200WaD Post-PH launch

It’s been almost two weeks since the launch on Product Hunt.

The community reached 1600 members. We grew a monthly-recurring revenue of 65$, which is enough to cover the business’s costs (but not enough to make a living). We peaked at 150+ posts published in one day.

We are now reaching a growth plateau at 200 daily active users and around 70 posts per day. It’s time to ship again.

I’m arriving in Kuala Lumpur tomorrow after a week at a friend’s house near Georgetown.

I will be locking myself up in an Airbnb condo near the Petronas Towers to grow 200WaD even further and keep on adding value at a higher speed.

My short-term goal over the next 6 months is to reach ramen profitability, meaning, I want to generate enough revenue to cover my living expenses, which in turn will enable me to work on 200WaD full-time indefinitely (I’m living on my savings as of now).

I can only do that by adding enough value for the members to invest in this community, so what differentiates 200WaD from other writing products? Its focus on a free and open community.

The community is truly the only thing that matters. This is why I’m gonna spend my whole time helping the members by interacting with them and releasing community features, with openness being our core value.

How does it translate to reality?

First, I’m going to release a basic API this week to allow anyone to build over 200WaD’s engine and create endless feature possibilities. We have many makers and developers in the fellowship that can create wonderful things, so it makes sense to welcome and encourage any community development.

Then I will be working on new community features: onboarding animation for the new members, crowdsourced writing prompts integrated to the writing interface, 200 words replies, and 200 words reviews.

Lastly, I am going to push new habit-forming features such as email reminders, leaderboards, a karma system and badges.

@jasonleow also mentionned in his great post about 200WaD the necessity to add features dedicated to readers, so I decided to release a bookmarking system as well.

It’s nice to make new features, but it’s more important to communicate. The format of the daily newsletter is going to change. The weekly newsletter is going to change as well. Many members published great writing tips. I want to feature them in the Tools section. A 200WaD account will be created to keep everyone updated on what’s being released, what’s the state of the roadmap, but also to feature the members and celebrate every small win together.

The best part? I made sure to create the right environment in KL to release a MVP version of everything over the next two weeks. To say I’m excited is an under-statement.

After that, we will talk about what to implement next together. I also need to keep talking with the active members on a daily basis, and figure out why most members dropped out and how I can help them with their writings.

Thanks to everyone writing here. You push me to new heights every day.

Don’t hesitate to message me if you have any question or suggestion. I’m here to help and always happy to hear from you :)

See you tomorrow,

baz