I shipped 3 products in 3 months, here is what I learned (so far)

Last October, I started a new challenge: Build and ship 6 products in 6 months. I spent the previous 5 years in the startup ecosystem, spending all my time focusing on one product only, and I needed a change!

Objectives

Learn faster than usual startups

As I said, when you start a startup, you go all in. You are spending all your time on one product, focusing on one market. You’re spending (too much) time building, and you get super-specific. I wanted to learn faster than that; I wanted to accelerate the process!

Less product, more marketing!

I’m a tech guy. I can spend all my time building products. That’s something I noticed in all the startups I met: they all spend way too much time building, not enough time on marketing.

I wanted a tight timeframe where I’m forced to ship something in less than 2 weeks.

Learn to ship

Most of the founders are super “shy” about shipping. They feel like they’re not ready yet, that they need a new feature, a new design, etc.…

I wanted to ship more, learn what works, what doesn’t work, and remove that feeling of shyness.

Learn to fail

Last but not least: learn how to fail. Learn when to abandon a product.

Again, I met plenty of founders who fell in love with their idea/product and can’t move away from it even if their startup doesn’t get traction or revenues. Learn when to stop, to be ok with failure is a superpower. I wanted it!

What worked so far:

I shipped 3 products in 3 months! The first good news is: it’s achievable!

I built 3 MVP with no-code:

  • The first one is a list of 400+ places to post your startup. I made it with Carrd, Airtable, and Gumroad. It took me 2 weeks to build
  • The second one is a product hunt for ideas made with Bubble. It took me 2 weeks to build
  • The third one is a job board made with Airtable + Table2site. It took me less than a week to build!

SpeadTheWorld (the first product) gets good traction from day 1 and still generates significant revenues. I also spend some extra time on it, adding new resources (I just add an option to get the emails of 1400+ tech journalists).

IdeaHunt (the second one) get some interesting feedback and many visitors after the launch. I decided to stop it for now as I need some significant time to implement some essential features and still don’t have any business plan for it.

RemoteFR (my last product so far) is doing well! I choose to launch in a tiny niche, and the strategy seems to works!

What failed

Biggest fail: I haven’t launched any of these products on ProductHunt. I’m still shy, feeling like I’m not ready :). That’s clearly an objective of the next 3 months!

Also, the major drawbacks of this kind of challenge are:

  • It’s impossible to scale. You don’t have enough time to scale any product properly.
  • It’s super hard to prioritize. The more you build, the more you have to choose where to put your focus.

What next

I want to continue this challenge. It’s super fun! I met many great people, I learn new tools every day, and I feel more productive than before!

However, at the end of the 6 months, I think I’ll slow down a bit, like trying to ship every 3 months. It will allow me to create more complex products and to scale them more efficiently.

Also, something I learned the hard way: it’s super hard to do everything on your own. I want to create some partnerships with other makers!

If you want to follow the build of the next products, follow me on Twitter! I build anything in public and share as much as I can my learnings! → https://twitter.com/angezanetti