Welcome to the fourth issue of Solo Founder 🔥

Hi, I'm Baadier and thanks for signing up to Solo Founder!

As a fellow solo founder, I know that we have unique challenges and I wanted to tell those stories and be a part of your journey. My vision is that we can learn together and reach our goals as fellow founders.

Please don't hesitate to reply here if you would like to interview on Solo Founder or would like to recommend someone else 👐

Upcoming Interviews

• Andrew Kamphey of BetterSheets.co
• Edwin Klesman of Washem
• Michael Callaghan of WalkingRiver.com
• Simon Grimm of Ionic Academy, Kickoff Ionic
• Kir Kovalin of Noizio

Solo Founder  

What's your background, and what are you working on?

👋 Hi! I’m Miguel Piedrafita, an 18-year-old maker from Spain. I’m currently finishing high school and working on Sitesauce, a service to generate a static site from any website, at the same time. I’ve also built and launched multiple products in the past, like Blogcast (generate a podcast from your blog) or UnMarkDocs (beautiful, superpowered documentation from GitHub), which I ended up selling to focus on Sitesauce as much as I could.

What motivated you to get started with your startup?

When rebuilding my website, I noticed that the only way of having a static site was to manually build one. Pick a static site generator, port your theme to a different templating language, configure it so it can grab your content from your CMS, etc.

It also came with additional maintenance costs. You had to make sure things looked good both in your CMS and your static site, and maintain two different code bases. I didn’t want to have to care about any of that, so I decided to build something that would solve the problem for everyone.

What went into building the initial product?

I spent a month building a working prototype, using Laravel for the backend and Vue for the frontend. Once it was ready, I announced it on my Twitter and put up a landing page so that people could register for early-access. Once the system was more robust, I launched a private beta where I invited a few friends to try it out.

What’s your business model, and how have you grown your revenue?

The business model is pretty standard, you pay a monthly (or yearly) fee and get to use the product. We provide unlimited everything so you don’t need to worry about hitting any limits. We've just launched, so growth has been driven by new users trying the product and staying after the trial ends.

What are your goals for the future?

My short-term goals for Sitesauce are to make it work for big sites (+10.000 pages) as well as it does for medium-sized ones. This includes optimizations for reducing build time and some sort of incremental deployments.

I also want to work on speed optimizations that all Sitesauce sites can benefit from.

If you had to start over, what would you do differently?

Building Sitesauce took eight months, and if I were to do it again I would have launched way sooner, even with fewer features and crappier UI.

I think it’s important to launch as soon as possible, then iterate with user feedback, instead of delaying your launch and trying to get it in the first try.

Have you found anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

The Vercel team have been really helpful while building Sitesauce, allowing me to tightly integrate with their platform. All sites generated with Sitesauce are hosted by Vercel, and it’s truly an awesome platform to host your stuff on.

What's your advice for solo founders who are just starting out?

Build in the open. Tweet about your progress, ask for help on IndieHackers, join WIP or Makerlog and interact with other makers, etc.

All this will not only get you some thoughts and feedback on your product as you build it, but also will slowly help you to build an audience interested in your journey as a maker.

To end off, where can we find you?

You can follow me on Twitter, where I regularly share my progress on building Sitesauce and some tips for makers. I also have a weekly newsletter you can subscribe to. I’m also planning to experiment with video content this summer, so you can subscribe to my YouTube channel if you’re interested.

If you want to learn more about Sitesauce or try it out, you can learn more on the Sitesauce website.

Solo Founder  

Why Marketing Flywheels Work

I featured an article from SparkToro in the last issue and once again I've got no choice to include another article this week. Rand Fishkin put out a great article on why it's so important to set up and maintain a marketing flywheel. Establishing a marketing flywheel will help you get long-term returns on your marketing.

sparktoro.com  

The Complete Practical Guide To Logos And Logo Design In 2020

A logo is often the first thing a new user sees when they engage with your brand. Users read a lot into your logo. While you don't want to overthink it in the early stages of your startup, you need to put in some effort so it doesn't do your startup a disservice.

logobly.com  

7 Product Team Pitfalls You Should Avoid

Top-notch work from the team at growth.design. The case study highlights common pitfalls in a beautiful format that is easy to understand. Well worth a look and an easy recommendation for me for you to subscribe.

growth.design  

I'm Walking Away From the Product I Spent a Year Building

Something different for this week. Most of the time I try to focus on resources that can help you be successful. However, not every idea ends up with an IPO. Some ends in failure or the founder drawing a line in the sand and walking away. Derrick Reimer does a brilliant job of taking us with him on his journey with Level.

derrickreimer.com  

My Maker’s Kitchen & Makerlog Story to Open Startup Creative Design Agency

Fajar Siddiq takes us through his entrepreneurship journey. While I believe we learn by walking our own path, I also feel that there is a significant benefit to expanding your own world view by seeing how others have walked the same path with different steps.

medium.com  

Help out Solo Founder

Once again, thanks for joining me for this issue 😄 I would really appreciate if you can share this with your circle and help me spread Solo Founder to more of our community.

You can reply right here if you have any feedback on anything at all. I'd love to hear from you 👋

Cheers, Baadier (@baadier)

Solo Founder