[ezekg]

I haven't launched, so I hope this is okay. I'm 7/mo into developing a side project called https://keygen.sh, and am finally wrapping things up to launch a beta in early January. I have a few hundred people on my mailing list, so that's a plus.

Challenges I've faced:

- Getting carried away with automation: emails after certain events, marketing to users who don't convert, billing features; all of these are things I should have done post-launch.

- Writing tests. I've literally delayed the launch of the product a whole month because I didn't feel my test coverage was good enough. I should have launched the beta and then started writing tests.

- Too many features. "Hey, x) would be a cool feature!", "Oh man, y) would be super useful to my users." – Yeah, I've written and then removed so many features that I'm a little ashamed.

- Wanting to adhere strictly to the JSON API spec. I shouldn't have spent so much time making sure that it followed the spec, because in the end, it doesn't.

After reevaluating things, all I need to do is finish writing documentation so that I can roll out the beta.

[levimaes]

This looks like a demanding project! I hope you make good headway, and get a lot of traction this new year. I'm curious, since I'm convinced consumers are deviating away from licensed native software towards web-accessible, web-authenticated product subscriptions, who your target audience/market is supposed to be? If it's targeted at native Electron and NW.js developers, can I ask what problem(s) your product might solve? I am new to product development, and I am just curious about what I'm missing.

[ezekg]

I don't see native software going anywhere anytime soon. There are things that will never* be able to be done in a web browser, such as a GUI for certain things, or a Terminal app that runs commands on your machine. (*don't quote me on that.)

My product was developed because I've written more or less the same licensing API logic for a few different desktop applications. I figured I couldn't be the only person who didn't want to write licensing logic, especially when it starts getting more complex with add-ons, user accounts, etc. so I've been creating a solution for myself and everybody else.

Keygen solves that issue by making licensing simple for desktop applications (not only limited to Node/JavaScript, of course), as well as some web apps (most notably in my mind would be gaming or other SaaS apps, but really it could be used for many different types of web apps). I've tried to provide a better UX than current solutions, such as not requiring a license key but rather having your users login and then checking their account for a specific license.

[perfmode]

When I view your landing page, the graphics spaz out. Is that intended?

[ezekg]

Yes. I wanted to try something a little different for the design. It's meant to give off a 'hacker' vibe (complete with a few Mr. Robot references).

[raquo]

Damn I really like those glitchy visuals.

[ShaneCurran]

I think so, I'm pretty sure it's meant to be skeuomorphic :)

That being said, it freaked me out a little bit when I opened it!

[alkhatib]

The website seems to have a bug on android. The first portion with a button loads then glitches and becomes all white.

[ezekg]

Appreciate the report. Safari has the same issue for some reason, so I will check it out on an Android device as well. ty