| Hey HN, Having been part of a fast-growing YC startup, I wanted to show what the early days of making a product are actually like—so I'm building a startup product myself and video recording the entire process. Literally every minute I spend working on Shuffleboard is recorded and uploaded to YouTube. Each video is a couple hours long, and shows both my face and my screen as I work. There are about 30 sessions and about 70 hours of work so far. All videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFP8wPiIB7kz7pbYCnjIc... See the live product: https://getshuffleboard.com/ What I've been doing: - Talking about who my customers are and what value I'm trying to create for them
- Designing the basic UX
- Interviewing potential users
- Running usability tests
- Designing a brand
- Maintaining a product backlog
- Reading documentation
- Writing code
- Fixing bugs
- Learning how to write unit tests
- Spending days trying to figure out Firestore security rules
- Prepping for a mini-launch (including writing this HN post)
- Getting stuck/bored/tired
- Making lots of mistakes
Next steps: - Sales
- More usability tests/interviews
- More features
- Improving the visual design
- Subscriptions with Stripe
Tech stack: - React + Create React App (with styled components)
- Firebase for the db (Firestore), plus Firebase auth and hosting
Like in any startup, there's a rollercoaster of ups and downs. The visual brand was designed in a couple hours, but figuring out how to finally secure the Firestore database took almost a week. There are moments where I'm having a blast, moments where I want to give up, and lots of hours where nothing much happens at all.Would love to hear what you think :) Sam |