Three months ago two of us quit really good engineering jobs. Here's the ledger, honestly.
The version of this story that gets told on launch day is the highlight reel. Here's the actual accounting.
What we gave up: two senior salaries in Bengaluru, one of which came with a team of 25 and a title that took two years to earn.
What we have built since: 500 users, 220 GitHub stars, one #1 Product of the Day, zero revenue.
That last number is the one that matters and it's the one nobody puts in the launch post. We are three months in with a product people install and no evidence yet that anyone will pay for it. That's not a failure, it's just the honest position, and pretending otherwise would make the next part of this useless.
The thing I underestimated: how much of the job stops being engineering. I've spent more hours this month on positioning, naming, email deliverability, and talking to users than on the daemon. Nobody warns you that the skill that got you here is now maybe a third of the work.
The thing I overestimated: how much the launch would change. It moved awareness, not conviction.
For the founders here who are further along what was the month where it stopped feeling like an expensive experiment and started feeling like a company?
Replies
Softorino 💻📲
It moved awareness, not conviction is the most honest launch sentence I've read on this site. From the marketing seat that gap is normal: a launch buys you permission to be remembered, conviction comes from the 2nd and 5th touch, which is why the month after matters more than the day. And spending a third of your time on positioning and deliverability isn't the job going wrong, that IS the job now, the daemon just has to share you.
Meridian
@yelyzaveta_kibets That distinction between awareness and conviction is useful. Which follow-up touch has consistently done the most to build conviction for Softorino?
Softorino 💻📲
@akarsh_hegde For Softorino it's the plain-text email a few days after someone tries an app, the one that reads like a person asking how it went. It loses to promos on click rate but the replies tell me exactly what to fix, and the people who answer stick around for years. Nothing else I send builds that much trust per word.
Meridian
@yelyzaveta_kibets The replies sound far more valuable than the click rate. Do you use those responses only to improve the app, or do they also shape your follow-up and retention strategy?
Softorino 💻📲
@akarsh_hegde Both, the replies basically write my retention emails for me. When 3 people describe the same snag, that becomes the next what's-new email, and the people who reported it get a personal note when it ships, which is the highest-open email I send. Improvement and retention turn out to be the same loop if you close it publicly.