{12} Kids Books, Personal Branding & Writer's Block
{12} Kids Books, Personal Branding & Writer's Block
Featuring Gezim Hoxha, Dev By RayRay, Fernando Pessagno, and Peter Mick
Good morning! 👋
I missed sending yesterday’s edition. After some consideration, I’ve decided to go away from publishing informal chats and move to a more formal Q&A structure. I’ll be asking makers 3 questions. The first question is always “What are you working on?” to break the ice. I’ll follow that up by asking 2 questions about their projects, backgrounds, and philosophies. Hopefully, we’ll uncover something interesting in the process.
It took a little longer than expected to round up the first batch of Q&As. But this gives me the opportunity to switch from evenings to mornings, which should be better for most readers.
Let me know what you think of the new structure. Here is batch #1!
Gezim Hoxha
Sold 3 micro-SaaS businesses ($1k, $2.5k, $50k) and killed one.
Q: What are you working on?
A: I’m working on Unicorny.ai — a service that turns kids from consumers into creators where they can create their own books!
Q: A platform that helps kids publish is a public service. I'll bet publishing as a kid is a life-long confidence booster. Those kiddos will feel like anything is possible as adults. Becoming an entrepreneur and creating an app won't seem like a scary undertaking.
A: I sure hope so because the first person I tried it on was my 4-year-old daughter, Maryam. I've made a point to read the names of authors when I read to her and when I got her book printed, she was ecstatic. She decided she needed to shed her most precious title prior, "big sister" and now became an author (we just had a 3rd baby so "big sister" is a big deal to her :D).
Q: I assume this project isn't purely philanthropic. Are you playing the long game with the intention of providing a platform for kids to continue publishing into adulthood?
A: I would love to have kids change that mindset. I think we do kids a huge disservice by slapping a device in front of them or putting them in front of a screen and letting them be passive consumers. I would be delighted to help turn kids into creators instead of passive consumers.
Q: I like the idea of AI-generated illustrations for kid’s books. It's a foundational piece that makes it possible to build and support the app at a fraction of the upfront cost.
Are complex queries prebuilt with the ability to inject simple storylines to maintain a consistent look and feel? I assume you could create design "themes" for authors to choose from while abstracting away a lot of the complexity.
A: Weilding these AI tools like ChatGPT and Dall-e has proven to be challenging. We can't quite just give the kid direct access to the output and currently still involve a human in the middle as we learn the boundaries. One of the surprising results I got while playing with a query was a pretty scary looking monster using a completely innocent prompt. That made me realize there's a content moderation piece to this as well that we have to figure out how to handle.
Dev By RayRay
Self-thought Frontend Developer since 2009.
Q: What are you working on?
A: I'm working on GeneratorXYZ, which will be a platform full of all kinds of generators for Bloggers and Marketeers. Right now, I'm working on the first product called "Ai Marketeer," which is a social media message generator. You can try it at beta.generatorxyz.com 👍
The user can paste a URL, and we generate a social media message based on the content of the URL. It can be used for multiple social media platforms. I'm also building integration with WordPress at the moment. Via that plugin users can generate social media messages right from the editor, which saves loads of times.
Q: You recently published a great thread on personal branding tips for developers. Most developers I've worked with, myself included, don't spend enough time thinking about their brand. If someone is only willing to spend a few hours on branding per month, what should they prioritize?
A: A developer should not spend an X amount on branding. If developers want to make a name for themselves, they must consider what they want to be known for.
If they want to be that developer known for all these lame jokes about developers, they should bring that into their online identity.
If they want to be that developer known for their expertise in Angular, they should act like that. For example, write fantastic tweets, and create videos or blog posts about that topic.
For instance, I want to be known for my expertise in JavaScript and TypeScript. So I write about those things on my blog. I also want to know for being friendly and helpful. The content I write shows that because I share a lot of knowledge to help others.
And yes, for some, that's designing a logo with cool colors, but for others, that's completely different. So there is no X amount of time to spend on branding. It's a continuous process.
Q: Wordpress is an interesting opportunity for app developers today. It's old, limited, and less exciting than newer tech. But it still powers millions of websites. What types of apps work best in that ecosystem?
A: WordPress can be very interesting because millions of users are using it. I don't think it's a limitation for app developers to build integrations for WordPress. You should focus on where most users can benefit from my app. That's the reason why I choose it.
Fernando Pessagno
Follow me as I #buildinpublic and share my journey 🚀
Q: What are you working on?
A: I am working on ResumeMaker.Online, the easiest to use resume maker, now powered by AI. I have just launched the 3.0 version with a much improve writing assistant that helps users create their resumes in just minutes.
Q: I find reflecting on my accomplishments in previous positions challenging. The AI-assistant makes that process much easier. You select your title and then a prompt from a list of common sentences. With starting points, it's much easier to fill in gaps and make progress.
Does your AI model factor in previous resume submission outcomes when generating prompts? For example, maybe resumes containing the word "optimized" are more likely to result in an interview than resumes containing "implemented".
A: Not really. The responses generated by GPT-3 are based on the patterns and language it has been trained on, which includes commonly used words and phrases in resumes and there is no capability to access any information about previous resume submissions or their outcomes. However, I personally review and curate the responses to ensure they contain useful information and require minimal editing.
Q: AI is extremely popular right now. Almost everyone I talk to is working on a different AI use case. Do you believe the majority of products with AI as a selling point, benefit more from marketing or the actual utility?
A: Yes, many products are using AI as a "nice-to-have" feature for marketing purposes, despite it not adding significant value. The hype surrounding AI has caused companies to include it in their products, even if it does not improve the product's functionality. However, as AI becomes more widely adopted and commoditized, it think it will become increasingly difficult for companies to differentiate themselves based on AI capabilities alone.
Peter Mick
👨💻 Indie dev
Q: What are you working on?
A: I’m working on Copylime.com & TweetAI.com. I’m the solo startup founder of both and do everything from coding to marketing.
Copylime is a smart AI writing assistant for blog articles, copywriting formulas and more.
TweetAI is there to help inspire people’s tweets.
Both aim to help overcome writer’s block. I go with an affordable pricing strategy so that they can be used by as many people as possible. They are profitable at this stage and just need marketing for growth.
Q: TweetAI is interesting. You've found a simple use case for AI to assist with writer's block on Twitter. I'm a big fan of single-function apps.
Have you thought about the psychology behind the paywall? When I tried the app, the first suggestion was hilarious. Then the 2nd and 3rd suggestions started getting me interested in figuring out how I might use the tool in the wild...then I tried a 4th query and got hit with a paywall. Have you experimented with a different number of free queries before triggering the paywall? I suspect ~5 free queries could have converted me.
A: Wow that's great feedback thank you Dane!
I've not experimented with changing the number of free runs in logged out mode. The paywall, however, has a free option of 30 extra runs. I'll up it to 5 and deploy the update this week.
Q: As an indie developer, your time is limited. Do you avoid app opportunities that require daily maintenance?
A: Not really avoid, but if I can put the effort in and make it run on auto-pilot then that's my preferred route. As a dad of 3 little kiddos, I really have little time.