iBuildMVPs is Back

It was almost 15 years ago when I started iBuildMVPs. I built the basic website in a weekend and soon started building minimum viable products for aspiring startup founders. After doing this for a few years, I started a career as a software engineer. I worked for large publicly traded companies, three-person startups, and everything…

I’m bad at marketing

This is really painful to admit this. For years, I considered myself an expert marketer. I got a mobile detailing company off the ground by sheer force of will when I was in college using adwords campaigns. I have a degree in marketing and I graduated with a 3.75. But yet – 10 years after…

Print Design Learnings

Print design was a new experience for me. Here are some of the key takeaways from my recent experiences. Tools The tool of choice for print design is Adobe Illustrator. I tried numerous other options including source tools and online tools. No other tool gave me the ability to make changes quickly and reliably that…

Everything has hidden complexity

When I started on the bookmark project, I didn’t understand how difficult every step in the process would be. Designing a bookmark is hard. Tweaking your design for printers is hard. Determining the type of finish, thickness, and size of a product is hard. Taking product photos is excruciatingly hard. Selling a product online is…

All products are iterative

Most of the products I’ve created in my lifetime have been software related products. Software products are inherently iterative. You find bugs. You fix bugs. Customers request features. You build those features. Strategy dictates different features for different markets. You build those different features. I never thought physical products would also be iterative. But they…

Doubt

Sometimes, you second guess yourself. This happened tonight for me. I’m working on an application that tracks team health. It’s my project for February. Part of creating12.com. A few days ago, my friend Jay mentioned it would be cool as a Slack application. I thought that was an intriguing idea. I looked at the slack…