@normal_ppl Thanks Eytan, look forward to hearing what you think about it.
Yep we custom built the site, Mike & I are both developers in our day jobs (him backend, my frontend) so its almost simpler to build it ourselves.
Congrats on launching your book! I've been looking forward to this for a couple months now.
I was wondering if it would be possible to break the 'sections' out into separate web pages? I want to add this thing to Pocket so that it's easier to read on my phone, and keep my place, but Pocket is currently only picking up the first section.
Either way, I'll be buying the ebook whenever you ship that.
@ejf_io Hey E John! Thanks for being so patient with us! We got there in the end :)
Yeah that makes total sense. Pocket hadn't even crossed my mind. I use Pocket a tonne myself, so definitely see the value in this. I'll see what I can do on the train home, it should be pretty easy to do. Will let you know once it's done π
Great book. So many founders face similar issues and don't get anywhere.
This book breaks it down into easy steps to follow. You learn how to reduce scope and still create a valuable product for your customer!
Plus they prove that it works by having launched 6 products in almost 6 months - no one is perfect.
@dupersuper_me Thanks so much Tom! We've tried to make the book we would have wanted to have read. I'm sure there'll be areas we can improve like anything, so I'm looking forward to the feedback.
@sultan0fswing Totally welcome Anuj! If you have any thoughts on how it could be better or topics it doesn't address you'd like it to then be sure to let me know :)
Hey all, so glad to finally ship this book (thanks to Ben for hunting! π).
Just over 12 months ago @mikeaag and I realised we had a problem. Despite working on side projects for months on end again and again, we continually failed to launch anything at all, meaning all our hard work went to waste. To fix this Mike suggested we try and launch six projects in six months.
I thought he was mad, we couldn't launch one project in unlimited time, so I wasn't sure how we'd manage to do six in six. But something about the challenge resonated with us both, so we went for it.
Now 12 months on we've launched 7 projects in the past year and are now launching our eighth, this book on what we learnt.
The book is specifically aimed at people who want to get better at shipping side projects, not those who have already mastered this and want to learn how to do the marketing, growth etc. It's our belief that just shipping something is hard enough, so we wanted to write a book just about that.
****The book is being released online for free, with no email wall. Anyone can read it.****
We'd love your feedback, if you have thoughts/questions at all please share them here, and we've also setup a Typeform to help gauge how useful the book is and how we can improve it.
https://contrast.typeform.com/to...
As always we tracked our time with the book, so you can see how long it took at the end :)
@fredrivett@mikeaag it's come a long way from the first draft I read...congrats on the finished product, reading the new closing chapters now
And kudos for putting it out there without even requiring an email address
@alangarrec Thanks bud! Your early feedback was really useful in helping shape the book, I was amazed at how quickly you powered through it! Sure there's still lots of ways it can be improved so I expect you'll have some more thoughts on this :)
@lifeis2complex For now our plans are to improve what we've already launched. We're working on v2 of FoundersKit.co, and will likely work on v2 of FlashTabs.co soon after.
Now we've learnt to launch, our next task is to learn to grow something, and earn some proper money :)
Dear makers, i think i landed at the right place at the right time..... :) please tell me, if u have time, how would you solve chicken-egg situation at launch.....? Have you covered that in the book? If yes which chapter?
@iamnineblack Hey Nine. Do you mean getting users at launch? What stage are you at? Have you shipped a side project and looking to get users? Or not shipped yet and wondering about what you'll do to get users down the line? Have you ever shipped anything or is this your first thing? Or have I totally mis-understood the question?
If you're able to clarify your situation I'm happy to give my thoughts, but by no means do I think they stand as the voice of the maker community. There's tonnes of ways to get stuff done, just general principles that can help you get there that you can pick and choose as you see fit :)
@fredrivett Hey fred, what I was saying was, users may not show interest if there's not TONS of users already.....imagine if facebook launched today and you log in and there's no friends of yours on it. You wouldn't visit that site right? Ours is such a social net. We will need lots of data and many users, so new users can keep coming...... one solution is start small, target one sector, master it and then move on......... any thought on that?
@iamnineblack Hey bud. Sure, definitely a big issue and one that a lot of startups face.
It's always tricky to give generic advice without knowing specifics, but I'd definitely say make the problem you're solving smaller, for now at least. What I mean by that is, is as you say, how can you solve the problems for a small sub-set of users?
Also, as you mentioned Facebook, I'd say just be really wary of not trying to make something shiny and big just because it looks glamorous. Everyone has the big dreams of being the next Zuckerberg etc, but that's just not how it works.
Be honest with where you're at (e.g. how good are you at launching stuff? How good at solving problems, building a business?) and then make your plan with that in mind. Trying to be the next big thing straight out of the gates is a sure fire plan to a tonne of wasted time and imminent failure. The book covers this a few times, if that resonates with you I think it'd be worth a read.
Let me know what you think :)
@fredrivett Thanks man!! I jumped to the Chapter : Start Small......that was a good guidence for me.......!! Will definitely read and tweet about your book!! Cheers! Best luck!
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