I really like that RSVPing requires 100% availability from all parties, who wants to leave folks out! And UX of using sliders for adjusting availability seems pretty intuitive. This is one of those problems that everyone has and the tool seems to solve it simply, great work.
Thanks! I'm hoping to improve some the UX around creating events, but it's coming together! I've had a few bits of feedback around the 100% thing, and maybe there's some options for how the tool will function when you're creating the event. Like "which times can the most people make" or maybe setting certain guests to "required" so that we find time that at least those people can make. I went simple first, as is my instinct with these things, and we'll see what features come next
Thanks! I'm just working through some text message integration stuff (lots of hoops to jump through, which is GOOD because i hate robo-text spam). More coming soon!
Super impressive stuff, the new animations for the single- / multiple-choice questions are slick. Appreciate the code walkthroughs as well, always learn something new. How’s the more business-y side of things going (the tasks your cofounder is working on)? Is August 5th the date y’all plan on launching an early alpha/beta version? Keep up the great work 💪🏼
Yeah i'm hoping to launch an alpha of this Through the Trees survey to people in my own life before August 5th. The Time Finder app has been helping me understand the things I'll need to do in order to send out the survey w/ SMS links, and I think i've now got the question types in order. Video coming out soon with some speed bumps i hit trying to record on iphones properly xD. Oh the life of a dev, sometimes...
Hey, your videos are super inspirational and insightful, thank you for posting so regularly, love seeing it as someone who is an aspiring SWE. Is there any way to reach out to you on other platforms, i.e. instagram, email etc... Keep it up! Truly a hidden gem.
Im currently doing an survey app in c# using blazor for the front end. I get stock on the Database design, i've done that answerQuestionSurveyResponse name lol.
Really informative video. From a software dev POV, how much emphasis and importance do you put into visual design, UI and UX. I've worked with software developers before, and most of them really prefer the coding and logic, and prefer to avoid doing much of the designing and wireframing. Would you partner with a UX designer for small startups, and if not, what other role/position do you think would complement yours best? Curious to hear your take on this.
Great question @sudhitheboat. I'd say it definitely depends on the application and on the developer. I personally can do a lot if given a set of brand guidelines (Colors, typographies, etc). I think I have an eye for when the UI isn't looking right, but I can't always get the UI to the right spot after noticing that unless i have some go-bys made by a designer. I really enjoy working through UX and wireframing. It's my belief that the best UX is made from a partnership of Design and Engineering, but I can get by and make pretty solid UXs by myself. At the end of the day, you should probably be spending resources according to the priorities of the business. So if you're making like a productivity app or something B2C which has the UI/UX central to the business's success - get a designer who you REALLY trust asap. If you're a service business creating internal tools to manage data and schedules, you may be able to cut corners and make do with someone like me who can get you 70+% of the way there on UI/UX but who ensures all the functionality is solid. Sorry for the essay, it got me thinking too xD
Despite the learning curve around audio the latency wasn’t bad at all. That was an awesome demo for a first version, nicely done! You mentioned using Drizzle for the first time, curious what you’re more accustomed with in the Node.js ecosystem-Prisma, raw SQL, something else?
Thanks! I think the audio typically is laggy because people will store it in a file and move it as a file rather than just streaming the data as is I’m used to using prisma, not super different from drizzle but I found a few moments when docs weren’t working as written and stuff which always takes you down a rabbit hole
can you set a spending limit on vercel's pro plan or do you only get a spend limit alert? what do you do if you go over that limit? I'm really pushed away by vercel because of the serverless computing (extremely high bill in case of website exploding with users) but it seems a lot of modern web hosting platforms are using it...
@avgJoe123 I've used vercel on a number of projects, none of them have crazy scale though so they haven't blown up on costs for me. I just pay $30/month ($20 for the pro plan and another $10 for log related stuff, and this is for all my projects combined). You can set spending limits so that it protects you from big paychecks. I've heard horror stories from folks on cloudflare, but I seem to remember vercel being more understanding of these things. Thinking about it, i'd say it's in their best interest to give a break to someone who blows up and create a happy loyal customer (who's now at a higher premium into the future). I would consider it a good problem to have. If the website is exploding with users, I'd hope i'm also monetizing a decent amount of that traffic. It's also part of the reason why a lot of soloprenuer saas devs say to not give a free version, i think. Thanks for the comment! It got me to go and take a look in vercel's billing settings and set $1,000 as my max monthly spend for now. I doubt I'll hit it without blowing up, but I imagine it'll give me the space to stop and think when i do.
@@FoundingMyWay Thanks for the reply! I thought vercel only allows spending limit notifications and then you can either stop the hosting or expand your limit... What do you use for the backend? I was thinking of using Digital Oceans's Droplets, but I think there's a lot of work to be done to properly protect your droplet (reverse proxying, setting up the firewall...).
had headphones in and was at like 80% volume and still had trouble hearing, thought it was just me xD last ep (first with the new mic?) sounded great, sure it'll get squared away
Thanks for the feedback y'all! I've been taking these things one at a time. I bought a microphone but I've been getting mixed results with it (I think because I still just have some things to figure out). I'll do some more tampering and see if I can get it in a good place
dude the concept of using a reverse questionnaire for honest feedback is really powerful. I feel like there’s alot more there that could be super valuable to alot of people.
Glad you enjoyed it! Yeah I've been itching to just build stuff, and so I think we'll probably see much more of this. Thanks for the feedback! Editing the video took a while though xD
Do you have any experience with fine-tuning LLMs? You might consider starting a service or agency that helps small businesses incorporate their domain-specific knowledge into custom LLMs. Not exactly a software product, but this could be a good way to align with the goal of helping small business owners and/or teachers.
Asking your customers directly whether they like an idea or if they’ll pay money for something often leads to false-positives, so just look out for that (see: The Mom Test). Given you have an audience in mind (accountants, financial advisors, etc.), I’d recommend talking to as many as you can and try uncovering their biggest pain points. From there determine if there’s anything that you could build using software to sell them given the solution would then be solving a real issue (the common trope of selling a vitamin vs. a pain killer).
Yeah i caught myself saying this in the video as well. I need to find ways to ACTUALLY get money from folks rather than asking if they would pay for it. I may try noah's example of how he created AppSumo to (using imgur and reddit) to create a similar user base for the idea I've been workshopping and interviewing people about the last couple of weeks.
hey Jesse, stumbled across your first video in this series and ended up binging a bunch of the rest! As a fellow software dev hoping to start a business, I find the way you're authentically sharing your process inspiring and it's kinda making me want to document my journey as well. Keep it up!
Thanks for watching! Yeah I find it's been great for two reasons. 1) It keeps me honest on making SOME progress each day and 2) it pushes me to improve how I organize thoughts and communicate about where I'm at in the process. It's been super helpful. And to put my Noah hat on, I'd say just start it and iterate!
super interesting points! we're running into the same issue with our startup... On any network platform, how do you get matched with what you're looking for? It seems that the matching algorithms don't have accurate enough parameters to get "few-shot" matching to work. And on the flip side, users aren't incentivized enough to stay on a platform long enough to find a match.
From what I know about matching, it's usually pretty easy if you have all the information about both sides of the process. The hard part is getting and organizing that information!
If the accountant concept does wind up working out, an interesting addition to the match-making / scheduling functionality might be collaboration features between accountants. Say an accountant does want to start doing their own thing and they get a client that has generally straightforward stuff except for one piece they're not too knowledgeable about. They then could use the platform to locate another accountant who is specialized in that particular area. Then the two could have some form of profit share or could be added to the "job" as a co-accountant or something. Just something that popped in my head. Not sure if there's legality that would get in the way of that or something lol. Overall, it seems you've pinpointed quite a unique problem in the marketplace with accountants. I'm very curious to see what you wind up finding out. Hopefully you can get one to have an honest conversation with soon!
Being a pioneer in a sector/market is always incredibly hard. But like you stated, if it works it gives others the ability to do the same in a much easier fashion. Can't wait to see the final outcome of this venture, I wish you success!
Hello Jesse, I love what you are doing with this series and that you are starting your own thing! I am an entrepenur who is currently working on a software that I can comercialize. I have a first prototype and have spoken to many big companies and potential customers. All I need, is a software engeneer who can help me preogress my prototype. I know this is a shot in the dark, but I stumbled across your videos just as I was looking for a software engineer and would love to chat futher about working together. Please let me know if you could be interested and I can give you my email. Thanks
I feel like you're being very specific on what you want, 1. the company cannot have faults it must have the best quality. You simply are not going to have this scenario due to the fact that even the best companies have shortfalls. Amazon their same day delivery option costs amazon a majority of their profit margin. this is because amazon wants you to know that their model is convenience for the customer over profit. Tesla their shortfall is that they are reliant on government assistance for green initiatives. 1a. Zocdoc for the example you brought up reviews on doctors and specialists. Zocdoc is not necessarily to promote an individuals practice, but to feature a individuals practice at a cost. Zocdoc makes money off of promotions of practices, they do not focus their attention to the customer's (doctor) end target (patient). Although Zocdoc makes money off of bookings they mainly source their money off of listings on their website it just like an Angi's platform for doctors. Zocdoc responsibility and goal is to show people their options, those options(doctors) have the responsibility and goal of providing a good service, now if the doctor has multiple reoccurring bad reviews people saying they injured them no good response then yes that would be Zocdoc's responsibility to remove that individual from the site indefinitely, but that would also mean that the doctor probably no longer practices if the continuously injury their clients many lawsuits would arise against the doctor to make them lose their right to practice medicine. 2. Companies do not start off with multiple verticals. Companies need a foundation to start with and be great at to get partnerships to further their mission goal. Which ever companies mission goal is to provide a client with a good product at cheap cost and can be their one stop shop to do whatever they need to do. So lets say for example Company A wants to start a marketing and planning company. How would Company A strategically do this as there are many aspects to marketing and planning. Here are some of the facets of marketing and planning. 1. Knowing your customer, *customer data analysis 2. What and where your product is coming from, *product sourcing 3. How much of the product you are selling will you need, *product forecasting 4. How will you reach the customer and make them change their WANT to a NEED, *strategic market penetration There are many aspects and levels to a marketing and planning company. It is up to you to which items you will want to do yourself and other aspects that you will want to outsource or have someone else do for you, through strategic partnerships. See what you can do easily, lets say for example you're good at collecting customer data. Okay, now that you have a system and program to collect customer data and organize it in a way to manipulate. What will you do with it? Sell it to a company who is interested in that specific customer data? or leverage it and go the full distance and approach companies who focus is that data you possess and offer them further sales, offer them growth but at a royalty cost per item or service sold. In this example we would choose the second option as this will show how you can have a marketing and planning company with just one aspect of the business. Company A holds the customer data, but Company A does not have market penetration knowledge. Company A has the customer data, and the amount of product needed so they will approach Company B, Company B knows how to advertise Company A's clients product and propose an idea to Company A for a stake in the program. Company A will take Company B's proposal and evaluate it and look to see if money is to be gained. Company A will accept Company B proposal and they will have a joint venture for the customer Company A wishes to serve. And then There are two ways to profit off of marketing and planning, 1. A scaling cost that goes with the reach the customer (target company) National or Domestic, this is more of a service approach, this is more of a hands off approach as you will provide the company with the bare necessities customer data, how much product is needed, who and how you will target the customer pool. 2. A scaling cost that is attached to how much of a product you sell for the customer (target company), which would be a royalty, this is more of a hands on approach where your goal is to sell as much product as possible to everyone regardless of the product being sold. --------------------------- Company A sole product is customer data collection, but their company is focused on marketing and planning due to the connections that they have. Company A will eventually gain enough capital to vertical integrate marketing and planning into their company, but that may not be for a couple of years.
I’ve hit $169 MRR this past week! It’s not much but it’s something. I highly recommend reading/listening to the book million dollar weekend to help you brainstorm business ideas and test the ideas quickly.
Hello Jessie! nice video! i like the format, i'm in my last year of university and working part time as a web-dev, i like your videos becouse this year i had the realization that to make something happend you just have to work it out and is really interesting to see people working it out too. I like the format and i would love to see you showing the product grow, imma suscribe! Cheers mate!
A problem online teachers are stuggling with is any assignments or quizzes they create are instantly posted online. You could explore solutions to create variations of questions to save the teachers from creating these variations manually.
Very interesting, thanks for the thought! Question: What tools are they using that do this (instantly post online)? Where does it post? Like to the students or to a community of teachers?
