Updates & Learnings From the First Week
Seven days ago, I started fresh into my new job - startup cofounder. I took my cofounder Hua’s advice to launch a 30-day project to kick start as a way to keep my workday structured, and at the same time, validate ideas and get traction. It is very helpful. @HuaTweets, thank you!
The first update from the past weekend is that I made a website for this #30DaysOfStartingUp project; the URL is https://startup.wentin.net/. The website makes it easy to browse all the past content and find where else it is being posted. Show me some love with your upvotes <3
The #30DaysOfStartingUp project has been motivating. Every night I feel accomplished going to bed, and every morning I wake up to stats I want to check immediately. The feeling is a familiar one - I was like this when I did passion projects. Stats kidnap me!
The stats are different from what I am used to with passion projects, though! It is much harder to get people’s attention with a startup than with free passion projects. I had project launches with 20,000 visitors on launch day and got on hacker news's front page.
Google Analytics for Type Detail at the first week:
Google Analytics for CSS Icon at the first week:
Google Analytics for Font Playground at the first week:
Now looking at my startup journey in its first week. I promote mostly my newsletter page, the stats of substack page visitors:
My old self would dread seeing this. However, my entrepreneur self looked at it from a different perspective. I learned my first lesson: passion projects are a short game; most of my projects reach their peak on launch day. Startup is a long game. We never want the peak to come.
Instead, I found encouragement in a different set of stats: the open rate is consistently above 40%. As long as I am putting in good work every day, my dear readers, you, come back to see my content and progress. That is the second lesson I learned: Persistency and consistency work.
I am sure there is still overnight success stories out there for startups, for example, Clubhouse. However, personally, I am not tuned into any clubhouse rooms anymore. What remains are the true fans. Overnight success certainly doesn’t hurt, but it is far from being necessary.
I was originally only planning to write the newsletter daily for 30 days. Now I have a bigger plan after 30 days: I will switch to biweekly and keep it running as long as the startup is open. Stay tuned, and be sure to visit the project’s website: https://startup.wentin.net/!