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. Hua, 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 and favorites!
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 get on the front page of hacker news. Examples:
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, people are coming back to see my content and progress. That is the second lesson I learned: Persistency and consistency work.
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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 at https://wentin.substack.com/.