Puput, mail without internet
Here's my new project: Puput, a service which lets you listen to your email when you have no internet.
I honestly think it's pretty cool, the project has a strong R+D component for which we filed a patent, and it has lots of potential to integrate into IMs like Slack and close the communication gap for people who are offline.
It's free, so please be my guest and give it a try! It's surprisingly awesome to be able to listen to your email when you're abroad without an internet connection.
Even though we have been absorbing a lot of startups-related material these last months, nothing will prepare you for a real product launch. Everybody says it, and I agree:
- The last 20% of the work consumes us 80% of the time. That is, UI, UX, the website, and the marketing strategy
- Selling is hard.
- Selling is even harder when you first invent a new technology and then try to find use cases for it. Yes, the lean startup recommends doing the opposite, it is a common first timer mistake :(
- I'll say it again, do product/market fit first, then start coding.
- Raising money is nearly impossible in the Spanish startup scene. Obviously we're nobodies, but I've also talked to many other founders, with great products, thousands of clients and two-digit monthly growth, who find it incredibly frustrating to raise even 200k€
- Launch day is scary so you find excuses not to launch. Adding more features is one of them. Establish hard deadlines and try to respect them as much as possible.
- It turns out it isn't that scary anyways, in fact, getting users and attention is difficult at first. Dying from success is unrealistically represented in sites like HN, it doesn't apply to 99% of the startups.
Anyway, launching a product is hard, teaches you many things about the world, and makes you respect people who have done it successfully.
Cheers to all first time founders.