Table of Contents
- Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
- How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
- Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
- What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
- What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
- Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
Aleksandar Balalovski is the founder of Writings - [A super simple writing app] that you can use to write, organize and share your content.
Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
I always loved to write. Not just fiction but also blogging and howtos. At some point I figured out that all my writing is spread all over. Text files, Word files, Google Docs, everywhere.
At the same time I wanted to learn web development and I decided to build an app to solve my problem and have my writing centralized in one place.
How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
I had a round of closed beta last winter. I offered a very basic set of features to volunteers that I collected from the landing page. That got me at about 20 users.
Then I announced a public beta (where I still am), and I started to talk about Writings on social media and between friends. That got me to about 50 groups.
The best growth strategy was when I decided to start measuring things. I dedicated a whole month (August) to marketing. I worked on SEO, I published my app on promotional websites, forums, Twitter, almost everywhere I could.
Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
I am using Next.js on the frontend, Node for backend, Firebase for Authentication and database and few analytics tool for data analysis. As I am a technical founder sometimes I get upset by the notion of scaling, but I try to park it for some later stage.
At this point the biggest limitation is my knowledge of web development technologies. I learned it only recently and I know only basic things
What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
I use Splitbee for analytics, KatLinks to improve SEO, Google Search Console to analyze results of SEO efforts, and few small but helpful tools to help me lurk in niche communities. I hang with my indie peers on Telegram and Twitter DMs.
What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
There are so many. Maybe some of the recent. The growth potential is in the ability to enable conversion. You can bring 1000 visitors to your landing page, but if they don't convert to users, it's nothing. If they do, then you have to convert them to active users, and then to paying users, and so on.
A user that idles is just a curious user, and idling does not monetize.
Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
I noticed that if I listen to "it's hard, it's hard, it's hard" I will expect for something to be hard. Or if I listen to "passive income is easy" for 10 times, then I'd expect it to be easy. But in reality, none of that matters. It's individual for every one of us. Point made: I stopped listening to podcasts.
The last book I enjoyed was Show your work by Austin Kleon.
But also, I don't think builders should read books about building products. If you want to learn how to build a product, nothing will teach you but your hands on building a product.
From newsletter the only one that I still read is "The Bootstrapped Founder" from Arvid.
