Harley

Founder, Full-stack Web/Mobile/AI Developer
Building in Public @ $45k MRR - Stealth project launches Aug. 1st
Sharing lessons from the journey.
Traveling.

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

Day 1 of building in public!

I see a lot of great builders and founders on X sharing their journey of building and taking their products to market, and it’s inspiring to see!

So, I decided, why not document and share my journey in public as well!

Since this is “Day 1”, I figured I would introduce myself first:

I’m Harley. I’m 35, living in Orlando Fl.
I have an amazing wife and we have a dog and a cat.

I’ve started and grown my business over the last 7 years that does well, and affords me the time to do the things I want to. It typically takes 1-2 days out of my week and I do other stuff aside from that.

I’ll be selling it around the end of the year because honestly, I’m tired of it and I don’t particularly enjoy working in the industry. It’s blue-collar work. I’ll leave it at that.

Aside from having some business success (not much, but some), I am a full-stack web/app developer. I’ve been building websites and apps for 15 years and I use to build websites from scratch in notepad!

Wild to think that I haven’t written any code in like 12 months with how great codex is.

Over the last few years I realized that the part I enjoy the most about my current business is not what the business offers, but all of the web/app development activities that I do behind the scenes.

So, after that realization, I decided to transition my attention from growing that business to focusing on freelancing for others on Upwork, etc, and coming up with the next business that I want to build in an industry I truly enjoy.

I’ve always been a bit of a private person.

That means I’ve never been the type to post a lot on social media, but I’ve also come to realize that for my next business, I need to get with the times and establish myself on X, so about 6-8 weeks ago, I reset my password and started posting/engaging daily.

So far so good!

I’m not a growth hack guy, and I can’t stand the follow-for-follow nonsense that I see on my feeds, but I do want to give myself as many advantages as possible when it comes to growing my next business, and that means building up a community of like-minded people!

Around the same time, 6-8 weeks ago I decided what my next product would be and got to work.

In the next couple of days I will post a demo video of the product and the story behind why I’m building it.

My goal is to post as often as possible to keep you updated on what I’m working on each day and the progress being made.

I’m sure I’ll make a ton of mistakes, and that’s one of the main reasons I think building in public will be so beneficial to everyone. We can all learn from my mistakes and hopefully my successes!

If anyone has any build in public advice, please share!

I do want to make one thing clear because it’s a mistake I see often in this space:

I do not expect to get a bunch of users from my X followers/build in public activity. Most of my customers won’t be on X or in the build in public space.

I will be trying to reach customers through TikTok, IG, Google, and other forms of advertising. I will share all of my work and experience throughout the GTM phase as well!

Wish me luck!

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

Holy hell codex slowed down hard in the last two hours. Anything going on? @OpenAI

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

@sameer_khurana_ Awesome, looking forward to experimenting with Grok Voice soon! Congratulations on the new role.

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

Build in Public Day 4:

I have to keep reminding myself that I don't need to reinvent the wheel.

I have the constant urge to custom build everything for my product.

Instead, I should be looking for the fastest way to get the MVP into user's hands.

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

👀

[Cursor @cursor_ai]

Introducing Cursor Router, our intelligent model router that selects the right model for the task at hand.

Router delivers frontier-quality results at 60% lower cost.

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

When you're a week away from launch and things are clicking

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

@levelsio That shows you how much larger our economy and tech sector is than theirs.

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

I was looking through some old pictures to use and came across this gem.

Bailey (Bean) was my first dog. I got her when I was 20.

She was always by my side through thick and thin.

She also had a funny way of seeming almost too smart at times.

Enjoy!

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

@DaveDiederen Great advice!

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

@Teknium They’re not going to stop. With some of the best minds in the business, they are playing the game on the field.

As much as we hate to see it, it’s what is in their best interest as a profit seeking company

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

Day 3 of Building in Public presented to you by Espresso!

I wrote an article for this one just to share how I think about taking my product to market and what I’m doing ahead of time.

Most of my day today is focused on starting the marketing engine.

Let me know what made the biggest difference in your go to market plan when you launched your app in the comments!

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

https://t.co/x4TKdHMh5k

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

https://t.co/x4TKdHMh5k

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

@Prashtwtz So much growth it can’t be contained!

[Naval @naval]

Code is speech. The people pushing to ban open source and free speech are the bad guys.

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

@i_mika_el Agree, but it’s not the lines of code that make a good senior dev, it’s the foundational understanding of project architecture, as well as the experience of deploying to production and being able to support scaling reliably.

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

@nicklaunches @NousResearch I haven’t measured anything really, but it definitely seems to be more competent in long sessions, and results in more consistent outputs across sessions for sure

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

I use @NousResearch Hermes agents to help me with a lot of things, and asked this one to tune itself for better memory.

Also asked it to create a diagram and share it's changes.

Any advice on how to get a truly ongoing agent? Second brain?

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

@indiemark_ Lots of bots come ago to 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

@florin_dev I also suspect that he's playing a long game, because he can, and will win.

[Harley @HarleyInHD]

@smoothcode97 If you build something that you use, or something that someone is asking for, you already have your first customer before you start building. That's the way to go.