Building something new!

I'm doing the build 12 projects in 12 months challenge. I already did one (this one). Now I have another idea I'm building. It has to do with search. This time I'm starting the other way around:

• Step 1: Research the market
• Step 2: Build a landing page (still not a custom domain lol) and share it
• Step 3: Implement a demo
• Step 4: Make public demo with a pricing calculator
• Step 5: Build product
• Step 6: Launch

Market Research:

Competitors:

• https://getcommande.com/
• https://en.outmind.ai/
• https://www.sinequa.com/
• https://www.elastic.co/enterprise-search/workplace-search
• https://recital.ai/en/

My appreciation

• So far the most successful one is Command E. It doesn't seem to use semantic search, so that's an edge I could use. It's a MacOS app. I will try to compete with a web based solution that I could port later to native apps.

• Also, I noticed that pricing and setup can be obtuse in all competing solutions, so I'll make mine as transparent and streamlined as possible.

I'm going to target B2B because I can't see individuals paying for this.

Marketing Ideas

• Spam landing everywhere
• Create a product hunt page
• Cold calls and messaging to potential customers (including those already using existing products)
• Create a blog and write as guest in other blogs:
  • About the Poma name
  • About the problem with information retrival today

Table of Contents

About Pressn't

The gist

1. You can only have a single post
2. You can update your post
3. People can follow other posts
4. You can read your followed posts' latest updates
5. You can upvote posts
6. You can find trending posts (depends on upvotes and last time updated)
7. There are also comments

Why?

There are plenty of reasons, and they range from why I made a site, to what I want this site to be. But first, let's dig into why you would want to have a single post.

Why a single post?

Modern social media is great. You can satisfy dopamine cravings like never before. Videos of derpy cats and dogs are just a few taps away. Same with the opinions of celebrities you like. You don't even need to tap anymore! Just Let the endless TikTok wall fill your dopamine tank...

But sometimes I don't want dopamine, I want to consume content with meaning. I want to read into other people's minds like I can do when reading Paul Graham's essays. But those are hard to get by, and a bit harder to set up for non-tech people. There's Twitter (and Mastodon), yes. But their product isn't fit for meaningful writing. It's meant to match short-written content with that dopamine hit we all crave. Blogging websites also exist but there's just too much noise.

But I do agree with the microblogging site's idea that limits foster creativity and communication. In their case, the character limit fosters quick and effective idea-sharing, and that's great. But here I want to foster noise-free and meaningful content.

The solution: A single post where you have to be thoughtful about what you write.

It's the only thing people will read from you. Of course, you may want to edit everything later and change the post altogether, but that's the point: you are encouraged to write whatever you think is meaningful enough to share at the moment. And for that, you need easy and full control over what you're currently sharing.

That's what I want this site to be.

So the TLDR here is...

• Less noise
• Thoughtful content
• Control what people see of you

Why I made this site

These are more personal growth reasons. And I might write them down here later on. But I think the focus now should be on Pressn't mission.

TODO

• Comment edit and delete
• Improve Post editor
• Private post snapshots
• Option to delete all comments on Post update
• Ask a friend to pentest the site
• Use a CDN
• Investigate ranking algorithms

DONE

• Fix dark mode css
• Fix mobile CSS
• Mentions
• Clear comments (not cleared, really. Just marked as old)
• Contact form
• User delete form

Archive

Last week I launched a site where you can only have a single post and it hit the HN Frontpage

(2023/01/06)

This site has been live for a week now. The first day felt chaotic and the following days have been pretty chill. Here's a recap of those days:

Hitting the HackerNews Frontpage

I had been developing this site for two weeks during my free time recreationally. I thought it was a cool idea and, although it was a bit rough on the edges (I'm looking at you, mobile and dark-mode users), it was usable. So when I logged into HackerNews as I do every morning, I said Why not?.

I wrote my first and only post, explaining the gist and vision of the site, and published it as a Show HN. As I said, I thought that the idea could be fun but not much more than that, and expected to either receive a barrage of mocking comments or complete silence. But the response was quite the opposite.

A few hours passed, and my post was at the top of Show HN, and on the front page (quite the opposite of my previous experience). Filled with comments both constructive and positive, and most importantly, with people resonating with the site vision. I was panicking at this point.

Unfortunately, I may have launched the site a bit too soon ― it was a pain to use for dark-mode users, and impossible to use on mobile. Regardless, it still received plenty of posts and new users. Some gave great feedback, others encouraged new users to join, some posted larches, and others posted dialog from Shrek. And then, it happened.

The site was filled with XSS worms, and @X got to the top. From there everyone was entering his post and getting infected. I'm not mad about that though, it was quite humbling and thrilling. The only sad part was having to reduce all those infected posts and comments to mere 🐛 emojis.

> Also, I wrote 'Thougths?' instead of 'Thoughts?' in front of a big audience.

Stuff that happened in the aftermath

• The next day I noticed I had almost exactly 100 users. Turns out I had hit the Sendgrid free tier limits, so I guess every new user couldn't receive their confirmation emails. I already upgraded my Sendgrid plan to be able to send more emails.

• A few people kept posting and I got to read some cool stuff.

• Based on the feedback I fixed dark mode and mobile, implemented mentions, notifications, a contact form, account deletetion, marking old comments and fixed some bugs I found.

Here are some kudos to some outstanding users:

• @mmphosis for being the most prolific pressn'ter ever
• @fake-app for warning me about preserved names
• @shamari for the great suggestions
• @anatoli for saying why people should try this
• and a kudosn't for @X

What did I learn?

• There's some interest for the site's idea, but it still needs more work and maturity.
• Launching early can be thrilling but I should pentest it before and check for spelling mistakes.
• I should make sure to be able to accommodate new users at launch.
• People can be pretty creative (so sad some of those posts are 🐛s now).