Day 436: My Own Rules

The silver lining of Intention being taken down is that my post about it went viral. It shot up to the #1 spot on Hacker News within minutes of me submitting it, and even though it was manually removed from the front page by the mods after about an hour or so, the post accomplished its mission of getting Intention restored. It received over 250 votes in a little over an hour — had it been left alone, I have no doubt it would’ve gotten over 1000 votes, maybe even 2000.

(I emailed the mods asking about why the post was taken down, and they explained that they wanted to avoid having HN be filled up with these kinds of stories that rehash the same topics that have been brought up plenty of times in the past. While I was disappointed to hear that and miss out on more of that sweet, sweet, HN traffic, it’s also understandable that they’re trying to keep HN a fresh and curious place.)

Thanks to that post’s brief moment in the spotlight, Browerflow also got more attention than usual. 24 people signed up for the private beta, and a higher proportion of them seemed to be geared towards business use cases than normal — probably because the language on the landing page sounds like it’s made for business use cases (e.g. “Save time and eliminate mistakes by automating repetitive, error-prone tasks”).

I sent out some invites today and kept the requirement of paying $20 to join the beta because it still seems like an effective way to ensure that I’m working primarily with people who care enough about their problem that they’re willing to pay for it. (The goal right now isn’t to get as many users as possible; it’s to identify the business use case that I can double down on.)

It’s getting easier to charge people for the things I build. Even though $20 is such a trivial amount, there’s still discomfort in asking for it, as if someone’s going to respond with, “Ha! You really think getting access to your work is worth $20?” Of course, that hasn’t happened. With each person that says yes, my confidence builds and the reality of the situation sinks in a bit more: I get to make my own rules.

This is the fun part of entrepreneurship. If I want to charge people, I can do that. If I want to raise prices, I can do that. It doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily work, but I have the power to set my terms and see what happens.

I’m not sure what lies at the root of my discomfort around asking people for money. It almost certainly has to do with the fact that money was always a tense topic growing up. There’s still fear and shame wrapped up in it. But I’m glad I get to slowly work on loosening the grip of that conditioning by building Browserflow and doing this whole indie maker thing.

Following my fear was a great intention to set for this year.