Emily at Work

Day 21. If you had to choose one channel to test early traction - what would it be? Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, or niche communities? Curious what's actually worked for others building SaaS.

Day 20. Building something new: 40% design, 30% code, 30% convincing the market to care 😂

Day 18. Building something new means saying "no" a lot. To shiny features, side ideas, and random "what ifs."

Day 17. Analytics: stable. Users: unpredictable. Me: pretending that's part of the plan 😂

Day 16. Early traction isn't about big numbers - it’s about finding what works once, then trying to make it happen twice.

Day 15. Funny thing about building in public - the line between "progress" and "patience" gets very blurry 😅

Day 14. Okay, builder friends - what's your best trick for getting actual user feedback? People sign up, click around, vanish… Need to figure out how to turn silence into insight 😅

Day 13. Built five features. Everyone's using one. And not the one I thought. 🤷‍♀️

Day 12. Learning that "user behaviour" = 80% surprises, 20% validation. And that's on a good day.

Day 11. Think you know how people will use your app? Give it to a few customers. You’ll be very surprised. 😅

Day 10. "AI-powered" ads… Starting to think the AI stands for Ad Income. 😅

Day 9. Early-stage marketing feels like detective work. Every metric is a clue, every click a mystery. Any tools people swear by for catching early user behaviour patterns? )

Day 8. Experimenting with Google Ads. Day 1: impressions flying. Day 2: zero. Didn’t touch a thing. Either it’s learning… or it’s napping 😅 Anyone knows what could cause that?

Day 7. First week done ✅ From zero to a few curious visitors, a few messages, a few "hm.." moments. Still early - but at least it’s not 0 sign ups anymore. Next: figure out what actually sticks.

Day 6. Funny how analytics dashboards can change your mood. +3 signups = dopamine -20% conversion = despair Startup life is basically a data-driven rollercoaster..

Day 5. Deep in analytics land. GA says one thing, backend says another… and ads? Charging for bonus visitors apparently 😅 Wish it worked the other way round. Any ad platform tips?

Day 4.. Part 2.. Bummer. Debugging: 1 Weekend: 0

Day 4. Saturday (eh.. forget about weekends). Who would’ve thought - there are bugs in a newly delivered software 😅 Surely, “AI is smarter than a PhD”… until you try to catch a bug in a non-deterministic system. Then your first hard-won user finds it. Bummer

Day 3 update: bots love us, humans... less so 😅 Mobile clicks galore, barely any signups. Desktop behaves like a different world. Is it just me, or does productivity SaaS always start this way?

Day 2 🚀 Started with Google Ads first. Opened the funnel wide - got bots, then crickets. Now Google says it "ML needs 1-2 weeks to learn." That’s forever in startup time 😅 Anyone found a quicker way to test or iterate early? #buildinpublic #marketing