#120 Are you trying to create a sustainable business or one that will need rounds and rounds of funding?
Are you trying to create a sustainable business or one that will need rounds and rounds of funding?
Even with all that funding Patreon haven’t found a way to make it work. From a VC perspective, Patreon may have passed the Mom-Test because there are thousands of creators are in motion actively looking for a way to earn a living…we can see all these creators in motion -
But from an individual Entrepreneurs perspective, especially a bootstrapper wouldn’t have passed the mom-test because most artists and creatives aren’t making any money. Only 2% make a living wage
Quote by Justin Jackson (Transistor.fm)
Most bootstrapped businesses should not pursue creating a new product category ❌
The goal is not to change the way people behave. It’s to recognise where people are already in motion and to build solutions for the direction people are already headed.
Don’t create the wave, ride the wave 🌊😎
How to do Free/Cheap Usability Tests!
This week I did guerilla user testing which is English for, I grabbed participants who fit the bill in coffee shops, offered to buy them a coffee in exchange for them speaking out loud about their expectations and use of a product.
Guess what, because I asked nicely enough, none of them wanted me to buy them a coffee.
Design
I used the following two tools to optimise the background image on the changes I made to the CupsPrinted page
Assetizr - magically transform your images
If you don’t religiously use Sketch or Photoshop (by use I mean pay the ~ £80pm for Sketch or ~£25pm for Photoshop) then you might really love this tool.
Assetizr will give you one tool for resizing images and optimising them for web and mobile applications. Never struggle with getting the right dimensions for your images again.
TinyJPG – Compress JPEG images intelligently
Does what it says above, compresses your images intelligently.
I use this after Assetizr
Insights
SHAPE UP
Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters
Jason Fried and the team at BASECAMP share a guide about what’s worked for them based on 15 years of collaborative trial-and-error. Read the PDF online for FREE here
It talks about how these 3 things work together:
project communication
task management
documentation
Spotify, beware consumerized thinking
In this episode of Tradeoffs, Patrick and Hiten take a look at how Spotify dominates streaming music and what tradeoffs they’ll need to make to maintain that position.
Lookback: Simple and powerful user research
User experience recording made simple. See the screen, face, voice and touches of your users. Record in-house or remotely and without equipment.
Not the cheapest solution at $49 per month, but I found out about it after Kromatic - a lean startup coaching company based in San Fran invited me to participate in one of their tests
Makers
Introducing VideoAsk — A new product from Typeform
Game changer!
Think Typeform - but completely video driven. VIDEOASK makes it easy create video led interviews which are more personal. You can get banter in there, your tone, all of it.
Typeform already make sick surveys…now get more personal with it
Weekend Club 🚀| London
My good friend Charlie who’s been connecting Indie Hackers IRL has created Weekend Club so people can work on projects together.
Get in early while the real value is being created
Culture Chat
Billionaire pays $34 million to settle Morehouse student loan debt for spring graduates
Not all hero’s rock capes. Private Equity business man, investor and philanthropist has pledged to settle the debt of Morehouse college students (basically a historically black university)