I’ll be honest—I’ve been a bit quiet on social media lately. But for me, “walking the talk” always beats just talking. Instead of sharing tips on how to build, I’ve been deep in the BUILDING MODE, actually building, breaking, and launching.

The last few weeks have been a roller coaster of code and cricket, and I’m hyped to finally show you what’s been happening behind the scenes.

1. VoxInvoice: Invoicing Without the Headache

If you know me, you know I’ve struggled with clunky, over-complicated invoicing software for years. I finally decided to build the solution I wanted to use.

VoxInvoice is one of the first dedicated desktop invoice management tools designed to be fast, local, and—most importantly—free.

• No Catch: Use the free version to generate invoices and manage your data.

• Offline First: Your data stays with you, with easy options for consistent backups.

• Built for Speed: No more waiting for browser tabs to load just to bill a client.

2. Gully Crix: Bringing the Stadium to the Street

When I’m not at my desk, I’m usually on the field with the crew. We’ve been heads-down for the last three weeks turning Gully Crix into a powerhouse for local matches. We’ve rolled out features that make your local game feel like a World Cup final:

• Live Match Streaming: For the teammates who couldn’t make it but want to feel the tension.

• Match Publishing: View all your scores and stats in a web browser once the game is over.

• Tie-Breakers & Tosses: Full support for Super Overs and digital coin tosses.

Why the Radio Silence?

I’ve always preferred showing the process over just posting the results. Building these two projects simultaneously taught me more about product-market fit and user experience than any “how-to” thread ever could.

I’m back now, and I’m ready to share more of the “behind the scenes” struggles and wins that went into these launches.

Check them out!

Curious about a specific feature? Or want to see how we handled a specific technical blocker? Head over to the websites or hit reply—I’m happy to dive into the weeds with you.

• Explore VoxInvoice: https://www.voxinvoice.com

• Check out Gully Crix: https://www.gullycrix.com

Catch you on the next update,

Abhishek
Follow me on Instagram

First of all it’s been a while that I have written a newsletter but I am thinking to stay as active as possible.

You have given me immense amount of love on Instagram and you have either subscribed to my newsletter by directly checking out the content or by downloading one of the resources on my website abhishek.build.

And from here on I will keep updating you about some of the amazing tech stacks and amazing ways to optimize your workflow in web, app, product and agentic development as much as possible.

All this FOR FREE.

With that, let’s dive into this week’s content.

People assume you need funding to build apps.

You don’t. You need the right tools — and most of them are free.

I put together a full breakdown of every tool I use as a solo developer: Claude Code, Supabase, Next.js, Render, Remotion, Figma, and Google Search Console. Total monthly cost: $20–45. Five live apps. Zero investors.

I turned it into a carousel first — here’s the quick version:

View on Instagram →

But the real detail is in the resource. For each tool I cover what it actually does, how I use it day-to-day, tips I’ve learned from shipping real products, and when (if ever) you’d need to upgrade or switch.

I also added alternatives — Neon if you want branchable Postgres without the full Supabase suite, Railway if Render’s spin-down ever frustrates you, and Bing Webmaster Tools as a quiet add-on once your Search Console is live.

Read the full guide →

The stack is there. The only thing left is to start. 🚀

— Abhishek

I wanted to write about a quick journey on how we execute ideas that are already validated and can really be very useful for our users.

So with that…

Let me tell you how Speech to Note Desktop came to exist.

We started with a simple problem: converting speech into text.

Back in 2023, with AI already adding speech capabilities everywhere, I thought this was an absolute banger of a time where we could not just convert speech into text, but also convert it into meaningful notes like emails, contacts, task lists for the team, messages for buddies on WhatsApp.

There were so many things as a product design agency owner for me to work on that I thought, “This makes sense.”

That’s how we started a simple application that made it to web.

A year later, we launched the mobile app, which allowed you to record on the go without worrying about turning on your laptop, and gave you a handy way to quickly label or tag your notes.

We kept adding meaningful features over the next 18 months to both web and mobile apps.

But one of the predominant places where I spent a lot of time was the desktop itself.

Then I saw an opportunity to build something for myself again.

I got a recommendation for another app, which, to be honest, was pretty awesome.

And I thought, “Hey, why not give something to our users in the same space who are already using Speech to Note? It would be pretty awesome if they got an application for voice typing in the same ecosystem.”

That’s where the idea clicked:

Since we’re already available for note-taking on web, for blabbering random ideas on the go via mobile, for recording one-on-one meetings on mobile up to 60 minutes, why can’t we make a voice typing application and lock it or associate it with the same account users have already signed up for?

Give them access to one absolute gem of an ecosystem where they need to sign up once and get access to speech-to-text-to-notes on every damn machine they own.

So yeah, that’s where the idea started.

Here we are now:

We’re a mobile app. We’re a web app. And it took just 31 days from the idea popping up in my head to shipping the Mac app.

31 days in between showing off first concepts to launching an idea fast.

The idea got validated because there was already an existing application doing well.

I gave it certain twists from my angle because this workflow works well for me: starting a recording, going through pages or articles in different tabs of my browser, blabbering my thoughts while collecting ideas, eventually stopping the recording, and making some format out of it.

This Mac application, which we already have live, was delivered in 31 days with the fantastic team we have at Speech to Note headquarters.

We’ve already started receiving amazing feedback from users.

It’s a kick-ass thing, and it really feels like we’re building momentum towards giving access to this ecosystem to our entire base of 8,000 users, 1,500 paid users (although most are lifetime deal users, but still).

Giving them access to this kind of wonderful ecosystem gives me chills, makes me very happy, and makes me go bonkers thinking about what we’re about to build next.

What’s next:

We’ve launched for Mac. We’re targeting to launch for Windows before Christmas.

That announcement has already made a lot of users in our ecosystem go buzzing, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Thanks for being part of this journey.

Abhishek
Founder, Speech to Note

P.S. - If you haven’t tried Desktop Companion, download it here: https://speechtonote.com/desktop-companion-app. Try it free for 14 days.

I am writing after quite sometime back here and I wanted to share my experiences with what has been happening with Speech to Note.

Speech to Note had a great run with lifetime deal sales.

But we’re struggling to convert new users consistently, and I think it’s time to be honest about why.

Here’s what’s actually happening:

A. We focus on existing source of income too

Team Codesign a product design and development team brings in reliable revenue, which means Speech to Note doesn’t have the desperate pressure to monetize or die, but it also means my attention is split between client work and building our own product.

B. We keep building for people who have already invested in us

Desktop Companion, UI improvements, new features—they’re all driven by feedback from our existing community, which is exactly how I believe products should be built, but it means we’re not spending enough time reaching new users who don’t know Speech to Note exists yet.

C. We haven’t spent much on marketing

Almost nothing, actually, because I’d rather build something people love than spend money convincing people to try something mediocre.

But at some point, you need both: a great product AND people knowing it exists.

So here’s what I’m working on in Q1 2026:

Setting up a reliable affiliate network

If you know students, professionals, or anyone who could benefit from Speech to Note, and you have a strong network of people who trust your recommendations, reach out to me.

I’d be happy to work on a partnership where you get rewarded for bringing people into something you’re already using and believe in.

Will Speech to Note shut down?

NO.

Team Codesign’s revenue keeps it running even without sustainable MRR right now, but I feel it’s high time to leverage the network we have with you to scale it to the next level.

This approach is very counter-intuitive in today’s venture capital world where you’re supposed to raise millions, burn through it on ads, and hope you figure out retention later.

We’ve decided to stick with the bootstrapped approach for now until we find the right people, or the right people find us.

Will we stop development?

Not at all.

We’re building every single day.

We’re currently working on UI 3.0, which will bring a major overhaul in terms of cleaning up the interface, but it will also bring more amazing features over the next year.

We’re also focusing on desktop applications: launched for Mac, now working on the Windows app.

The goal is to have an awesome suite of voice AI tools bundled within one ecosystem:

• Personal notes (Possible with Web and Mobile)

• Voice typing anywhere on computer (Now possible with brand new Mac App and coming soon for Windows)

• Meeting transcription and summaries (Will build further on Mac and Windows Apps)

All in one place with ONE account.

We started small, but we have a crazy vision for this ever-evolving world.

Our focus is to stay human in how we build and who we build for.

Why this matters to me personally:

As an agency, things become quite boring when you’re building for clients and THEIR users who you never talk to directly.

Speech to Note gave us access to solving problems that:

A. We had ourselves and…
B. We love solving for you with your feedback, by directly connecting with YOU over emails, calls, and community messages

We’re not a task-checker team anymore.

We literally carry the badge of problem solvers, and we got it from you.

We’re also focusing on solving similar problems in domain-specific cases like healthcare, offline sales, and other industries where voice capture changes everything.

If you’re keen on learning about these or want to explore partnerships, hit me up.

Thanks for sticking with us.

Abhishek
Founder, Speech to Note & Team Codesign

P.S. - If you know someone who loses thoughts before they can write them down

Share this URL with them

And if you want to partner with us to bring Speech to Note to your network, just reply to this email. Let’s talk.

By the way if you’re interested in chatting with me here on Substack you can hit the button below.

OR if you have been part of Speech to Note’s Journey, you can join our brand new Discord Community too.

STN Discord Community

Until next time, which I am pretty sure will be very soon. Stay good, stay awesome.

The secret to standing out? Share tangible results right alongside your proposal.

Show Your Thinking Process

Instead of just listing what you’ll do and how much it will cost, demonstrate your understanding of the project by sharing actual deliverables. One of the most effective ways to do this is by creating a user flow that shows how you think the project should be approached.

Let’s say you’re a web developer pitching a website project. Rather than simply outlining your tech stack and delivery timeline, take it a step further. Write a brief commentary (OR use Speech to Note - a Voice to Text platform for your commentary) on how you envision users interacting with the website. Walk through the entire user journey and highlight key user experience considerations. This shows clients that you’re thinking about their end users, not just the technical implementation.

Once you’ve written down your thoughts and commentary about the user flow, you can refine and organize them using ChatGPT. Simply paste your notes and ask it to create a clear summary of the project requirements and user journey.

Then, take it one step further by creating a visual user flow diagram. Here’s how:

1. Create a free account on Whimsical.com

2. Find the Whimsical Diagrams tool in the ChatGPT GPT Store

3. Paste your refined thoughts into the tool

4. Specify the user persona you want to create a flow for (for example, an end user visiting the website, or if you’re building a web application with multiple user types, you might create separate flows for users, sellers, and admins)

5. Generate the user flow diagram automatically

6. Make any necessary edits to polish it

Now you have a professional, visual representation of your approach that you can include with your proposal and estimations.

Go Beyond the Bare Minimum

Don’t stop at user flows. Depending on the project, you can share additional insights that demonstrate your strategic thinking:

• SEO strategy: Explain how you’ll approach search engine optimization to ensure the website gets discovered

• AI chatbot integration: Discuss how you might improve customer service or user engagement

• Search visibility: Share ideas about improving the website’s presence across different platforms

The key is to give clients something concrete that shows you’re not just focused on delivering code or completing tasks. You’re focused on solving their problems and ensuring their business succeeds.

Why This Works

When you include tangible deliverables like user flows, strategic insights, and visual diagrams in your proposals, you accomplish several things:

• You differentiate yourself from competitors who only send basic quotes

• You demonstrate that you’ve actually thought deeply about their project

• You give clients confidence that you understand their needs

• You show that you’re invested in their success, not just the paycheck

Remember, clients aren’t just buying your time or technical skills—they’re buying your expertise and problem-solving ability. Show them what that looks like, and you’ll win more projects at better rates.

• Goes on to hire a team of 10 developers

• Adds all the features at once 

• Launched in the market

• People don’t like it 

And all of sudden you are completely blown away, because what once you thought to be a billion-dollar company idea now no one is even paying attention to it.

And this hurts as a founder/builder to see your hard work is not working.

• You might think wtf has happened here?

• Why People don’t want to use it? 

• It will help them in doing XYZ

The problem is not the people/Product.

The problem is you launched it badly, without building an MVP and taking feedback from users. You’ve got a brilliant idea, but how do you make sure it lands in the real world without wasting time and money?

Through, MVP (Minimum Viable Product).

MVP is not just about launching fast. It’s more of building a product people love with fewer risks and more opportunities to adapt based on what your users truly want.

But, the problem happens, when founders fall into the trap of trying to do too much, too soon, and losing sight of the MVP’s purpose which is 👇

• Simplicity

• Focus

• speed.

But Why MVPs Matter

MVPs are not about rushing to market with half-baked ideas. They’re about building smarter. Which gives you a chance to validate your idea before you go all in with your resources

Many companies crash and burn because they invest in a full-fledged product, only to realize too late that no one really cares about most of their features.

Here’s where it often goes wrong.

During the initial days of building your MVP, you’re excited, you’re confident — and you’ve done tons of research. 

Research can be deceiving.

Even after hours of interviews and market studies, you can still make the fatal mistake of building based on assumptions. You might be tempted to include every shiny idea you think your audience will love. 

they won’t.

Let’s say you are building a meal-prep service app and you’ve conducted surveys and found users want 

• healthy recipes, 

• shopping lists,

• and even a fitness tracker.

You don’t need to give all these features at once, because this will clutter your MVP and your users will be overwhelmed.

Instead, you start with adding one or two features that solve a pressing pain point. That’s what will make users come back for a second, third, and fourth time. Then, when they’re asking for more — that’s when you expand.

Focus on Your MVP’s Core — The 80/20 Rule

The MVP should focus on the core feature that 80% of users will use all the time. This isn't about guessing what they'll find useful. It's about solving a problem they face every day.

A great example is Instagram.

Yes, Now if you use Instagram, it has filters, stories, and reels, but if you remember using it back in 2015 or earlier it has one focus letting users share photos quickly and easily.

After users had been hooked by the simplicity of photo sharing, the team added new features according to user demand.

If MVP is the king then your Feedbacks are queen 👑

Now after you launch your MVP, your real game starts where you need to understand your users to get your product up and running all the time.

And how would you do it? By taking continuous feedback from them.

Once your MVP is out there, talk to your users. Their feedback will give you the roadmap you need to work on your product.

Now you might think wtf will I ask my users? 😟

Don’t guess what features they’ll want next — ask them.

1. What did you love? What’s the one feature that made you think, “I need this”?

2. What could be better? Is there something that didn’t meet your expectations?

3. What’s missing? Is there a feature you’d want to see added next?

Asking the right questions with your users will give you insights which you will never find by guessing.

Building for Retention

Always focus on building your product for retention. MVP should be something that pulls users back. Not once, not twice, but again and again.

The goal is to hook your users with one core feature, making them curious to see what comes next.

For Example, Spotify did not start with playlists, podcasts, and social listening all at once their MVP was simple: stream music.

This core function was enough to draw users in, and once they were hooked, Spotify slowly added more features.

Here’s what you can keep in a note while building your MVP

1. Focus on solving one problem well.

2. You can’t read users’ minds, so don’t assume you know what they want. 

3. You’ll never feel 100% ready, but if your core feature works, launch now.

4. You can use Speech to note to record your user’s feedback

Speed matters. Delays can kill momentum.

Got any questions? I’m ready to help!

Stay curious. Build lean. Iterate fast.

Thanks for reading, and keep designing with purpose!

Before we say the final goodbye to today’s topic, here are 5 Interesting things I came across last week 👇

1. The Mom Test: How to talk to customers

2. How to scrappily hire for, measure

3. Scaling Mailbox - From 0 to 1M Users in 6 weeks

4. How I spent a year by Shaan Puri

5. The Failed Promise Of Freelance Talent Platforms

If you liked the “reading experience” please share this with a friend. It would mean the world to me❤️

How do you approach designing for users with different levels of tech-savviness?

Designing a product that works for both tech-savvy users and those who aren’t as comfortable with technology can be tricky.

The very baby steps to working on your product start with 

Understanding your users

• Who they are? 

• What’s their needs?

• How tech-savvy are they?

Before you start designing, you need to understand who your users are and how comfortable they are with technology. Some users may know a lot about technology, while others may only use it when they have to.

For example, while building Speech to Note

• We have had users who are simply just authors who love to use pen and paper but we're exploring technology as a complementary tool.

• Students who had a casual understanding of technology, and even seniors who were relatively unfamiliar with digital products.

We had to make sure everyone could use it easily, regardless of their tech skills.

So when you understand the paradigm or the level of your users, you can then try to make sure that the simple pieces of your product are accessible to anyone and everyone on the platform.  

In the case of Speech-to-Note, some users wanted nothing more than a simple note-taking function, while others were developers or enthusiasts who wanted features like integration with other platforms, automated workflows, and customizable settings.

Layer Your Design ~ Keep it Simple, But Offer More for Advanced Users

A great way to design for different types of users is to layer your design. This means the main features of your product should be easy to find and use, while more advanced options are available but tucked away for those who need them.

In Speech-to-Note, we added a feature for tech-savvy users called "webhooks," which lets them connect their notes to other platforms. But this feature is hidden in the settings, so regular users don’t get confused by it

.

To set up webhooks, tech-savvy users can go into the settings, find the option, and connect it to the service they want. After that, they can send their notes wherever they want with just a click

This layering makes sure that non-tech-savvy users can still use the product without getting lost in extra features they don’t need, while tech-savvy users can dig deeper and customize their experience.

Social media apps like Facebook or Instagram offer another example. Most users just want to create an account and start posting. But for some users who care about security, there’s an option to set up two-factor authentication (2FA).

This feature adds extra protection to your account, but it’s not something most people would know how to set up, so it’s hidden in the settings.

People who need it can find it, but it doesn’t clutter the experience for everyone else.

Design for Solving Problems, Not Showing Off Tech Features

When people use your product, they’re usually there to solve a problem, not to play around with technology. Even tech-savvy users want your product to work smoothly without having to figure out complicated settings.

A great example would be Postman, an app used by developers to test APIs, which is an example of a product built for advanced users. 

Because its main users are developers, Postman is designed to solve complex problems, and it’s packed with features to help them do that.

Even though Postman is a complex tool, it’s still focused on solving a specific problem: testing APIs. This keeps it from feeling overwhelming, even for experienced users.

In Speech-to-Note, both tech-savvy users and beginners have the same goal: turning speech into text. So we made the main interface simple. Users just press a button to start recording, and the app turns their words into text.

For tech-savvy users who want more, like sending their notes to another app, the advanced options are there—but only if they want them. That way, both groups can get what they need without the product becoming too complicated.

Make Your Product Inclusive for All Users

Designing for users with different levels of tech-savviness means making your product inclusive. This means everyone should feel comfortable using it, no matter how much they know about technology.

Take Google Docs, for example. It’s easy enough for anyone to use for writing and sharing documents. But it also has advanced features, like voice typing and macros, for users who want more control.

Zoom is another good example. Anyone can join a Zoom meeting with just a few clicks, but for users who want more, there are advanced features like virtual backgrounds and breakout rooms.

These apps are great at keeping things simple while offering extra tools for those who need them.

Don’t Overcomplicate It with Too Many Features

It’s easy to get carried away by adding "cool" features to your product. But if you overload your product with too many advanced features, you risk confusing users who aren’t as comfortable with technology.

A great example of keeping things simple is Spotify. The main purpose of Spotify is to play music, and that’s the first thing you see when you open the app. It’s easy for anyone to search for a song and press play.

For more advanced users, there are extra features like creating playlists, sharing music, or even adding podcasts. But those features don’t get in the way of the basic experience.

In the end, it’s important to keep things simple and user-friendly while still offering advanced features.

"Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains."

Thanks for reading, and keep designing with purpose!

Before we say the final goodbye to today’s topic, here are 5 Interesting things I came across last week 👇

1. One cold email can change your life.

2. Mastering Mindset for Design Career Growth

3. $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi

4. I interviewed Sam Altman by David Perell

5. How to actually calculate CAC by Andrew Chen

If you liked the “reading experience” please share this with a friend. It would mean the world to me❤️

• My clients are from the USA, DUBAI, UK, Australia, etc.

• I’ve designed more than 500+ websites

I’m sure some of you have reached this stage or you might have seen people talking about their agencies and thinking of what they are doing differently that I’m not doing as a freelancer.

I had screwed up so many times because when I started I did not have clarity on how much I should charge for my services and I believe 90% of freelancers go wrong at this point when it comes to charging right to clients.

• If you undercharge, you will feel underpaid and overwhelmed

• If you overcharge, you might scare your potential clients.

There is a very thin line between undercharging VS overcharging clients for your services.

Now how do you quote the right price?

Before thinking about jumping directly into sending quotations to your clients, first, you need to focus on:

Understanding your client's requirements.

As a freelancer or agency owner, it’s very important to understand

• What do your clients want?

• What details will be needed?

• How soon do they need it?

You need to scope out with your potential clients to understand their requirements because every project is different and every client is different hence every requirement and pricing will be different.

So what do you need to consider?

1. What exactly does the client want? How many pages are required? What kind of content will need to be included? The scope will largely determine the effort and the resources you’ll need to put into the project.

2. Is the client asking for a simple, minimalist design, or are they looking for something more complex and interactive?

3. Will the client provide the text, or will you need to create or edit content for them?

4. Are they expecting you to source images, videos, or other multimedia assets, or will they provide these items? Clear this up early to avoid confusion later on.

For example:

You are building a website for a dentist and they need a total of six pages, including a blog page that they can update regularly. But they also want you to handle content creation and help with branding. 

It will be easier for you to create a quote that is accurate and fair if you understand these specific needs from the beginning.

Now once you have all the details about your client's needs, you need to make..

Detailed Scoping

It’s important to clearly define your project details with your clients and your team because once you understand client details it’s important to scope the requirements in detail to avoid unexpected revisions, delays, and unhappy clients.

The clearer you can define the project requirements, the smoother the project will go—and the easier it will be to avoid disputes down the line.

For example:

At the start, they ask for a few basic pages, but midway through the project, they suddenly want to add a membership section, video guides, and a place for booking appointments. Without a detailed scope, you might find yourself doing a lot of additional work for free, or worse, losing the client when you try to renegotiate the terms.

A well-done scope allows you to say, “We initially agreed on a five-page website, but I’m happy to include these additional features for X amount more.”

So what do you need to consider?

1. Identify what the client will provide and what you’ll need to source or create.  

2. Make sure every page and feature is accounted for in your quote.

3. Once the project is in progress, significant changes should be treated as a separate addition, with clear additional charges.

Now once you have the client's requirements and the scope of the project, it’s time for you to send a quote or pricing your services.

Pricing your services

Here’s how you can quote:

Based on your requirements, we’ll build a six-page website including the following:

• Home page

• About page

• Client vision page

• Blog page (regularly updatable)

• Clinics information page

• Team members page

We will also create stationery for your new brand.

For all of the above, we’re charging $10,000.

Now you also need to mention what’s not included to avoid any confusion when you have started working on the project.

What’s NOT Included

Clarity is king 👑

The mistake many web designers make is to only outline what is included. In order to avoid future misunderstandings, it's equally important to specify what is not included.

But why you need to do this? Because 

Clients often assume that certain services (like logo design, content or photography) are part of the package, but that may not be the case. 

For example:

• We will use your existing logo.

• Video shoots: This will incur additional charges.

• Customer testimonial shoots: Not included in the base package.

• Customer photograph sessions: Additional costs will apply if requested.

Tips for Quoting

It’s often a good idea to ask for the client’s budget range early on. If a client is expecting to spend $2,000 but you quote them $10,000, there’s a significant mismatch.

Ask thoughtful questions to fully grasp what the client needs. Sometimes, clients don’t even realize they need certain features (like SEO optimization or mobile responsiveness).

Offer Multiple Packages:

1. Comprehensive package: Six pages, full branding, blog setup, mobile responsiveness, and social media integration.

2. Essential package: Six pages and blog setup, but no social media integration or advanced SEO.

3. Bare-bones package: Three essential pages (Home, About, Services) with mobile responsiveness only.

Offering these options allows clients to choose what works best for them while ensuring that even your lowest-tier package meets your baseline standards.

Now the golden fish is: Upselling Opportunities

These are additional services that you can offer to enhance the client’s website, often resulting in higher project revenue.

1. If the client doesn’t have the time or skills to create content, offer content writing services for an additional fee.

2. Many businesses need regular blog posts or SEO optimization to maintain their web presence. 

3. Some clients may want their social media accounts linked to their site. 

4. Many small businesses could use a visual upgrade. If you’re not a branding expert, consider partnering with one to offer a full suite of services.

Be sure to clarify that adding services after the initial quote may not come with the same discounted price as bundled services offered upfront.

Pricing a web design project isn’t just about coming up with a number; it’s about understanding the client’s needs, scoping the project thoroughly, and being transparent about what's included and what's not. 

Remember:

1. Customer is king

2. Clarity is queen

Both goes hand in hand.

Thanks for reading, and keep designing with purpose!

Before we say the final goodbye to today’s topic, here are 5 Interesting things I came across last week 👇

1.  The Tough Future Facing Gen Z

2. A less sterile derangement

3. The Future of Inequality

4. The Looking Glass: The Curse of Perfect

5. Cracking PMF

If you liked the “reading experience” please share this with a friend. It would mean the world to me❤️

Now I need a Mac, iPhone blah blah …

That’s how a junior designer feels after making a portfolio or some UI screen on Figma.

Being a UI/UX designer is much more than saying 

• I’m an expert at Figma

• I know all the design principles

• Reading Steve Job books 

All of these will not make you a designer, It’s good to learn them but it’s much more than what you think.

I have been in the design industry for more than 10+ years and have designed more than 500+ products through Team Codesign and the biggest mistake junior designers make is : 

“Explaining EVERYTHING to Potential Recruiters or Companies”

I know It’s natural to explain everything you know because, in the end, we all want to impress clients, recruiters or whoever we are pitching to..

But here's where many junior designers go wrong: they end up explaining everything.

Why Over-Explaining is a Problem?

1. Information Overload

Let’s say you are working on the Notification drawer, the natural extinct inside you would want to explain every type of notification you considered from alerts to promotional messages. 

But explaining everything to a recruiter or clients will make them overwhelmed because they don’t have much time to hear what you have to say and you need to be concise. 

Even when I was a Junior designer and when someone would ask me to pitch my design to clients or recruiters, here’s how the answer would be:

"For this notification drawer feature, I began by researching how users interact with notifications, interviewing 25 users to understand their preferences. I created detailed journey maps for various use cases, focusing on how users dismiss, expand, or interact with notifications. I started with low-fidelity wireframes in Figma and then transitioned to Sketch to design the UI. Based on user testing feedback, I went through four iterations, adjusting padding, icon sizes, and spacing between notifications. 

After that, I reworked the typography hierarchy for better readability, experimented with five colour schemes for the notification backgrounds, and tested several styles for the expand/collapse button. I created a prototype in InVision, which I shared with stakeholders who requested more changes. I also refined the micro-interactions for smooth animation and optimized the performance for faster load times before delivering the final design."

No No, it’s not your fault, we all start and learn by making mistakes.

The mistake in the above statement is👇

The recruiter doesn't need to know about whom you talk to which colour choices you made and the pixel you chose.

Instead of going all in about explaining every type of notification, shift the focus to the user journey. 

1. What happens when a user clicks on a notification? 

2. Where does it lead, and why? 

This explanation shows how your design decisions impact the user experience without overwhelming them with technicalities.

The better way to answer the above questions is 👇

 “I designed notification cards for six different types of alerts, adjusting padding, margins, and colours for each. I created user flows for each scenario to ensure they had the best user experience possible.”

Or 

“When a user clicks on a notification, they’re taken to a detail page. My focus was on ensuring a seamless transition, keeping users engaged and informed throughout the journey.”

When you explain the flow and logic behind your solutions you're showcasing your ability to think critically about user experience.

2. Making Your Process Seem Complicated

If you explain every adjustment and feature in detail, it can make your process seem overly complex. 

Let’s say you are explaining another example: The options for notification, such as “mark as read” or “delete.”  Rather than listing each functionality you built, explain why you included them and how they impact the user.

The bad approach is to explain like: 

"I included multiple functionalities for the notification drawer, such as 'mark as read/unread,' a 'delete' option, and a swipe gesture for dismissing notifications. I spent a lot of time refining the placement of these options to make them easily accessible. 

I tested different icon sizes and button placements, and I experimented with varying swipe speeds and distances to ensure that users could interact smoothly. I also optimized the animations for each action to create a fluid user experience. Finally, I made several iterations to adjust the haptic feedback when users swiped to delete or marked a notification as read."

The good way is: 

“I included functionalities like ‘mark as read/unread’ and a ‘remove’ option. I went through several iterations to optimize each interaction, ensuring smooth usability.”

Or

“I prioritized functionality based on user needs, including ‘mark as read’ and ‘delete,’ which were validated through user testing as essential for reducing clutter.”

Focusing on why you made those decisions conveys that you’re thinking strategically, not just technically.

As I said earlier, Instead of telling everything,

Focus on What Really Matters

Explain the Impact on whatever you have made, for instance, you made a Notifications drawer (keeping the same example to make it easier to understand)

1. Why was this notification drawer important for the business?

2. How did it impact user behaviour or engagement? 

Don’t just talk about design features; talk about the results your design achieved. 

1. Did user interaction improve? 

2. Did the business see better outcomes as a result?

For Example: “By improving the notification drawer, I reduced the drop-off rate by 15%, increasing user engagement significantly.”

One of the most important thing and easiest ways many people make mistakes is, by explaining every layer of design, which is not important at all…

Now the Most Important thing: “How to Avoid These Mistakes”

1. Focus on the Why

Explain why you made certain design decisions, not just what you did. 

For example, when discussing a notification drawer, instead of explaining every interaction, focus on the logic behind your choices like 👇

 “I implemented notification functionalities based on user testing insights, prioritizing features that enhanced user engagement and minimized confusion.”

2. Focus on Impact

Think about the results, not the process. Did your design increase conversion rates, enhance user engagement, or solve a critical user problem?

Like 👇

“My redesign of the notification drawer led to a 20% increase in user retention within the first month of launch.”

Sooooo Instead of building many portfolios or UI screens, focus on one good project and understand every detail aspect of it so that the next time when you present your portfolio or discuss a project you will understand how things change according to the audience and their preferences.

“Great design speaks through outcomes, not over-explanation.”

Thanks for reading, and keep designing with purpose!

Before we say the final goodbye to today’s topic, here are 5 Interesting things I came across last week 👇

1. The Way to Marketplace Liquidity by Brian Rothenberg

2. Building Community by Lenny

3. How Netflix builds a culture - Podcast of Elizabeth Stone (CTO Netflix)

4. Creative inspiration for the modern marketer

5. Building Kirana Social Network

If you liked the “reading experience” please share this with a friend. It would mean the world to me❤️

Share

I have countless DMs from people on

• How did we make $50k+ with speech to note?

• How did we manage to pull this off?

• What worked for us?

Since many of you have been asking me about it, I thought of explaining what worked for us apart from marketing strategies in detail from the designer's POV.

Btw, It’s not going to be any marketing strategies or action plans, instead, it’s 3 UX core fundamentals that we follow for every single thing we design at STN.

Let’s get started….

First thing first If you are a designer, founder, developer, or builder and if you are building any product you need to understand

• Why does someone will use your product?

When there are so many people creating so many products on the market, understand what your users need. Make it less frictionless for your users so that it’s easier for them to use.

That’s what Hick’s law says: “The fewer options, the better for the users.”

Have you seen this BIG RED record button? The moment you open STN…

We gave this recording button right away on the main screen because our primary goal was to make it easier for users to hit that record button.

We made sure

1. To keep our flagship record button straight on the user’s face

2. That it isn’t messed up with a lot of choices around

Even when you log into your account the first thing you will see is this recording button..

We simplified the choices because we want our users to HIT THAT BIG RED RECORD button ASAP.

That’s where the magic happens at Speech to Note.

And by doing this we reduced the cognitive load on the users…

Now you might be wondering wtf is cognitive load now? Well, Hick’s law has one cousin too 😂 known as cognitive load and both go together everywhere…

To ensure that we are following them both we need to make sure that we are not overwhelming our users with a lot of steps or options for performing a simple operation.

For example : 

Instead of asking users to select different options while recording we start the recording right away and users can adjust accordingly if they want any changes. 

Once they have completed the recording they are redirected to the Notes page..

In short:

1. The user only has to take one step to complete that KEY ACTION. It's step 1 and boom!

2. Also, make sure those steps aren't surrounded by too many distractions.

This reduces the mental load on users and easier for them to use. There will inevitably be tradeoffs, but in Speech to Note, no one can replace that Red Record button not even me. 

I’m sure you have heard this quote everywhere “Customer is King” and you need to treat them like king 👑

So it becomes important to communicate to your customers aka users properly if anything is going to affect their services.

That’s when Don Norman’s Law of Error comes into the picture.

It says that your application will have errors and you better make some effort to inform your users PROPERLY.

Yes, PROPERLY.

Remember those “Something Went Wrong” On any website or App

It’s irritating because you don’t know the exact reason what went wrong, either it was from my end or from the company’s end.

For the longest time, we did the same thing. 

Our recording is error-prone as we are a web app and mishaps can happen if the network decides to drop and sometimes you might have covered the mic accidentally and the app didn’t hear a thing.

Guess what we did to handle both of those scenarios 

Something went wrong 😒.

Until we got feedback and we decided to do it PROPERLY

Now we are providing transparent and detailed error messages which talk about the exact issues. The issue might be 

• Network Problem

• Tab switching disruptions

• Mic is not working

If you know it and your application has that piece of code which lets it know about the issue, then please take steps to translate that jargon for users.

I know all of this may sound silly but it’s important to let them know.

And this did make our users go from “OK, I get it, I will try again”  with a little less frustration.

Well, the work doesn’t stop here and we are continuously working on enhancing the user experience to make it even more better for our users.

If want to see all those UX fundamentals in action, Plugin to STN

Click here, here and here, and Experience Speech to Note yourself!

Feel free to get in touch with me if you have any ideas, feedback or feelings 😉

Thanks for reading, and keep designing with purpose!

If you liked the “reading experience” please share this with a friend. It would mean the world to me❤️

__________________________________

Before we say the final goodbye to today’s topic, here are 5 Interesting things I came across last week 👇

1. How Did OLA Become This Big?

2. How a Talk Begins by Austin Kelon

3. The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

4. One cold email can change your life - Sahil Bloom

5. Nikita Bier’s on winning at consumer apps - Lenny’s Podcast

“No, I want to be an actor” 

Some might even have a goal to be a

• doctor

• football player 

• engineer

• cricket player hitting centuries.

Back in the 90s, very few people had the idea of starting their startup and no one knew about wtf was metrics, the Internet, or even the word ‘startup’.

All we knew was business means Dhanda…

But very few people were doing it… 

So the only thing we had was to dream of those fancy job titles that we used to hear in our school or maybe from our Bua ka beta who was earning well 🙂

And his reaction when he heard our plans was like:

We all had very different dreams during our childhood, some of you might still be pursuing your dreams and most of them today are not and the reason might be very different for everyone.

As we grow up, we often reflect on how great our school days were, even though we thought growing up would be so much more exciting. But life has a way of steering us in unexpected directions.

Growing up I always wanted to be an artist. Still, somehow, the inner artist inside me turned into an engineer because someone else convinced my family that engineering is the best thing in life. 

And as every student even I started preparing for IIT JEE 😀 to get into IIT Bombay, do engineering and booom 6Cr package would be on my way…

But the most funny thing was Instead of a 6 CR package I got 6 marks in IIT JEE.

Yes, it was only 6 out of Idk 😅

The IIT dream faded away, and everyone was sure: ” Jaise Taise 12th hogya Btech to bilkul nhi hoga tere se, normal graduation kar le bas”

Sadly, they were right. I took four years to complete my three-year BSC degree. 

And years later (7 years ago), I thought I made my biggest life mistake again (The first being IIT preparation of course 😣)

I was sitting in my parent's home staring at my laptop after quitting my well-paying job to pursue designing full-time as a freelancer. 

Why did I leave the job? Well 👇

Jokes apart, Have you ever been in a situation where you know you can do it more but your current role or job is restricting you from doing it? 

No No, I was not born to be a founder or thought I would be having a team and building a SaaS.

I was just clueless (well, if you are a founder and if you are clueless then you should get in touch with thecluelesscompany) about my Job and wanted to try what I truly wanted to do, and that was being a freelance designer.

But being a freelancer also comes with great freedom but uncertainty is paralyzing.

In the first year after leaving the Job, I took 👇

• Any Job I could in Design 

• Worked 80/Hours /week (yes, I’m Inspired by Narayan Murthy sir)

• Learned the hard ways of setting boundaries.

Slowly with time and learning I 👇

• Niched down to focus on UI/UX for startups

• Started networking with people on LinkedIn and Twitter

• Started saying No to Unfit clients

I know all this sounds easier being said than done, but trust me there are no hacks or quick shortcuts to anything….. 

Because when you will start freelancing or even your job it’s not easy to 

• Find your niche and get a job or client for the same

• Have all those skills since the beginning 

• Build trust when you are just starting

How I did do all this? I will explain everything in my newsletter soon 🙂

And between all this hustle my first breakthrough came when I landed my first high-paying client through LinkedIn the project was so big that I had to hire the first person to handle overflow work. 

With one step at a time and growing slowly, I turned into a full-time founder from a freelancer, I know this sounds so easy but it was not. It took so many countless nights and rejections to become a founder and start a company.

Even being a founder has so many challenges:

• Had to develop systems to handle clients 

• Working with the team and delegating tasks

Meet my amazing team (some are WFH) 👇

But as said you start getting things done when you start putting effort into it. 

Today, I run a successful agency (Team Codesign) and have launched a product (SpeechtoNote), and at Team Codesign we are, creating impactful digital products.

• We’ve launched 500+ digital products

• We’ve helped thousands of users enhance their workflows

10 years back I never thought I would be here but the only thing that worked for me was believing in myself 💪

Btw, How did your childhood dreams evolve? I’d love to hear your story. 

Before we say the final goodbye to today’s topic, here are 5 Interesting things I came across last week 👇

1. Building Initial team for seed startup by Andrew Chen 

2. Use Reddit and AI to find winning startup ideas video by Greg Isenberg

3. Understanding Your Brain by Evan LaPointe

4. How Founders Got Their First 1000 Users

5. Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick

If you liked the “reading experience” please share this with a friend. It would mean the world to me❤️

Even I had an Idea (btw I still have so many things to build)

I was in my final year of college completely clueless about what I would be doing after completing my degree this is common for everyone I believe and I’m not the only one who doubts their abilities.

But on the other hand, I was always excited to try something new and this excitement led me to figure out one thing that everyone in my college was missing very badly.

It was an intercollege fest

In the last 50 years of college existence, no general secretary could pull this off and I badly wanted to give a shot from my side.

But, I had no clue about 

• What is User Research 

• Primary & Secondary Research

• We also need to validate our ideas to see if there is any requirement.

All I knew was “I want to do this anyhow” 💪 and without giving it a thought I started working on it all alone without even thinking that I would need a team, would have to do 100s of other things to run this smoothly and I will not be able to do it all alone.

Little did I know that it’s important to “understand your users” if you want to create a product or service you are interested in because most of the time as founders, and product managers we think based on the assumption that we have or on our gut feeling.

But that’s now how things work…

When you want to build anything for people who are going to use your product or services you need to dig deeper into the minds of your users. 

You can’t build anything on ASSUMPTIONS or GUT FEELING. To do this better you need to understand your user's pain points, what they need, their behaviors and motivations. 

When I started working on College Fest as General Secretary there were multiple challenges from meeting everyone's expectations to getting the budget from college authorities and finding sponsorship and 100s of other things which initially I thought was easy

.

Unknowingly I started doing primary research (You might be thinking what the heck is this) but primary research is collecting data from your users or potential users which gives you first-hand information or Insights on user's expectations and behaviors.

I had to talk to users to understand (what were their expectations), in my case it was:

• College authorities Team members

• College students

• Sponsorships people

• And multiple other people whose support was needed to make this run smoothly.

The best way (methods) you can do this is to 

Talk to Customers: If you have direct access, nothing beats one-on-one conversations. In my case when I was talking to everyone to understand what they had in mind about the fest and how I could benefit them from my existing ideas I would have to tweak it according to the user's needs.

You can’t build any product or service without talking to users, this is the most fundamental thing you need to have if you want it to grow. Sometimes people have to say “Hey, I don’t know how to find my users” or “I don’t have access to them”. 

All you need is an Internet connection, a laptop or mobile and a social media account (everyone has one nowadays). Start sharing about it on socials (Ik Ik everyone has to say the same thing) but I’m sharing this from my personal experience.

When I started building Speech to Note in Nov 2023, I did not have any audience or users Instead I had to find them to talk with them and understand what they wanted and it worked for us because we focused on gathering Insights from the users and iterating on them.

Today we have Speech to Note has made sales of more than $50,000 yet we have not stopped talking to our community and users to understand that what we have built is something they are having fun using it or not.

The Point is even if you have sales or early ideas you will have to talk to users and there’s no escape from it.

I know I know you might be thinking bro what happened about your college fest? I was interested in it… but you gotta wait for it 😉

Since you now know about what the fu*k is Primary Research it’s also important for you to understand what secondary research is.

Secondary research means working on existing data that others have already collected. It helps you make better decision-making and provides insights without conducting new, original research.

When we started working on Speech to Note we reviewed so many reports on the speech recognition and transcription market and how it’s being used in products and this is just a small example. 

To give you more context about secondary research, we did thorough analyses of our competitors by studying their products, user reviews, and market strategies and that helped us understand what’s their strengths and weaknesses and what we need to improve on.

People complained about frustrations with slow transcription speeds with other tools, we understood that if we wanted to make it happen this was the first thing we needed to solve. 

These are just a few examples of how secondary research can help you and why both are important and interlinked with each other.

The best way to use primary and secondary research is to combine both of them and start working on your idea by using secondary research and then move to primary research.

Let’s say you have an Idea and you want to build a dollar company the first step you need to do is to find a competitor for your idea and start gathering existing data to understand the pain points of your users.

Now when you have an Idea of what you want to build and what’s already existing in the market and the pain points of your users start talking to your users about your Idea.

Use these insights to make informed decisions, iterate on your product, and continuously improve user engagement.

If you want to Understand How to talk to users, then you should read “Mom Test”

Building a successful product is an ongoing journey of learning and iteration. Keep exploring, keep asking questions, and never stop engaging with your users.

Stay curious and keep innovating!

Ps: Btw here is me performing in that fest

I hope this email finds you well.

I wanted to take a moment to share my journey with you all. It’s been a rollercoaster ride, filled with highs, lows, and invaluable lessons. Here’s a little peek into my story and how it has shaped me as an entrepreneur.

Early Struggles and First Steps

Back in early 2014, I faced a major setback when I failed my final year B.Sc. exams. Mid-2014, I re-took the exams, but the results were disheartening. With marks too low to pursue a post-grad, I was shattered.

Despite this, I started working as a content writer and SEO associate at a local agency, nurturing my passion for graphic design using Photoshop on the side.

Venturing into Design and Development

By mid-2015, I moved on to a medical tourism startup, diving deep into design work and self-learning UX. In 2016, I transitioned to front-end development, combining my design skills with coding. The company's culture, however, wasn’t great, and by mid-2017,

I found myself freelancing and registering my proprietorship, Team Codesign.

Initial Success and Setbacks

Partnering with others didn’t go as planned, but I pressed on solo, eventually hiring my first team members. During 2018-2019, Team Codesign saw initial growth, moving to places like Hyderabad and working on-site with clients.

By 2020, we had an opportunity in Pune, but then Covid-19 happened. Like many, we weren’t prepared and faced business losses. However, 2021 brought enterprise partnerships back, and our business took off once again.

Lessons Learned and Moving Forward

Unfortunately, in the latter part of 2021 and throughout 2022, I chased shiny objects, losing focus on the core business and facing financial challenges.

But 2023 was a year of realization and damage control.

Refocusing on our core strengths has set us back on track, and 2024 looks promising.

Today, we are not just a team of designers but also proud product builders, marketers, and more. We’re learning every day, and I’m excited for our future growth.

Sharing My Journey

I’ve decided to start posting about these experiences on my newsletter, Dil Se Designer. If you’re interested, I’d love to know what specific topics or insights you’d like me to cover. Your feedback is invaluable to me, and I promise to share everything openly.

I hope this gives you a detailed insight into my journey and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. Let’s continue to grow and flourish together.

Feel free to respond with any topics or questions you’d like me to cover in the newsletter, and let's keep this conversation going!

Thank you for being a part of this journey.

Best,
Abhishek

So, MVPs are meant to be light and should focus on the core aspect of the product which you believe 80% of the participants or users will use all the time. This will not only establish trust and acquire those initial users but will also be a key factor in retention. The feature should entice the user to return to the platform multiple times — at least a second, third, fourth, or fifth time, minimum — before they return to you asking for additional features.

MVPs should serve as a starting point for user interaction. Before making your roadmap public, inquire with your users about what they would like to see in the product you are developing. It is crucial not to indulge in adding every possible feature at once. Instead, cut the clutter down to one simple, yet powerful, feature that you can deliver as an MVP.

After delivering the MVP, let the users interact with it and provide feedback. Their responses will be more concrete and less imaginary because they will be based on their experience with the product rather than speculation. Use their feedback to understand:

• Their expectations for the journey

• What you should add before and after the current functionality

Through this, they will inform you of how the MVP fits into their experience. Listen to such journey feedback and craft a product that includes the highest common factors among all users. Then, you can build subsequent versions of your product based on informed decisions.

The goal of an MVP is to deliver a simple and compelling product that draws your target audience back multiple times. This encourages their curiosity and leads them to request additional features. That's the journey your MVP should take.

Please share your MVP experiences and questions. I'm eager to engage in a discussion and provide insights on your MVP-related thoughts.

Key Takeaways:

• Craft an MVP that is lightweight but essential.

• Focus on core aspects that drive user retention.

• Engage users for feedback and shape your product roadmap.

• Deliver simple, engaging features that make users come back.

• Use real user experiences to inform future development.

Your feedback on MVP crafting is valuable. Let's discuss how we can make MVPs more effective together.

🔌 Product Plug

Try Speech to Note today

It turns your voice drafts

into well-crafted summaries

Try Speech to Note today

What I have learned throughout the last few years is that no matter who you are as a professional, if you can look for ways to give back to the community in the form of teaching your skill sets to someone who's just starting out or who is looking for acquiring those skills, it helps you in a lot of enormous ways.

Things that it has done for my own self are:

• It definitely challenges me to stay on course with what's new and how things should actually be done.

• If I was serious as a professional to deliver on a particular skill set, my seriousness goes 2x or 3x if I am planning to teach those things to the next line of students.

• It somehow keeps me humble and grounded because I know that I cannot be complacent about learning a particular topic and executing it.

Teaching gives me an additional responsibility to deliver the right set of information to someone who is coming with a complete blank slate. It somehow becomes my responsibility to teach them in a way that can be helpful for them.

I believe responsibility makes humans humble, or at least in my case, it definitely does that. With humility comes the fact that it helps me stay grounded to the cause or to the values that I hold dear.

One of the last factors which I believe is good about teaching, especially if you're an entrepreneur or if you are building teams, is that it helps you find your drive or it helps you find your team members with whom you want to work with.

This is definitely the case with big companies or big multinational companies as well. No matter whether you graduate from prestigious colleges like IITs, or you are coming from small engineering colleges, these companies keep their dedicated training sessions to mold you in a way or in a style of working that is compatible for them.

So similarly if you teach certain students, you will find your next line of team members with whom you want to work, and that happens automatically, without putting a great amount of effort into acquiring the right kind of talent.

So I think this is something I can vouch for, but the best way of acquiring the right talent on the team has always been via some mode of teaching. Whether I have taught in full-time boot camps, collaborated with cohort-based courses like Skillvalley, or given internship opportunities within the ecosystem of Team Codesign, where interns have learned while working with us and adapted to our working style before becoming full-time team members.

Teaching allows you to connect emotionally with a student beyond just imparting a particular skill. It has enabled me to find the right set of team members as well.

With that, I am really looking forward to this workshop that's happening on the 24th of February, 2024 here in Nagpur. Looking forward to connecting with a lot of emerging students to teach them the principles of product design and how to boil down to a minimum viable product.

I will share experiences of what I have learned so far in building Speech to Note

I'm excited for that and nervous at the same time. Let's see how it goes.

Thank you for reading this. Thank you for coming along on this journey, and looking forward to connecting with you all in the next one.

We have finally sold more than $10,000 of licenses of speech to note on AppSumo. So yeah, when we were prepping for this launch, we took a lot of advice from my friend Shubham from HeyBase. He really helped out a lot with his suggestions and strategies for launching on AppSumo. He gave us some really valuable feedback with respect to:

How committed we should be towards -

• responding to all the questions.

• delivering value to our audience.

Even though our product is simple, we made sure that we were listening to the feedback and building a community around it.

As a result of this approach, we generated more than $5,000 of sales within the first two weeks of launch. And I'm talking about just our profit; in total, we made more than $10,000 of sales, taking into account platform commissions from AppSumo.

Things we did well

Kept the launch simple

Ensured we were ready to respond to all inquiries.

The first few nights were challenging, as I was answering questions well into the night, sometimes as late as 2am or 3am my time, due to a large volume of US users on AppSumo.

By being available to respond to user queries, we created a strong rapport for our product and team, which resulted in a significant number of sales in the initial days.

Key Steps That Worked in Our Favor:

1. Building a community around the initial adopters of AppSumo and giving them a platform to share direct feedback and suggestions for improvement.

   

2. Implementing early feedback, which led to requests like native language support in SpeechToNote, and better output for the Simple Clear format, which we promptly addressed. This has made the Simple Clear format a favorite among users.

   

3. Decision to form a community on Telegram instead of Facebook. This choice was personal as the Speech to Note team prefers Telegram for its communication effectiveness with a chat structure over a wall style.

4. Public roadmap sharing: We made our roadmap available to our early adopters, who in turn gave us a wealth of ideas, feature requests, and feedback which were crucial to our product development.

   

5. Taking a step back to review feedback objectively and making decisions that are best for the product and the user base, planning our releases methodically without compromising on quality.

6. Our biggest strength: the user experience. We've kept the product simple to use without unnecessary complications, staying true to the value proposition.

   

What’s ahead…

Moving forward, we intend to keep improving the product and explore new features for collaborative documentation using voice.

And Finally,

A big thanks to everyone who has supported us and to all the early adopters from AppSumo. Your trust in us and the feedback has been invaluable. Here at SpeechToNote, we're excited to keep delivering value and simplicity through our service.

Thank you so much.

Visit Speech to Note

Number one is never. Never, ever leave your main business if it has been a pure revenue-generating machine for you. The moment you sort of take your attention off of it, that's when you are making the mistake. I did this. Make sure you don’t.

Number two is building products with users. Sounds good, but you need to find a perfect founder's fit as well. It's not just about product-market fit, but it's also about founder-market fit. I learned about this particular term from Y Combinator videos.

And if you believe in a certain thing, or you believe that there is a problem and you can envision that on a wider scale, and then you can develop a solution for that particular problem, then you will be able to sell that problem with all your heart in it for sure.

Number three is like building your tribe is all about building the vibe first. This tribe is whether it's your team or first line of customers, who are going to buy from you. It's all about setting the vibe, setting the tonality. It's also about platforms.

For example, we launched SpeechToNote on AppSumo and then we were told by a lot of people that we should start a community on Facebook. But I guess Facebook was never the place for us all of the internal team members at SpeechToNote. So we decided that we'd stick with a platform of our choice, like Telegram. And eventually, that worked out well for us.

Number four. I guess you need to stay prepared for repercussions if you have made a big mistake in the past.

So, yes, I have made some bad decisions in the past, in the last couple of years, and that has affected the way I run my team or my company.

Although I have tried recovering from certain bad decisions and they are bad runs over the period, I guess there will be times that I will be punished heavily for those bad decisions for sure. And I guess that time is going to come very soon.

Number five, I need to learn a lot about raising capital for a company. I've always been a big believer in bootstrapped businesses, but if you are someone who believes in running a regular business, like a proper bootstrap business, then it becomes quite difficult for you when you land in the realm of investors and the realm of fundraising.

Then you need to learn terms like SHA and iSAFE, which are nothing but convertible instruments.

Number six is I guess you need to find your audience for the product. Your social presence matters, but if your audience is not hanging around on socials, then you're probably hanging around in the wrong place. Yeah, whether it's especially if you are running a business.

You need to look at it like there are congregations available on the internet where you can find them, or if they are not online, if they're offline, you need to just go there and market yourself there.

Sometimes we get so busy talking about traditional online channels such as SEO and social media marketing that we forget to study our audience very well and forget where and don't take action towards where they are hanging out. So it's super important to understand where they are going or where they are hanging out and then accordingly take the next set of decisions.

So, that's more or less about the learnings that I have learned over the past few months. Let me know what are yours. I would love to hear back from you on this email and would love to talk about your share of learning and your share of stories as well.

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