Day 56: February Review

For this month’s review, I’m using the following template:

What went well?
What didn’t go well?
What would I like to do differently?
Overall reflections

What went well?

💰 Got my first paid users for Hide Feed!

I got my first paid user at the beginning of the month, which was dope. As of today, I have 7 paid users out of 101 total users (7 paid users * $5/month = $35 MRR = at least one instant ramen meal a day! Woot woot. Don’t worry, I’m not actually subsisting off of ramen.)

Maintaining a 7% conversion rate would be fantastic, but 6 out of those 7 users are friends that I know IRL so I expect the actual conversion rate to be much, much lower. To my dear subscribers Tom, Jake, Shiva, Eric, Shah, Kelly, and Cathy — thanks so much for your support! You guys are the best.

🛠 Rewrote Intention in several days

After seeing Motion and other extensions, I was inspired to work on Intention again, the self-control extension I had put on hold when I started working on Hide Feed. I had most of it previously built, but I ended up rewriting most of it in a surprisingly short amount of time. I’m using it every day now, and I’m excited to have other people try it out.

🌇 Moved to NYC and made a bunch of great friends

I’m taking part in a 10-week hacker residency, and I’m enjoying my time here. It’s great fun being surrounded by so many talented, thoughtful, ambitious (yet still chill!) people.

🌎 Made Just One Earth with Matt and Erica

As part of a hackathon for the residency, my team built a collection of visualizations on climate change and animal welfare. We ended up being one of the three winners of the hackathon (our demo), had a popular post on Reddit, and hit the front page of Product Hunt — twice! I’m extremely proud of what we’ve built and how well we worked together as a team.

What didn’t go well?

🛑 Chrome Web Store rejections

Two days ago, I got my first rejection on the Chrome Web Store after months of having zero problems. I thought it was due to a bug in my code, but it looks like there’s something else going on. I asked for clarification and their response was not to provide an explanation, but rather remove Hide Feed from the Chrome Web Store. The link for the extension still works so I’m holding out hope that it won’t actually be removed, but this looks like an existential threat for Hide Feed. I’m worried.

😰 Poor Hide Feed Pro conversions

When the trial period expired for ~50 of my users, no one upgraded to the Pro plan. One likely reason is that the UX for upgrading needs a ton of improvement (thanks to Francesco for helping me realize this), but the bigger problem is that I don’t think enough people find the Pro plan compelling enough to upgrade. Like I mentioned in the linked post, I think I need to expand my sample size before drawing conclusions, but this is something to keep in mind.

📭 Feedback Friday

I only did one Feedback Friday this month, and it’s because I realized that I was a dummy for thinking that everyone would be receptive to unsolicited feedback. Due to all the things going on with the hacker residency, I put off reaching out to makers and ended up not doing Feedback Fridays. For this upcoming month, I want to be more proactive and get back to doing one every week.

😴 Self-care

The hackathon was fun, but it totally screwed with my sleep schedule. I’m still experiencing the negative effects of that almost a full week later, and it’s taken a toll on my exercise routine, eating habits, self-control around mindlessly consuming social media, and my general well-being. I’m looking forward to getting back on my routine and not feeling like a zombie blob.

What would I like to do differently?

🚀 Launch more quickly

I feel like I’m still taking too long building things in private before launching it into the world, and I’d like to work on moving more quickly. Seeing the response around Just One Earth was a helpful reminder that I don’t need to spend months on something in order to start sharing it with people — we were able to get over 5,000 visitors with less than two days of work. I already feel like I’ve been sitting on Intention for too long so I’d like to launch it soon. I also need to figure out what launching means for me — there’s a difference between posting about it on Twitter and Facebook and posting stuff on Product Hunt / Hacker News. I’m currently thinking that I should share on my personal social media as early as possible and wait a bit before posting on public forums, but I’m not entirely sure about that.

Notion doesn’t give me analytics so I don’t know how many people read Road to Ramen, but I don’t think it’s that many. On one hand, that feels perfectly fine because I enjoy writing this journal regardless of whether others read it or not. On the other hand, since I’m taking the time to write all these things out and I think many people will appreciate it, I might as well try to share it with more people. I’m not sure what’s the best way to go about doing this, but I’d like to actively work on this.

Overall reflections

I’ve been feeling stuck for the past several days due to poor sleep, challenges with coding, and the uncertainty around what will happen to Hide Feed on the Chrome Web Store, but this monthly review is helping me take a broader view and recognize that quite a bit has happened this past month. I’m proud of all that’s happened, and I’m excited to keep this going!