I built something in a week that I couldn't build for months, thanks to a perspective shift
The thing is that I do notes. A lot of them, so I was able to quite precisely see when I was where. And it struck me, in January I was approximately where I was just weeks ago.
But let me start from the beginning.
About me and the project itself:
I'm a theoretical physicist that also does business related to experimental statistics (not important to the story, but if you want to check out my company: moonshotoperations.com).
For a long time, I was meditating on what should I build. Ideally, I was thinking, it should be something with an enormous impact on people (ego I guess haha), and something I am very uniquely in a position to build. This meant crazy-good statistics.
I decided to build a mostly-free service for startupers that made personalized reading recommendations to them that answer questions BEFORE they know they should ask them.
Yup. Doable.
(btw, here's the link: adstra.ai , but try to read the rest first before getting there)
For months I was building the service. Was sure that it has to take that long. During this time I deeply thought through almost everything and build proprietary algorithms. But months passed and publishing was nowhere close (although I almost thought that I was just days away, really)
About the shift
One time I was watching a YCombinator's Michael Seibel's YouTube video where he answered the question of what was the factor that differentiates top 10% entrepreneurs in YC from the rest. His key point was that if a 10% CEO says that something will be done by some due date, some version of success will be realized.
It struck me. I am very good at getting where I want to get, but never in time. It was not acceptable to not be in the top 10%, so I decided to change. But change is almost never done by a simple motivation, so what should I do?
Well, every time I hire someone, I give a personalized responsibility. In the sense, that if the specific thing is superb, it's considered to be this person's credit. But if it was faulty, it was their fault. No matter what happened. Their fault, their credit.
But... I never appointed a personal responsibility to myself. Crazy. So what is CEO's personal responsibility?
If I was asked that in January, I would say get to a success point in as short time as possible. Note that it means that the threshold is the success point while the optimized parameter is time.
But then, inspired by Michael's video, I understood. It should be the other way around. My job is to deliver as good result as possible in a given time. The threshold is time and the optimized parameter is the result.
So what's my, a CEO's, personal responsibility? To realize some version of success in a given time.
That's it. So easy to miss or undervalue. So easy to confuse with the previous approach. But made me over 10x faster. I released the MVP IN A WEEK. IN A WEEK. Yeah, sure, it's a buggy MVP, but remember - "some version of success", that's it. It already does the job and people love it. Which for me is eye-watering in itself.
In a week I released a product I couldn't for months. The service, Adstra.ai already has a few hundred posts and helps people. And I could easily say something like: cool, but the statistics cannot do the wonders yet - up to its potential - because the pool of posts is simply not big enough yet. Or that there are bugs, some things don't work etc. But would I be right to focus on these things? Not really, at least not according to my users. So this small paradigm shift made me and my company quicker but the factor of 10-13.
Love this. "Some version of success" extends beyond indie hacking too. This is a great life lesson. We can be so hard on ourselves and we make comparisons to everyone. But if we maintain some version of success, we won't become debilitated by the comparisons and doubt.
One lesson that I loved from Kobe Bryant was that he was a big proponent of me vs. me. Every day, it wasn't about beating a team or an opposing player. Kobe was out to beat Kobe from the day before.
I like the Me vs Me. Looking at what you have achieved as supposed to where you are and want to go has a positive effect on your morale. If you see increases every day it will keep you going.
I have been working on my product for over three years. I am doing a lot of development and always thinking about marketing but never actually doing much of it. I need to shorten my time spent on development and increase my marketing effort. I will take the quote you mention to heart and use it!
This is usually the case when you find something that removes the "bottleneck" in your business.
I've found a similar thing. Goals are not enough. Goals and deadlines are where it's at.
Two important notes:
Same journey here! Best wishes!
the timebox is a constraint that will make you more creative in finite time. infinite timebox means infinite work.
I went through a similar journey as well. I ended up killing the startup.
This is awesome! I went through a similar journey, I was building for months before I showed the ex-CEO at my job. He said it's great and all but I keep mentioning more features that I need to complete before going live. He recommended setting a deadline for myself. That was a really great decision because I got all the engineering done that I wanted to BEFORE my deadline.
Definitely recommend everyone set a deadline for themselves and push whatever you have by then. It doesn't need to be absolutely perfect the very first second, indie hackers and beta users will understand you're still building.
Wow, lots to think about here. It does give me so much comfort just reading this. "Some version of success." Success big or small, is still success. We often forget to take joy in that. Thanks for sharing again!
Your experience is a great example of how shifting your perspective can lead to breakthroughs in productivity and innovation.
It is a good product. I visited your site. Good perspective on how to get your idea off the starting line!
Absolutely awesome. I'm in the same spot. Have thought about building a SaaS for ever. Tons of ideas but no execution. The other day someone asked, "Hey could you build something like this"? The answer was of course I can... but why hadn't I?
I'm four days in and have accomplished what would have taken me months of procrastinating. Mindset is everything. Best of luck on Adstra!
It's all about mindset and priorities. Good luck!
Well done. I think a lot of us suffer the same and I found that a) timeboxing it and b) gaining momentum by hitting goals within those timeboxed iterations/sprints work well.
I love stories like these, not because they are a success story, but because they teached someone a really important lesson.
Never being in the CEO role (or something similar) really feeds minds with stereotypes, such as them being people that chill the whole day in their $100,000,000 yacht drinking $10,000$ champagne. That's maybe true after >50 years of hard work and an honored retirement, but if you're just starting out, champagne will be the last thing you wish for.
Inspirational story , best of luck sir
Kind of happened the same to us with Uphint and really being lean is worth it! best wishes with Adstra!!! Go! Go!
Michael Seibel's whole thing is = just get it done 80% and ship the damn thing! lots of founders struggle with timelines and making things "perfect"
good
Loved this. Needed to hear this. Thank you!
Even if there's a perfect solution, you would not implement/release the perfect solution on version 1. This is like MBA 101. You need a roadmap and a strategy. On release something, you typically would set some goals with some duration, you can always go back to update the plan. You can use waterfall model to define those early MVP milestones. On the deliverables, you can use TDD model to first hardcode the end goal (for each iteration), then implement the algorithms to try to achieve your goal.
While you might have good ideas and executions, I recommend you to read up on some software engineering design patterns. It might come in handy :)
That's awesome, I love the simplicity and cleanness of the product. I'm curious to what tools you used to build an MVP in a week? did you resort to a no-code approach?
I'm glad to hear that you found the perspective shift helpful! It can be really tough to get started on a project, especially when we feel like we have a lot to do. Sometimes all it takes is a little change in perspective to help us get unstuck.
Awesome! Very good to hear that you have made it. To be honest I am struggling with that thing too, planning and planning but not going far away in terms of making the product I am doing. Thanks for your story I will grab it to myself too and will try to focus on "some form of success".
You may work on a project for months to make it perfect and then the instance you launch it does not reach the expectations you had of it.
MVP saves a lot. The few user's feedback might even push you to do more.
Good story about your MVP, thanks for sharing!
I signed up for your service. Did you test different versions of landing pages?
Asking because I am not sure that requesting email straight away is the best approach.
I would maybe add some benefits on the landing page.
I have the same feeling. I wouldn't sign up without getting more information about what I'm getting into. Giving away your email represents an investment from the user (a small one but still). The more convincing there is, the more chances the user will be ready to make that investment.
Thank you! I'll think what I can do to make giving one's email easier, that is to be more convinced to do so
No, I just did the one, because making a specific landing page took too much time and I noted that most social media (even though Adstra is not really a social media, just has some slight social aspect to it) have this log-in-wall, not a real landing page. (Even the small, not well know social media)
Thank you for advice, I will deeply consider it. And it would be awesome if you told me what you think of the service :)