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    Tuesday, August 31, 2021

    Marketplace Tuesday! - August 31, 2021 Entrepreneur

    Marketplace Tuesday! - August 31, 2021 Entrepreneur


    Marketplace Tuesday! - August 31, 2021

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 02:00 AM PDT

    Please use this thread to post any Jobs that you're looking to fill (including interns), or services you're looking to render to other members.

    We do this to not overflow the main subreddit with personal offerings (such logo design, SEO, etc) so please try to limit the offerings to this weekly thread.

    Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts.

    submitted by /u/AutoModerator
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    Made $190k in 2 years as Solo Founder

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 02:25 AM PDT

    I finished my Master's degree in 2017 and joined a full-time job as a Full Stack Engineer in a startup. I had a dream to start a company by myself solo founder. I read the book called Company of One and I got more motivation by just reading the first 20-pages of the book. I decide to quit my job without knowing what to build.

    I found a GitHub repository for the Public APIs that have more than 700+ APIs but the problem I see to navigate the API with the advanced search feature.

    So, decide to convert that into a user-friendly website to easily get the API user looking.

    So, I launch my first project on 14th January 2019 on ProductHunt and It's become the #1 product of the day. In 4-5 months website was getting 50k+ page views and more than 30% traffic from organic google search.

    I was not making any money from that website at that time but traffic was growing as I was adding new public APIs by myself and In parallel, I was making other projects those get failed.

    After 7 months one API company email to buy Public APIs project and I decide to make money and sold for $23k.

    From there I got more motivation and here is the number about my micro-startups.

    • Launched 11 micro startups
    • 7-failed
    • 3-sold
    • 1-making $2k+ MRR
    • Made $190k

    I follow a pattern to make MVP faster and validate.

    1️⃣MVP in days

    2️⃣Launch

    3️⃣Validate

    4️⃣Continue ↳ Iterate

    5️⃣Stop ↳ 1️⃣

    Currently, I'm working on my SAAS business(NoCodeAPI.com) full-time to grow for $10 MRR by this year. Let's see how far I can go.

    submitted by /u/mddanishyusuf
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    I made my first $ on the internet!! ��

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 08:09 AM PDT

    So, big personal milestone happened for me today. I earned my first dollar on the internet!!!

    HOW: I've been working on namy.ai for a while, and yesterday I finally finished making & training an AI model that I was happy with, and deployed it. Then I made a small announcement on Twitter (~300 followers) about it.

    Some people visited and entered prompts, loitered around, but I didn't see anyone actually buy a domain. "Oh well" I said, I still needed to improve my SEO anyways (barely have done anything on that front😅)

    BUT TODAY I log into my dashboard, and I see: balance: €0.99 EUR

    !!!

    It finally happened!!! My FIRST internet money that I earned on my own!!!!

    I know it's not a lot and that I have a long, long way to go (and making twitter posts is not sustainable. I need to improve SEO.), but damn does it feel good!

    It's definitely validating that someone, somewhere paid money for something you built. Great feeling!

    submitted by /u/Hugo0o0
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    LinkedIn has become a joke. What do you use to network these days?

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 08:25 AM PDT

    LinkedIn has basically become Facebook now. When I scroll through it's either political nonsense, "feel good" stories that have nothing to do with work, or just straight up ads about how great their own companies are.

    I miss the days that it was a great place to find connections and expand your working network, and even potentially find new careers/positions because you had like minded groups.

    Thought I might post here because entrepreneurs live and die by their networks in the early stages.

    submitted by /u/ItsAJackal21
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    How I built a successful consultancy business

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 11:06 AM PDT

    Every now and then we see a post on building a successful business, often SAAS, drop shipping or marketing but not so much on consultancy and since I've had a couple of DMs asking for some tips so I figured I'd make a post about it.

    A bit of background first, I'm UK based and I started my business late in 2019. It's workplace wellbeing consulting working with large corporates. I tend to have 3 or 4 big companies at any one time with smaller companies/projects constantly ticking over.

    At the moment we're turning over comfortable 6 figures and I'm now looking to scale to 7 figures next year.

    I can only tell you what worked for me, it might not work for others but maybe it'll give some ideas or insights

    It started out offering wellbeing training like mental health awareness sessions then over time I learned the market and what companies liked so my offering grew to include consulting services.

    The business is built around me and my story. Using my story of mental health struggles gives credibility and makes it relatable because you're not actually speaking to businesses, your speaking to people who happen to be in a business.

    I also wrote and published a book telling my story which acts a bit like a big business card, if I do a speaking gig or a seminar I'll give out free copies to my target client.

    Early on I spent hours working out who my target client was. Everything down to gender, age, position, salary and even how many kids they have. This doesn't mean I'll only work with people who fit that but when I'm marketing I'll write as if I'm talking directly to that person

    My marketing strategy costs very little or nothing. I started out by joining Facebook groups full of people similar to my target client, I would find out what's causing them issues. For example workplace stress. So I would go away, create a webinar on workplace stress and deliver it to them for free but also mention the other (paid) stuff I offer.

    That brought in a lot of clients.

    I'd also create content on the subject area and post every day to establish myself as the expert in what I do. Often stuff that my competitors would charge for.

    Eventually I made my own Facebook group which made the whole process a lot easier, I post in there 4 times day and vary my content between info graphics, video, long form post and funny/random shit (anything to do with dogs and babies is a winner for engagement)

    I also created a mailing list and send an email out once a week. Sometimes giving knowledge, sometimes to advertise what I do.

    I also recorded a couple of of webinars and put them for sale on my website giving a low cost option that generated interest in my higher value stuff. I built up the online stuff so it now generates around 40k a year with no effort once it's created.

    For pricing I picked a figure I was comfortable with for each service, then doubled it. That was what I charged. I also have a minimum amount I'll work for in a day (at the moment that's £650 per day) and stuck to that. So I might give a discount if they ask but I'll never go below that.

    Once I got better at what I do I started offering retained services where they pay me monthly to deliver a regular service. That's what took it from a 5 figure business to 6 figure and now forms the majority of my daily work. These are typically my big clients so they always get priority.

    I don't employ anyone but have a team of trusted subcontractors that I trained up and take on a lot of the small jobs and the admin stuff I don't like doing.

    These days I work around 5 or 6 hours a day, 4 or 5 days a week although I did have lots of 16 hour days at the start, I also had months where I didn't take a salary and ate noodles and beans on toast so it's not been plain sailing.

    Anyway, I hope this helps in some way. Happy to answer questions when I get round to it.

    submitted by /u/chalky87
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    How I learned to be confident about business ideas

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 06:49 AM PDT

    Hey guys!

    I have been diving into the world of business ideas recently and made some important realizations that I want to share with you.

    The problem with creativity

    I would describe myself as a creative (but unorganized) person, meaning I can come up with ideas quite easily. When it comes to acting upon them, however, I always feel uncertain whether my idea is really good enough.

    So I wondered if there was any way to validate whether business ideas are worth spending time (and, potentially, money) on. Since I always found it hard to stick to one project (I get distracted very easily), I really need to be confident about an idea.

    Focus on research instead

    During my research, I stumbled upon concepts like audience-first, user centrism and community research. Basically, these concepts tell you to forget about your own ideas and start with research on what people really need. People told me that online communities on Facebook, Reddit, forums etc. are the best places to find problems that people are actually struggling with.

    While my ego was a bit hurt at first (I mean, who doesn't want their own creative ideas to lead to success?), I got to realize that this is the only way for me to be confident enough about a business idea to actually act upon it. In fact, the longer I thought about and researched on these approaches, the more I was convinced that this is the way to start a business.

    What I came up with

    So I started doing research in online communities to find problems that people are actually struggling with. I ended up having so much fun with it that I started collecting these problems in tables. Since not all problems imply business solutions, I picked the ones I found most interesting and started to write them down.

    I have been doing this for like 1,5 months now and covered 4 communities that I was interested in: Gaming content creators, yoga teachers, bootstrapped founders, and Airbnb hosts.

    Instead of finding one idea to build a business on myself, I got so intrigued with this that I went deeper into research.

    Ultimately, I thought that I didn't just want to do this for myself but share it with others. If you want to check out these community-validated business ideas, you can do that here

    What do you think?

    I would be super grateful for feedback (or even a subscription if you liked it). Until now, I have been proposing solutions to the problems. But I'm thinking about focusing more on describing the problems more, since this is what people are probably more interested in.

    Also, can you guys relate to the point on not feeling confident enough about a business idea? For me, starting with research instead of brainstorming really was the perspective I was missing to have that confidence.

    Curious to hear about your opinions!

    submitted by /u/Perspectrums
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    Anyone have a great search engine optimization company to refer?

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 04:00 AM PDT

    I have an online ecommerce business that is ranking between #1 to 10 for alot of relevant keywords for my industry/niche. I am looking for a reputable and effective SEO company that will handle my SEO going forward.I have also heard some good feedbacks about onlineadvantages.net but i wonder anyone has any experience with them or not. I have a very healthy revenue stream and can afford most if not all SEO services as long as they are reasonable and effective. If they are located in Canada or US that is a plus. Thank you.

    submitted by /u/obsessedSnipe515
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    Do you want to be successful? Like do you REALLY want to be successful?

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 02:03 AM PDT

    Too often I hear of aspiring entrepreneurs talk about wanting to "make it", get rich, run a company, be their own boss, make their own hours...when you start with this mindset, you're already jeopardizing your success. You want to be successful because you desire the outcome of what it might bring you, but you lack to understand what it REALLY takes. If you really want success and want what comes with it (which isn't always good or fun), you'll forget the outcomes and focus on the path.

    If you REALLY want to be successful, you'll stop doing the following. You can't even afford to compromise on one of these. There are too many of us out there who will be successful at any cost. If you're doing any of these you don't really want it:

    • You make excuses - You have a family to feed, your job pays you too well and you don't want to give it up, you don't have enough time. If this is you making these excuses...it's gut check time. Take a moment to realize, whatever you want to do, however much it's going to cost you, or however long it's going to take...double or triple your estimate. If you're a first-time entrepreneur...at least triple it. Seriously, there is no time to make excuses and you'll come up with every reason why you don't REALLY want to succeed.
    • You won't sacrifice - Look at what you just read above...you won't give it up. I'm not talking about not being able to live, but I'm talking about changing your lifestyle. I'm talking about selling your cars to wipe away your debt, I'm talking about saving 6 months of your expenses to give yourself a fighting shot to figure things out, I'm talking about committing to an extra few hours of work each day and ditching Netflix or compromising on sleep (temporarily with sleep of course). Everyone who has made it knows what it was like at the beginning. It F***ING SUCKS...especially if you've had a taste of what comfort is like. The great thing is, if you actually do fail, you can always get another job.
    • You won't validate your idea - I HATE THIS EXCUSE...forget the patent, forget the engineer who you think is going to steal your idea...you're not as smart as you think you are!!! You know who is? Someone who might buy what you're brining to the table? And no, I'm not talking about your best friend or mommy and daddy saying "oh yeah, that's really cool...I'd pay for that" No they wouldn't! Talk to real people who actually make buying decisions for what you want to do! Even if you do go for a patent, want to hide your idea until launch, etc...you're still going to bring it to market at some point when you're still at ZERO! Someone will have to hear about it, so why wait? Get feedback. Things change and your first assumptions will almost never be correct.
    • You need an investment - Remember the first and second points I made? Stop thinking you need $100k to get started. YOU DON'T. I started a multi-million dollar SaaS company with a couple friends and we had NO IDEA what we were even doing. We each put a couple grand in to hire a crappy engineer who couldn't produce an MVP. You know what we did...we fired the engineer and we sold the dream with what we had. We partnered with a national corporation to roll out a marketplace, signed an agreement, collected some money to keep building, rebuilt our product, and iterated from there. Eventually we raised a small amount of cash, but money doesn't solve problems, people also don't solve problems...resilience, grit, and scrappiness in the early days do.

    One last thing. The longer you give yourself to be successful, the more likely it will happen. It sounds simple, but so many people quit too early. We ALL have what it takes and we can all achieve what we want if we're willing to work for it. The question is, are you REALLY ready to be successful or are you just dreaming of the outcome?

    submitted by /u/Millionaire_
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    Will create a free landing page in Webflow from Figma design

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 10:38 AM PDT

    Hello everyone! 👋👋

    I'm a webflow developer, who's working in a marketing agency. I'm planning to be a freelancer, but it's hard to do it without an portfolio.

    I can't showcase any designs that I created there because of NDA, so that's why I'm offering my services for free to 5 startups.

    In exchange, I would like a testimonial from you and that you allow me to place your landing page in my portfolio.

    submitted by /u/kronwald98
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    How to create a successful product?

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 05:14 AM PDT

    Creating new products is my passion.

    Things you cannot neglect while creating your product whether its B2B or B2C.

    1. The experience ~ make a unique experience that is simple and sound to your customer- ditch complexity and focus on creating a memorable experience for your customer- again whether its for a business or a consumer. That doesn't mean offering a non-unique product- it means - make it simple for the customer.

    2. Don't be greedy and don't be too cheap:D ~ Consumers enjoy products that are fairly priced with reference to the service you're providing- if you are fairly expensive or too affordable- both may sell- but for a short period of time- put the right pricing strategy that fits your service and segments. Make sure it is SOUND AND FAIR - most importantly sustainable.

    3. Don't be like your competitors- you don't have to "reinvent the wheel", you can still do things like others , yet you always need to be offering something unique~always - creating everyday, investing in R&D, understanding the market dynamics is key to creating a product that lasts.

    4. Get constant feedback. Stay connected to your customer and know that the "voice of the customer" is usually the starting point to your success amd sustainablity.

    More tips your way. Just a few points on top of my head.

    submitted by /u/Oldiebabyeez
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    What are some of your business failures?

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 01:51 PM PDT

    I read a lot of success stories on here but we never talk about failure or even business failures. I feel like we need to be more open about talking about our screwups so new business owners/entrepreneurs won't feel as terrible about their mess ups.

    Here's mine.

    I was 19 years old and I just lost my job as a wildlife conservation worker. I was looking for another job but during my free time I was reading about business and entrepreneurship. I came up with a business idea called Green Life Nature, a grocery store awards and discount program for people who use reusable bags. I found a software provider, bag provider, and started attending local pitching/ expo events in my City.

    When I first started pitching it, people said it was a great idea. I even had people offering to be part of the early startup phrase. I was even lucky enough to find investors who were interested in hearing my pitches and give me feedback.

    Unfortunately, everyone who said they were interested in being part of the startup never responded to my emails or told me they couldn't do it. Two months went by and I haven't heard from anybody. The investor meeting was getting close, and I had no one supporting me.

    So, I gave up and canceled it.

    I look back at the experience and it depresses me because a part of me hoped I could be successful. but in reality, how far could a young, broke, uneducated person go?

    But despite the heart break I'm still thankful for the experience for some reason.

    Anyways, what are some of your business failures?

    submitted by /u/tinydog360
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    Why is ride sharing in Europe not more common? Turning private transport into public transport is one of the best concepts to reduce emissions.

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 01:42 PM PDT

    Commuting by train and bus are by far the most efficient ways to travel. So why not make car travel more public? Why does almost no one in Europe use ride sharing?

    Young people have so much demand for it.

    submitted by /u/TonightMaleficent721
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    How to find out a potential job applicants political affiliation

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 01:32 PM PDT

    Hi

    So I am a business owner and looking to fill a job for a personal assistant position in the coming weeks. This position would be someone very close to me that essentially would be working alongside me every single day. It's just me in the office but am planning on hiring one more person in the next few months. I have several candidates to interview, but I have a question.

    I am a conservative. I even started a political tiktok as well with just about 5000 followers. Sometimes I make these tiktoks at the office. I want to ask a subtle question in the interview that can let me know if they lean left or right. I would hate to hire a hardcore liberal only to find out later. I personally don't look down or disrespect people because of their political opinions, but I know many others do.

    Any suggestions?

    submitted by /u/tjcloutier3
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    Tips to find a technical cofounder

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 01:27 PM PDT

    Let me preface with this, I know everybody is looking for an app developer. I know everybody has a million dollar idea.

    I'm just looking for someone to work on a project with me that would be through a mobile app. I have a decent bit of technical knowledge, but am so far from able to build an app.

    Not a million or billion dollar idea, but I think it would be a lot of fun for someone to say they own and could possibly make some money.

    Any tips on finding a technical cofounder?

    submitted by /u/dandydos
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    Burnout or Overwhelmed or In Over My Head

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 09:34 AM PDT

    So I had this great idea to create a mobile app. From 10,000ft view, it's untappd for cannabis. I come from a technical background but development has never been my forte. I can script things together and stumble through code to make fixes but a full software package is not in my skillset.

    Anyway, on the side, I own a cat cafe (it's my wife and I's humanitarian effort, feels good but financially, it just pays for itself with no real gain) and a crypto mining farm that we have since converted to a GPU-renting marketplace for AI/ML jobs. The "data center" has been expanding pretty rapidly. I also trade as my largest income stream.

    Anyway, I had a developer for puff and, now that we launched version 1, he said he'd like to take a step back because of some stuff in personal life. I figured I'd focus more on building a user base and let him regroup and now I'm standing at the bottom of this massive mountain alone and feeling extremely overwhelmed.

    I really don't want to take the financial loss on this but I also don't know if I have the time/ability/drive to scale this mountain with the roadmap I have in mind (new features, monetization, etc).

    I'm sure I'm not the only one that put a lot of stuff on their plate at once...how did you decide whether to keep on the grind versus cutting losses early?

    https://puff.social is the app for reference

    submitted by /u/moonkiska
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    Need advice about growth given the next variables

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 12:13 PM PDT

    Me and my brother have a sauce that we believe it is marketable. In the past this sauce was sold by my brother in his restaurant already in combination with dishes and it was praised by many that came back, sadly more than a year ago his business went bankrupt, so a few weeks ago I told him we should try to market his sauce.

    We already have a production line going on and we have made tests on how much we can produce, we have costs of operation, costs of materials, warehouse, everything needed to have a production system that is reliable along with a reliable source of providers.

    My marketing plan (I am no Marketer) will mainly consists in Facebook Ads but above all a strong IG presence and colaboration with other local business that also are growing and we can offer each other exposition to new potential clients. Focus our efforts on a small part of our city, and if everything goes well, grow from there on. It's not easy to enter the supermarkets as they ask for prices that we can't currently handle despite presenting them the idea that we really have no competitors.

    So I will create a map, thanks to google maps, about the small local business that sell fruits, meat and general house needs and go door to door to promote to their owners our product.

    Curenntly, if anyone needs the idea, I write "store" on google maps and see if that store has all our requisistes, clean, parking lot and good appearance. If it checks atleast that I add them to the list of places to visit to make business.

    I am opening here with my probable tactics to help anyone who has even less ideas than me and to ask for any ideas of any kind, constructive criticism and things like that.

    Thanks

    submitted by /u/Garthas86
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    Surprising ranking by Google after getting some traction on ProductHunt

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 12:09 PM PDT

    TL;DR

    4 hours of execution. 2 people. 12 hours of hype + great community support.

    Motivation

    As a founder, registering and operating your business is crucial. Over the past 15 years, I've run 6 businesses and helped hundreds of other founders to execute and start their own companies.

    This product is a result of our team's knowledge distilled in a simple package during the hackathon week.

    I'm putting this in public in the spirit of #buildinpublic but also to talk to more founders and help them streamline the first steps of registering and doing business.

    Intro

    We have assembled a team during #GlobalBuildWeekend with some other OnDeck fellows. We had a day or two of planning and then kicked off in the middle of the week.

    Six of us had different backgrounds in startups, law, marketing, and no-code. It was a good enough mixture to get us moving forward. Robb, Oya, Sam, Teresa, Suhail and myself. Only Suhail and myself worked on the ProductHunt campaign.

    Usually, it takes months to build anything, and you still need to confirm your product-market fit. Then you iterate, fix bugs, do lots of engineering, lots of marketing, and finally if you're lucky enough — customer support. So how do we do all that in under a week?

    Landing page

    ![landing page](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb8ff429a-8e18-4f7b-9e2f-052a2c6dc654_1600x1015.png)

    Every idea you want to spend money and time on goes through the validation process first. Going through many accelerators taught me one thing — create a very simple, low-fidelity landing page to confirm your idea.

    Building a low-fidelity version first helps bring attention to the idea itself, rather its execution.

    This is exactly what we did. We built a basic version of the landing page and signup form using WebFlow in under an hour. And we polished the copy of the landing page for another hour or so.

    It was time to get some feedback!

    Early distribution

    So where can we find some early feedback?

    Because we launched this project during the Global Build Weekend, we already had access to a vibrant OnDeck community of ~250 builders.

    ![OnDeck's Slack](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1816cf2a-6b7c-49d0-b1e0-42a1aa6bfb34_2048x1299.png)

    I managed to share the landing page with several OnDeck Chapters in different cities and got initial positive feedback.

    A friend even suggested we do a ProductHunt launch. 💡

    Oh, and we got our first couple of signups within the first hour of posting the landing page on Slack communities. 🙌

    Preparation

    ![Explaining to the team why we need to do ProductHunt launch](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F385aa229-f4c9-411d-95c8-edd021d50c11_480x270.gif)

    After some internal deliberation between the team members across several timezones we decided to launch on ProductHunt.

    When? Tomorrow!

    Why? Because we had a pitch scheduled for Saturday and we wanted to confirm our project solves a real need ASAP.

    Back to the drawing board. It's 7 pm PST and less than 5 hours to prepare for the launch.

    A quick plan emerged:

    • revamp the landing page
    • edit signup page
    • add Google Analytics metrics
    • create a dedicated LLC Toolkit Twitter account
    • create one screen that explains what our product does
    • create screenshots of the product that's still in the works
    • create a video
    • create an interactive logo for the ProductHunt page
    • create one-liner of the project, and its description
    • create first Maker's comment

    Most of the above we achieved thanks to no-code, sketch, and lots of feedback from the friends who were still up.

    We scheduled the launch for 00:01 am PST the next day.

    Hype

    ![How we want early-stage founders to feel about our product](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16ad539b-adae-4f92-b377-243bae828c85_400x224.gif)

    To be fair, I already spent plenty of time on the ProductHunt engaging with other makers and building up relationships and connections. And getting a little less than 500 followers during the past several months. Same for Twitter. It boils down to spending 10-15 minutes a day to vote on the products you like and engage with the founders to discuss their products and questions.

    The strategy of getting the launch off the ground was to address existing online communities within the first half an hour after the launch:

    • ProductHunt
    • IndieHackers
    • Reddit
    • HackerNews

    Timing is everything.

    I had 4–5 hours of energy left to prepare everything.

    ProductHunt is a global community, so a new day starts at midnight in Pacific Standard Time. So midnight in California is early morning in Europe and Israel, and noon in India. So being able to ride the waves and engage your audiences across the globe is the key.

    Luckily around half of my ProductHunt following is in India's time zone.

    The next steps were to keep being persistent and consistent: preparing all the assets for the ProductHunt page, testing the updated landing page with the new signup form, and creating a copy for the online communities and social media.

    Midnight

    ![We have a lift-off!](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fce618a6f-1b80-41a7-b4ef-60189418ecfa_500x459.gif)

    Time to go! After the ProductHunt page went live, I posted some prepared content across the social media and online communities as well as Slack/Discord groups.

    I texted my friends here in the US, and also in the EU and Israel to help us with the initial upvotes and we got half the page up within the first hour. We were #40, and got to ranked #20 fast. 🙌

    After that, the launch became an uphill battle. We climbed to #15 during next 20 hours.

    We got great interest from the OnDeck community, lots of Twitter love from the no-code community. The ProductHunt community members helped us engage in the relevant conversations across the platform and on Twitter.

    Several hours later past midnight, it was time to get some sleep.

    Luckily, Suhail, one of our team members, who's based in India, got back online and took over. He helped with keeping the Twitter hype up and running across the social media and Slack groups.

    Waking up

    ![Exactly the feeling when you wake up](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9f21af72-bdd5-456d-a2d8-b454d31f5f47_480x270.gif)

    It was a great surprise to get the first signup after launching a landing page within an hour.

    Imagine waking up to 100+ signups! It's an amazing feeling that an all-nighter push has lead us to such great results!

    ![New signups](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F397f3585-e302-4a4b-80a0-0588cbefc7b1_1242x2688.png)

    We were hovering around #13 for that day on the ProductHunt and got a dozen votes disqualified by the algorithm (I assume because people created fresh accounts). And #1 had close to 500 votes.

    We were rich in the number of signup and lots of great feedback and questions across the ProductHunt, Slack, and Twitter.

    After all the work we accomplished yesterday, we had still around 12 hours to go before the end of the day.

    Engagement

    ![Making time to answer each comment and tweet](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F265285c8-6dd8-498e-8699-bdb12c9b137d_500x300.gif)

    The team and I doubled down on all the existing platforms to get our product in front of as many people as possible.

    We had a great product for the GlobalBuildWeekend. Everyone who ended up with an interesting idea and was on track to continue building a product and business out of it, everyone would need to incorporate.

    By late Thursday evening, we crossed 100+ votes on the ProductHunt, Google Analytics was showing hundreds of users live across the globe on our website.

    It was unimaginable to see something we spent 48 hours on getting so much traction.

    We kept pushing.

    Lessons

    ![Lessons learned](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6d9a6d00-75ab-4251-b3ac-fbbf78c8a726_500x281.gif)

    Launching on the ProductHunt on Thursday is tough and brings lots of competition, for our product launching on Friday or Saturday would get us to first positions much easier, but would also bring us less traffic.

    Launching on HackerNews and Reddit failed because we didn't build a community there yet, and it was hard to reach any significant levels of engagement there.

    We did a good job with Twitter in the beginning, and then during the evening and nighttime. We could have done a much better job in the middle of the day, by engaging online communities and creating more content on Twitter and Medium/IndieHackers.

    We kickstarted with a simple signup form, and then added more questions about what kind of business our customers run. This helped us engage in meaningful conversations on a different level.

    Having more than one person working on the launch is a must. You can achieve more within the same time frame and when sharing same strategy.

    We had several team members engage across the platforms, but if we'd spent some dedicated time into building the audience and community first, we would have 10x reach.

    We missed out on Quora, where we have lots of our potential customers. Though Quora usually requires a long-term game to be successful.

    LinkedIn yielded fewer results because the audience we have there is much less engaged. Also, the LI algorithm shows one's posts less often.

    Reaching out via existing Twitter DM conversation could have been an additional driver too.

    Weekend pitch

    ![We got overexcited with the external validations we got!](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fea4a49c1-0c46-47f5-a89e-8185abc24563_480x270.gif)

    Our team of amazing no-coders and legal experts kept hammering, before the launch, during the launch, and after the launch. The amount of effort that went into building an early product is insane, and couldn't be possible without no code and lots of previous experience our team had. 😎

    Thankfully to our launch and the efforts of the team we were able to pull a nice slide deck together and qualify for the final pitch. ✨

    We also started a chain reaction, and several other teams also launched on ProductHunt the next day and a day after. 🤯

    ![Some of the tweets went viral too](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F102cbffd-4a27-4f84-9214-c49cb10f969d_1600x685.png)

    Final pitch

    Sunday morning, little to no sleep, lots of slides and lines of code later…

    ![Zoom love during our final pitch](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2635aa99-5da2-448d-927c-c78e55a414cb_1600x1109.jpeg)

    We reiterate the feedback we got from OnDeck judges: VC investors, angel investors, and tech entrepreneurs.

    We found out our landing page made it to #4 on Google in the past 48 hours. And #1 in the Delaware niche. We outperformed long-established competitors with multimillion advertisement budgets!

    ![#1 on Google](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe1c902ad-63a4-455a-98e6-3edc787d39c9_2048x1299.png)

    We competed against a dozen other amazing teams and ideas.

    Several hours later, after a couple of hours of continuous zoom pitches, we heard back results from the judges.

    And… we lost the final pitch, but we won our early customers and our early adopters.

    In retrospect, the top 3 teams had great social and community-driven ideas and amazing teams behind each and every one of them.

    Oh, and we got new signups that continue during the pitches, after the pitches, and the next day too. 😍

    A week to recharge

    ![Getting some time to rest](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F96ae3da1-264b-454c-9ea3-695367754b5c_250x225.gif)

    After coming together for a short period of time to take part in the Global Build Weekend everyone needed some well-deserved rest. 🥂

    After all, we did tremendous job in launching and validating our product in under 72 hours, got 150+ votes on ProductHunt, #1 on Google, and got 100K impressions across social media channels. 📣

    What's next

    ![Our next board meeting](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1dcc9bb3-e667-4810-a225-b484f1280c4b_480x270.gif)

    Getting back online after a much-needed rest brought us to the incredible list of 200+ customers and founders waiting for us to help them make their ideas a reality.

    We already talked with several of you, and plan to schedule one-on-ones with all of you who signed up.

    In the meantime, we want to invite you to join a 💌 community of 200+ early-stage founders like you and help us build a product for you in public.

    We will offer one year of free registered agent services to the next hundred founders to join our community.

    Check for the promo code in your next email.

    Thank you

    This product wouldn't be possible without the team effort and support of our first customers. We are thankful to all of you who kept us motivated and moving forward. Thank you for all the feedback to our founders and friends and my wife!

    ![Thank you](https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faeda7030-4e52-4dab-80af-9a6b9a7815ac_480x270.gif)

    Support

    If you found this story useful, please show your love ❤️ to this Twitter thread.

    submitted by /u/eugenehp
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    Going back to the "job" world and how to present yourself

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 11:52 AM PDT

    Ah, the life of the Entrepreneur:

    • never gives up
    • burns savings to try again
    • has irrational optimism
    • always learning
    • constantly overcoming the friction of people with limited beliefs (often family!!)
    • expert at testing and failing quickly

    Sometimes though, we end up having to go back to a "job" to recover, rebuild, and try again. Things happen. COVID, death in the family, heart break, aging parents.

    Thats where im at.

    What a struggle though!

    I'm both overqualified and underqualified at the same time. I also know that I'm in my own way, and have tons of imposter syndrome for many roles.

    Anyone else been here? If so...

    • What are some strategies to overcoming this?
    • What roles are good landing spots for ex founders (im in tech)?
    • Do you know any good career consultants that can help? If so, please DM me.
    • Have you read any good books that addressed this issue?

    If you are in HR or know someone, I would love an intro or DM.

    Thanks!

    submitted by /u/mayurdotca
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    A potential supplier was not honest with me. How would you react?

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 11:46 AM PDT

    Hello r/entrepreneur,

    I own a start-up company that is in the B2C retail and service business.

    Today I was talking to a new supplier who would be bringing some interesting products to my line. He seemed very interested in my business model and asked a lot of questions about it, which didn't bother me because a lot of people are interested or intrigued by my business. He also asked if we were thinking about getting into B2B as well, and I told him that our long-term plan was to get into B2B as well, since it would integrate well with our already established B2C processes.

    So we talked a lot about our partnership and my business model, and overall had a great conversation. Later, I Googled the guy's name and found out that he is in the process of launching a startup alongside his current company, which is basically my business model, but in B2B instead of B2C.

    I find this situation difficult because, as I mentioned earlier, we would like to expand into B2B in the future, which would make us competitors. Since he would be a competitor and a supplier at the same time, it would create a conflict of interest.

    But what bothers me even more is something personal. He didn't mention his new company, and now I kind of feel betrayed because I thought he was really interested in my business model. I now feel like he was just trying to get useful information out of me. In my opinion, the trust is now gone, which is a pretty bad situation to start a new relationship with a supplier. I am thinking of canceling him tomorrow and looking for a new supplier with similar products.

    What do you think about this situation? Have I overreacted? Should I cut the relationship? Any advice would be appreciated.

    submitted by /u/259felix
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    What is a common buissness most people start? Buy and sell? I'm 20.

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 11:40 AM PDT

    I'm looking to start a buisness but don't really know what kind of buisness to start. I have a 3d printer and live in a small town, I've thought about a 3d printing company but don't know what i would do. Would love input, thanks.

    submitted by /u/True-Compote-7547
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    In Ten years, new Billion Dollar companies will have emerged which don’t even exist yet. What are the markets, those companies will target?

    Posted: 30 Aug 2021 04:38 PM PDT

    P.S. Same question could have been asked 10 years ago.

    I always think to myself: "In ten years, I want to be someone who thinks: "good thing that I started ten years ago"."

    submitted by /u/TonightMaleficent721
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    Where were you in life before going on out on your own.

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 11:03 AM PDT

    I am thinking about opening a business in the current construction trade that I have been a part of for the last 13 years. I have always been a cautious person by nature, but I want to take the risk so I can reap the benefits later in life. I was just wondering where everyone was situated in their life before they decided to take the leap.

    I am 30 and currently have one mortgage, one car payment, one kid, and not other debt. My total monthly expenses don't exceed $2800 a month with utilities included. Between my wife and I we make around $110k a year and I make the majority of that. We have around $50k in savings and about the same in 401k and a little more than that in equity in our house.

    submitted by /u/will1921
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    Founders and Co-founders of failed Start-ups, what are your lessons learned?

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 10:51 AM PDT

    Those who've started companies that unfortunately didn't take off, I'd love to hear your stories.

    What was your start-up company about, and what are the lessons you learned through your experience having founded / co-founded a start up?

    What would you do differently now looking back on the experience?

    submitted by /u/ItzFruity
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    Finally launched Pixelied on Product Hunt after procrastinating for one year

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 10:46 AM PDT

    Now don't me wrong.

    During this past year, we've been working tirelessly on the platform. Did our Appsumo launch and had an amazing response.

    Every time, we planned for a launch date, soon after had to reschedule due to certain reasons.

    Now, we have finally launched Pixelied 2.0 on Product Hunt.

    A bit of background: Pixelied is an easy-to-use online design suite for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

    Link: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pixelied

    Your feedback and support is much appreciated.

    Made by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs 😊

    submitted by /u/dawoodkhan254
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    Need some motivation right now.

    Posted: 31 Aug 2021 10:41 AM PDT

    I'm 18 and a couple weeks ago I got my first ever job as a croupier, I just needed some training before I got started. I was very happy and my plan was to take the money I earned and start day trading and then start with e-commerce. But I got a text yesterday that said that they think that this job may not be for me, after these weeks of training. And telling people I got a job. I feel like a loser, so to all the entrepreneurs here do you have any major drawbacks in your careers you could share, a great source of motivation, or just quotes that help you through those hard times. It would be much appreciated.

    submitted by /u/Tobias783
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