Luke

Just bought a domain for another totally unvalidated idea that me, my fiancée, and our neighbour came up with last night 😆 Zero research. Zero plan. Just three idiots with zero credentials and maximum delusion. What could possibly go wrong? 🫡

@rxhit05 Reddit is great if you can get past the mods on there

As a founder, where are you marketing??

@typecraft_dev My absolute peak in 3 months is 1m 👀 No idea how people do it cos I live on this platform 😭

How do you get 5M impressions in 3 months? Is this a skill issue?

@AlxAndrws Starting new projects is so much fun though!

@ldo_dev Avoid shiny object syndrome.

A question for the builders in my feed: What single habit, if you locked it in for the rest of this year, would actually move the needle on your product the most?

@FabianD97 So true man. It's genuinely my favourite reason behind being a developer. It's such a good feeling :D

@ldo_dev That "clicking" feeling is genuinely irreplaceable. AI can get you to the finish line faster but it can't give you the deep understanding that comes from wrestling with it yourself. You'll be so much better off when things inevitably break at 2am.

My brain is fried but I'm grinning like a fool 😆 Yesterday I had only built web apps and now I've got a monorepo running two front ends with Next.js for web and Expo for mobile. Both apps share the same Prisma ORM setup and they share the same Hono API endpoints. One database, one API, multiple front ends. The best bit about this is that the technology is starting to make sense I can't wait to share what breaks next 🫡

@jaesong I built my own product for me and then added auth so others could use it :) I use it all the time. I'm not sure that constitutes a habit though, what do you reckon?

@ldo_dev Use your own product. You'll find a lot of user pain points before they drive customers away.

@WebDevJohn_ It's funny cos it would have been super simple and done really quickly if i used AI but there's something so amazing about having it click in your head :D So exciting!

@ldo_dev This is what a cracked dev looks like! I’m happy to see you grinding things out rather than sending sentences to an ai. Keep at it bro! You got thisss 💪

@mdnlabs @athcanft Ah that makes more sense! Just my small brain 😆

@ldo_dev @athcanft Hahaha it's not finished yet. It's supposed to be the two text options for each thing. It'll be weekly and yearly. Text changes on screen depending on which you choose

Updated Paywall. Inspired by @athcanft Waiting on Apple to push updates. Then ALL time goes into marketing.

@tibo_maker IT IS THAT MUCH HOLY. But yes, that makes complete sense 😂 My bad for being an idiot

@ldo_dev because it did cost $8 instead of 5m 😂

I raised $550k for 5% of Outrank felt like I betrayed myself - hardest decision I've ever made 🥲 I've always said no to investors, dilution, board members but we needed that money to buy articIe.ai it now redirects to Outrank 🤩 next step: I'm adding this gif to my newsletter - apparently X has opinions on whether I should still be writing one 🤷🏻

I love my 9-5. As long as I just get to get on and write code I'm happy. That being said, I think 5 days for a company and two days to yourself is obscene. Everyone would have much better morale and work ethic if it was 4/3. Even if you love your work, 2 days freedom for 5 days of slaving isn't fair

This is the problem with a 9-5. If you hate your job, you need the weekend to recover. But a weekend spent recovering means you’re never truly living. Either find a 9-5 you love or quit and build something.

@mdnlabs Steve is back from the dead to get you

guys it's over. Apple banned my account.

@stijnvwx You should always be focusing on acquiring new users. But also reach out to the ones that churned. Admittedly, most of them will ignore you but it's better to try than not try

After shipping updates, do you reach out to users who churned? Or focus only on acquiring new users? Curious what’s worked for you.

When was the last time you spent hours just breaking your own product? 😆 Yeah, I know you don’t 🫡 Spent today doing freelance QA and wow, found so many weird edge cases Devs really gotta torture test their own stuff more Back to my own building tomorrow 👀

@Tumtirel Yea that's a good point - and at that point you're trying to find a really specific set of people

@ldo_dev Cold DMs worked fastest, but only once the ask was stupid specific and tied to the signup pain you're already seeing.

So I'm at like 115 signups and wondering how everyone else got their first paying users 🤔 What actually worked for you? - building in public - cold outreach / dm - SEO / content grind - just running ads Genuinely curious what's been worth the effort 👀

@Sammichike Habits don't necessarily have to be about building though - we all have to stay sane in some way :D

@ldo_dev If everyone knows, they wouldn’t be looking for a way to grow and market their product

1. Make sure the landing page is actually easy to understand *what* your product is about and who it's for. 2. Make sure it has the features that a user would want 3. Make sure it has a nice UI. If you don't have those - that's the reason you have no users 😆 Only then, should you talk to people about your product. Otherwise you pitch the idea, they visit your website and can't find anything else useful about it

Your SaaS has 0 users, What do you fix first? A) UI B) Features C) Landing page D) Talk to users

@sflorimm You can know everything about everything I've ever bought or searched online - but I am absolutely NOT giving you access to see that I visited your website for analytical purposes 😆 The concept is so broken 💀

the generation that refused to accept cookies is now giving AI access to their desktops, files, and bank accounts

@lubinho_k Finding the right people to put your app in front of is genuinely a skill that I have not been able to figure out yet. I think makers hide behind their product and ship more features because it feels safer - I am guilty of that too lol

Talk to customers. Steve Blank called it “get out of the building” and it’s still the most underrated habit in building. Most founders (me included) hide behind the product. Tweaking features, redesigning the dashboard, optimizing stuff nobody asked for. Meanwhile the person who’d actually pay you is out there with a problem you haven’t fully understood yet. One real conversation with a frustrated user teaches you more than a month of analytics. Go in the trenches. Ask dumb questions. Listen more than you pitch.

@Pauline_Cx I think people are concerned because it's generally the demographic they want to build their app towards right? If it's changing to where you live but you've built an app and an audience aimed at another country, then it's a bit annoying

Everyone's talking about change in their country audience. I have no idea about mine 🙃 it's been years I stopped looking at X stats. I stopped when I realized I became anxious by impressions.