TinyLog: Lesson for those stuck at $0

I wasted a year of my life on a product that never made a dollar. Not because the product sucked, but because I skipped the most important step. Don’t make the same mistake I did.

What’s new?

You can now start promoting your launch even before going live! Your supporters will find a “Notify me” button on your launch page and get an email as soon as your launch is live, ready to leave an upvote :)

Last week’s winners

The following products got the most votes during the past launch week.

🥇 StackNinja — Master your supplement protocol, on autopilot

🥈 Prodcast — The smart discovery layer for podcasts

🥉 Lattix — Organize and launch workspace layouts in a single click

For the first time ever, a launch has exceeded 100 upvotes! 🎉 A big milestone that has me incredibly excited for the future of the platform.

Personal favorite

Easy Creator Pay — Send creators pay-per-view contracts that fulfill themselves. Skip the back-and-forth. Set your price, share one link, done.

Lesson for those stuck at $0

Don’t waste months or years on an idea that’s not validated yet.

We don’t have a neutral view on our own ideas. We always think it’s the best thing ever initially. That’s why we can’t trust our own judgment on whether something will work.

I personally spent a year of my life building a 3D cloud rendering platform. Convinced it would hit $10k MRR. Ended up making $0. A whole year I’ll never get back.

Here’s what I should have done: get from idea to validation as fast as humanly possible. That means no perfect product with 100% test coverage. No polished UI. No advanced features.

Instead, build a one-feature MVP that barely works, then marketing marketing marketing. Talk to people. See if they actually want this thing you’re building.

Even better? Start selling before you build. Set up a waitlist with a buy button. See if people will actually pay for your idea before it exists.

A waitlist alone isn’t a strong enough signal. People will sign up for anything that sounds cool. Only hard cash counts. Money is the only honest feedback you’ll get.

Really don’t want to sell something that doesn’t exist yet? Fine. Add a buy button anyway that says “coming soon” after they click, and track how many people had the intention to buy. At least you’ll know if there’s real demand.

I know it’s not what you want to hear. Us builders want to do one thing: build. But wasting a year of your limited life on an idea that’s never gonna make it hurts way more than spending a little time validating the idea first.

So please, take my advice. Validate first, then build.

Tweet of the week

Taking sell before you build to the max.

PS

As always, you can reach me by simply replying to this email or messaging me on 𝕏 @chrissyinspace.