A Daily Curation of the Web's Best Content for Startups

Plausible Analytics: Lessons from building and growing an open source SaaS

Lessons from building and growing an open source SaaS
Marko Saric of Plausible Analytics  offers “some lessons learned from building and growing an open source SaaS startup in the highly competitive web analytics market.”

Problems with an Open Source Business Model
“There were also multiple cases of large cloud corporations wanting to take our code and resell it to their customers. They wanted us to help them build that integration without contributing back to our project in any shape or form.”

Problems with Being Funded by Donations
“We’ve been accepting donations for about six months now and as things stand, we’ve had six donations of $5 each.
 

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Zero to $1000 a month in 94 Days

Zero to $1000 a month in 94 Days

Here is a good overview of what it takes to find a new business idea and get it to market by Stefan Vetter of Friendly. Many key ideas here are beneficial to review, regardless of where you are in your startup journey. 1. Start with an audience and the problem they have, not your idea and the product you want to create. 2. Launching on sites like ProductHunt. 3. Becoming an open startup and publicly sharing all your key metrics. 4. “Document, don’t create.” The idea of sharing the process of building your business.

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Startup Transparency is Great Marketing

Startup Transparency is Great Marketing

The Hustle has a short post about the open startup movement. It links to Pieter Levels monster post where he documents, in great detail, the process of building his Hoodmaps business to more than 300,000 users. This follows Gary Vaynerchuck’s idea of Document, Don’t Create. Rather than generic advice and platitudes, it’s a lot more valuable and interesting to read exactly how you built something. The press likes this, too. Documenting the process and key business metrics can be a great way to promote your business. Checkout Baremetrics for a list of companies openly sharing financial details. Business Opportunity: When an idea, like open startups, is clear and simple and is gaining traction there will be more newsletters, podcasts, conferences, apps, consulting, etc. around it. You’ll see.

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Building Startups in the Open with Pieter Levels

Building Startups in the Open with Pieter Levels.

If you are active in digital nomad and online business communities like IndieHackers or ProductHunt, you will likely have heard of Pieter Levels. He is the creator of NomadList, which ranks popular digital nomad cities around the world. It was part of the 12 Startups in 12 Months project he undertook in 2014.  NomadList and the accompanying job board now make $20k + per month in revenue.

There are many lessons to learn from Pieter Levels. Embracing the open startup, digital nomad, and lean startup movements when they were still in their infancy put Pieter ahead of the trends and made him a clear thought leader.

Coming up with a big challenge with a catchy name like “12 startups in 12 months”, got him a lot of press. Delivering on that promise with some business successes made it even more compelling. Being a serial entrepreneur is interesting. Doing 12 startups in 12 months is a story worth sharing. There are still new startups benefiting from the idea.

Leveraging platforms like ProductHunt, IndieHackers, and Twitter, Pieter Levels has built a large following and helped build early momentum for his launches.

Lessons to Learn: Try lots of things to see what gets traction. Building in public is a great way to generate interest. Openly sharing financials can also help promote your ideas. Bold challenges can generate publicity. Never underestimate the value of a simple and clear tagline or idea to promote your work. You need a community. Get involved in the online communities where your audience is.

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10 Reasons You Should do a 100-Day Project

10 Reasons You Should do a 100-Day Project

Milena Rangelov expands on Elle Luna’s encouragement to start 100-Day projects. This is a really powerful idea.  Undertaking a lengthy project like this forces you to “focus on the process, not the outcome.” That daily habit becomes the reward itself. It’s a great way to build momentum and a portfolio.

Opportunity: Just like the buzz worthiness of “12 Startups in 12 Months” I introduced before, challenges like this can be a great promotion for your work. Here are some ideas for an everyday challenge:

  • design a logo,
  • draw an illustration,
  • publish an interesting photo,
  • write a tagline for a different company,
  • do a free SEO audit for a local company.

A simple idea like this with focused effort can be the start of a good business. How much would your skills improve and how many people could you reach if you did something like this for 100 consecutive days? This is also a great story to market your services after the fact. “What I learned designing a logo every day for 100 days.”

If you think 100 days is hard, remember that Seth Godin has blogged every day for more than two decades.

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The man who has created 100+ pointless inventions

The man who has created 100+ pointless inventions

“What happened when one entrepreneur decided to share all of his crazy, rejected product ideas with the world.” Matty Benedetto has invented hundreds of largely useless inventions. His notoriety has earned him 555k Instagram followers and another 55k on YouTube. His typical invention costs less than $20 in 3D printer filament and 2 or 3 days to design.

Business Lessons: 

1. Prototyping new products is probably easier and faster than you might think, particularly if you do a lot of them.
2. Do interesting things if you want people to be interested in you. Taking it to the extreme like creating hundreds of pointless inventions can generate publicity and fans. The fact that sites like The Hustle are promoting Matty Benedetto proves that it works.
3. I’ve recently written about doing 100 projects in 100 days, or 12 Startups in 12 Months. Those are stories that people want to share. What can you do that will be of interest to others?

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“Celebrity Thinkers”: Internet’s New Icons

"Celebrity Thinkers": internet's new icons
“While the Covid-19 crisis is in full swing and everyone fears for their work and their future, a new class of influencers is taking off: the “celebrity thinkers.” And they could change a lot of things in today’s uncertain landscape.”

An interesting post covering Building in Public, Community Building, Curation, Lifelong Learning, and knowledge tools like Roam, Notion, Substack, etc.

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