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/xavier_coiffard
*Photo by Tony Hand