Intro

Hello again!

This is my eight entry about Firestarters Global, and last official one as the challenge is ending today, but I don't intend to stop working on my product. Let's summarize these past few weeks.

What went well?

Overall, I'm really happy that I decided to join the challenge. I was thinking about starting this product for quite a while and I guess I really needed an extra "push", to actually start doing. In these few weeks I was able to:

• Clarify what I want to work on
• Build a landing page + subscription form for my product - https://startupstarter.dev
• Talk to a few people about what I'm building and get their input and opinions
• Run a survey among potential customers to better understand their needs
• Build a barebone MVP of my product that I will be improving over the next weeks

It might not sound like a lot for 8 weeks, but it's more than I did with that idea for the six months prior to the challenge, so I count that as a win. Additionally, I was able to learn a lot about prioritization, having a bias for action versus endlessly researching, thinking, and obsessing over what I should be really building. I'm still struggling with it, but I can already see that I'm changing my approach. I also managed to build some new relationships that might be really important in the future.

What I would improve?

Of course, it wasn't perfect and there are a lot of things that didn't go as I would like them to.

First of all, I started with a bit different idea initially (Slack/Discord bot templates) as I knew I won't be able to ship SaaS Starter in 8 weeks, but after a few weeks I realised that I would much rather work on my initial idea, even if that will take a bit more time to deliver. I wasted some time, but that's a lesson learned. Other thing that didn't go so well was finding time to focus on the project. I had some weeks where I just didn't make any progress due to everything else happening in my life. That's okay, sometimes life happens and we cannot do anything about it. But I still believe that with better prioritization and organization, I could find more time to focus on the most important things for pushing the project forward. Last thing that didn't go so well is obviously not selling the product to anyone. I was thinking about doing some kind of prerelease, but I didn't feel comfortable doing that just yet. I would like to have a better MVP version before I start taking money from people.

What are the plans for the project after the challenge?

Nothing really changes here, my focus for next week will be:

• Continue sharing the landing page with wider audience
• Continue work on the product's MVP

Numbers

Spent - $10

I only spent $10 overall to buy a domain, other tools were either free or I already had access to them.

Earned - $0

Plus a ton of experience!