Hey HN,<p>Having been part of a fast-growing YC startup, I wanted to show what the early days of making a product are actually like—so I'm building a startup product myself and video recording the entire process.<p>Literally every minute I spend working on Shuffleboard is recorded and uploaded to YouTube. Each video is a couple hours long, and shows both my face and my screen as I work. There are about 30 sessions and about 70 hours of work so far.<p>All videos: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFP8wPiIB7kz7pbYCnjIcYN8EhL9NAnGt" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFP8wPiIB7kz7pbYCnjIc...</a><p>See the live product: <a href="https://getshuffleboard.com/" rel="nofollow">https://getshuffleboard.com/</a><p>What I've been doing:<p><pre><code> - Talking about who my customers are and what value I'm trying to create for them
- Designing the basic UX
- Interviewing potential users
- Running usability tests
- Designing a brand
- Maintaining a product backlog
- Reading documentation
- Writing code
- Fixing bugs
- Learning how to write unit tests
- Spending days trying to figure out Firestore security rules
- Prepping for a mini-launch (including writing this HN post)
- Getting stuck/bored/tired
- Making lots of mistakes
</code></pre>
Next steps:<p><pre><code> - Sales
- More usability tests/interviews
- More features
- Improving the visual design
- Subscriptions with Stripe
</code></pre>
Tech stack:<p><pre><code> - React + Create React App (with styled components)
- Firebase for the db (Firestore), plus Firebase auth and hosting
</code></pre>
Like in any startup, there's a rollercoaster of ups and downs. The visual brand was designed in a couple hours, but figuring out how to finally secure the Firestore database took almost a week. There are moments where I'm having a blast, moments where I want to give up, and lots of hours where nothing much happens at all.<p>Would love to hear what you think :)<p>Sam
This is interesting - tho I would question the sanity of anybody who watches it all - perhaps a daily 10 minute highlight (extended for anything particularly noteworthy)?<p>If nothing else, the goldfish bowl effect should keep you focused...<p>Best of luck.