MindStone has been launched for 1 months, I tweeted about it here. I spent about a month to build and launch the product, here is break down of what I learned:
- Some stats about how it went
- Whether this is a success or a failure?
- Lessons learned
MindStone Launch by number
In term of coding
- I spent 30 days coding on this project, 130 commits
- I learned a lot about
- Over time the project, got 66 ⭐, an accomplishment to me, since this is my first ever published open source project.
In term of Launching:
- My tweets got a whooping 🔥 16,000+ impressions, about 100 times compare to my boring normal tweets.
- The video got watched more than 🔥 4000 times, about 1/4 people see the tweet watch the video (I guess)
- I got about 60 new followers just because this tweet
- Since I don't track traffic to https://mindstone.tuancao.me, I'm not sure how much traffic Twitter brings, but in the end it results in 66 stars to github project. So I think It did well.
Is this a Success or Failure?
I think its a little bit of both, but I lean toward Success.
I set out to do this with a few personal goals in mind:
- Brushing up my coding skill since I haven't been coding for 2-3 years (professionally). For which I think I learned a lot (see above) and ready to take on bigger challenge.
- Validate the idea: Whether there are a need for tool like this? I'm convinced that, the market for MindStone is still too small and hard to monetize on. Event 66 people stars the project, I've not come across many people using MindStone in the wild. The hard part about writing is the writing part, not the publishing part. People who like to tinkering, seem to write/publish less 🤔.
- Gradually build up my audience, who care about what I build. For which I think it give me the taste of building something people wants, I gained about 60+ followers just from 1 tweet.
Lesson learned
- Build in Public is a great tool for Indie Hackers, because:
- It help us to validate idea much faster
- It force us to become more accountable, I feel guilty if I don't have anything to show at the end of each week.
- Psychological Support, I cannot stress how much it mean to me, without it I think I gave up at some point.
- Building audience, people are attracted to the ups and downs, what works, what doesn't when building/shipping products.
- To have successful launch, there are a few things that helps:
- Build in public, obviously, it raise awareness on what you're working on. Awareness take time, do it early and often.
- Follow and engage with Industry/Community Leader relevant to your product
- Gauge up your launch with teasing tweet. Like this one.
- On the launch day: DM/Contact Community leaders about your product and interact with your audience.
What next?
As I don't see strong enough demand on the product, despite nice encouraging words on Obsidian Forum, I decided to move on to work on my newer idea: SendToPod
I learned a bunch and had a lot of fun doing this project, and will continue to do so!