Learnings from Week 1

Hi Automators!

I hereby start a series of posts documenting DocsAutomator's startup journey week by week with the hope that it brings value to someone in the future. Let's go.

A few stats from last week:

• Landing page visitors: 106
• Sign ups: 22
• Created documents: ~ 100

This past week I learned that...

1. ... building doesn't lead to users

Like so many others, I love building. Coding the first version of DocsAutomator took around 4-6 weeks and I've fallen into the trap of thinking that once I'm done, users will just come. Of course that's not the case and I had read about this a million times — still forgot and had the hope it wouldn't apply to me 🤦‍♂️

2. ... involving community is key

I've started reaching out to the No-Code community and it's amazing how open and willing to share that community is. Finding a community is key in the early days 👨‍👨‍👧‍👧

3. ... speaking to users is key

In the beginning, one has to assume what users want and build a first, best version. From actually speaking to users, I've learned about use cases I had no idea about. I also saw how people interact with DocsAutomator in ways I didn't anticipate, making it unncessarily confusing 😵‍💫

4. ... great software > ask users to schedule a call

On DocsAutomator's website, I offer an integration call for new users. It's kind of lazy to make up for a lack of great user experience by offering a call 😜, so my goal is to improve the user journey so offering a call becomes obsolete.

5. ... growth in the beginning is slow

From looking at most Micro-SaaS projects, I know growth is slow in the beginning. Without SEO, a successful Product Hunt launch, customers recommending the product, etc., there are just no channels where traffic might come from. So staying patient and doing the work daily is the slow but steady way to growth 📈

If you have any questions about DocsAutomator's journey or would like to chat, please feel free to always reach out via Twitter.

Happy automating!
Rupert
Founder & Automator in Chief