Toby

distribution guy - sharing techniques to help you grow your product
1 exit, now building to $100k MRR

[Toby @toby_infinite]

starting a vlog of my journey scaling Geograph - as much for my own record as anything else. will be sharing what I learn, what works, what doesn't
introducing episode 1: distribution in the age of AI

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@levelsio potentially interesting but meaningless without a scale

[Toby @toby_infinite]

yes exactly - it's not about not moving on but rather going deep enough to know it won't work first

have you had many products you pivoted from?

[Toby @toby_infinite]

this is spot on: failure doesn't have to be part of the journey.

I see people shipping 30 products instead of going deep on one

the steps are simple:
1) choose your product carefully - does it solve a real pain? are people willing to pay to solve it?
2) launch and get feedback
3) evolve your product to get to product-market fit
4) market hard
5) only then give up and move on

depth is a moat, you need to go so far in that a weekend-cloner can't catch you

I'd rather have one product people can't live without than 30 nobody remembers

[Jackson @Jtyles]

Often, the most toxic thing on 𝕏 for new builders is the advice.

It almost killed my first product. If you’re in your first year of building, stretch that attention span for a minute and read this.

Scroll long enough and you’ll see the same story everywhere. Someone failed for 2 years before their first hit. Someone else shipped 5 flops before finding a winner.

We watch founders we look up to, like @robj3d3, fail for a while before winning big. It’s just as easy to assume our story HAS to go the same way. It doesn’t. Everyone’s path is different.

Then comes the advice. A lot of successful founders (not all) will tell you some version of this: your first product isn’t supposed to work, so expect it to fail.

I listened.

In August, I finally landed on a great idea and started building fast, with a launch planned for this month. The idea deserved more effort than what I was building. In my head, it was supposed to fail anyway, so why not get something out there and get it over with?

Expecting to fail also drained my motivation. I’d get something half done, pivot to something else, get that half done, and pivot again. I never finished anything before starting the next thing.

Eventually, it clicked. I was building the failure I’d been told to expect.

My first product can win. If it doesn’t, that’s fine, and everything I learned goes into the next one. But I should expect it to win, because that kind of delusional hope largely determines how well I build it and how hard I market it.

So right before I was about to launch, I flipped my mindset. I’m now building this as if Elon Musk is going to review it personally. The launch is moving to October so I can polish it properly. When it ships, you’ll get my best work instead of my fastest.

Nobody creates something really good if they expect to fail. Don’t expect to fail.

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@SoraiaDev oh man 🫠 I guess the solution is to make a product good enough that the good reviews drown out the idiots right?

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@neural_mind @emilkowalski Thanks for sharing

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@dmytrovirych Reddit can be brutal - there is serious issue on there with anyone making anything getting called AI slop these days, even if it is a well-designed great product

[Toby @toby_infinite]

how long do you spend on marketing vs building on average?

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@VanpeltVentures @claudeai I'd have been there dude! hope the 4 of you had some good chats

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@richvieren hahaha. there are loads of benefits of coffee, hosing it is the way

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@buildwithmaya 💯 same! has made me feel pretty bad about my slow X progress but then also shown me it can be done if we lock in

[Toby @toby_infinite]

this is one of the best pieces of marketing I've seen in a long time

1) set yourself ambitious public goal
2) use your product IRL to show how it directly solves pain your target customers have
3) share the story of the journey

[Rob Hallam @robj3d3]

I’m growing a new account from 0 followers to viral to prove a point.

Step 8: it's growing faster than I imagined

How I'm doing it:

> making friends
> sharing the follower wins
> using SuperX Engage feeds to find the posts to reply to

That's it so far.

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@bamieater sweet - good shout! it's time consuming but worth it think! shiiiip it! 🚀

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@robj3d3 it's funny I've been planning something similar for my next vlog video: giving myself 90 days to grow Geograph using Geograph in public

it's not quite a fast with SEO 😅

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@MartinTale I used to love bomberman - can you set some Jev bots loose in there?

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@bamieater looking forward to seeing what you launch!

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@bamieater what are you shipping next?

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@Adamlags @robj3d3 yes would love to know what are you DMing them after commenting @robj3d3 ?

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@_aueio_ love the site, nice to see something with a bit of heart

[Toby @toby_infinite]

@abhi_ships i'm surprised to see them actually shipping new features at all, seems like the product hasn't evolved (apart from jamming in AI) at all over the last 10 years