Thread by @AndreyAzimov

⚡️ Sheet2Site has been acquired!

Here's my story how I:
🔎 tried lots of different ideas
💡 found the idea for a spreadsheet-based website generator
🚧 built it without being able to code
💰 and sold it after 3 years

sheet2site.com/acquired/

Thread 👇

In 2018 I quit my job to make startups for a year. I called it Hardcore Year

https://twitter.com/AndreyAzimov/status/974718090314268673

I didn't have money even for renting a bike, so I was walking 2km every night with a lot of dogs gangs chasing me:

https://twitter.com/AndreyAzimov/status/1003173593553858560

I was working from @Starbucks and just asking for a tap water because it was free. I also worked there after it was closed:

https://twitter.com/AndreyAzimov/status/994603269900058624

I did all of this from 🏝 Canggu in Bali

💡 When I was working on my previous project darkmodelist.com I needed to manage a lot of content like titles, links, image etc.

💫 Using SQL database was too complicated so I decided to connect this spreadsheet to my website and it worked like a charm

First Sheet2Site version was very basic, I did it in a couple of days and it looked like this:

I improved design to make look a bit better:

The Product was good enough to me, but I decided to show to people and see if they will get it. How wrong I was. Face to face real people feedback can teach you more than an entire month of working alone.

😥 Depression

After the site was semi-ready, I’ve made a soft launch and shared it in my Twitter, Indie Hackers, Beta List. I felt like everyone would be using it because it was solving such a popular problem.

This is not what happened.

What happened was people saying, “Oh, nice idea”.

This hurt 😓.

Someone even told me that the website was pointless, as Wix, Squarespace and other website builders were already doing this.

What I know now is that depression stage is a standard in any creative process.

If you hit this stage, know that you are on the right path and that it is crucial:

You do not give up now. You can do it if you persevere.

Perfectionism trap

I started working on Site2Sheet again but quickly became obsessed with perfecting it.

I didn’t want to launch it until every single thing was in perfectly in place.

But here’s the thing:

Users won’t pay you if you polish your product to its ideal state.

Users will only pay you if they find something valuable for them within the product.

They are only going to pay you if you solve their problem.

🚀 Launch

After deciding to launch, I was finished in two days. Apparently, deadlines works

I launched it on @ProductHunt

https://twitter.com/AndreyAzimov/status/976368376019795970

🎉 Launch celebration

This is me celebrating the launch in coffee shop with a bar of chocolate 😂.

Launching is a lot like this chocolate.

If you don’t eat your chocolate in time, it goes bad. If you don’t launch your product in time, the idea spoils in your mind

💰 Revenue

In 10 days after launch I made 16 sales.

I tested different prices started from $5 / mo and then raised to $10 / mo or $60 / year

🔥 Do things that don’t scale

I listened @paulg's advice and have chosen to do things that don’t scale.

My projects didn't have any automation of sales, email, connecting custom domain.

I’ve did everything manually.

In particular there was no way to connect a custom domain (which is #1 feature of any website builder).

So I sent an HTML with iFrame inside for people who purchased via email😂

After couple of weeks I decided to work on something new, because the goal of Hardcore Year was to launch as many as possible.

I put Sheet2Site on a pause and switched to...

macOS apps!

I launched progressbarosx.com

And makeosxgreatagain.com

And became @ProductHunt Maker of the Year

https://twitter.com/AndreyAzimov/status/1086279686060048384

At this point all my ideas finished, so I decided to go back to Sheet2Site to improve the design and make new templates:

After a significant improvement of the product I launched Sheet2Site 2.0

https://twitter.com/AndreyAzimov/status/1109354579630514177

Sheet2Site made $1,000 MRR and I achieved my goal of Hardcore Year

https://twitter.com/AndreyAzimov/status/1134472394091814912

In 2019, I spent a lot of time optimizing and automating the product and making new templates

https://twitter.com/AndreyAzimov/status/1155136523026587650

Then suddenly 🦠 COVID happened:
- Many people were sitting at home and decided to work on their ideas
- I removed the monthly plan
- I made a free template with badge if their website was COVID related to help people

My revenue boomed to $10,000+/mo

https://twitter.com/AndreyAzimov/status/1245725856317636613

It was an intense time.

A lot of new customers but also a lot of support.

Slowly I automated a lot of stuff and 2020 I spent improving the product. I added:

- New Templates
- SEO optimization
- Pagination
- Faster Speed Loading
- Performance
- Filters
- Stripe
- Disqus

For marketing I wrote articles and made YouTube videos:

At this point the business was pretty stable I have some free time.

I launched a couple of other side projects including chart2site.com

I think some people have more enjoyment when they creating things from scratch and other people like to optimize existing things.

I'm more the first type, so I started to think selling my 3 y.o. business.