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Hey 👋

I'm writing this month's issue from Mexico City! I've been working on improving my Spanish for the past year and a half (originally prompted my walk on the Camino de Santiago) so I made it a goal this year to come spend some time in Mexico City where I could immerse myself and practice my Spanish.

I'm absolutely loving it so far. There are people, dogs and amazing food everywhere! The city is beautiful and the weather has been amazing. I'm here for another week, so if you've been and have any tips hit reply and let me know.

In ChartJuice news, I've spent most of this month focused on ramping up marketing - through Google Ads and cold outreach. So far, the early results are pretty mediocre. I'm acquiring users through the ads, but no conversions to paid and fairly low usage right now. My gut says that the chart-to-image API use case isn't resonating as much as I had hoped it might. My plan for next month is to switch over the marketing materials and user flow of the app to be focused on the freemium chart builder use case. Ideally, I'd also like to get a few plugins built - I'm targeting Figma, Canva, and Webflow first.

At the same time, I'm also starting to explore a couple of other ideas with a new partner. So my time for the next few months will likely be split roughly equally between ChartJuice, new projects, and consulting. I'll keep sharing progress here (and on my podcast) as I go! Appreciate you for reading.

Cheers,

Andrew

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

For bootstrappers

​I'm walking away from the product I spent a year building​

As I've been struggling to get ChartJuice off the ground, I've been looking for advice or writing from other founders about how they decided to quit working on an idea. A friend recommended I revisit the Art of Product podcast, and that led me to this great post from Derrick Reimer. Derrick went through two businesses after he left Drip before he eventually landed on SavvyCal, which he has now grown into a great business.

​The guide to SaaS metrics​

I've bookmarked this massive guide, and plan to reference it over time as I grow my business. I haven't read all the way through it yet (again, it's massive) but it seems like a fantastic resource for founders wanting to get better at analyzing their data. And it's beautifully designed.

​Schlep blindness​

A classic post from Paul Graham on finding startup ideas by taking on hard things that no one else wants to do.

From me

​Everything I learned building a $1M agency​

I've wanted to write this post for a long time. This is everything I learned about growing an agency business over the 8 years it took me to grow Krit to $1M in revenue. This is meant to be a resource I can share with anyone interested in starting an agency, and I want to continue adding to it over time. So if you have questions I don't cover in this post, please let me know!

For fun

​The perfect draft challenge​

For any fantasy football geeks out there who want something that's more fun than a mock draft, but less work than a real draft, this is a really entertaining challenge. You try to pick the best possible 2023 team in a simulated draft. It's really fun to think through how your strategy will change when you know how players performed. And it ends up being really challenging to crack into the top of the leaderboard. My best score so far is 2777. Can you beat it?

​Turn a FigJam board into a website​

I loved this fun experiment to use FigJam boards as websites. It's easy for the web to all start to feel... kind of the same. So it's always exciting when someone does something weird and different. You can check out an example website at 535.fund. It's not a perfect user experience, but it definitely stands out.

​This High Hopes cover scratches my brain just right​

I found this High Hopes cover by Gabriella Bee in a YouTube short, and then had to go track down the full version. It's just scratches my brain in a great way, and the funky instruments are fun.

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