[Journey] My Adventure with 4 Startups

[figaro03240]

Best of luck. I suggest you use bold fonts for headings. Especially the first thing that the user will read should be bold in SaaS landing pages imo.

thanks, i will check this out.


Yesterday, I finished building the landing page of my second startup. shadcn + gsap = <3. Today, I plan to create a blog section based on markdown files. I'll send you a video of the landing page in the future, so I don't have to record the screen every day and blur out the logo and startup name

 

[figaro03240]

Yesterday, I finished building the blog section based on markdown files, created a smooth gradient in the call to action section, and designed a new pricing view for the second startup.

 

[figaro03240]

The blog will serve me to build a knowledge base with key phrases. The content will be generated by AI, and then it will go through several AI models for SEO optimization. In addition, for each of the posts (I'm counting on having about 70 at the start), I will create introductory images. That's for the end. The whole thing I'll do in Photopea (I think that 8 templates in which the text will change will suffice).

 

[figaro03240]

All The Best. Your Startup Was Great. Appreciate That.

thanks.

Yesterday, I created three views in the second startup (frontend only, the logic exists but is not connected). Today, I want to improve two of them and make a fourth.

 

[Ghoztseo]

Nice to see all the startups, but what stack did you using right now? Is it Next JS or MERN stack. Could you please elaborate the stacks? and to be honest landing page superb and appealing in a production grade perspective.

Another suggestion is how did you validate your idea? Idea is everything right. if you can contribute to BHW, people like me would get better lesson from you OP

 

[Aingeaco]

Yesterday, I finished building the blog section based on markdown files, created a smooth gradient in the call to action section, and designed a new pricing view for the second startup.

View attachment 333219

View attachment 333218

It looks great, keep it up!

 

[figaro03240]

Nice to see all the startups, but what stack did you using right now? Is it Next JS or MERN stack. Could you please elaborate the stacks? and to be honest landing page superb and appealing in a production grade perspective.

Another suggestion is how did you validate your idea? Idea is everything right. if you can contribute to BHW, people like me would get better lesson from you OP

Thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it!

Overall, I'm using Next.js. I chose it because it's built for React, which I wanted to learn (I don't have a frontend background - only functional automatic testing). Each of the startups I'm creating is essentially an intermediate-level CRUD, so I don't need anything more serious. For now, it's enough for me. I have a background in Django and DRF but decided it would be overkill to set up React and DRF separately.

As for the rest of the technologies:

1. Shadcn (with Tailwind) - their design, from my perspective, is very good, so I decided to cut down on manual work on most components.
2. Supabase - a cloud database for data storage based on PostgreSQL. I'm interested in simple resource scaling, and from what I've read online, it's the most commonly chosen form. In the future (if needed, although I don't anticipate it) I'll migrate to my own solution. For now, I don't have such a need, as long as I don't have +1000 users.
3. Resend - for transactional emails and newsletters.
4. AI - I use one of several open-source models (for those interested - better than ChatGPT 4). In the coming days, I'll be setting up a service in Flask, which will allow me to separate it from the rest of the application and potentially reuse it in future startups.
5. Vercel - for hosting. If the costs don't align after launching the first startup, I'll be looking for alternatives (maybe Render?). I chose Vercel because they were actively involved in the development of NextJS, and the concept of serverless functions is interesting.
6. Stripe - for payments. For now, it's enough, although I'm looking at alternatives. After stories from the net, I'm afraid I'll catch a permaban (I have no basis for this ) and will be forced to migrate quickly.
7. Grafana Cloud - for monitoring events during manual testing (I plan to set it up next week) and event analysis (traces, logs, profiling). I have a very good relationship with Grafana and am thoroughly familiar with their technology stack. I've created extensions for them in the past. In the long term, due to costs, I probably won't be using the Cloud. If observability becomes necessary (due to the specifics of subsequent applications), I'll set up the Grafana ecosystem (I think Grafana, Loki, Mimir, and Tempo will be sufficient) in a separate environment, and I'll integrate it with the applications using Opentelemetry.
8. Umami - for monitoring views and simple events (like newsletter button click). The target solution for such simple applications.

As for the idea of the application:

1. The first startup (an open-source list of places to promote startups) was created for two reasons:
   a) to gather data (emails) of my target group for the second startup
   b) to familiarize myself with places where I can promote the second startup

It's a win-win situation.

1. The second startup is the reason I needed something for the newsletter myself. Every alternative available online came bundled with other functionalities I didn't need. Additionally, none of the solutions met my expectations. To put it simply, it was weak. It created disengaging, artificial, exaggerated, and strange emails. I figured that since there's no alternative on the market, and I have a background in creating content on the internet (mainly technology blogs), I'll create a tool myself that meets my expectations. The idea to release it as a startup came to me at the same moment.

The next 2 startups I haven't started working on yet are not related to the previous ones (maybe indirectly ;p).

It looks great, keep it up!

Thanks!

 

[figaro03240]

Nice to see all the startups, but what stack did you using right now? Is it Next JS or MERN stack. Could you please elaborate the stacks? and to be honest landing page superb and appealing in a production grade perspective.

Another suggestion is how did you validate your idea? Idea is everything right. if you can contribute to BHW, people like me would get better lesson from you OP

oh, and a little of gsap for simple & smooth animations

 

[Ghoztseo]

This is totally a bang... Good luck on your journey. I'll keep keen eye on your updates. Keep up the grinding OP you will met all your expectations soon.

 

[Kai Escalade]

Nice thread. What you use for the blog? Is it custom or some WordPress based

 

[shipments]

You are a real apex predator.

As someone just learning the programming space, I can’t wait to watch this journey and see what happens when you can truly be your own one man army.

 

[figaro03240]

This is totally a bang... Good luck on your journey. I'll keep keen eye on your updates. Keep up the grinding OP you will met all your expectations soon.

thanks, i will update everyday (i hope lol)

Nice thread. What you use for the blog? Is it custom or some WordPress based

The blog from the thread that I built is in NextJS. I rely on the gray-matter library and fs to fetch the content of markdown files and format it.

For other blogs, I use Medium and Dev.to. A year or two ago, I was setting up blogs on WordPress, but I didn't want to spend time on SEO and focused on content (specific niche, mainly a blog about pentesting and learning application security).

If I were to start from scratch, I would still create on Medium, Dev.to, and add Substack to that.

You are a real apex predator.

As someone just learning the programming space, I can’t wait to watch this journey and see what happens when you can truly be your own one man army.

Thanks! I'll keep reporting as I go along ;p

 

[Nw_Work]

What CMS you built on?

Also for 1st startup add in G4 GA and connect to GSC and Bing etc and then put on Adsense to get back some bucks to cover your domain and server cost since it will be promoted a lot to get your email list. If your the type that don't like Ads overcrowding site then from Auto ads setting change it to Ad serving lowest setting.
Since 1st startup is free users can expect to see ads and these aren't intrusive as YouTube ads so no biggie

2nd startup since a saas doubtful going to be easy to acquire paying customers, but since you have built a solid plan for promoting it may work out. If it is not progressing after some time simply register it as a company and then sell shares to a VC for further funds and then get saas sales teams to sell to b2b or you could sell business entirely as well

 

[figaro03240]

What CMS you built on?

Also for 1st startup add in G4 GA and connect to GSC and Bing etc and then put on Adsense to get back some bucks to cover your domain and server cost since it will be promoted a lot to get your email list. If your the type that don't like Ads overcrowding site then from Auto ads setting change it to Ad serving lowest setting.
Since 1st startup is free users can expect to see ads and these aren't intrusive as YouTube ads so no biggie

2nd startup since a saas doubtful going to be easy to acquire paying customers, but since you have built a solid plan for promoting it may work out. If it is not progressing after some time simply register it as a company and then sell shares to a VC for further funds and then get saas sales teams to sell to b2b or you could sell business entirely as well

I don't use a CMS - posts are uploaded in markdown format (I write daily in Obsidian and it's more convenient for me). I don't need it for the rest (in Supabase, browsing results in the database is fantastically simple). The application is not complicated enough to require that. In the case of the fourth startup, a CMS will be necessary, but I haven't done the research yet.

Thanks for the valuable advice! I hadn't thought about using AdSense, but it indeed seems logical. I need to read more about how it works (how flexible it is).

If the site gets traffic and I build a newsletter audience, I planned to introduce the possibility for specific companies to sponsor it.

VC is a completely unfamiliar field to me. I'll have to read more about it. In the country where I reside, it's possible to obtain grants for innovative technological startups from the EU, and after initial discussions with companies that specialize in securing them, the third and fourth startups fit within the innovation framework. After creating the third startup, I want to reach out directly to individuals who could be my business partners (the fourth startup is about a niche). From a preliminary check of these individuals, they are people who have previously dealt with securing grants, have foundations, etc.

 

[figaro03240]

I dedicated yesterday entirely to working on my second startup. Here's what I did:

1. Designed the database and deployed it on #supabase.
2. Finished creating three views (two of them are very similar).
3. Wrote the backend and integrated it with most of the frontend (I still need to integrate it with the generation view, Stripe, and settings).

 

[Nw_Work]

Since you are technical I want to know how can one protect their database from just being stolen by hosting company? Since literally any hosting company can copy your entire site and deploy it as their own if they wish to. How to prevent this?

 

[figaro03240]

Since you are technical I want to know how can one protect their database from just being stolen by hosting company? Since literally any hosting company can copy your entire site and deploy it as their own if they wish to. How to prevent this?

I think this needs to be divided into two parts - those that build trust in the hosting provider and strictly technological methods. Let's discuss it step by step:
Trust in the hosting provider is determined by:

1. Company size
2. Frequency of use by others
3. Collaboration with other reputable companies (for Supabase, it's Vercel or Resend)
4. Undergoing pentests, security audits, and certifications (https://supabase.com/security)

The hosting provider cannot guarantee that our data will not be stolen. It can happen through (for example) a breach of our administrator account, not necessarily directly through the hosting company. In both cases, we can protect ourselves by:

1. Encrypting data at rest - if the database is stolen, it ensures that it cannot be read without decryption keys.
2. Encrypting data in transit - we use SSL/TLS to encrypt data between the application and the database (provider) to avoid MITM attacks.
3. Setting access control - establishing permissions for each role and limiting them as much as possible.
4. Security observability - reviewing logs and detecting suspicious activities (in Splunk, for example, although this can be more automated).
5. Backups - in case of losing access, we can easily restore data from backups taken before the incident.

 

[figaro03240]

Starting today, I will label each day with the prefix "(DAY) Startups Journey". I'll start from the day that would correspond to today since the beginning of the thread on the forum.

(Day 11) Startups Journey

Yesterday, I finished the generation view, wrote an API for it, improved three other views, and added rules (for loading data, handling their absence, etc.).

 

[figaro03240]

I'm wondering where I can look for a marketing specialist for my startups - I would like to focus on creating them in the future, and share equity with people who could market and sell them further. I mean individuals rather than entire teams. I'll look around on Twitter, although most of the people I know there are one-man armies.

 

[figaro03240]

(Day 12) Startups Journey

Yesterday, I made minor edits to the database, added the ability to share emails with others, planned the implementation of AI, and added components for communication (contact, help, etc.).

Today, I plan to finish the part about adding external people, add updates for incoming emails, and want to start implementing Stripe.