Sutle: Launching on Product Hunt
Part 3 of Building Sutle
This is part 3 of 3 regarding my experience in building Sutle. If you missed the previous parts, you can checkout the ff:
Part 1 - Sutle: The Beginning.
Part 2 - Sutle: DNS, Emails and Twitter Developer Account Application.
Table of Contents
Working on “resources”.
Alpha Release on Product Hunt.
Working on “resources”.
As I’ve finished the learning paths, I realized that I don’t use Sutle all that much anymore. So I decided what I can add more so that I’ll use the app almost every day.
With that, I thought about “bookmarks”. It was one of the stuff that I mostly do on almost all platforms that have it. I have tons of bookmarks on Twitter, on Dev.to, etc. As it grew, it became so unorganized that lots of my bookmarks became buried and forgotten. With that, I desired to keep all my bookmarks in a single place.
As I was searching for an app that resembles what I wanted, I discovered Curius. At first, I got so excited about using it. Also, I love the idea of linking bookmarks and seeing the activities of the people you follow. But as time grew, I guess I wasn’t satisfied. I was mostly on my phone so most of my bookmarks came from there. But I needed to wait for them to make an extension for the browser I’m using on my mobile. So with that, I decided to make my own instead.
Then as I’m building it, my boss mentioned that it was similar to the app he’s building. It was Atlas. It seems that he has bigger plans for it regarding knowledge curation. So I guess if you want a more serious app, not a side-project and one-man team like mine, you may want to check it out.
As for Sutle’s resources, I’m thinking more of making it a place to store resources. That one may add resources and make a collection like “Useful Web Development Resources in 2021” then share it with others. Moreover, I’m also planning to add a feature that enables you to follow other users so that you may see what they’ve bookmarked and the learning paths they’ve created/upvoted. But for now, I made the resources feature quickly cause I wanna use it as soon as possible. So with that, there may be a lot of stuff missing in here. Anyways, here is the initial version of Sutle’s resources:
So now, Sutle has three main focus:
Learning Paths (priority).
Resources.
User Journey.
Alpha Release on Product Hunt.
In the past, I didn’t know about Product Hunt. I only got to know it by seeing the product launches posted on Twitter. So with that, I got curious and wanted to try launching one. I wanted to experience what it’s like to “launch” something lol.
When I was working on Sutle, I decided that I’ll be sharing it publicly or launching it by April. But when that month came, I was so reluctant in launching it. I feel like it isn’t finished yet, tho it is. It still lacks a ton of features and I’m kinda embarrassed to launch it in its state. With that, I kept moving the target launch date of Sutle.
But one day, I saw a product launch on Twitter. That app was similar to the user profile of Sutle. It was cool to see an app that solves of my problems. But since I’ve built Sutle, I became somewhat sad to see it. It feels as though what I’ve done was just a waste of time and that people wouldn’t use mine since (1) it’s a side project so I can’t allot a lot of time to it when I get a full-time job and (2) I lack the drive or passion a creator may have for their app. Since if there’s already an existing app that solves my problem and I like the UI/UX, I’ll use it instead of building one.
I guess one flaw of mine is that I can get emotionally driven easily. Feeling kinda down, I decided to launch mine on that day. I stay up all night to create pictures I can post on product hunt, work on the product hunt post, and added a comment regarding what I’ve built.
I then scheduled the product hunt post at 1:00PST the next day which was a few hours away. With that I launched an alpha version of the app, I then shared it on my social media platforms - Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. I was feeling anxious as to what I’ve done since I don’t like the thought that people would just ignore it validating that what I’ve done is just a waste of time.
Surprisingly, the community around Stitches, the styling library that I’m using, is quite supportive. Even my boss retweeted it. I guess seeing that kinda made me feel glad. I also realize the power of the community or an audience. Because of everyone, Sutle became featured on Product Hunt that day.
I thought that I had no audience anymore since I wasn’t active on Twitter like I was before. When I started my journey on web dev, I was consistent and was constantly interacting with the community. But when the pandemic hit and I started my first developer job. I slowly became inactive on Twitter. More so because the people that were there with me while I was doing the 100DaysOfCode challenge was now gone or not that active anymore. It felt like I lost some friends and I wasn’t in the mood to make some new ones mostly because the pandemic was affecting me.
Anyways, I was also surprised that an investor contacted me and wanted to push the project forward. Sadly, I only want Sutle to just be a side project of mine. Managing a business is an entirely different matter. I don’t have the capabilities yet to take on the risk. Mostly because I lack the knowledge and experience in “selling” and “managing” stuff. Building an app and sell an app/creating a business are two different things for me.
Moreover, I am more invested on the app that I’m building at my new job. I’m keener on finishing or putting out an MVP of it rather than building Sutle full-time.
In the end, I’m just glad I decided to build and launch Sutle.
Ending Note.
Thank you so much for reading this post. I hope that sharing my experience in building Sutle, it will help you in building your next project.
At first, I was reluctant in building Sutle, but now I can say that working on it was one of the best decisions that I made in life. Not only that it helped me to learn about a lot of stuff like emails, DNS, etc, it also let me experienced what it’s like to “launch” something. I really enjoyed building this side project of mine and would continue to work on it today and in the future.
For now, I’m planning to try writing a post twice a month. I’ll be experimenting in what kind of schedule works best for me.
Also, I’m planning to either write something about my thoughts and experiences regarding “communities” or about how I started in tech. I could also write about my projects and experiences back in college. Anyways, I’ll think about it.
Until then ciao!