Show HN: I’m building a startup and recording the entire process on YouTube

Show HN: I’m building a startup and recording the entire process on YouTube(youtube.com)

15 points by sampl 6 years ago | 5 comments

sampl 6 years ago |

Hey HN,

Having been part of a fast-growing YC startup, I wanted to show what the early days of making a product are actually like—so I'm building a startup product myself and video recording the entire process.

Literally every minute I spend working on Shuffleboard is recorded and uploaded to YouTube. Each video is a couple hours long, and shows both my face and my screen as I work. There are about 30 sessions and about 70 hours of work so far.

All videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFP8wPiIB7kz7pbYCnjIc...

See the live product: https://getshuffleboard.com/

What I've been doing:

  - Talking about who my customers are and what value I'm trying to create for them
  - Designing the basic UX
  - Interviewing potential users
  - Running usability tests
  - Designing a brand
  - Maintaining a product backlog
  - Reading documentation
  - Writing code
  - Fixing bugs
  - Learning how to write unit tests
  - Spending days trying to figure out Firestore security rules
  - Prepping for a mini-launch (including writing this HN post)
  - Getting stuck/bored/tired
  - Making lots of mistakes

Next steps:

  - Sales
  - More usability tests/interviews
  - More features
  - Improving the visual design
  - Subscriptions with Stripe

Tech stack:

  - React + Create React App (with styled components)
  - Firebase for the db (Firestore), plus Firebase auth and hosting

Like in any startup, there's a rollercoaster of ups and downs. The visual brand was designed in a couple hours, but figuring out how to finally secure the Firestore database took almost a week. There are moments where I'm having a blast, moments where I want to give up, and lots of hours where nothing much happens at all.

Would love to hear what you think :)

Sam

new_guy 6 years ago | |

If learning how to secure a database took you almost a week I'd respectfully suggest forgetting about YouTube and concentrate on learning the basics.

sampl 6 years ago | | |

Yeah, it's normally a pretty basic task--in this case I was working with Firestore, which required a special nested structure to be able to write the security rules I needed. A week is a bit of an exaggeration anyway--it's a couple hours a day for a few days.

mellosouls 6 years ago |

This is interesting - tho I would question the sanity of anybody who watches it all - perhaps a daily 10 minute highlight (extended for anything particularly noteworthy)?

If nothing else, the goldfish bowl effect should keep you focused...

Best of luck.

sampl 6 years ago | |

Thanks! Yeah it's almost an insane amount of video, but I've made it fairly easy to skip to the interesting parts if you want to see them. We'll see how it goes :)

- Talking about who my customers are and what value I'm trying to create for them - Designing the basic UX - Interviewing potential users - Running usability tests - Designing a brand - Maintaining a product backlog - Reading documentation - Writing code - Fixing bugs - Learning how to write unit tests - Spending days trying to figure out Firestore security rules - Prepping for a mini-launch (including writing this HN post) - Getting stuck/bored/tired - Making lots of mistakes