Week 4/5 - Code Weeks
Hi all,
This will be the most technical update to date by a wide margin. Feel free to skim over the š¤sections if not technically inclined.
Letās start by looking back at my plan from 2 weeks ago:
Iāve done well on (1), (2), and half of (4). I have not spent any time on ā3 - refining Uno thinkingā. When it comes to Editmode, Iāve managed to spec out the work and added a bunch of features, but concluded that revenue projections are pure guesswork until after Iāve seen the response of the different cohorts the product is relevant to.
To sum up, the past 2 weeks have been focussed on deep work. I found myself a great WeWork in BGC and got into a routine. I really enjoyed building again. Iām still in the phase where I get that child-like anticipation during the time when Iām not coding. The kind where you canāt wait to get the office and finish off the feature youād been working on the day before, or implement an idea that came to you while you were in the shower. Work feels like play at the moment.
š¤ Client Work: This ended up taking much more resource than I had planned. Iām building the website and mobile experience for a friend who is launching a chain of fitness clubs here in Manila. On mobile, our plan was to publish a Progressive Web App (this is just a fancy way of saying āadding some stuff to a normal web app that makes it feel more āmobile-app-likeā, including much better offline support. I had built the skeleton using Vuesion and read this post which led me to believe we could distribute it as a webview wrapper through the app stores. When I went to set this up I realized that users who install the app through the Apple app store wouldnāt benefit from any of the offline support because WKWebView doesnāt support service workers. This meant 30% of users (iOS users) would get a pretty mediocre experience. So I set about finding an alternative. A one-day test run with React Native gave me confidence we could build something fully native, albeit fairly rudimentary. Normally iOS Applications are written in a programming language called Swift, and Android applications are written in Java, but React Native allows you to write your app in Javascript (confusingly not related to Java), which is a much more familiar language to anyone whoās built web software before. Itās kind of like Google Translate for mobile apps, and it allowed me, as someone who has never worked with Swift or Java, to build a mobile app for both Android and iOS in under a week. Hereās a quick run-through clip: one tab for a video library, one for account management and check in.
Editmode
Last week I on-boarded Earle to the Editmode codebase. Earle was our first hire at First Circle and is one of the most versatile product engineers Iāve worked with. Heās now working full time in Canada but we were both eager to work together again so heās going to be getting involved to add some features and refine the product in the coming weeks.
To keep us focussed, we identified the two milestones toward which any work undertaken should be directed. They are:
Marketing Launch: This is when Editmode will be āunveiledā to the public. The goals here are to understand the response from both the technical and non-technical potential users/cohorts. At this point, people should be able to see and understand what Editmode is and what it does really well, although they wonāt be able to self-serve and begin using the product just yet. The most important parts of this are a) The interactive demo, b) The marketing message/comms, and c) The data capture. We want to put our best foot forward and give ourselves the best chance of people saying āThis looks really polished, I could definitely see myself using itā, and to then capture who they are and how they would use it.
Alpha Testing Period: This is when weāll allow a small number of trusted users to use the platform. The idea here is to understand the technical considerations and pain points. Itās likely that this will be limited to rails users to start. The most important things here are removing impediments that prevent self-service, ensuring the product is super easy to understand and get started with, and reliable enough to feel comfortable building on top of.
With the aims identified, weāve broken down the remaining work into tasks and assigned them to ensure weāre not working on anything unnecessary. Our broad aim is to have both the marketing launch complete, and the first batch of people using the platform by April 5.
The major win last week was getting a live demo of Editmode working. If youāre interested, you can test it by going here, hitting the keyboard shortcut: Command & Shift & E, and logging in with email: ādemo@example.comā and password: ādemouserā. You can then make live changes to any content on the page and hit save (Please be tasteful as these changes will be viewable by the general public).
Other stuff
OnDeck Update: I mentioned in a previous update Iād be traveling to San Francisco to take part in OnDeck from March 7. I received an email this morning to say that the programās been postponed for 3 weeks due to COVID-19. I had intentionally held off booking flights and accommodation so this isnāt a super terrible development. As things stand the program will now be kicking off April 6. Given cost of living in Manila vs SF this will prolong my personal runway and allow me to spend another few weeks on Editmode and refining Uno.
I caught up with Daniel Kehoe last week. Daniel is the man behind Rails Composer and Learn Ruby on Rails. I brought him in to First Circle for 6 months at the end of last year and he made a big impact. We chatted about how crazy difficult it still is for beginners to build something simple out of the box, and how it seems to be getting even more convoluted. He told me heās working on a new book which will run through the best ways for beginners to build web applications which Iām really looking forward to reading. He reminded me of the whole code catalog by Steve Krouse, which is cool but seems to missing quite a few important tools.
As mentioned in week 2, Iāve managed to spend more time in javascript-land. (63% as per Wakatime, which is great for tracking this). My impressions are still forming but itās not as bad as I remember it being.
Insights & Reflections
Iāve noticed anecdotally a very high correlation between my productivity and my mood. When I'm productive, I'm happy. When I'm not, I'm generally more irritable. Similarly thereās a high correlation between my physical environment and my productivity. I donāt know if this is healthy or not. I do know that Enjoyable environment = good productivity = good mood. These arenāt the only variables of course but I continue to think that being intentional about my environment is the single highest impact way to affect my life satisfaction. Interested to hear otherās thoughts on this.
My schedule in the past 2 weeks looked completely different to the previous 2 week period. The first period was pretty intensively focused on discussing, brainstorming and thinking. I met on average 3 to 4 people per day and spent a lot of time writing. The last 2 weeks have been very different - I spent almost no time in meetings or on calls, and thereās no way Iād have been as productive if I had. I really like this clean separation (several weeks in build mode, several in brainstorm mode), and Iāll be trying to keep it up going forward.
My tune has changed pretty dramatically on living in Asia. Before Christmas I was a bit fed up with life in Manila, but having come back with a fresh perspective and more freedom, Iāve warmed to it much more than I thought I would. The cost of living here is so low when compared with Europe and the US, the lifestyle is pretty great, and having sunshine all day every day is good for the soul. This might just be the honeymoon period, weāll see how it plays out.
Readings & Links
We Bought a Tokyo Apartment and I'm Done With Real Estate ā Rather than buying one big expensive house, this guy has bought several affordable apartments in different cities with friends. I love this idea and would love to explore if anyoneās interested.
Spendee - Iād been looking for a personal finance tracker that auto-syncs with Revolut & BOI - Iāve spent a few hours in it and it seems extremely promising. I now have my spending auto tracked and budgets set up for the next couple months.
We Need To Take CO2 Out Of The Sky ā An excellent, thoroughly researched overview of what we need to do to combat climate change.
Three really cool experimental tools released this week in the tools for thought space:
Geoffrey Litt (an excellent thinker in the tools for thought space) released Wildcard, as a concept for what end-user-customisable software might look like. Thereās definitely inspiration to be taken from this for Uno. This video (Customizing Airbnb with a spreadsheet) is the best demo of the tool, which he built as a chrome extension.
Webcodesk is by far the most comprehensive component-builder-in-the-browser Iāve seen. I line I trot out a lot is āWe have the right abstractions, we just havenāt built tooling that makes them explicitā and I think this is a good positive example of what I mean. The left pane, rather than listing files and folders, shows āComponents, Templates, Pages, Flows, and Functionsā.
Wasp Lang - āA programming language that understands what aĀ web appĀ isā, or a dsl for specifying and building web applications. Technical product but seems to be very well thought out.
Finally, I have one ask this week. As things stand Iāll be in San Francisco from April 6 for 6 weeks. Given the cost of accommodation there, Iād be super appreciative of any assistance, either in the form of advice or connections to people who may have a spare room at their place. Itād be great to not have to spend a huge amount on this if possible š.
Thatās all for now!
Thanks!
Tony