Day 510 - Sheet2Bio back story - https://golifelog.com/posts/sheet2bio-back-story-1653460361207
So everything’s done for Sheet2Bio. It’s launch time!
Not sure why but only just recently I realised Sheet2Bio is my 2nd SaaS product. I was already a month in by then, yet it only dawned on me so much later. Why?
Back story
I think it’s because I never quite took it so ‘seriously’ to call it a SaaS. From the start it was just something I wanted for myself – a link-in-bio site to contain my most important links to products and content. I didn’t want to have to log in to edit it. I liked using Google Sheets to update stuff like that. I didn’t feel like the existing ones serve my needs as a creator, and since I already had some old code for a similar product I shut down previously, I thought I could repurpose it.
After that I saw that other creators also had lots of links, and thought I could build it for them, so I offered it to other creators I know who already use one. One by one, I DMed them, offered them a free beta account, and manually created each page for them. Along the way, learned loads! So many bugs and user errors that I never anticipated if I had just stuck to me, myself and I as the only user. The product improved by leaps. It started to have it’s own look. It took on it’s defining features catered for Twitter creators and indie hackers – revenue charts, progress bar.
Now I thought… maybe I can charge for it and see if people will even pay. That’s still an unknown, even though there were some enthusiastic responses from the beta users. After all, they got it for free. But the dynamics change the moment you’re asked to key in your credit card number. So it’s good to push it out now to test the hypothesis: “Is Sheet2Bio viable as a business? Would customers be willing to pay?”
Approach so far
Because of that iterative, incremental approach to building in public, I never had a grand vision in mind. It was always just responding to whatever the opportunity was in front of me. I didn’t have much expectations, unlike all of my past products, especially Lifelog.
And I’m kind of liking this “loosely held” approach.
Because it feels like I can be more realistic this time, and not be blinded my idealism and grand visions not tethered to reality. I can take it for what it is, rather what it should be.
Because it’s loosely held, I’m also keeping my tendencies for over-engineering or over-designing in check. Just look at my landing page. It’s still raw HTML only. No fonts, no colors. The only colors are the emojis. Everything is optimised for minimum effort. Nothing is automated at this point – I still created each link-in-bio page, each account manually.
Not out of laziness though, but more out of committing just the right amount of effort for the stage that the product is at. Just-in-time effort. And frankly, for anything that’s still zero revenue, the effort and cost invested should be low. Low enough that if it fails, I won’t lose sleep over it.
This truly feels true to the spirit of being an idiot without a plan than being a genius with a plan.
Next: launch!
I made my first code commit for Sheet2Bio on Apr 2nd, and it’s already almost 2 months since! How time flies. While my effort wasn’t 100% on it, I think 2 months is still too long. So I’m committing to a MVP launch.
On Thursday, May 26th!
Again, no expectation. Launching on Twitter first. No Product Hunt yet.
Glad to be pushing it out into the wild… finally!
Not sure why but only just recently I realised Sheet2Bio is my 2nd SaaS product. I was already a month in by then, yet it only dawned on me so much later. Why?
Back story
I think it’s because I never quite took it so ‘seriously’ to call it a SaaS. From the start it was just something I wanted for myself – a link-in-bio site to contain my most important links to products and content. I didn’t want to have to log in to edit it. I liked using Google Sheets to update stuff like that. I didn’t feel like the existing ones serve my needs as a creator, and since I already had some old code for a similar product I shut down previously, I thought I could repurpose it.
After that I saw that other creators also had lots of links, and thought I could build it for them, so I offered it to other creators I know who already use one. One by one, I DMed them, offered them a free beta account, and manually created each page for them. Along the way, learned loads! So many bugs and user errors that I never anticipated if I had just stuck to me, myself and I as the only user. The product improved by leaps. It started to have it’s own look. It took on it’s defining features catered for Twitter creators and indie hackers – revenue charts, progress bar.
Now I thought… maybe I can charge for it and see if people will even pay. That’s still an unknown, even though there were some enthusiastic responses from the beta users. After all, they got it for free. But the dynamics change the moment you’re asked to key in your credit card number. So it’s good to push it out now to test the hypothesis: “Is Sheet2Bio viable as a business? Would customers be willing to pay?”
Approach so far
Because of that iterative, incremental approach to building in public, I never had a grand vision in mind. It was always just responding to whatever the opportunity was in front of me. I didn’t have much expectations, unlike all of my past products, especially Lifelog.
And I’m kind of liking this “loosely held” approach.
Because it feels like I can be more realistic this time, and not be blinded my idealism and grand visions not tethered to reality. I can take it for what it is, rather what it should be.
Because it’s loosely held, I’m also keeping my tendencies for over-engineering or over-designing in check. Just look at my landing page. It’s still raw HTML only. No fonts, no colors. The only colors are the emojis. Everything is optimised for minimum effort. Nothing is automated at this point – I still created each link-in-bio page, each account manually.
Not out of laziness though, but more out of committing just the right amount of effort for the stage that the product is at. Just-in-time effort. And frankly, for anything that’s still zero revenue, the effort and cost invested should be low. Low enough that if it fails, I won’t lose sleep over it.
This truly feels true to the spirit of being an idiot without a plan than being a genius with a plan.
Next: launch!
I made my first code commit for Sheet2Bio on Apr 2nd, and it’s already almost 2 months since! How time flies. While my effort wasn’t 100% on it, I think 2 months is still too long. So I’m committing to a MVP launch.
On Thursday, May 26th!
Again, no expectation. Launching on Twitter first. No Product Hunt yet.
Glad to be pushing it out into the wild… finally!