the next one by Sam?
Pretty good one.
Sandra: Richard Jedlick?
Dan: No, the one by Sam
Sandra: above. Oh, Sam, sorry. Uh, Sam is saying, Sam knew, knew by my app still doesn't have a way to update your email.
Dan: I love this. Do you have a way to reset your password in klu.so? Yes. Yeah. The writing joke is if you have a way to reset your password and you've launched too late, and it's the same with the email.
I think, yeah, sometimes. You know, when you launch and you think, well, I need a bunch of these things, you know, you need a user profile and maybe the user needs to put a photo. And what if we need, um, you know, the address for this thing or that thing, and it blows up and you, you actually do not spend that much time.
On the product itself, but you spend time on these kind of. But
Sandra: those are very important details.
Dan: I know, but it's not important when you launch, right? No. It's important after you have some customers, because if you update your email, but the only email to update is yours and no customers, then it's not that important, I believe.
So. Yes,
Sandra: realistically talking, I fully agree with you, but there is more pleasure in having all the
Dan: details put together. Yeah, absolutely. I also feel like when I sign up to a service, and I actually don't have those things, I'm a little bit more reluctant, but you know I probably have a different way of seeing things.
So I'm, I'm willing to, you know, look away and say, yeah, they're, they're just building it. It's a small team or one person, but I bet a lot of users don't see past that when they think, Oh my God, we don't have. this, or we don't have that. That being said, you probably won't have that many people that want to change their email or password for a while.
So you can also wait for the first one to ask you for that and say, yeah, just give me a few days to implement it. Uh, and then you're good to go. Or
Sandra: send me your email password so I can manually update it.
Dan: Oh yeah, that's also a thing. That's also a thing. Like I'm a fan of that. Okay, side story. Um, when I did, uh, when I did payments for some of the products in the past, I would basically You know, wait for the, you made the sale email to come in and then quickly react, go in the database, set, you know, pro to, to equals to true.
And then the user would have the pro subscription without, you know, yeah, yeah, no, no problem at all. So You know, um, you, you can, you can go quite far with, with a little bit of manual work. And then of course, at some point you're going to think, well, okay, it's not possible for me to do all these manual tasks.
And then, then it's a good time to automate because you're going to think, is it worth, you know, do I have enough customers for this to, to make sense to actually implement something? And then you do it.
Sandra: Yeah. Yeah. Realistically talking, I fully agree with you.
Dan: Yeah. But emotionally speaking. You do not
That's why we're such a good team, huh? Alright, you wanna take the next
Sandra: one? Yes. Hua, Hua. Hua, .
Dan: I, I, I go with the first one. Sorry. I think, I think it's Hua, but uh
Sandra: Okay. Yeah. Reason. Mod for, um, design tools. If you've got some interesting things to share or say about design tools, go post there, hashtag building
Dan: public.
I love this. I love, you know. Reddit is a big mystery to me. I don't know how it works. Do you?
Sandra: I hate Reddit, but your own subreddit and then making your own rules in this subreddit. Um, I, I mean, Reddit is a really tricky one. I've seen, um, great makers just taking off from just Reddit. It's like, it's been, they, they got really great results.
Um, And I remember when I started Clue, Reddit was one of the channels I wanted to, um, kind of like investigate more. And I, I, I seen great, like at the beginning, really nice results from Reddit, but it was too tricky because you, you don't know these people. They are hiding behind their like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 names.
Um, And I had people calling me out on Reddit just because I used my real name, and they were like, what the fuck? And I was like, what is happening here? Not, not a big fan, but I've seen great results with people
Dan: using Reddit. Yeah. Um, it can be very powerful to get visits, unique visits. I've had a few good posts.
So by good posts, I mean, those are not, they're either taken down and I'm banned from the subreddit or they, they skyrocket and I go viral as the two options for me. Um, and those that actually didn't. get taken down, they got me, you know, thousands or even tens of thousands of, uh, of unique views. It's, it's quite crazy how powerful it could be, especially in the big subreddits.
Um, but the people there are, are quite, you know, as you say, they, they hide behind the anonymous user and you know, they say things that are not that nice usually. And for the most part, it's, it's not bad, but it could also, it could go sideways and you can have a very bad day by posting on Reddit. So yeah.
You still hear me? Yes, we
Sandra: lost you for a second.
Dan: Yeah, I think it's, I think it's a great, um, I think it's a great platform to try out things and then depending on the product, it might work very well for you. I know it can, um, it's just not for everyone. And you need to have a bit of a thick skin sometimes to, to post there.
It's, it's very scary for me. Yeah, yeah.
Sandra: Interesting
Dan: channel. Yeah. Okay. I'll take the next one by Suraj. I bet this is the correct pronunciation. Um, he's saying just build Dubco, an open source package for creating short URLs right from your terminal. It uses Stephen Tate's dub. co API to generate short links and there's like a small demo video.
He installed the thing and then I suppose. You run a command. Yeah. And then you, then you get a short link that you can send to everyone. I wonder if you can track this, cause that would be pretty cool. Can you, can you see how many people clicked on that link? You know, how, how does it work? Cause usually when I do the short links, you do it so you don't have like this humongous tracking thing.
Yeah. But this looks pretty cool. And it's open source too. That's, uh, you know, something to try out. Do you think, did you use any? Link shortener sometimes?
Sandra: Um, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I, if I know it's going to go somewhere where people will see it, then yeah, I use them. And it's usually like just me Googling, please give me, give me some tool that's going to shorten this
Dan: thing out.
Yeah, it used to be at some point that there were a bunch of these tools and they were quite, uh, quite popular. But now every time I look for one, it's kind of hard to find it. You have the same? Yeah.
Sandra: But this is one thing I've learned in building public. Um, and it's kind of like beautiful for me because, um, and I think you've been a big influence to that as well.
Um, like there are these products or like habits we have, like, let's, let's take this, um, shorten your link. Um, people take building public product or someone who made a product and they stick to it. So it's like. Whenever you have this issue, you have your product that you are using for that. And I love that.
It's kind of like this. Yeah. You just go to that already, you know, product you already know.
Dan: Yeah, exactly. That takes me back to one of the. Actually, very popular members we had, um, in the community, Lillian, he's not, I don't think he's on Twitter at all these days. It's quite an interesting story, but he used to have this, um, this slogan to, uh, not just get followers, but to get fans.
And I love that. because it speaks to, you know, turning people into not only people that look at your work, but people that advocate for, for your product. And they stick with it because not only do they stick with it because they like it. But they also talk about it to other people. Yeah. So if you can do that with your product, it's, it's, you know, the, the best way to, to also get, I mean, you can, you can tell me this better, but isn't that the best kind of marketing you can get other people?
Sandra: Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, I had that moment after our second product launch where. You know, I think some, yeah, Denny or I forgot the name asked, asked, is someone solving the problem that clue is and then, um, bunch of people started mentioning me and clue and then I realized, Oh my God, this is so much better than any launch.
You can kind of like. Because then you have a group of people that kind of know what your product is. Um, they don't use it or use it. It doesn't, it's not, it doesn't matter because when they see other people asking the first thing they think about is your product. Yeah, so that's why I'm always saying to people just be loud and clear.
You never know who's going to see it. You never know who's going to remember your product, you know? Um, yeah.
Dan: I love this. Yeah. You could have basically taken the day off because people did the work for you. Yeah. Just go home and have a cup of tea, iced tea, I guess. And. Long Island one! And that's it. Yeah, it's brilliant when it happens.
Okay, let's take the next one. Uh, would you want to read it?
Sandra: Yes, Robert Shaw. Easy one. I know, thank you so much. Um, my hashtag PradaCuntLaunch flopped, but you know what? I gained valuable lessons. Sure, those PradaCunt upvotes may not earn my trust again, but, but here's the thing. Will I try again? Absolutely.
Why? Because it's ultimate chance to reach a massive audience. Why did it flop? What happened? He didn't have call with me.
Dan: I, yeah, I can only imagine that he did not get in touch with you and you know, that's like 50 percent of the launch gone. Um, it seems like he wasn't featured, uh, from the screenshot, he doesn't have a position, right?
So he was not on the front page of Product Hunt. The first
Sandra: rule in first five minutes, if you have launched on Product Hunt and you are not on the feature page, you email message them, find them on Twitter.
Dan: Yeah. That's the, the first rule. I, I did see, you know, we, we talked about this last time that some people, even if they do that, they still don't get featured, which is quite, quite strange. It happens more and more often. Yeah.
Sandra: I, I, I'm really mad on the other hand. Let's not go into that.
Dan: Yeah. Um, But yeah, the sentiment is quite interesting that even though this has flopped, Robert here thinks it's the ultimate chance to reach a massive audience.
I don't want to go in the comments. I'm pretty sure they're going to be negative. I'm going in the comments. No, they're not. People are saying it's still better than those who don't launch at all. Absolutely. Very true though. Very true. Yeah. We have, uh, Yossi here. He says, my first product on launch received nine upvotes.
You're doing much better. So yeah. Oh man, I love this. You see, look at this, look at this community. It's so good. Everyone's saying, keep going. You know, you got, you got a bank, backlink, love the spirit. Uh, Abhishek says, it's all good. It's a learning experience. Oh my, this is so nice. I, yeah. I want to print this comment section, it's so good.
Sandra: And put it where my mirror is, so I can see it immediately
Dan: in the morning. Don't you just love this, Sandra? Look at this. Everyone's so supportive. I know,
Sandra: this is, it's the same thing, like, um, Sometimes we focus on product content and have high expectations, but probably this tweet alone worked better than the product launch itself.
Dan: Right, right. I bet it did. Yeah, I bet it did. Well, yeah, the same thing that I said before, please include the link because I'm not sure what's the product that's being launched. If I go to Robert's profile here, maybe Sidespace app, um, could, could be the one, I'm not sure that's the latest one. But, uh, I will actually I'm, I'm very interested in this now.
Um,
Sandra: Your browser tabs organized. I love that.
Dan: I want to try this one. So it's a vertical tabs manager browser extension. I have a huge issue with Tabs and specifically hoarding tabs, so I will try this. Do you have the same issue, Sandra? Yes,
Sandra: yes. And I saw your tweet from last night where you didn't, um, shut down your computer because of the tabs.
And I was like, yes.
Dan: Yeah, it's, It's giving me anxiety because I don't know what I'm going to lose, and I have so much open, and I just keep it open as long as I can, and then when it happens, I'm panicking because who knows what tab I'm losing from two weeks ago that I will never find. And also bookmarks don't work for me.
I don't, they just don't. Um, that's a fact. Okay. I'll take the next one by Patrick. Hey, full name Patrick toddler. You see. No problem at all. Good morning from Tokyo. This week in Build in Public. Finalized new testing kit from NMKR IO Studio. NMKR is the most powerful plug and play tools for successful NFT and real world asset tokenization.
I mean, I'm not familiar with but it sounds pretty cool. Um, he's working on a strategy, doing marketing, Oh, marketing week. Um, going to an event in Tokyo, very few calls. There's a lot of things that he got done in one week, final touches and updated the landing page. So this is a lot of, uh, marketing changes.
I, uh, actually don't, uh, follow the space. that closely with NFTs and so on. It was very hot for a while. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's still a lot of innovation happening there. There must be. Um, it's just when the AI thing happened, this, uh, this kind of took over, but I'm interested to, to see what's, what's going on with NFTs.
And for a while, I thought that's, that's the thing that's gonna, you know, be there for a long time. And then with all the crypto things, when, when the prices go down. It kind of seems like the hype cycle goes down and then it comes up again Maybe one year later and it's been like this since it's launched.
Yeah, it's
Sandra: it's a very unstable
Dan: market Yeah, do you follow? the the crypto news and so on or
Sandra: Oh, the means, but, um, and I, that's my source of the information, but I was reading that there is a clinic somewhere in Europe for all the people that lost their cryptos.
Dan: Yeah. Did you, did you own any crypto?
Sandra: No, no, no, no.
I, I'm, I never went on that. Um, yeah, but I, one close friend that also lost a bunch of money on it. Yeah. We do tend to joke a lot about it. He's quite healthy, but I still think that he needs to go to clinic just for like five days probably. He talks about it too much.
Dan: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the thing. Um, it, it kind of gets you when I, I used to have a friend that did it and it was everything that, that, that friend could talk about because it is pretty addictive and especially, you know, if you, If you go on the trading side of things, uh, it can get quite, uh, quite crazy.
So, yeah. All right. Do you think. Uh, do you think we should talk about our sponsor and then take one more? I agree
Sandra: with you. I was waiting for this moment. Then bring the sponsors in. I'm opening the door.
Dan: Yeah. Um, so today's sponsor is ChatWith. And this is actually a very cool, uh, take on chat. Sandra, do you want to talk about it?
Sandra: Okay. AIChat does more than just chatting. Imagine that. Brilliant. Um, chat with dot tools, um, is plug in your contact, you plug in your, all of your contact and that data sources. I love that. And then customers, you put, place it on your, on your website and then people can chat with it.
Dan: You sound like you've just heard about our sponsor and basically the first time you read about it, but you, you of course knew it and were prepared.
Of
Sandra: course, then. Don't question me.
Dan: Of course, yeah. I mean, we're professionals here. Um, right. Let's get to the next one.
Sandra: Fernando Palacios. Palacios. Palacios. I hate that.
Dan: I love it. Big
Sandra: news! I just crafted our first template for eye catching captions. Plus, you can preview changes in real time. Here is the first look, aiming for a simple editor vibe.
Private beta soon. Wait a minute, what is this? First template for eye catching captions.
Dan: Yeah, so it's, it's You know, on a video, it looks like You could add any text, so it's, it's a bit like, um, sorry, I'm losing my voice. Uh, maybe Tik Tok or Instagram where you can add, you know, text on top. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
But this just works on any video from my understanding. Looks pretty neat actually. So he's changing a bunch of colors and backgrounds and some animations and whatnot. I like it. Yeah,
Sandra: I can even introduce one more sponsor by accidentally, um, Lera is doing this Clip Wing, if I recall correctly, and, um, it's an editor for short videos, and we, when we had a call, um, I was asking her if it's possible to do captions, because, like, captions are so important for the short videos.
It's not the same when you are looking like, or scrolling TikTok or Instagram, I don't know what's your vibe, but it's not the same looking at the short videos with and without the captions. So I'm a big fan of the captions
Dan: actually. Yeah. It seems like it may be a video editing tools. And specifically these where you, where you add texts have been very hot recently.
There's been. So many of these apps. So yeah, and I love, uh, Lara's clip wing. I've tried it. It basically takes, you know, a long form clip and it creates a lot of content from it, and then you can edit it. I would definitely want to go more into that. For me, it's very hard to do video. I don't know why. Maybe we should do it for the show too, to, you know, get a bit better.
We could use clip wing for this show and get, you know, snippets out. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe Lara wants to actually sponsor us.
Sandra: I think TikTok is now a new channel. Oh my God, Dan.
Dan: Why not? Okay. Well, this is what I had for this week for the wonderful people that have been joining us. Remember to check out the website for past episodes if you've missed them.
We are actually trying to, to get this in some sort of podcast thing. Yeah. Because some people said, well, I want to download it and listen to it later and so on. And they, they have their own app. So why not? Um, I, I love to do that, but for now, morningmakershow.com. Spotify
Sandra: reached out, reached out to us, and they were like, guys, you need to move from the Twitter spaces to Spotify,
Dan: Oh, yeah. I think I, I just moved that mail to spam, but Oh, good, good. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm just going for Apple directly, but Spotify's okay. Um, you know, oh, yeah, yeah.
Sandra: I got a free subscription to Apple, so I'm fully in.
Dan: Yeah, yeah. We, we, we, we go, we go big or, or we don't go at all. So. Hopefully, hopefully by the end of the year we'll be in a podcast too, so you can catch us there, but in the meantime, you can also sign up for our newsletter, which is on morningmakershow.com/newsletter. I'm not kidding. One of the best things that I've, that I've read in my life every single week. I don't know how Sandra does it.
Dan: How do you do it, Sandra?
Sandra: Wine.
Dan: There you go. You heard it here first. Have a wonderful week, everybody. And we'll catch you in the next episode.
Sandra: Yes. Thank you so much and see you guys.
Bye. Bye.
