Issue #34
personal
The week I almost quit. What stopped me wasn't motivation.
It was a $12 charge on my card — the renewal for the domain I'd registered when the idea first hit. Twelve dollars. That's all it took.
Read this issue6 min read
Est. Feb 2024
Building in public. Failing in public.
Writing it all down.
A one-person journal from the messy middle — real revenue numbers, failed launches, quiet wins, and everything the case studies skip.
247 makers reading weekly
Chapter I
The Launches
the ones that didn't trend
Launch Debrief
I launched on Product Hunt at 2 a.m. and got 9 upvotes.
Mostly from people I texted. Here's what I'd change about the page, the timing, and the headline I was too scared to use.
Read entryPricing
The pricing page test that cost me 14 signups.
I ran two versions for three weeks. Version B looked cleaner. Version A converted 34% better. The data was uncomfortable.
Read entryProduct Decision
Killing the feature I spent six weeks building.
Three users asked for it. Zero used it after launch. The sunk-cost conversation I had with myself at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday.
Read entryRevenue
How I got to $1 MRR. Then $10. Then $84.
Every dollar felt different. The gap between zero and one is not the same gap as one to ten. This is what that felt like.
Read entry"The numbers are public not because I'm proud of them — but because I needed to see them myself."
Entry 34, Week of Feb 3
Chapter II
The Numbers
Monthly MRR snapshots, unfiltered and annotated.
stripe_dashboard.png
this is real. feb 2026.
MRR: $847 · ARR run rate: $10,164
$847
First month I didn't check the dashboard every 20 minutes.
$735
One tweet. One spike. Then back to normal.
$446
Holiday churn. Expected it. Still stung.
$480
The pricing change finally kicked in.
Chapter III
The Letters
34 issues and counting
Browse all issuesIssue #33
What 247 email subscribers taught me about positioning.
I asked them one question: "What problem were you trying to solve when you found this?" The answers broke my product description into pieces.
Read this issue8 min read
Issue #32
personal
Sunday, 11:47 p.m. Shipped. Nobody noticed.
The silence after a launch is its own kind of data. Here's what I did with it instead of refreshing the analytics tab for the 40th time.
Read this issue5 min read
"Nobody tells you the hardest part isn't the code or the copy — it's sending the email when you're not sure anyone's reading."
Issue #31 · Jan 26, 2026
Chapter IV
The Toolkit
Everything running this project, as of Feb 2026. No affiliate links.
Payments
Lemon Squeezy
Switched from Gumroad. Better checkout, same vibe.
Email
Resend
API-first. 100 emails/day free. No excuses.
Analytics
Plausible
No cookie banner. No guilt. $9/mo.
Hosting
Railway
Deployed in 4 minutes. Still surprised.
Tasks
Linear
Overkill for one person. Use it anyway.
Writing
Obsidian
Where this journal lives before it goes online.
free download
The First 1,000: What I'd Do Differently
A 24-page PDF covering the 8 mistakes I made getting to my first 1,000 email subscribers — with the exact copy, timing, and distribution channels I should have used instead.
- The subject line test that cost me 300 opens
- Why I posted on Twitter at 2 p.m. (wrong)
- The landing page copy I was too embarrassed to write