If you need free feedback on your landing page you can join my Wednesday sessions in Twitter.
Just reply with a link and get your page roasted 🤗

https://twitter.com/alexanderisora/status/1341700222230081538

#landingpage

P.S.: Happy holidays season folks!

Internet has became fast enough nowadays. It is OK to put 1-2-5 GIFs in a web page.
But if you decide to do this, make sure you optimize each GIF’s size.

I recommend Ezgif for GIF compression. I have been enjoying this tool for 5 years.

1) 100% free.
2) Compression options.
3) Not only compress - edit, compose.
4) Old school UI 🤤

https://ezgif.com/optimize

#tools

@unicornplatform stats for January 2021.

🧐 Visitors: 4,493
💹MRR: $6,570
👩👨Total users: 7,298
👸🤴Total paid subscribers: 502
🤝New affiliate partners: 5
👋Churned: 43

#openstartup

I have got 5 invites in Clubhouse 😋
DM me in Twitter if you need one (for free): https://twitter.com/alexanderisora

update: 0 invites left. Sorry.

@unicornplatform stats for February 2021.

🧐 Visitors: 6,735
💹 MRR: $6,595
👩‍❤️‍👨 Total users: 7,959
👑 Total paid subscribers: 521
🤝 New affiliate partners: 7
👋 Churned: 41

#openstartup

I have been using the M1 MacBook Air 13" 16GB for 1.5 months.
Here is my experience working on this machine as a coding SaaS founder.

⚡️ Speed
Aww yeah, it is lightning fast!
My daily setup: Postgres, VScode (+48 plugins), Sublime Text, Slack, Discord, Spotify, Thunderbird, Telegram, Chrome (+8 extensions), Firefox, iTerm, Figma, Alfred. All simultaneously.
Not a single freeze so far. Each app opens instantly.
My friend-pythonist is using an 8GB version. It works slick too.


🔌 Apps
As you know, there is a chip incompatibility issue. And there is something called Rosetta to fix it.
So I expected some problems with apps.

But in reality, I did not have to care about this. Everything just works. There is not a single difference between M1 and Intel to me

💔 What went wrong
My biggest fear was not being able to launch my development environment.
When I typed brew install python@3.7 in the terminal I got this error: "python@3.7: The x86_64 architecture is required for this software.".
It instantly made me pale because this means I will have to carry 2 laptops to be able to code my product 😩
The problem was solved quickly by upgrading the project to a newer version of Python. Thank goodness our dependencies did not mess up because of the update.

The next problem was nodejs v11 which was needed to launch the product locally. yarn start took ~2 hours (HOURS!) to launch. Each update took ~5 minutes to compile. The development process was awful. I got pale again 😩
The problem was solved by moving to a newer nodejs version. Again, the dependencies did not break up. But the things could easily mess up because nodejs dependencies are complicated as hell.
Now it compiles instantly, yarn build takes 30 sec.

🪶 Keyboard
It is much better than the previous generations have. Apple has fixed it.
I can code, I can type emails, I can write stories.
It is not as brilliant as the old one from my MacBook Pro 2012, but still fine

💻 Why Air, not Pro
AFAIK, the Pro version has these differences: better battery, better mic + sound, more ports (+2). I did not find these features significant enough to pay extra. And I also dislike Touch Bar.

#tools

I found the famous "How To Get Rich" read by Naval Ravikant dangerous (https://nav.al/rich)

Yes, dangerous.

It should have a disclaimer:

"Getting rich is an Olympic sport discipline. Putting your life on the altar of such a major accomplishment will make your life less full and quality. Think before diving into this game. Will it really make you happy? What stops you from being happy today?".

#read #lifestyle

I made a video to explain you how to find the best hunter for your Product Hunt launch 🙂

Watch here: https://youtu.be/QkG4MdJOz_4

If you are too lazy to watch: instead of asking someone to hunt your product, just do it by yourself. Even a famous hunter will not bring much boost, but it will take time and energy for negotiation.

#producthunt #marketing

“All overnight success takes about 10 years.”

What I learned in the last 5 years is that there is no such thing as overnight success. Every great artist, musician, or entrepreneur had spent 10,000 hours on their work to create that masterpiece, to become outstanding, to reach that MRR.

Shortcuts don't exist. It is an illusion. Illusions drain your energy and distract you from what really matters - hard work.

Only hard work will make you successful. You only need to find a way to extract dopamine from the working process. Your brain will do the rest.

This is called "find a motivation".

#motivation #productivity

This is how I got the very first customers for my SaaS (@unicornplatform).
Finding the first paid clients may be challenging. I hope these ideas will help you 🙂

Friends.
Friends are loyal. They know you personally. You have already built a reputation with them. So it is much easier to sell them anything.
Some of my friends work in the Web industry. They were aware I’m working on a landing page builder. And then I released the first version, they immediately bought it.
The very first customer of @unicornplatform has been a paid subscribed since 2018. It is a close friend of mine.

Ex-clients from the freelancing age.
I have worked as a freelancer for a couple of years. A huge part of freelancing is making relationships.
Even if you stopped working with a person, you still have a reputation. Do not neglect these connections. These people already know you can make cool things. If you think they may benefit from your product, reach out to them!
Some of my clients were following me in Twitter. When they saw the release announce, they bought the product. I did not even need to pitch or sell them anything.

The first customers played an important role. They gave me an initial boost of motivation and strengthened my belief.
Also, they gave feedback. Feedback from a paid customer is more valuable than thoughts from strangers or free plan users. You want your product to be aligned to the needs of paying customers if you want to get more of them.

If you are struggling to find the first customers for your SaaS among strangers, try to look at the closer people. Maybe you know someone from the previous places you worked in, or someone you met in a conference, learned together in a high school, or were in the same group of a coding course.

3 tools I found recently and enjoy very much 🥰

1) https://www.raycast.com/
Replace the default OSX Spotlight with an intelligent omnibox.
Search Notion pages, convert currencies and units etc. A fancier Alfred.
Free for personal use.

2) https://shottr.cc/
Powerful screenshot tool.
Has some unique features: drag and drop the result as a file, record scrolling, smart elements removing (not just erasing).
Free.

3) https://bitwarden.com/
OpenSource password manager.
Not as cool as 1password, but free and still great.

#tools

I shared the story of making @unicornplatform 🙂

Learn how I came up with the idea, built the tool, and discover our traffic sources.

Enjoy the read!

https://unicornplatform.com/blog/from-0-to-10k-mrr-the-story-of-a-bootstrapped-saas/

I made over 20 products. Only 1 got off the ground. Why?

Here are 10 mistakes I made:

1. Chasing fast profit 🤑
Making products for earning quick cash may look easy. But it is not.
Being able to sense trends and jumping on them requires skill and a particular mindset. I'm not that kind of a maker. I spend years to realize it.

2. Partnering with improper people 🤝
Finding the right co-founder and maintaining a good relationship is hard. It requires luck, the ability to analyze people, great networking and leadership skills.
If your visions and tempers are not aligned, get prepared for the bad.

3. Fearing failure 😣
If I was less scared to try when I had opportunities, I would get to this point x10 times faster.
A failure never brought depression or anything bad into my life. Each failure was a huge leap forward. Always.

4. Being influenced by experts too much 🧑‍🏫
The professional mentors, VCs, marketers added so much noise in my head. I wish I could be able to filter out what they say. Or at least listen to them less.

5. Following stereotypes 🤖
I told you about this in my recent article: https://twitter.com/alexanderisora/status/1488017133959213056
Acting like a successful founder gave nothing. Following steps from the success stories of others was doing a Cargo cult. Instead of learning my own way and making my own path, I was choosing "safe" "proven" ways of others which of course did not work.

6. Being too serious 😷
Taking shit too serious was always a blocker. I caused many conflicts in teams because I was too heavy.
Only positive vibes now.
Nothing bad will happen ever. Vipassana taught me this.

7. Quitting too early 🐰
Never stop grinding.

8. Not working on motivation 🤓
Motivation is something that needs to be cared about consciously.
If you lose it, you lose everything.
I should have learned earlier about how my brain works and how to keep it motivated in the long term.

9. Quitting too late 🐢
Sometimes I needed to quit but was too afraid to leave my comfort zone and step into the suspense.
Meditations and psychotherapy help to find the right way.

10. Making products for small markets 👀
An idea may sound amazing. But if it is aimed at a small group of people you will earn nothing.
I told about how to validate an idea on my YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf0HioM8eeU



I hope those will be helpful. Let me know what you think ✌️

Building solo:
⚡️ lightning fast decisions
💵 more $$, more stocks
🕊 zero conflicts
✨ sharp vision


With a cofounder:
🤝 support
👁 diverse opinions
🤓 hard to find a right person
💪 share responsibility
😴 less work
🎾 flexible vision

Read this amazing research on the no-code market 🤯👍

https://code.store/post/the-future-of-no-code

My takeaways:
1/6 Bubble, Webflow, and other sustained players are not perfect and have their own huge and probably critical problems.
2/6 Huge corps may want to buy out no-code companies. But maybe not because the no-code trend is cycling every 20 years.
3/6 SMB is easier to target than enterprise.
4/6 "Raising 100M$ is a cursed gift". Make products, not the capital of your investors.
5/6 I'll follow Retool precisely (mostly because they make a bet on the marketplace which we do)
6/6 "Managing a marketplace is a tremendously capital extensive job" - why? 🤔

That is what I call good customer care!

😅

Is it just me getting old or the new software is worse than the old one???? 🤔🤔🤔🤔


AIMP > Apple Music
Opera 12 > Chrome
Sketch > Figma
Old Facebook > Today's Facebook
Diablo 2 > Diablo 3
Anything > Slack

Source: https://us14.campaign-archive.com/?e=9265e4f5a7&u=c5b3029db5eb0e935f32a26fd&id=425dd0213a

I made a metaverse to work together remotely 🤓
You can join and work. They have pets and cartings!!

https://app.gather.town/invite?token=9aBFsXGdSB6kFziJP1nm

(The link expires in 24 hours).