The app that changed everything 👀
The app that changed everything 👀
This month's newsletter is brought to you by Bigin by Zoho CRM. I've been using products from Zoho for years now, so when I heard they launched a new product I had to give it a shot. Bigin is built specifically for small businesses. creators, solopreneurs, and freelancers. It comes with a super affordable price tag and a free forever version to match. My favourite part is their library of templates to help you get setup in minutes. I'm going to give it a shot to effectively manage my sponsorship pipeline - how amazing!!
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📓 Articles
Creating SaaS is tricky, I know, I've been working in teams for the last ~7 years creating software. But you don't want to hear my account, there is tones of content out there by venture-backed SaaS teams. What's interesting about Max Rozen's post is that he's the Founder, Developer, Designer, Customer Support, and Customer Success Manager of OnlineOrNot and has a full-time job at Atlassian. Sounds interesting now right? In this post, Max shares his learnings from his first year running his side project and it's packed with great tips and tricks for those considering starting a SaaS business, for those already in weeds or just curious.
One piece of golden advice I couldn't agree more with is "Ship first, worry about scale later". Too many founders get bogged down with optimising for scale before they even have their first customers. (8 min read)
I don't usually feature articles from large publications, mostly due to the mission of this newsletter being to surface great content and resources from independent online makers and creators, however, sometimes I need to make exceptions when the content is too good not to share. When one of the most secretive technology companies shares some insight into their best in class design studio it's worth a read. If you appreciate design, craftsmanship and the thought process that goes into the worlds leading hardware and software products you will certainly enjoy reading this. Additionally, there are some fascinating images to examine from their design team at work, however, there is no way their studios are that tidy all the time. (14 min read)
Remember Paper for the iPad? that delightful free app for drawing and taking notes on your iPad? Well, it became one of the most downloaded apps of its time and pushed the boundaries of what could be achieved on the iPad. Andy, is the founder and designer at FiftyThree (creator of Paper) which was acquired in 2018 by WeTransfer. He has since launched Not Boring - a suite of standalone mobile apps looking to bring some fun and delight back to your most-used apps. In this post, Andy shares some fascinating insight into the genesis of Paper now some 10 years later. A few things that jumped out at me. Firstly, it was their first time building an app. The iPad was only a year old at the time and the App store was also relatively new too. They created a spatial navigation model and defined some gestures we now take for granted when using our devices. Lastly, they designed and iterated their concept on hundreds of Keynote decks. (11 min read)
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🔗 Links
P.S if you haven't heard of Maze check them out. I've been using the product on and off for a few years now as my go to tool for remote usability testing and research.
So you might not have heard of Yuga Labs but il take a wild guess and presume you are aware of The Board Ape Yacht Club? Well, last month their pitch deck was mysteriously leaked. For some businesses this could be disastrous, however, from what I've seen online it's only built more hype for the future of the brand's ambitions. And it certainly did impact their ability to raise as they just closed an eye-watering $450m round to bring their NFT metaverse ambitions to life which includes gaming-focused metaverse (check this sneak peek out), a sale of 200,000 digital land worth $178 million, and the highly anticipated cryptocurrency “APECoin” (just purchased some 🙈 ). This is fresh off the back of their acquisition of CryptoPunks, another stratospheric NTF collection.
The founders of Yuga Labs responded to the leak mentioning “There are a lot of things in there that have already changed, and plenty more things that will change because f*ck doing expected things.”. Believe what you will, regardless, this pitch deck offers an inside look at the future of the largest and most successful NFT project to date.
🎁 Bonus Content: Speaking of pitch decks, I found this curated collection of 350+ pitch decks including those from Airbnb, Uber and Spotify by Nico Cerdeira (founder of Failory.com)
📱 Products
This month's latest early access beta products brought you by Beta Directory are:
Outverse: A community platform with live video.
Tilt: Your favourite brands with your favourite people
MidJourney: New research lab. Exploring new mediums of thought.
Calliper: Stop sweating your team over data. Make data work for you
About a year ago I wrote a post about Dennis Müller's MVP for an exciting new calendar and to-do list concept. However, it's been what feels like years since I first signed up for early access to Amie, but the good news is it's finally launched in beta with a stunning new brand and website. Amie's unique approach as a standalone productivity app seems to be its all-in-one calendar, to-do and contact list. Additionally, the app is full of little delighters such as their Spotify integration to track what you listened to and when on your calendar (do I need that? no, do I want it? yes!) and also keyboard shortcuts which can trigger a handy shortcut modal which makes the process of navigating around the app frictionless.
If you design websites, create illustrations, apps, or digital art you gotta have a good colour picker in your arsenal. Recently, I discovered this super handy free colour picker. The best thing is it's not a Chrome extension, rather a Mac app and therefore, can be used across my other Mac apps such as Figma. While we are on the topic, I also discovered Huemint which uses machine learning to create unique colour schemes for your brand, website or graphic..
Admittedly I don't personally use this product, but if I hadn't spent a lot of time hacking my current stack together I would certainly consider this. Matter pulls everything you want to read into one beautiful place. With powerful tools, social curation, audio and more. It's like Pocket, Feedly and Medium had a baby and produced this little fella.
👾 Friends of Creator Club
This month I want to give a shout to the Weekly Filet. You know it's a good newsletter when it's been around since 2011 and is trusted by thousands of readers. David's a journalist, and a curious generalist and publishes his newsletter every Friday with carefully curated recommendations on what to read, watch and listen to. Basically less news, more new insights. Expect to be surprised. Check it out!
🐽 Other links to consume
• Generation defining stats by Steph Smith
• Dyson's dystopian headphones (not an April fools)
🐦 Tweet of the month
Brian Bourque parts some fantastic insights and wisdom working at a startup. There is no doubt that working for a startup can be an incredibly accelerating experience and propel your learning to new heights in a condensed amount of time, however, it can come at a cost. Having spent 8 years working with well over 20 startups at all stages I've found his observations to be incredibly insightful and also made me feel some of the struggles aren't just particular to my personal experience. Certainly worth a read if you're currently working at a startup or considering it.
⚡️ Flashback
This month I'm going to leave you with this 1988 cover of 'Computing Across America' by Steven K. Roberts (AKA the original digital nomad). Steven sold his house in 84 and set out to explore the US on his custom-built bike or as he referred to it as 'The Winniebiko'. His mission was to explore 18,000 miles of the USA as proof of the concept of online connectedness. He couch-surfed and blogged long before those words/phrases became a common vernacular. It is also worth noting that this was almost a decade before the Web. Let that sink in for a minute 🤷♂️
That's it for this month!
If you made it this far, hit reply and tell me what you thought of this newsletter. Was this 🔥 or 🗑. I read every response 👀
Until next month,
Sam | @thisdickie 👨💻
P.S you can view all my past content in this Notion repo 🗄