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Hey friend,

This month's essay is about the validation process I followed for MetaMonster - the AI-powered SEO optimization tool I'm building. I titled it, "this time feels different," because it does. People are talking to me, I have a few paying customers, and there seems to be something here even if it's not completely working yet.

At the same time, I was nervous to title it that (and to share this at all). Because what if it's not different? We're far from product-market fit, what if this is just another SaaS failure?? Some days it feels like we're on the cusp of figuring everything out, and some days it feels like we're going nowhere.

To which I say... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I hope you never take one of my pieces of writing as me saying, "this is the RIGHT way to do things. Do it this way or you're STUPID. Silver bullets this way ->"

I share what I'm trying and my takeaways in the hopes that it's helpful for someone. But you should always, always take any startup advice with a big grain of salt. What works for me may not work for you.

And I share these feelings in case you're struggling with something similar. By the way, this line of thinking is very similar to the answer Jason Cohen gives in this excellent essay from 2010 about why his blog should exist.

If you think I missed something or have an idea for what I should try next, hit reply and let me know!

Cheers,

Andrew

For bootstrappers

​AI horseless carriages​

This essay from Pete Koomen is a must-read for anyone building with AI. As we were testing MetaMonster, I had this feeling that we we were putting too many restrictions on the AI. The greatest strength of LLMs is their flexibility, and by hiding the prompts behind a button like you would traditional code we were eliminating almost all flexibility. Pete argues for a new way of thinking about products that resonates a lot with me, where you expose prompts to the users and think more about building tools for the AI to leverage and interfaces to sort and manage their output. In a similar vein, here's an essay written from a user's perspective making a similar point.

​The roadmap to product/market fit (maybe)​

I've been revisiting this (and a number of Cohen's essays) as we've been struggling to find our way to PMF with MetaMonster. We're solidly in step 5 now, and while we are reworking the product to be more valuable, we're also experimenting with positioning, pricing, and distribution channels.

From me

​This time feels different: my updated idea validation process​

A look at the process I followed to validate MetaMonster (which I plan to use again with clients or on future product ideas) along with what didn't work, what I would do differently next time, and the limits of pre-product validation.

For fun

​List of common misconceptions​

Sean (who I run the Small Efforts podcast with) just sent me this amazing Wikipedia page full of common myths and misconceptions about all sorts of things. It covers everything from, "Adidas is not an acronym for "'ll day I dream about sports,'" to "Irregardless is a word. It appears in numerous dictionaries along with other nonstandard, slang, or colloquial terms."

​Moving into my dream NYC studio​

I absolutely adore this video Jordan Studdard created about building his studio (which is two floors above Casey Neistat's). The studio is incredible, the video is funny and whimsical, it made me want to go create something cool. I've been collecting videos that give me that feeling, maybe someday I'll publish the playlist. Bonus: here's another video of three YouTube creators breaking down everything that's so great about this.

​Vacation Drink (a mocktail recipe)​

I've been working on finding good mocktail recipes to add to my home bar menu. We have a bunch of friends who don't drink, and I'd like to have something fun to make them when they come over. I also have been trying to limit how much I drink. When mixing cocktails is one of your go-to hobbies it's easy to suddenly find yourself having a drink or two almost every night.

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