Starting over!

Back in 2019 I started building ecommerce software that would be friendlier to social media users (moms selling homemade cupcakes on WhatsApp, generation Z on Instagram selling t-shirts, artists selling their paintings over direct message… You get it). I called it ShopWindow.

It is currently generating around $1000 ARR, which obviously is not enough to make a living, but it helped some users to make thousands of dollars in sales. I decided to put the project in the freezer last December and recently I decided to revisit it.

Almost one year later, it is clear to me I over-complicated things… A lot! In every aspect you can think of… First off, I postponed marketing (totally unfamiliar to me) thinking that “it won’t be that complicated, after all I am a developer!”. Secondly, I realised that I was trying to build not one, but three different products in one… The developer in me clouded my judgement. And the list of mistakes goes on…

I ended up trying to boil the ocean… I felt I had to stop and go one step back.

But! I still believe in the concept and recently I received some interest in it from various sources so I thought I might give it another go, leveraging all the invaluable lessons learned along the way during the first try.

Simpler product, narrower audience, putting it on users’ hands early on and listening to what they have to say about it!

The product for this second iteration will be called Chiringo and I will share it here once launched!