I'm Alyssa X, a serial maker. I've built and shipped 10+ products. AMA.

@syswarren Appreciate it! Coming up with ideas is hard, I don't think there's one definitive way to go about it. I personally do it in a variety of ways, some examples: - Think of something that I would use or make my life easier if it existed. That's how I came up with Jumpskip for example, since I absolutely hate jumpscares, and I wanted to find a way to not get scared all the time 👻 - Combine two ideas together, either two products or different concepts. For example, with Mapus I had the idea to combine a tool like Google Maps with the concept of real-time collaboration. I think I use this method a lot, it's pretty useful. - Just look for an existing product, and think how you can make it better. I did this with Screenity, seeing tools like Loom or Screencastify which had users complaining about limits on the free plan, so I built a better free screen recorder, plus with other features such as annotation or push to talk. - Complete randomness. Sometimes I don't know how I come up with ideas, they just come to me I guess. Like a while back I had the idea to build some sort of tool to be able to create platforming games in Figma, designing levels, enemies, etc. Super weird thing. As per actually executing, well, I think I just have a good work ethic and I commit myself to finish everything I start :) I don't want to let people down.

@philsoutside Thanks Phil! That's a good question. Usually I don't start building a new project unless I am 100% convinced I will be able to complete it. But sometimes I underestimate the effort, or I come across big blockers that I can't overcome. I think I had this issue with a specific project I was working on a few months back - I basically wanted to build a tool to create virtual worlds/MMORPGs (think Club Penguin, Habbo...) using Figma. I built a prototype where you could design rooms, items, avatars... in Figma, press a button, and it would automatically generate the world for you, and you could move around and chat and whatnot. Everything was going well, until I realized I could not complete it for a very simple reason, I'm not an artist. I spent a few weeks trying different artstyles, see if I could figure something out, but ultimately I dropped the project. I also felt it was a bit similar to another project of mine, a tool to create platforming games in Figma, and it might not be worth to launch anyway.

@joshdance I've been programming since I was 7, I started with Visual Basic, Bash, Action Script, basically creating all sorts of simple programs and games mainly. It wasn't until I was ~15 that I decided to get into web development, I didn't follow any courses whatsoever but rather I learnt by building. For example, one of the first projects I built to better understand how to code was a collaborative task manager, with teams, collections, repeating tasks, a Gantt chart, and a lot of different challenging features I had to figure out how to implement. I basically just was constantly looking things up (StackOverflow helped a lot :P) or watching all sorts of Youtube videos. I ended up winning a prize for that project, which might have encouraged me to keep building new stuff :)

@jai_verdancy I tend to have the same issue, honestly. I like to have a good plan beforehand, I make a Notion doc with a bunch of tasks for an MVP, and try my best not to add more tasks during the development of the product. Oftentimes I go through all the tasks during the development and I remove those that I feel aren't going to make a difference, sometimes I get obsessed over adding a small detail that most users aren't even going to notice. It's just a matter of finding a balance :)

@alyssaxuu Could you elaborate a little bit on what your thought process is for approaching the discovery process versus leap of faith balance in releasing your MVP? This is something our team is currently struggling with.

@eriks_k I think it's hard to say, for me it also helps showing my product to users and hearing their thoughts, I can easily see whether they get the product, if they have issues using it, if they find it lacking, if it's something they would use... It also comes down to whether there's time constraints. I've had several products that were taking longer than expected, and I ended up deciding to cut down on features. You can always add them later on anyway. Ultimately if you show it to users and they think it's fine, the lack of certain features / polish is unlikely to make or break the product. The most important part is to acquire those users, focus on marketing the product, and keep working on it and improving it post launch. I've had far too many products where I spent weeks on certain features that 99% of users didn't even notice or care about, they would have used the product regardless. Focus on marketable features, the acquisition part.

@alyssaxuu do you also update the products for security fixes or new feature?

@sushant_borse Honestly, I try not to, most of my products are one-off. But Screenity and Flowy specifically I do consistently maintain, releasing fixes and new updates from time to time. I just prefer to focus on shipping new products :P

@scheuercharles Thank you so much! :) For Sonuum I first started with some prototypes for the 3D animation, then in Figma I designed what would go in each section. I then exported each image separately that I'd want to animate, and using jQuery I added breakpoints at different scroll positions to trigger different animations (e.g. scroll down a bit, do a CSS transform, then another one and show the next section, and so on).

@pulljosh Staying motivated is hard, I think I've gotten better at it with practice (I've been doing this for a few years now!). The way I go about it is first of all making sure before starting to work on a project that I will be able to finish it. I make a plan, create a Notion doc with a task list of things to do to finish the MVP, and if it all looks good, then I commit to it. I have to stop myself from getting distracted and working on other stuff, since from experience that ends up killing projects. I think it's mainly a mentality thing, I know if I drop a project it won't be another month or two that I'll be able to build something else, and I always want to make sure I have things to share with my audience, sort of meeting expectations :) So in a way it's my responsibility, at least that's how I see it. Regarding marketing, honestly, up until last year I only shared my products on my Twitter account. I noticed people got notifications for my tweets (both through Twitter and email) if I went off for a couple of months and then I tweeted, so I followed that strategy for a while. It also helps I have a decent following on Twitter :) I've also been launching both on Product Hunt and Hacker News, and I make sure to tell everyone I know about it.

@alyssaxuu "... making sure before starting to work on a project that I will be able to finish it." This is precisely the kind of obvious-in-hindsight advice I needed to hear. I've never approached a project with the end (of the MVP) already in sight, but I will next time, and I bet it will help a lot.

@kidhack1 @alyssaxuu of course not. Wrong question. The right question: Which exquisite Parisian art gallery do you belong too?

@alyssaxuu nice:) I see you made 5 good projects on PH, got any tips? We just launched our Carpio 2.0 today and wouldn't mind getting some tips what we can still improve:) https://www.producthunt.com/post...

@product_at_producthunt Thank you so much! And yep, I tend to work on products that I'd personally use, that said I rarely build products only due to existing products having a poor UI/UX, I like to build things that are original and have unique features. I think I mostly do that when I see existing processes which could easily be simplified, one example could be with Animockup, an animated mockup editor I built a while back. I used to create teasers for my products using After Effects, with laptop mockups where I would put screen recordings of the product. This process would take me forever, After Effects takes ages to load, then I would need to position the mockup accordingly with the video, set the composition duration, and then wait a while for it to render. I also needed it to be in GIF format for Twitter, so I would have to use Handbrake to reduce the file size, and then use an MP4 to GIF converter to get the final file. So instead I built a product that would do all of this super easily, select the mockup, upload the video, change the background color, add text or images, and then export directly as a GIF. That easy :P

@ejsnowdon Thank you so much Emily! Honestly it's pretty hard, I think the only way I've been able to manage it is by making sure my products are mostly one-offs, and that I only have to deal with user feedback and questions. There's some that need more maintenance, such as Flowy and Screenity, where there's a lot of users who have questions about the product, or they want to make improvements to it. Unfortunately I can only take care of it every so on, usually a few times a month. As per your other question, I answered it pretty in depth over here :) https://www.producthunt.com/disc...

@ashugeo Thank you so much! If you're talking about formal studies, I didn't do any. I did go to university for a mix of software engineering and UX, but I dropped out on the first day, I figured I'd be able to learn on my own for free anyway, plus making money through a job. So yeah, just trial and error. Since I focus on web development specifically UI/UX and coding go a bit hand in hand, so I learnt both at the same time.

@rohan_1702 Yeah definitely! I've built a ton of products over the past years, lots of experiments with APIs, task management apps, even a social network for creatives, similar to Dribbble. I struggled to get traction with those, since back then I didn't really have an audience, and I also didn't know where or who to share them with. It wasn't until I discovered platforms like Product Hunt and people building on public on Twitter and other places that I started getting better at putting myself and my products out there :) Regarding customer validation, it depends. For some products like Screenity I did extensive research in existing products, user reviews from the Chrome Store and other sources, and I talked to a lot of people about it in the development process. Other products I validated them myself, like Jumpskip, as I was using the site wheresthejump.com to skip over jumpscares, having to switch back and forth, and I simplified with an extension that would do it automatically. I also sometimes build things that are more experimental in nature, for my real-time collaborative Maps tool I built it as a sort of technical challenge at first, and I didn't figure out the use cases until later on (was surprised a week after the launch https://felt.com/ made an announcement to build the exact same tool, so I guess it was validated after the fact). Just wanted to build something unique and different :P

@alyssaxuu I saw your research (the comparison sheet :) ) you did for Screenity sometime ago. That was really awesome. Also you have so diverse products chrome extension, js library, twitter tools, most of them have a JS stack. But for something like audio editor or the web based movie editor, how do you learn or get hold of the underlying tech stack or the tech challenges?

@rohan_1702 Actually you'd be surprised, it's still all basically just jQuery :P For my motion graphics editor I used Fabric.js for the canvas which I've used many times before, for example in Screenity and Animockup, so I am pretty knowledgeable w/ the library. The tricky part was doing the animation, Fabric.js isn't really meant for that, so I had to look around for animation libraries and I found Anime.js, which I felt was really easy to understand through the docs. Ended up re-rendering on each animation frame and it worked out pretty well. For exporting the video it's just FFMPEG, which I also used on Screenity and Animockup. So yeah, the stack is pretty much the same ^^ For the audio editor, same story tbh. This one though was probably the trickiest because I had to do extensive research in the Web Audio API, which I don't feel has great documentation. I couldn't find any javascript libraries for manipulating audio, so I made my own (for fade in, changing audio pitch, reversing audio, normalizing, reverb, changing the speed, even auto tune). I'm considering open sourcing it to make it easier for other developers :)

@msurguy Hmm I haven't come up with any idea I wouldn't be able to pull off. I suppose there's projects that are more ambitious than others, and would require a longer time to build, but so far it's all been possible :P Regarding collaborators, I wish I knew. I've only worked on a project together with someone else in the past, Carden with @anne_laure_le_cunff who is a friend of mine. I'd definitely love to do more collaborations, I think it helps build better products since you have more eyes on the product, and you have different perspectives. Hard to say what's the product I'm most proud of... I suppose talking about success specifically I'm most proud of Screenity, which has over 70K users, and has been translated in a lot of different languages. I've heard of teachers using it in schools, who personally thanked me for making it 100% free and open source, as they couldn't afford other paid alternatives. In terms of technical ability, it might be Sonuum, which is a real-time collaborative audio editor. Quite a challenging product to build, but definitely rewarding.

@jacquelinclem Haha nice one :P I personally wouldn't know since I don't have any pets, I spend too much time working anyway so I wouldn't be able to take care or spend time with them. Either would probably be a great companion while developing though :) 🐈 🐕

@alyssaxuu tried my best to be pertinent. 🥸 What a sad story anyway 😱 A cat is a great mate for developing!

@usama_khalid Well, the way I manage them is by making sure they're low maintenance, and trying to focus on building mostly one-off type of products, that I don't have to scale or keep growing. A day in my life differs depending if it's on the weekend or on a weekday :) During weekdays I've got my full-time job, I try to wake up early to get some work done on my projects, try to maximize the time by making simple meals and staying focused with music, and then after that I just do my job (which is later since I work remotely from the UK for a US company, so the timezones are different and I have to adapt :P). After my job I tend to just relax by watching a movie or some series, and then I go to bed. During weekends I basically just work 24/7 on my projects, taking short breaks from time to time to clear my mind, or to unleash my creativity as it can be easy to get blocked. I tend to stay up late which is probably not great 😅 Regarding burnout honestly it's hard, especially since I work all the time, and when I launch a project I already start working on the next one. I think it's mostly a matter of being constantly motivated, I do get a rush whenever I ship a product, wondering what will happen, what will people think, how many users will I get... So while developing projects I tend to keep that in mind a lot, it helps me keep going :) I also know when I have to stop, while I can work for a long time I notice there's times where my mind is blank and nothing is working, so I do something else for a while, take a shower, etc. and come back to it later.

@joshdance I answered this here pretty thoroughly :) https://www.producthunt.com/disc...

@svenn_petter_maehle Depends on the objective really. I personally did it through trial and error as my goal was to be able to build my own products, maybe in a bit of a scrappy way, whatever means necessary. If the goal is to land a job, or to be very knowledgeable in coding, a course would definitely be the way to go, although it would take longer to actually be able to build products. Since I'm an indie hacker, I tend to choose the fastest implementation when developing products, when there's multiple ways to go about it :P Although for some projects (especially those which I plan on scaling and which aren't just a one-off thing) I try to future-proof them by writing clean and efficient code.

@mikestaub You'd be surprised, I don't really have a list. I usually only have one idea in my head at a time, when I launch a product right away I start brainstorming for the next one, so I don't really have it planned beforehand. Maybe rather than specific ideas I have concepts or areas I'd like to explore, such as augmented reality, building native Mac apps, iOS apps, etc. As per how I decide what to focus on, it comes down to a few things. How fast I think I could build it, is it niche or more broad (I personally prefer broader products as they can more easily appeal to my audience), could I effectively make a ~10 second GIF of the product that someone could watch and understand what it does (important for Twitter :P), is there any specific challenge or concept I would learn while building the product, would it help me get more opportunities if it was in my portfolio, etc.

@artem_smirnov1 Thanks! It depends - most of my projects are one-off, but I have a few projects that I keep maintaining, mostly my open source ones. So for example my flowcharting library Flowy, I look into issues and questions people have, make improvements from time to time, etc. Or my Screenity screen recorder. Ideally though I like to work on projects I don't have to maintain, since otherwise I don't have enough time to work on new stuff :P