Alexander

Building SaaS in public. Sharing the real ups, downs, lessons & mistakes of being a young founder.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

Design tokens are only useful if the team actually uses them consistently. The best design system breaks down when engineers hardcode values because it's faster in the moment.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

What's the worst piece of advice you've ever received about building a business? I'll share mine in the replies.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

I asked Claude to review my onboarding flow and identify where users were most likely to drop off based on the copy and UX description I gave it. It found three real issues. Zero bias, instant feedback.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

The more I build, the more I believe distribution beats product. A great product with no distribution is a private project. An okay product with great distribution is a business.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

Good copy isn't about clever words. It's about saying the right thing to the right person at the right moment.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

Burnout for founders usually isn't from working too hard. It's from working hard on things that aren't working. The exhaustion is the feedback.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

What's the most useful resource you've found for building products? Not the famous ones everyone recommends. The one that actually changed something for you.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

I've started treating my AI tools the same way I treat my team. Clear briefs, clear expectations, clear feedback when the output misses. Better inputs, consistently better outputs.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

Fixed Carloop's mobile performance this week. Load time went from acceptable to fast. The bounce rate improvement was immediate. Speed really is a feature.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

The best decision you'll make in a startup is the one you make before you've spent 6 months building in the wrong direction.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

A well-designed 404 page can turn a frustrating moment into a useful one. Most 404 pages are just apologies. Make yours actually do something.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

What's your honest take on AI-generated content? Do you care if the post you're reading was written by a human or not?

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

Claude handles long-context reasoning better than anything else I've tried. When the problem needs sustained thinking across a lot of information, it's in a different league.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

Something I wish I knew earlier: the first version of your pricing is just the opening bid in a long negotiation with the market. Don't be precious about it.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

Talking to 10 users is worth more than reading 100 threads about your market.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

If your design looks good at 100% zoom but breaks at 80% or 125%, you haven't finished the design. Test at multiple zoom levels. Always.

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

@CodeWithAmann I would take both 🤓

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

Hot take: most product analytics setups track the wrong things. Founders measure what's easy to measure, not what actually predicts whether the product is working.

Agree?

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

@ash_twtz The citation and sources are much better and easier to see

[Alexander @TheDevDesign]

@justbyte_ I think for next.js apps Vercel and Netlify for anything else