What is 80daystartup?
What are the goals?
We want to show people the entire process of creating a new product from scratch. In just 80 days, we'll try to make and market something people want and are willing to pay for.
Along the way we'll document and explain everything we do for public consumption. How to come up with an idea (and what makes ideas good or bad), how to build the first prototype, how you reach customers and do marketing, how to set up a server, how do you handle billing and invoices, we'll show it all.
What are you building?We don't know yet! Update Day 21: we're building Thymer! (we decided on the idea on Day 3, and launched the landing page on Day 21)
Why is this worth doing?People tell us all the time they want to do a startup, but they don't know where to start. It just seems too intimidating when you're used to the structure provided to you by college or a day job, or when reading about startups who are already further along. Many of those who actually try —commendable as that is— make critical mistakes at every stage and then if they even launch at all they don't get traction and get discouraged and give up.
We also did everything wrong in the beginning and started out clueless. Now that we've been doing startups for years, we want to show that it's totally doable. We think that showing people the process raw, live, from scratch and in real time will be educational in a way polished books and articles can never be.
And of course it sounded like a fun challenge! (ask us again in about 80 days though).
Who is this for?Anybody who is interested in (software) startups. It doesn't matter whether you are a student, a startup veteran, an employee, or just curious. We'll try to cover all material in a simple way.
The scope will be wide because startup founders have to do everything themselves. We'll have to create a road map in the first days and we will have to divide our attention between product, marketing, sales, and finance (so some posts will be more about business, others will be more technical when talking about building the product itself).
Why the 80-Day Startup?Because we're going to build the business live and we're going to post updates every day. We want to work on it full-time, but we're only going to count weekdays (and we'll take breaks, stay healthy!), so 80 days is about four months. That's short enough for every day to count, but still long enough to make something that's real and valuable.
We're doing it all completely bootstrapped. Day 1 starts with no social media presence, no followers, no press contacts, no road map, a shoestring budget and no revenue. We want to do it the hard way to demonstrate that the barriers to entry are lower than they've ever been. All you need is a couch and a laptop (couch optional).
What will you share?We want to share every step, so not just the finished product or polished screenshots or a single marketing post that worked. We'll also include things like (discarded) design drafts, (unfinished) code, (ignored) emails to press, (botched) marketing plans, expenses and (hopefully!) revenue, server config, GDPR paperwork... basically, everything. Next to our writing we might also do podcasts or live-streams. We'll figure it out as we go.
Are you doing a real startup?Yes, absolutely. We're making something that can realistically end up with many happy customers and plenty of profit. We just want to build something cool that's also viable as a business, and in the process show people that doing a startup really isn't that scary, no matter the outcome :)
Who is we?
We're building a startup from scratch in 80 days. We post here every day, sharing
everything, from code to finances.
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