👋I'm Mac, CEO of WebWave, a growth hacker and basketball player. Ask me anything! 💚📈🏀🔥

@amjosephjenkins In my opinion, the best way to market the product initially is to use social media, and communities. This is because you will get a lot of feedback there really quickly, and you can adjust your product and marketing strategy according to that feedback. Once you start getting positive feedback, and people start buying your product you know, you've got a good marketing strategy and a product good enough, so that you can start doing PPC marketing.

@webxdesigner You can integrate a lot of plugins to your website created with WebWave by just adding a 3rd party html, css, js code to your website. This gives you lots of integration possibilities. One thing that's not possible right now is integrating you online store with some shipping companies, or invoicing, or dropshipping. We're working at the very moment to improve our ecommerce so that it is much more versatile. What do you mean about freelances and agencies?

@mac_czaj I was referring to agency plans and special programs meant for freelance designers and design agencies

@webxdesigner If you're asking about new features created solely for agencies, we are planning to redesign the whole webmaster panel with this kind of users in mind. We should be starting our design work around this feature by the end of next month, I think. But we are constantly introducing other features. They are not tailored only for Agencies, but for everyone else as well. Every week something new is published, and agencies can make use of it.

@janusz_mirowski right now I'm rather filling my car full of all the baby carriage, bicycles, toy excavators and puzzles. I usually need to rent an additional roof rack :)

@janusz_mirowski Yeah, one of those I've looked at in my early 20s with disgust. Right now my perspective has radically changed ;)

@michelepomposo First, we had a great product designer with lots and lots of experience in designing websites for clients. He was the brain behind how the product works. After we created MVP, we just sat together with a client and watched how they used it. And we improved all the things that they had problems with. It took us a long time, nearly 2 years to improve the product enough so that we really got some traction. So my advice here, is watch what your customers do and how they use your product, and iterate. And be patient. Remember, that building a product is not a task for 3 months. It takes years, so be ready both mentally and financially for such a long time.

@mac_czaj sure! what about your ICP?

@michelepomposo Could you please elaborate on the acronym ICP?

@mac_czaj sure! ideal customer profile, in particular the one that has allowed you to reach product-market fit

@michelepomposo In our core markets our ICP is small business, who wants to create their own business website to display their offerings, their experience, build their credibility online. One important thing is that this small business owner needs to have a pretty clear understanding of how he wants his website to look like, and does not settle just to pick a template a make minor changes. In global markets we're targeting more graphic designers, freelancers, and small agencies, who create websites for themselves or their clients. This is not the same customer, but their needs are very close one to each other.

@alwaysbelearnin This is a hard one. Thank you very much :) I have always liked games, both board and computer ones. But I've always preferred strategic games, like Settlers or Sim City to shootouts. And running a company is just like playing a super complicated strategy game. A one with tones of rules. So I think, that if I was not running a company right now I'd be still playing those games, just because I like it. And I think this is why I haven't ever had any problems with motivation. I don't even think about it this way. I just wake up and get to work, because that's something I like doing. And my advice here is to figure out, what you like doing, and try doing that. That's not always possible, and more often than not means you should not be running your own company. This is a marathon, where not much can be faked. And don't feel bad about not being able to motivate yourself into doing something you don't like. I wouldn't be able to wake up every morning and work as a doctor, or a lawyer. Those are great jobs and I respect people, who are able to do that. But If I had to do that, that'd just be a 9 to 5 job for me, where all the time I think what interesting things I'd be able to do after I'm done here. And you cannot be a 9 to 5 entrepreneur.

@leena_jose I'd love this story to be filmed one day, just like Facebook's or Apple's :D But there's a long way ahead for us to be such a company as they are. But we'll get there :D Anyway, we started some 10 years ago, and we started on our local domestic Polish market. It was a totally different time. Website builders were a total novelty, and there was not much competition. Since we came out with a decent product, people just started buying it out of the blue. I had very little savings to put into the project. I also had no previous business nor marketing experience, but I had a lot of luck, great timing and lots and lots of will to make it happen. And most importantly, I had lots of fun doing it right from the start. And this is most important, because if you do not like, what you're doing you will not be able to make yourself get out of bed every morning, and you'll give up. Running a business is a marathon, and an ultra hard one. You have to love it, otherwise it'll just be a pain. If you're looking for an article or some advice about how to go with a product to a market, we're well established in EU, but right now we're introducing our product to global markets. This time we've created a strategy, we know our place, we know our target customer. We know where we are, and we're consciously making one step after another. And we will most definitely write a post or an article about all this in a couple of months. Hopefully it will be a great success story, so stay tuned :)

@mac_czaj Thanks for these insights. Looking forward to the article. Wishing you all the best for this one.

@thedhanrajsingh I haven't ever thought about monetizing the community. I think of a community built around the product as of a group of people, who can help you build a better product. This is a win win situation, where the community gives feedback about how they want to use your product, and you give the community a product, that better fits their needs. Everyone gives and gets something in return.

@mac_czaj I agree to it. That's the beauty of building a community around a product instead of a idea.

@haidersayed_com This is a great one, thanks :) Right now website builders available are either very simple tools, that lets you pick a template and change a photo, or tools that are build for developers to make coding a little easier (like Webflow, or Elementor). But if you're a graphic designer you still need to launch Figma, and create your mockup there, and only after you're done you can recreate that mockup as a website. Designers use Figma, because of the way you create graphics with that tool. They can move objects around, iterate very quickly with lots and lots of ideas, work with layers etc. And this is exactly what WebWave is. It's a Figma, or Canva, or Photoshop, but after you're done creating your mockup, you can just click one button and your website is online. You can work in a friendly and easy environment of a graphic design program, and you don't have to waste time recreating the design in another tool after you're done.

@andrej_persolja That's true. There is a lot of competition out there at the moment. But available website builders are either simple tools, that lets you pick a template and change a photo or two, or tools that are basically built for developers to make coding a little easier (like Webflow, or Elementor). But if you're a small entrepreneur, and you've got an idea of how your website should look like, neither of this is for you, because you will not be able to easily recreate your design with those tools. That's why professional graphic designers use Figma to create mockups, because they can move objects around, iterate very quickly with lots and lots of ideas, work with layers etc. It's just a natural way of working for a creative person. After they're done, they recreate those mockups as websites using other tools. And here comes WebWave. It's Figma, or Canva, or Photoshop, but after you're done creating your mockup, you can just click one button and your website is online. You can move objects around anywhere on the canvas, and there's no invisible table you have to fit it. You can work in a friendly and easy environment of a graphic design program, and you can launch your website live with just one click instead of launching other tool are doing the same work again.

@mac_czaj Got it, so I'm assuming WebWave is primarily targeted at creatives?

@andrej_persolja WebWave is best for people, who want to create a website with just the graphics design they wanted. Those are creatives indeed, but also people who just want to stand out, or have an idea of how they would like their website to look like. People, who do not settle for just picking a template and changing it a little. With WebWave you can create a website from scratch, and if you start with a template, you can customize it as much as you need and want. Ideally, if they have any experience with graphic design tools like Figma or Canva, then getting to know WebWave and understanding how it works is much easier.

@carmela_padasas First, be sure what you're selling and who your target group is. Second, polish your website and your story. Third, use social media to get some attention, and first feedback. Use that feedback to upgrade your story. Talk a lot with people from your target group, and if they don't want to talk to you yet, talk to people who have experience, and have built products before. They will help you fix some obvious mistakes in your product. And after you've got your story and your product right, and you think you know what you want to sell to people, go to AppSumo and verify if your ideas are right. The community there is really demanding, and unlike here on ProductHunt, they are voting with their money, and not with Upvotes. So they do think twice before buying something. After a successful Appsumo launch try here on Product Hunt.

@psd This year it really hard to predict anything. I think that even though golden states are trailing in the season, they are always strong in playoffs. Nuggets are great, but Jokic's defense will be abused in the playoffs, and will drag them down. Bucks and Celtics are teams with few wak spots.

@mac_czaj warriors are gearing up for the playoffs and we may see a few upsets of top seeds in the west The East doesn’t seem unpredictable but at least my Knicks are doing ok 😅 What is your schedule like on a daily basis?

@psd My schedule is more weekly than daily. On Mondays, I do all the urgent staff, and administration. I'm also planning for a week and checking all the statuses. On Tuesdays, I'm working with my team. I've got a 1on1 meetings with my management. Wednesdays and Thursdays are when I work on strategy and building and updating company processes Friday is when I work on the product. I talk with customers, look for improvements etc.

@nok_moe What comes over and over again in many conversations with our customers is the product itself, and that it's just different to what competition is offering. And the second factor is customer support. This is something very hard to build and maintain, but it's super important, especially in the beginning. Customer support not only helps our customers create effects, that they want at the moment. They are also responsible for gathering feedback and transferring that feedback to our product development team, so that we know what is expected. So maintain great contact with customers, and talking to them in many different ways, is in my mind most important.

@maxsong Literally a million of them. Building a company is going from one failure to another, like all the time. The thing is not to get depressed, learn your lessons, and go on. The biggest mistakes I've made so far are all related to building a team. First and foremost, I've always underestimated how other people are different to me in the way they work, in the way they think and what drives them every day. Second is I did too many operations myself instead of focusing on building a strategy and processes to ensure that strategy is executed. Third, hiring the wrong people, and managing them in the wrong way. I've always thought, that giving a person as much freedom of movement as possible will make them thrive. It turns out that without a clear strategy to follow this freedom confuses people and lowers motivation, because they just don't know what to do. So freedom is good, but there need to be a lot of guidelines, and a very detailed onboarding process that lasts for a couple of months to make sure, that a person knows what we're doing, where we're heading and how to help us.

@mac_czaj I couldn't agree more. Challenge difficulties with the right people. Starting a business product is like taking part in an ultra trail running with no end.

@maxsong I believe that a great, experienced and skilled leader can build companies with just anyone. He'll be able to guide them correctly. But if you do not have that experience, better motivated people with more initiative will help you greatly to cover your mistakes.

@alwaysbelearnin Yes, we are going to do that globally. We are from Poland, and we do have this community of 3rd party contributors here up and running very well. People are affiliating for WebWave, creating templates that are sold withing the app, and are applying to become WebWave experts. And of course, people are using WebWave to create websites for their customers. This is a full time job for some already here. And once we're well established globally, we will be rolling that out globally as well. Would you like to become one of our 3rd party contributors?

@abdelrahman_deabes1 WebWave excels at creating a custom designed business websites with 3-10 pages, blog and a small ecommerce. You can create landing pages with WebWave. We've got all the basic features needed. But that's not what we focus on.

@yashank_goswami1 We started locally in Poland. It took us a couple of years to reach product market fit. Because we were very low on cash, we had to do side projects, like software development for 3rd party companies, just to keep us afloat. But we finally reached break even. So we scaled to Romania. When we reached break even there we're now going global. And here we've started with AppSumo campaign. And now we're here on product hunt. We're also doing a lot of seo.

@mycelebs_elle Thank you very much. But we're still far away from the success we're planning for :) 1) You can create PWA with WebWave. It's available out of the box, and you just need to create a website for mobile devices, and people will be able to add it as an app to their mobile device. 2) I think luck is the secret ingredient in all businesses :)

@mattyt123 Our ultimate goal is to replace Figma in web design. We plan to make WebWave a tool, where you start from scratch, create all your wire frames / moc ups etc. just like you were working with Figma, and then instead of exporting your design to 3rd party tool you just click one button and your website is online ready to receive customers :)

@brennen_barney It was like 8 years ago when we launched public, so I don't think that advices from that period are still relevant. But I can tell you how we've found our first 100 users from a global market, which is what we're doing right now. I used Quora and other social media a lot to ask questions, present this tool to various people and get feedback. Because I think, that your goal in the beginning should not be getting users, but getting feedback. After you get positive feedback only then it's time to ask for money.

@nilans I think that if something is in a playbook, it's not a growth hack anymore :) Growth hacks are one of a kind tricks, that gives you one time advantage, and get you a lot of attention. Ideas come all the time. The important thing is to write them down for later assessment. Because If I don't write them down immediately, they just go away. That's why I go to all meetings with a notebook and a pen, and after that meeting I go through my notes. And I do not expect a single silver bullet growth hack to shoot us to the moon. I'm a fan of making a million small steps instead. So every small thing, every word changed on your website or every single new user counts for me.