At the moment I'm working on MetricShots and AWNA: A Wee Notch App. MetricShots is all about celebrating milestones and achievements. It allows you to easily create images which celebrate any metric you like. It could be followers on X, number of products launched, number of sales, or you can customise the text and can create an image for any identifiable number that's important to you. Its tagline is "You hit the number. Now show it off.". AWNA is a weekend project I gave myself for fun but then started taking more seriously as the days went on. It's "A Wee Notch App" for Windows, resting at the top center of your screen. Macs have had the notch fun for long enough! Within it are ten tabs, cleanly designed, containing a host of productivity tools. I'm at the point where I consider it 'finished' in terms of development before a general launch. I'm enjoying using it, I hope others do too!

I started building with AI in January. I took out the Claude Pro subscription and very quickly found out it wasn't going to keep up with the ideas I had. Bumped up to the Max 5x plan, and started building. Came up with a few Android apps, including the obligatory budget tracker that a lot of people were making, along with two SaaS platforms; one aimed at kids to improve their typing skills, and another for contractors managing their jobs and quotes. I was excited about those, went and printed out flyers and joined local Facebook groups to advertise in and everything. It was at that point I discovered that marketing is a different beast altogether. Something I'm still trying to get better at! With MetricShots, you only need to scroll through your X feed to see people celebrating their follower counts and analytics screenshots. It's great, I'm happy for everyone that hits their goals, so I thought I could offer up an easy-to-use tool to make their achievements stand out a little more than raw screengrabs.

You have to earn users, even those that show interest at the start. People that like the look of your product and people that like your product enough to use it are two different things.

I got a sale on the day I launched MetricShots. I wasn't expecting it, so I was blown away. I might have jumped in the air. I had great feedback from testers in the days coming up to launch, and nearly two weeks on I have users that continue to come back who are using it in ways outside of "I got this many followers". I'm always delighted to see people posting their images from MetricShots. I'm trying to get more people interested by spotting posts about upcoming milestones and sending them draft cards that they can then tweak and export for themselves. For AWNA, I've had some waitlist applicants which I'm pleased about. To think people would be interested in trying out something I've coughed up over a weekend means a lot to me.

I am cursed by the "that looks cool!" reply that goes no further. I've seen it with MetricShots and older projects I've worked on, and I'm seeing it with AWNA too. In addition to the other projects I mentioned, I also created STARFOUNDERS. This is a SaaS directory crossed with a video game. You can fly around a 3D galaxy, claim planets in the name of your product, shoot down asteroids and computer-controlled enemy ships, and run a ring race with a high score leaderboard. It has multiplayer too, so you can fly around with other founders. I had a blast making it. I had such high hopes that people would like it. I couldn't tell you how many times I posted about it on X, or in replies to people's "drop your project!" posts, only to get "looks awesome", and very very few people spent more than a couple minutes on it. I gave a few planets away to pals, and I had one sale (thank you!), but the galaxy seems to, well, drift alone in space. I mentioned it above. There's a difference between liking the idea behind a product, and actually getting users to sign up and help you build your product through feedback.

It's never been easier to turn an idea into a working prototype. So find your idea, put together a minimum viable product, and seek validation before spending time and energy fleshing it out. It's easy to keep building in a bubble only to launch to crickets. Keep talking to potential users about what your product should do. Also, take your time and don't burn yourself out. Your health is more important than your code.