Howdy from Durham,

Welcome to the 12 new subscribers from last week.

Feather is here.

See what we built for yourself by signing up below.

No cost.

No fees.

No credit card.

Just enter your email, and start generating summaries.

Seriously.

Hold up. What’s Feather?

If you’re a newer subscriber, then you might need a quick refresher.

Here are the details:

• Dave (former co-worker) and I competed in an AI hackathon in Dec.

• We built an audio-to-text summarizer for YouTube videos/podcasts

• It went nuts on twitter, and we had 2500+ beta users try us out

Folks asked for a product. Dave and I committed to making it happen.

I’ve got a whole lot of thoughts on what it took to get here. Let’s dive in.

I’ve gone from minimum viable product (MVP) to v1.0 a few times in a corporate role, but this is my first time doing it as a bootstrapped founder.

Here are the differences.

MVP to v1.0 in a corporate role:

• Pros: resources to lean on (financial, intellectual) means that neither cost nor lack of knowledge stand in your way

• Cons: access to resources makes you more comfortable and less creative in finding ways to make things work, decisions require layers of approval which means that you won’t be able to move fast

MVP to v1.0 in a bootstrapped startup:

• Pros: decisions that take weeks in a corporate role take just minutes in a startup, you can accelerate feedback loops much faster, and you can change direction much quicker. Plus, having a user find value in the product you willed into existence is 100x more fulfilling than pushing a product you don’t care about.

• Cons: resources are tight, so you’ll need to teach yourself more than just your domain. You have to become a generalist (legal, accounting, marketing, etc.) Things are also much more volatile. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions. One minute, you love what you created. The next, you think it’ll never work.

• Yeah, but those things above aren’t actually cons: I’m here to learn about entrepreneurship. In fact, documenting how to build cool things was the impetus of my podcast and this newsletter. So, shoot, I’m not complaining that I have to teach myself new things on the fly. It’s fun (this includes learning how to manage the rollercoaster of emotions - lol).

Whereas a corporate entity would want to fine tune things until they’re *just right* for launch, a startup puts stuff out there as soon as possible (before it’s fully ready tbh).

There are no rules for a startup (other than build a product that users love). The only way to do that is iterate.

Take the newsletter I sent on 1/26 titled “We Need Your Help.” Technically, this was a soft launch. We needed family and friends to test what we had.

We had centered the entire Feather experience around a Chrome Extension - great for avid Chrome users, not so great for folks who aren’t.

Our family/friends launch (s/o to The Build readers who signed-up for user tests) taught us that we needed to take a step back and bring the "Paste a YouTube Link” functionality from our MVP back into our v1.0.

tl;dr relying solely on the Chrome Extension prevented users from getting to an “Aha” moment quickly (when ppl recognize value in the product)

Solution: we built My Feather - the one stop shop to generate summaries. When you register, you get a personal page to generate summaries by pasting a YouTube URL, uploading an mp3, or downloading our Chrome Extension.

We launched My Feather this past Tuesday on 2/21 to our Beta email list (see “Feather AI Is Here”). I wouldn’t call it a hard launch as folks sorta/kinda new about us - more of a warm launch, if you will.

The point? Launch. Learn more about what the user needs. Build what’s needed. Get ready for the next launch. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

We’ve got a couple other things planned with various channels of distribution down the line, so you can bet this won’t be our last launch. Yet, it’s a significant milestone all the same.

Bottom line: keep iterating and providing value, and no one will care how many times you launch. They just want a product to love.

Thanks for bein’ a part of the journey. I’ll continue to document lessons learned here.

What I’m paying attention to:

Click for a breathing tip from my friend, Charlotte

Photo of the week:

Thanks for reading

Reply if you’re fired up for 🪶 Feather,

Josh

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