I built five products. Marketing is harder than building.

This is placeholder content that came with the site. It exists to show what an article looks like and to hold the shape of a post I actually intend to write. Replace the whole file when you write the real thing, or delete it.

The outline below is what this piece is meant to cover.

#The bit I was good at

Five products, all live, all built in evenings and weekends around a full-time job. The building was never the hard part. Given a clear idea and a free Saturday, the thing gets made.

That turns out to be almost irrelevant.

#The bit I was not

Here is the honest sequence for most of them:

1. Have the idea, usually late, usually convinced it is obvious
2. Build it, faster than expected, because building is now genuinely fast
3. Ship it
4. Sit in complete silence
5. Slowly work out that nobody was ever going to just turn up

Step five is the whole subject of this post.

The uncomfortable version is that I spent twenty years learning to make things and approximately zero years learning to make anyone care.

#What actually moved the needle

Placeholder section. The real one wants concrete numbers: what each channel cost, what it returned, and which of the things I was sure would work did nothing at all.

#Things that did nothing

• Posting a launch and hoping
• Being technically correct about why the product is good
• Waiting

#Things that did something

• Talking to individual people, slowly, one at a time
• Writing down what I learned, which is partly why this site exists

#The code bit, so this template has one

Article typography needs to survive a code block, so here is one:

// The metric I should have been watching from the start.
const activated = signups.filter((user) => user.completedFirstRound);
console.log(activated.length / signups.length);

#Where this leaves me

Placeholder close. The real ending is probably that building being easy is not an advantage if everyone else's building is also easy, and the scarce thing has quietly moved somewhere I am much less practised.