Tim Harrison

I make things 🙂, DMs open

[Tim Harrison @TheTurboTimbo]

🚀 Launch day!

I've been working away on a new app Spoken.

Spoken serves up short daily tasks that challenge intermediate+ language learners.
🎙️ Speaking: spontaneous self-expression
👂 Listening: real human voices, speaking naturally
👉 https://t.co/awUbjzk2Ri

[Fly.io @flydotio]

Our App of the Week, Shanty Lab by @TheTurboTimbo, turns your browser into a musical playground! Create custom drum patterns, arrange songs, and watch the weather respond to your beats. Perfect for both music makers and rhythm enthusiasts to craft their own digital shanties 🥁 ⚡️

🔗 ➡️ 🧵

[Chris Elmendorf @CSElmendorf]

🥳New paper! "Do Housing Supply Skeptics Learn?"🎆

Yessir, they do!

And when they do, they become *much* more supportive of market-rate housing development.

1/🧵

https://t.co/MPjIwXuqyg

[Tim Harrison @TheTurboTimbo]

@MartinSLewis I made a free app to help people Switch Banks, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it @MartinSLewis https://t.co/9d10JUn99L

[John Rush @johnrush]

I built 30 startups in 20 years.
VC-backed, Bootstrapped, Apps, SaaS, B2B, B2C.

75 mistakes I regret making:

1. Doing consumer apps.
The Failure rate here is 100x of b2b rates, nearly a lottery.

2. Raising VC money.
I felt like Marc Zuckerberg when we raised the first round. All journalists interviewing us. Felt like a dream.
Eventually, most of these startups failed by being funded too early.

3. Hiring too early.
Previously, startups took pride in large teams - a key sign of growth back then.
Founders should do most of the work until PMF.
Employees and contractors won't have enough love and passion for your project.

4. Ignoring SEO.
None of the people in my network did SEO. We all thought it was something for late and we kept postponing it forever.

5. Ignoring content marketing.
Never took blogging seriously. Big mistake.

6. Social Media Marketing.
This is my biggest regret. I started using twitter just a year ago. Got to 20k followers now. What if I started 20 years ago? Could I have 1M followers now? I think so.

7. Skipping idea validation.
I'd always assume for the audience. Anticipate what they need. It almost never turned out to be true.
My best projects were those I thought will fail and failed projects had my highest hopes at the start.

8. Hiring managers.
I haven't yet seen any useful manager in a startup.
They might be useful for corporations, but for startup I should have hired only doers.

9. Chasing Investors.
For every startup I'd spend 40% of my time fundraising.
I'd succeed in most of the cases, but at what cost?
I haven't done a single outreach to investors in 2 years, but I get VCs knocking my doors, because I have good traction and they search for such projects daily.

10. Hiring specialized of developers.
There is nothing less efficient than a team of specialized developers for a startup.
Today I have 1 fullstack dev doing 5x more progress on a project than a team of 12 back then.
Avoid "teams" at all cost.

11. Hiring people I don't wanna hug.
My cofounder, an old Danish man said this to me in 2015. If you don’t wanna hug the person, it means you dislike them on a chemical/animal level.

12. Betting on partners.
I partnered up with large billion dollar corporates many times with different startups.
They promise huge stuff, millions of users, but end up just wasting your time, destroy focus, shift priorities, make you spend zillions on ramping up security and compliance, and eventually bring in no users/money.

13. Shiny objects.
I fell for crypt0 hype. Got super rich, then lost it all.
Years wasted. Almost got depressed by seeing how scammy and greedy humans can be, even my own partners.

14. Holding on a bad project for too long.
I kept believing in projects after years of no traction.
I thought that one day something magic will happen and things will go up. It was just a waste of time.

15. Went to tech conferences.
Totally waste of time.
Most people there are the “good” employees of corporations who were sent there as a perk for being loyal to the corporation.

16. Scrum is a Scam.
If I had a team that had to be nagged every morning with questions as if they were children in kindergarten, then things would eventually fail. The only good stuff I managed to do happened with people who were grownups and could manage their stuff on their own. We would just do everything over chat as a sync on goals and plans.

17. Outsourced development & marketing.
The vendors were good, but the outcome was not good.
Startups are so difficult that there is almost no chance someone from outside can do a good job for them.

18. Started with a free tier in b2b.
Free proejcts attracted totally wrong crowd who gave a feedback that was only relevant to please the rest of the "free" crowd. But "paid" users turn out to be very different and have different needs.
Few times I started with no free and had no sales, so later I added free version. But this was a mistake too. If nobody wanna pay for my product, I have to fix the product or find another audience for it.

19. Code from scratch.
My team would spend first 3 months coding basic things like auth, admin panel, cruds and etc.
It was huge waste of time.
The momeny I started using boilerplates, the speed went up 10x.

20. Spent little time with my family & friends.
I worked way too much. Didn't take holidays at all.
It was very destructive for my creativity. Once I started having some off, I became way more creative.
Quality >Quantity.

That's it.
What's your biggest regret as a startup founder?

[John Rush @johnrush]

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[Switch Tracker @SwitchTracker]

We’re at an all-time high for bonuses - we’ve got over £2000 in free cash waiting for you to collect!

Download for free today 😉

[Tim Harrison @TheTurboTimbo]

@VictoriaCoren @RealDMitchell @OVOEnergy @OctopusEnergy There’s also a £50 bonus for switching to octopus Check out this switch offer from Octopus Energy worth £50 https://t.co/p4ashFApb8

[Tim Harrison @TheTurboTimbo]

The power of someone posting about your app on Reddit is incredible!

[Switch Tracker @SwitchTracker]

Switching season is back open!

Lloyds just launched a new offer - that’s another £175 of free cash 🤑

It’s all so easy (and free!) with Switch Tracker 📱 💷 🏦

[Umar Hansa @umaar]

✨ I'm available for a new job opportunity!

👨‍💻 Looking for Fullstack Web Development, or Developer Advocate-type role

➡️ My website includes links to code I've written, socials, articles published, videos created, courses etc. https://t.co/W2D1chbhTM

🔁 Reposts appreciated!

[Switch Tracker @SwitchTracker]

Bank switches have (temporarily🤞🏻) dried up - but have no fear!

Switch Tracker has over £800 available in other offers, from investment apps to energy supply.

Don’t miss out on free money!

[Switch Tracker @SwitchTracker]

Any feature requests for Switch Tracker?

We’re feeling very “new year new you” 🗓️ 🌄 📱

[Switch Tracker @SwitchTracker]

It’s switching season once again!

First Direct, TSB and Co-Operative Bank switching offers are all now live, with over £1200 in total available across all offers!

💰

[Tim Harrison @TheTurboTimbo]

@threehourcoffee I use Phind quite often: it’s gpt-4 for free and I find works incredibly well. I use it in the browser but I believe you can also use it in vscode if that’s your jam

[Tim Harrison @TheTurboTimbo]

Snuck in just inside 2023, my first AI feature: Chat with Our Party Wall.

If you have questions about party wall agreements you can now get answers.

https://t.co/KjrhuuluIr

[Tim Harrison @TheTurboTimbo]

I'd love to hear any feedback, don't hold back 😬

[Tim Harrison @TheTurboTimbo]

I quietly released a new product a couple of weeks ago, very un-indie-hacker of me, so let's get into it:

Our Party Wall is a site dedicated to helping people handle their own Party Wall Agreements and save money

There's a few firsts for me ... 🧵

https://t.co/V8dCOZvyoZ

[Tim Harrison @TheTurboTimbo]

Loads of learning on this project, it took a bit longer than it should have. This was partly because of all the learning but also because of a bit of fear of failure I think. Now that it's out it's great to see sign ups and getting your first sale feels absolutely incredible