Pivoting From Newsletter to a Tool for Summarizing News
I’m Julia, currently an indie maker. Three months ago my partner and I decided to a build 12 apps in 2024 (initiated by Pieter Levels levels.io @levelsio on Twitter). The aim is fast and committed delivering and iteration, which actually is our developers’ comfort zone.
My partner and I just launched our second app — “At a Glance” on ProductHunt today, 2/12 mission accomplished :)
Original Idea — AI Newsletter
After finishing our first project, Gift Note Writer, we aimed to develop an AI newsletter. This newsletter would cater to early startup founders and individuals looking to transition from traditional 9–5 jobs to independent developers. I spend about an hour daily reading tech news from various sources like TechCrunch and newsletters. I thought, why not share the knowledge gained from these readings to save time for busy people?
Failed Fast & Pivoted
Having learned from past experiences, we understood the importance of validating ideas before diving into development. So, this time, I reached out to communities like Reddit, IndieHackers, Twitter, and ProductHunt to gauge interest. It turned out that the AI newsletter wasn’t as appealing as we had hoped. It appears that newsletters are better suited for individuals further along in their journey or those with larger social media followings. Additionally, we experienced the challenge of curating and summarizing news from different platforms like TechCrunch, Medium, and Reddit. Even with the assistance of ChatGPT, it was incredibly time-consuming. Moreover, as a non-native English speaker, translating and refining for potential readers in other languages made it even annoying.
We saw some problems, so we made something to fix them fast. It’s called “At a Glance” and it’s a Chrome Extension. This tool does only one thing: it summarizes web articles and translates them, and can bypass the pay walls. We wanted it to be really simple and easy to use: by just clicking on it, it gives you a short paragraph that’s ready to publish. This helps content creators like newsletter editors or multilingual news reporters because they can gather material for their publications without spending a lot of time reading everything. This could also be handy for those just seeking a quick read.
We spent about only a day get the core part done.
Lessons Learned
The initial project taught us the importance of asking questions before diving into development. The second project emphasized the value of embracing failure as a way to pivot quickly when necessary. Moving forward, we recognize the need to prioritize where we invest our time and energy. Now we are looking forward to starting the third project with more validations and fast iterations, hopefully will have more wins than losses to share by then.
