What’s this email about?
I’m sending weekly emails about a new product I’m building (Agora), documenting what I did each week and why. I’m doing this to:
Clarify my thinking: writing I find is the best way to do this.
Keep myself accountable: it’s easy to start a business and if it doesn’t get traction, you quietly give up. If it’s public, I can’t do that.
Share things I learn: tools I use, content that helps me, things that work, things that don’t work. If you may one day be interested in starting a business, you may find some lessons here (probably a laundry list of things to not do).
I’m not going to spend more than 30 minutes a week on writing it, so don’t expect anything Shakespearean. It will be quick dot points, like the rest of this email.
Quick background
Agora is an app designed to make philosophy books more accessible and enjoyable. I’ve built side projects around reading for some time. Why?
I think there are lots of ways to improve the reading experience, especially around retention, application and making it social.
Reading is a great way to learn and understand more about the world.
I think people will pay for a product that helped them understand more.
Quick history
These are the projects I’ve previously built around reading.
Suite Books: a place to log the books you read (and wanted to read) and discuss these with your friends.
It grew to a few thousand users, but retention was terrible. A typical person might finish a book a month, so they really only needed to come to the app once a month, which is not the way to build a new habit.
Synto: this was pre-reading and post-reading questions to apply lessons from the philosophy book you read to everyday life (there were also professor insights while you read).
I constantly had come for the tool, stay for the network in my head so wanted to build this amazing tool for the individual and then layer a network on top of that.
It had good signup and activation metrics, poor retention (again).
Agora prototype: I then built a prototype making it social first. End of chapter questions centred around Meditations by Marcus Aurelius that you share and discuss.
The retention metrics started looking a lot better, and I had some power users (people asking for more features, referring others on).
Fake door tests (buttons to click on the app that go nowhere) and qualitative data was consistent in where people would find value and pay.
So retention plus an indication people will pay has given me the confidence to build a proper product that will (hopefully) start generating revenue.
A few points to get started
I’m not a trained developer, so will be learning as I go. I’ve worked in tech, studied computer science (a postgrad degree) and built no-code apps, but never something properly.
I have a roadmap for the next 5 months to build a web app and get a small group of users giving feedback. This app will include:
A reader: a way to read books (or book) to start.
Some social features in the book
Some professor insights in the book.
Sounds easy when I put it that way. I’ll try and remember that as I’m about to throw my computer out the window.
I have two hypotheses and if I can prove either one, I’ll keep building.
Does social reading create retention?
Will engaged users pay for expert insights?
If not, I’ll have to pivot quickly or move to something different.
Next week
I’m building the foundation and authorisation for a reader app. That is, setting up the files and folders that I’ll write code in, setting up a database (i.e. getting an account and creating tables for data to be stored) and building the pages to sign up and log in, which thankfully is made easy by the database provider. I’m also going to be re-learning some JavaScript concepts and learning React.
Will share my frustrations and successes next week.
Nick