MegaMaker - Why didn't my project take off?

​

Three things for you this Saturday: beware of simplistic wisdom, finding traction, and some interesting twitter finds.

🧘‍♂️ The limits of "conventional wisdom"

All bits of wisdom have limits, boundaries, thresholds.

It's your individual context that will determine whether advice is wise (or unwise).

As James says, consider the limits of the wisdom you receive:

James Clear @JamesClear Everything is an oversimplification. Reality is messy and complex. The question is whether it is a useful simplification. Know the limitations of an idea and you can apply it to great effect—despite the messiness of reality. August 28th 2021 427 Retweets 2,884 Likes

I also like this idea from Elizabeth Earnshaw that a lot of pieces of popular wisdom have a "missing half."

A few of her examples:

• "You can't change other people... *and* you might influence them to change."
• "Self-care isn't selfish... *and* sometimes we call things 'self care' that actually are kind of selfish."

You can see this dynamic at play in a lot of popular quotes we see on Twitter:

Orange Book 🍊📖 @orangebook_ Too much comfort dulls the mind. December 8th 2021 609 Retweets 4,149 Likes

I've seen this quote shared a few times. However, it has a missing half:

"Too much comfort dulls the mind, and... sometimes our minds really need comfort in order to thrive."

I believe that good wisdom invites tension; it's comfortable with duality, context, and nuance.

​Read this as a blog post →​

​

📈📉 Why didn't my project take off?

We think we should be rewarded for the effort, resources, and time we invest in a project.

Unfortunately, markets don't work this way.

In business, the amount of reward you get (revenue) is based mostly on demand:

"How much do people want what you're selling?"

The "shape of demand" differs from product to product. This is often noticeable once you've launched multiple projects.

For example, Francesco and his team launched Mailbrew (to much fanfare) in March of 2020. They go press on 9to5Mac, MacSparky, Reddit and Hacker News.

And then, 9 months later, the same team launched Typefully.

Mailbrew had a big head start (Typefully didn't start earning revenue until June 2021), but Typefully now earns more revenue:

This can be frustrating for makers because, regardless of the amount of work we've put in, some products just get better traction, faster.

Why?

Traction is more connected to underlying demand than founder effort.

Another example:

Peter Suhm worked on Branch (a WordPress product) for a long time. He spent years trying to get traction.

Then, he and a co-founder built Reform (a Typeform alternative) in a few months. Reform quickly eclipsed Branch in revenue.

Effort in ≠ revenue out

Some types of products just have more demand!

​Read this as a blog post →​
​

🐥 Good tweets

• 3️⃣ The three phases of product / market fit​
• 🎙️ Fascinating podcast growth case study​
• ☁️ The limits of our imagination define our limits​
• 🤝 There's no shame in quitting your hustle and getting a job​
  ​

Cheers,
Justin Jackson
​@mijustin​

PS: Josh and I are planning to launch Meeps on Jan 15. If you want to build a membership site in 2022, you should jump on his early-access deal.

Personally, I'm using Meeps for MegaMaker, and I'll be using it to run my local meetup soon. (Josh just released a way of creating/managing events in Meeps).

​

This newsletter is brought to you by ⚡ MegaMaker ⚡
(the private community for bootstrappers)