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Hey 👋

Between summer travel and a design project for a client this newsletter is coming out about two weeks later than I wanted it to. So it's serving as a combined June/July issue.

If you want more frequent updates from me, check out my podcast Small Efforts with Sean Sun. We put out three episodes in June, and should get out another three in July (although travel is again getting in the way a bit).

Since my last issue I have soft launched the ChartJuice MVP! I had to spend an extra couple of weeks fighting with image formatting libraries. On the plus side, I now know a lot more about image processing, edge functions, and serverless environments. I still haven't implemented billing, so if you signup the product is free to use until I do (lol). But I have fleshed out the marketing website a bit, added a demo video, and created a landing page for a ChartJuice productized service I'm excited to test. Hopefully by next issue I'll have billing done, and some marketing efforts to report on.

What are you working on? Hit reply and let me know!

Cheers,

Andrew

P.S. This issue's original essay topic was picked by you, and there's a poll at the bottom to pick the next one.

From the bootstrapped world

​Great thread from kyzo on the challenges of indie hacking​

While it can be fun and inspiring to watch people talk about their successes in business, I often get so much more from posts like this one where people get honest about their struggles. I've seen a number of indie bootstrappers talking more recently about how to make this life sustainable so they can stay in it for the long run. One of the top pieces of advice? Don't quit your day job. I got fired from mine, and haven't gone back yet. But I might start trying to pick up more freelance work to make this sustainable.

​After 2 years of living on their sailboat the LeaveMeAlone founders are selling their boat​

Another post about the challenges behind the scenes of social media life. James Ivings and his wife Danielle are selling their boat and going back to living on land. James talks in this post about the reasons behind their decision - namely that sailing can be lonely, and takes up a lot of their time. They want to focus more on one of their new businesses, and to have less to worry about day-to-day.

​Direct sales for bootstrapped startups​

As I'm gearing up to start sending outbound emails for ChartJuice, this classic post from Nathan Barry (written in 2017) on how to do direct sales popped into my feed. It's one of the most tactical, helpful posts I've seen on the topic. Although I've also been referencing Founding Sales, which I've linked to in this newsletter before, a lot.

From me

​How I validated ChartJuice (enough to invest in an MVP)​

ChartJuice is a long way from being fully validated, I don't have any customers yet, and don't know if the business will work. But I thought it would be interested to write about what I did to build enough confidence in the idea to decide to invest 3+ months into building an MVP (by the way, that was longer than I would prefer, but it was my first time programming in 6+ years). It started with looking at the market, then I did a landing page test, and finally I conducted about 12 user interviews. I also get into what's coming next, and the concerns I still have about the business.

From the internet

​Crypto Confidential: Winning and losing millions in the new frontier of finance​

Nat Eliason just sent me a copy of his new book, and I've seen a lot of folks in the bootstrapped community talking about it. Nat started his career selling infoproducts, then built a successful SEO agency, got heavy into crypto, and is now pursuing his dream of being a full-time author. I've enjoyed his writing since he was running his agency, and I'm excited to dig into the book when I'm traveling next week.

​Building product at Stripe: craft, metrics, and customer obsession with Jeff Weinstein​

Excited to dig into this episode of Lenny San's podcast with Jeff Weinstein. Jeff might be the most active I've ever seen any PM be on social. It feels like anytime someone has a problem with Stripe on twitter Jeff is there trying to understand and get user feedback for project's he's pushing for.

​4 smash recipes to SMASH this summer​

I needed at least one link to something fun that wasn't related to business or tech in any way shape or form. So here is a link to 4 fun variations of a classic cocktail recipe to try this summer, from my favorite cocktail YouTuber. Mixing cocktails has become one of my favorite hobbies in the last year, and my girlfriend asked for more cocktails with sage, so I'm planning to try a couple of these out soon. Bonus: Ander's video on the Enzoni, which is having a moment right now.

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