Doug Lyford

@emmajo Jabroneys

need a slur for idea guys who are unemployed yet somehow also too busy to execute on any of their ideas

Building on a rainy Saturday. IdealDay now has Google calendar sync, yay!! 🥂 Not in prod yet, have to get Google approval (account review) before we push this to prod. But it's a nice feature! #buildinpublic

@ClimStefan Appreciate you!! Thanks.

@DougLyford Dont let discourage get you. There is the time for all, go sell your product as much as you can, get quick feedbacks and improve. Your time will come Doug, just keep going 💪

Daily #buildinpublic post: Site traffic has picked up a bit. 165 visitors, 534 page views. 7 user accounts, 0 subscribers. Today is the first day where I felt kind of down and discouraged. Had a long week working on several difficult client projects, hacking IdealDay at night. Not sure why I am feeling discouraged today. I went down a few rabbit holes randomly clicking around on X, and my algo is showing me all of these amazing indie projects and successful founders. That's probably got something to do with it 😀. Despite not feeling great, I shipped a very useful feature today: default schedules. Critical to make the app enjoyable to use. Did more planning on Google calendar integration and sync. Not sure exactly how I want to implement that yet. Tomorrow comes.

@jcn08 @ClubWPTGold 2h sleep = 0h sleep. Mights well get an early start on the fence ;) congrats

😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨 @ClubWPTGold I’ve gotta get up in 2.5 hours to build a fence for my wife’s grandparents 😂

Cracking the UI/UX problem around this would be huuuge. Daily cardle is a cool innovation. Making the trainer feel like playing is nice, but personally I feel there are bigger fish to fry when it comes to this problem. Drilling is great, but the other side is understanding the big picture. Internalizing heuristics hidden in the massive piles of gto solution data. Learning more nuanced concepts as you get more advanced. I feel like the tools now are absolutely amazing, but there’s still a lot of ux ground to cover and a lot more that can be done!

I hate that studying poker can feel like such a chore. That's my biggest motivation for building @LucidPoker. I want Lucid to be so easy and fun to use, you find yourself reaching for it instead of time-wasting apps like IG or X. The last few updates are a major step forward.

I feel like the real truth is: “AI makes elite performers more important than ever”. Yeah if there’s one guy who understands the full stack and how everything works, that guy is super important. AI enables this to happen way more, because 1 guy + a few agents can run a stack, or one guy + 10 agents a business. Shifts things from a team of 5 where everyone is kinda imortant to varying degrees -> one guy is absolutely critical and if hit by a bus we’re screwed

Counterintuitive take: AI makes people more important than ever. While simple work may be automated, judgement and taste are still the sole domains of humans and will be for a long time. Software Factory allows us to capture what we know into a Knowledge Graph that then helps you to guide and manage your team - of people, agents, AI and everything in between. The result is a better product and more resilient software. Try it.

@jacobrodri_ Paul Merriman’s ultimate buy and hold strategy is simple and Goated. 🐐 Basically 10 index funds evenly distributed. Google it, simple to understand, mathematically backed

where do you guys invest your savings? S&P 500 and chill? individual stocks? crypto?

@Matt_Pinner You got a dollar?

you are sitting next to Elon Musk, what is the first thing you're asking him?

@ThrillaRilla369 Leisure suit Larry

Anyone who used a computer between 1985 & 2009, what’s one game you still think about?

@Todd_Spence Amazing 🤣

Someone put audio from CASINO over Looney Tunes and its perfect 🔥😂

@dklappin 😂👏

Charlie Carrel: “I’m a great reader of people. Buy my ‘Advanced Live Tells Masterclass for $699’. Also Charlie Carrel: “Here’s a top 5 list of all the people I trusted who stole from me.”

@allen_explains Bookmarked and coming back later with popcorn ;) Thanks for sharing

🚨 A junior at Jane Street reportedly landed a $220K–$600K role because he used AI to analyze trillions of data points faster than most teams ever could. In this 1-hour lecture, he breaks down the exact system behind it: • how he researches massive datasets • how AI finds patterns humans miss • how his machine turns raw data into decisions • how you can apply the same thinking yourself Skip Netflix tonight. Watch this instead. One hour could completely change how you think about research, AI, and opportunity.

I hear you there! I don't have high hopes for getting many subscriptions out of it. But right now, I am having a hard time even giving away accounts! I am hoping that I at least get a few users in there trying things and telling me what sucks. If I only get that out of it and zero subs, that's a win!

@DougLyford The LTD crowd is a different beast getting feedback from them is useful but converting them to subscribers is a whole other game. Curious how the launches go though.

My #SaaS app IdealDay is kind of 💩. But that's part of the plan 😀 See, I shipped a minimal MVP. I wanted to get this thing out there for people to play with. Now, I am adding loads of new features based on my roadmap and user feedback. In 1 month, the app will be unrecognizable. In 2 months, it will have 10+ new features. In 6 months, it will be a whole different beast. Top priorities: - Preset daily schedules (set your consistent blocks, they get pre-filled on each planned day) - Google Calendar integration (bi-directional) - Optimized mobile UX Bunch of other stuff on my list. The list will change based upon user feedback. #buildinpublic

@ClimStefan Yeah that's what I am doing, just a couple of meaningful comments a day in subreddits. Nothing spammy. Only commenting on stuff I am actually interested in :)

@DougLyford basically you need to take it easy and not spam reddit in the first period. Dont really draw attention on you.

Day 1/31 of marketing keywordscluster.com Users/paying users: 0/10 Target DMs/sent: 20/30 - tried a simple opening, 5 responded. Blogpost target/created: 3/0 - Cleared blogposts to make room to current stuff Target X posts/posted: 3/3 Received very valuable feedback from @hustle_fred (forever grateful to you and your secret agent 😁) Continued warming up Reddit account based on @arthuryuzbashew tool 😁 See you tomorrow!

@sherifgjini YNAB! (youneedabudget). Beautiful software that works. No hate.

Name a tech company that has literally zero haters

I'm not. I have done a lot of things to organically market (social posts, email list) but that has only resulted in 5 users and none have subscribed. I have two LTD launches scheduled (should happen next week) which will put the product in front of 30k people who prefer LTD over subscriptions. So I hope that leads to much higher user volume. Also giving away 10+ lifetime accounts for free. I think with all of that, I should be able to get some real user feedback.

@DougLyford How are you getting the first users in while you build?

My favorite thing about #indiehacking: I get to make all the rules. No giant corporation enforcing policies or mountains of red tape. I choose commit strategies, linting, github actions, code quality enforcement policies. I like that :)

@KevinNaughtonJr I took a quick look at your product and I LOVE the idea, probably will be using it myself soon. Congrats on the milestone! Just launched myself and at about -$100 MRR right now :)

After exactly 110 days, my SaaS product (ferryman.io) passed the $1,000 MRR mark! 🎉 I wanted to document my learnings in the hope that it'll help others reach this milestone too (hopefully faster than I did). My ultimate goal is to grow my product to $10k MRR and document the entire process. As it continues to scale I'll try to continue sharing what I learn along the way. Here are the biggest takeaways I've learned from going from $0 MRR to $1,000 MRR in 110 days: 1⃣ Build a Solution for Your Own Problem I've realized that there are many times that I've thought about building something (or even started) but for the wrong reasons. Oftentimes people (myself included) will be attacted to an idea due to the possibility of making a certain ROI. While there's nothing wrong with making money it's important to realize that there are infinite ways to make money so don't become fixated on "shiny" ideas. Instead, solve a real problem that you are the customer of. Doing this is imporant for 2 reasons: 1. You'll deeply understand your customers' problems 2. Since it's a problem you experience, you'll be motivated to deliver a solution Both these points are extremely important especially when you're building solo. It's very unlikely you'll be able to deliver a valuable solution if you aren't solving a problem you experience and understand. Additionally, it's very likely at the beginning of your journey you'll have little extrinsic motivation to continue working: you won't have an abundance of customers, you likely won't be making lots of money etc. Because of this, having the motivation to solve your own problem will be good fuel to ensure you keep going; which bring me to my next learning of 2⃣ Consistency > Everything Else If there's anything you take away from this post let it be this: consistently working on your product is everything. I mean this in a general sense, not necessarily coding. There will be many days where it feels like nothing is changing, but having these boring days is what will eventually set you up for success. It's kinda funny because it's almost like you need to reach an inflection point where things actually start to matter but getting to this point requires a certain activation energy that 99% of people aren't willing to put in. Don't think that because things are sleepy with your application you're failing it's actually just part of the journey so try and learn to enjoy it. Because of this, what matters way more than seeing specific metrics initially is building habits that you can control that are good for you and your product. For example, you can control how many cold DMs you sent in a day to market your product, you can't control how many users sign up for your product. Every day I write a list of things that I want to get done for my product whether it's related to engineering or marketing (or anything else). But every item on my list is something that I directly control. 3⃣ Minimize Scope: You Need Users Not Features What's funny about this advice is that it's something I tried to index on from other lessons I had read online but I still failed. I think a good litmus test for this is doing the following exercise: 1. Describe your product in 5 words or less 2. Launch with 1 feature that embodies this description My theory about why I strugged with cutting scope is that I (like many others) love building things. I'd actually argue that after you have your MVP functioning, any additional building you do is just active procrastination. It feels good and it feels productive, but it's not actually what you should be indexing on. Build the smallest possible thing and launch and then start talking about it. 4⃣ Marketing is Actually the Difficult (and Important) Part Having the ability to build things used to be a moat, but now, almost anyone can build something. Because of this what matters is how you distribute and market what you build. At the beginning of your journey, marketing is just as important, if not more important, than actually building your product. If I'm being brutally honest with myself I think I shied away from marketing because I wasn't comfortable about talking about what I was building -- because talking about it meant people would know about it and if people knew about it they could know that it might fail. My best advice here is to force yourself to do marketing even if it's uncomfortable and the best way to do this is by making marketing an integral part of your daily activities. I started posting about my product on my socials even though it felt uncomfortable. I also made it a goal to tell 10 new people about my product every single day. The best part about doing this is that now I don't feel uncomfortable talking about my product anymore. Forcing yourself to post will make you realize that no one really cares in the first place (which should be liberating to you) 5⃣ Trials are Worth More Than Subscriptions One of my biggest lessons was to give users trials of your product. Countless things in my product were born out of users being able to try my product and then tell me: 1. What they liked 2. What they didn't like 3. What the product didn't have that they wanted Because of this, every trial in the early days of your product, is worth multiple times more than the $30 you might get from their subscription. Give them out liberally. Not only will trialing users give you ideas of what to build they'll expose ways that users who aren't you are using and thinking about your product. Many of the bugs I've uncovered in my application have also come out of trialing users interacting with my product in ways I didn't think of. Trials also give you an interesting insight into perceived value of your product; pay attention to the percentage at which trialing users convert and try to gleen why users don't continue with their subscription if they cancel. tl;dr 1. be your own customer 2. do something every day 3. aggressively cut scope 4. marketing >= building 5. give trials liberally i hope this helps! :D Try Ferryman: ferryman.io