Underway Rich

Building 'underway'

CEO Closed and Paid / Managing Partner Nexgrowth

#buildinpublic

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

Guys, it's been a while, but I'm back.

Introducing: Underway

Thirty-one days ago I started documenting building my own company, in private, at the end of each day.

Not a vlog. An interview. The app reads my day; it knows me inside out, asks me about it out loud, and cuts my answers into a numbered episode while I brush my teeth.

Every reason I never did this before is the reason I built it:

> "I'll do it for a week and stop." Episodes count, not days. Miss a week and episode 12 still follows 11. A pause is one tap.

> "I'd sit there with nothing to say." It reads your calendar, your commits, your notes, and asks about what actually happened.

> "Then there's the edit." There is no edit. Minutes after you stop, the episode exists: cut, captioned, covered.

> "I can't put this in public yet." Then don't. Everything is in stealth until you say. Release the whole run the day you go public, or release behind a paywall.

> "Who would even watch?" No hooks. It's a serial. People come back for episode 47 because they watched 46, and the directory is where they find you.

> "I'm not a writer." It's an interview. You never write a word. The thread, the post and the caption are written from what you said.

> "I'd film it three times." One take is the take. The cut does the tidying.

34 episodes later, I have the one thing no founder can make afterwards: the beginning, dated, in my own words, before I knew how it turned out.

Now I want ten founders to use it before anyone else.

Free for three months. Any stage, any kind of business, camera or no camera. In return I want one thing: tell me what's wrong with it, every week, honestly.

If that's you, reply "in" or DM me. First ten.

And from here on, you'll be hearing from me. I'm documenting Underway the same way, one episode at a time, and I'll be posting them here.

Watch me here: https://t.co/47c3g4Qf2z

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

X posting test from Underway — ignore.

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

You finally did it.

Soon it'll feel normal. The win fades into the week. The first version becomes the old version. You stop remembering how today felt.

and by the time you realise, youre 6 months down the line with nothing documented

underway is a daily on-camera diary. It asks about your day. You talk. Tap Done. That feeling becomes your next episode.

Keep how today felt. Document the beginning before it turns ordinary.

Three free episodes.
https://t.co/0ksQmEF1tq

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

Episode 7.

LinkedIn and YouTube connected in the morning, the whole series switched to private by the evening.

Documenting a build and protecting it pull against each other.

The detail that makes a diary worth watching is the same detail you may not want out there before a patent is filed.

LinkedIn and YouTube are connected now, alongside the calendar, Zoom, Fathom, Fireflies and Stripe.

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

You're a founder, and you forgot to document the beginning

BIG MISTAKE

The good news is you're no different.

Most founders do. The first version, the first customer, the first late night that actually mattered- gone, because nobody was filming.

Underway is a daily on-camera diary for what you're building now. It asks about your day. You talk. Tap Done. Episode ready.

You don't need the whole origin story. Start from tonight.

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

For your future self.

Most founders only remember the wins.

The middle days disappear, the blank pages, the almosts, the quiet work nobody clapped for.

I built underway to remember these highlights.

Underway is a numbered diary of what you actually did, filmed while it's happening. No editor. No polish tax.

Just you on camera or via podcast audio, and keep the proof for the person / business you're becoming.

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

@devantae_masaun @commas @FlexSuperApp you gonna be here?

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

I sat down to record a full product walkthrough of underway. Clicked film. Meant to share my screen and walk through the site, community, integrations, how it all works.

No share button. Not in that mode. Bug. I could have deleted the take, fixed it with Cloud Code, started again. That’s what polished demos do.

I kept talking instead. Transparency is the product. If you can’t show the missing button, you say the button is missing.

Episode 4: The missing share button. Filmed in private, before the series went public. The kind of episode you’ll want in a year — proof you were building in the open even when the UI wasn’t ready.

https://t.co/JDUlrwpY63

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

Good morning from vegas.

Suns not even up yet but I’m wide awake.

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

Episode 3. The walkthrough where I could not show you the setup screen.

And for me, this is all about being transparent, forget about being perfect, and showing the reality of building something. I want to show you all the ups and all the downs.

https://t.co/zOSq3Muwny

Every product demo you have ever watched was recorded after the thing worked. This one was filmed while the app was in use, which is exactly why one screen stayed hidden.

I walked through the Today tab, where episode 2 from earlier today was already sitting, and the push I made today so you can record more than one episode a day. Then I hit film another, it said set up your shot, and because I was already in the process of setting one up, I could not show you.

Also in this one:
• Freestyle, the voice note button that saves a thought during the day as context for tonight's episode

• Context pulled from Git pushes, emails, meetings, Stripe, screenshots and video capture

• Where it stands: I am going to see whether I can add screenshots to an episode I have already recorded, so I can show that screen after all

For any founder who wants a record of the build without turning it into an editing job.

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

It goes like this.

Your workday is finished. Your video is still to edit.

That’s the part that kills the habit. (It killed it for me.)

Ten to forty minutes of footage, an hour in a timeline, captions, one more trim, and by Thursday you’re choosing between the episode and the rest of your life lol.

underway never opens an editor. I’ve taken editing away completely.

You answer. You tap Done.

A few minutes later the episode exists, cut, captioned, numbered.

Your words, in your order.

That’s because documenting isn’t about a perfect video, it’s about the process.

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

@AntisShah Same

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

Episode 2. The episode where I explain where Underway came from: I pushed away marketing and creating content for the app I was already building.

https://t.co/gTZF8e9te0

A good product can go unseen for a reason that has nothing to do with the product.

The founder looks at what making content actually involves, day after day, and quietly decides not to.

Paid ads are always there, but they cost money.

Organic is free, and the price of free is time, effort and patience. That is where a lot of apps stop.

My fiancé and I are building a wedding guest camera app.

I put the marketing off at the start, because marketing and sales are my bread and butter, and I assumed I would take over at a certain point.

We got to that point, sat down to talk about content, and both hit a wall.

Mine was not the camera. I am, quote-unquote, an extrovert; I have been in films and TV ads.

It was the thought process behind it: the hook, the script, the lighting, then doing it again tomorrow. It kind of just made me think, do you know what? Forget it, it's too difficult.

I also cover:

• The wedding guest camera app my fiancé and I are building, and why I left the content until later
• The paid options staring at us, Facebook, YouTube, Google and LinkedIn ads, against the free one
• Why retail and the public connect with the founder rather than the brand, especially while you are still building
• Where Underway Live actually came from: if all I had to do was sit in front of a screen and answer questions about what I had done, I would do it
• Where things stand right now: episode two, slightly addicted, waking up thinking about the topic, and recording this one at 11 AM instead of the evening
• The goal of 1 million annual recurring revenue, and the directory of everything I built sitting there at the end of it

This one is for the builder who is fine talking but never gets round to filming, and who has worked out that building in public is not the hard part. The filming is. You can start tonight.

#buildinpublic #underway #founderdiary #weddingguestapp #organiccontent

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

@LauraLoumd Couldn’t agree more

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

@annasoreskin Let’s do it

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

@alohaproxy hey thanks ill check it out!

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

@flowzonedev Always

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

Episode 1. I recorded on the 2nd of September.

Woke up the next day and did not like what came out.

Every editing tool pushes you the same way, towards something clean.

That is fine for a launch film and wrong for a diary, because the first day of a company is messy and almost nobody keeps a record of it.

If the tool meant to capture that start quietly asks you to make it neat, you either fiddle with it for an hour or you drop it.

See my thoughts below ninjas

For anyone building in public who keeps re-recording their first episode instead of posting it. You can start tonight with the version that is not perfect...

https://t.co/jR8nKQ6Li8

[Mitansh @mitansh_j07]

@underwayrich episode 1 of the startup diary landing after keeping the messy edit is honest
that day-one energy coming through is the point

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

So I get it

You're building something, you want to document it, but you're not ready to tell the world?

underway has your back and saves it all in your private vault

ready to go live with one click

[Underway Rich @underwayrich]

Well, today is off to a good start.

A meeting with https://t.co/Ar034WQTCu so that i can get my ads rolling...

Turns out their sales department knows a few things from closed & paid

I joined from the car and he immediately rescheduled

Hat tip to you serrr

I think we gonna get along just fine