Orazio Antonaci

Hey everyone! I'm going to launch my first web app in early July (lofi.co) and as the coding is almost done, i'm approaching a few YouTubers and Instagram influencers to schedule promotions in the days following launch. Out of the 15% of them who respond, the vast majority is able to give me a flat rate or even better a media kit, but there's also a few who ask 'What's your budget?' How do you guys approach them? I have a set marketing budget but i don't like to have one for each influencer i contact. Who knows your audience better than you? And also, these days influencers with the same amount of views, in the same niche and with the same audience location can charge one 50 times the other for no apparent reason other than not actually knowing what they're doing. You can actually find someone charging $5000 for a 40 seconds promotion in a video and someone else with the same analytics do it for $300-$400 (this has actually happened, the only difference was that the first one was managed by an agency). Let me know what you think!

Hello everyone! After around 7 months of work, my first web app is finally live at https://lofi.co and even though there's still a lot to do, it feels good to have it open to the public. While working on our ProductHunt launch, I wanted to share the story behind the product. As a non-technical founder, and with this being a pretty unique app, I went through a lot to make my idea a reality, and in this post I'll tell you everything about it: the story behind the app, how much I spent (I feel like this is a piece of information many non-technical founders are interested in) and the mistakes I made. Background I'm a 23yo guy from Italy, I started looking for ways to make money online since I was 16 and while growing up I used to have an absurd amount of ideas, but I never had the kind of money to pay for the development and design of any of them, so in the past 3 years I shifted to crypto, social media (growing and selling pages at the beginning, then collaborating with a media company to help artists with their social media presence) and e-commerce. Thanks to all of these, crypto in particular, I was finally able to save a decent amount of money and invest in my ideas. lofi.co: idea and development Due to my social media background, I managed to get the username @lofi on Instagram (i know this might seem useless, but that username alone is actually worth a pretty decent amount of money) and I was thinking to start another theme page to grow and sell, but then I decided I actually wanted to make something different out of it and, still without an idea, I bought the domain lofi.co for $3.5k back in mid-2020. The idea I was looking for didn't come until this February, and it was a pretty complicated one: an interactive experience combining lofi music, interactive animated artworks, and productivity tools. It wasn't complicated because of the tech side of it, but because a lot of people needed to be involved: music producers, designers, illustrators, record labels (if I didn't want to keep paying to have original tracks only) and a developer. Managing all of these people together was not easy, and it took 7 months to get everything done but, to be honest, it could've gone worse. I think the most frustrating part of the management process was during the interviews, where some people initially didn't take me seriously because of my age, but I guess I can understand them. Mistakes & Costs As I said, It was not easy, and I made a couple (expensive, both money and time-wise) mistakes. With the same experience I gained in these 7 months, I think the project would be completed in less than half the time. So yea, learning by doing is definitely a good way to learn. My two mistakes are strictly correlated, mainly to the fact that I hired a developer before having a final UI/UX that I actually liked (first mistake), this cost me a lot of time. The developer I hired is a great guy, ended up in Forbes 30 under 30 for an ed-tech startup he co-founded a few years ago. I had him start working on the project while the first design agency was almost done with the UI/UX. Problem was that I actually didn't like that design at all, and I knew this would happen before they even started working on it. This was my second mistake, because when I scrolled through this agency's portfolio, I already knew they weren't the right fit, but I was in a hurry to get the UI to the developer. I was also late on my schedule because of an issue I had with a previous developer I hired, which ended up wasting 1 month of my time and almost $1600 (which I'm still trying to get a refund for, and I eventually will). This is a product for students and young workers (it's for everyone, actually, but that will be the target audience with marketing campaigns), therefore I really wanted to launch it before summer. When we were close to launching the beta, I decided I really didn't want anyone to see the platform with that design and that's when I found an amazing design agency on a well-known online forum, IH. I had this agency redesign the whole thing, which brought to a few UX changes and obviously delays, also caused by the summer holidays. Let's talk about costs: Development (fully working & optimized web app): $5900. I had quotes anywhere from $3000 to $8000 so this was the average. Every quote was from Italian developers. Domain: $3500 Artworks & Animations: $4800. 10 animated, original artworks (2 are still unreleased) done by high-end artists, with full commercial and exclusive rights. Original music: $2300. Over a hundred original, exclusive tracks (music licenses are a pain in the ass). UI/UX $3300. $1500 for the unused one, $1800 for PixelTrue's version (which also includes the design for a future upgrade of the platform). I also set a budget for paid marketing (mainly influencers who I already booked), but I won't talk about that because the campaign hasn't started yet and I think it would be pointless before seeing the results. Woah! I don't remember the last time I've written something this long in English. If you've made it here, thank you for reading and I hope I didn't bore you too much ahah, would love to hear your feedback! Any advice is also greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone, I wanted to ask for your feedback on a problem I'm facing while making my first web app, lofi.co. I'm currently in the process of ending the open beta (which you can check out at https://testing.lofi.co if you want) as the first version of the app is complete and all bugs have been fixed, but I'm facing a few annoying problems with mobile optimization, in particular on iOS, which are causing a delay with the public launch. The app is designed to work on desktop, but I've decided to make a decent-looking version of it for mobile since I have a good audience on Instagram and I know a good part of the traffic will come from there. Thing is, my developer is having a problem optimizing some of the features on iOS, mainly regarding volume control and buttons interactions. My question is: is it better to have a 90% working version on mobile or not having it at all and leaving a landing page explaining how the app only works on desktop? Consider I've put some pop-ups here and there recommending to visit the site from desktop, but I'm still not sure if that will do the job. Looking forward to hearing from you, it would really help out!