For a long time I’ve been helping companies build successful software product businesses. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to build software products of my own.
I’m hugely interested in building great software products. This interest has given me great respect for people who create software products people love and driven me to work with SaaS founders to learn how they build software products successfully.
I’m currently working on my own software projects and continuing to build upon the skills I’ve identified as necessary to create great software product businesses.
Here are the skills I see as important to building successful software product businesses:
- UX research
- UX design
- front-end/backend dev
- product marketing
To learn these skills, I’ve:
- interviewed experts in each of these respective fields (identifying best practices and most common mistakes)
- consumed the best resources available (books [https://blog.cvonu.com/reading], courses, videos, etc)
- been a guinea pig for consultants (joined over a dozen focus groups, performed dozens of user tests, and took notes on what did and didn’t work)
- and then performed the work myself (interviewed hundreds of customers for different companies, recreated the UIs of popular applications, designed new ones, did user testing for over a dozen companies
- and lastly taught myself how to code (front-end (HTML, CSS, and Javascript)
I’ve learned a lot along the way, way more than any one book will tell you. Much of what I’ve learned is what not to do. There are lots of ways founders can fail in any one of these areas.
My efforts have been very purposeful: learn how to do everything involved in creating a successful software business from the people who’ve done it themselves.
If you’d like to follow along in my journey and read more about what I’m building next, you can subscribe here [GHOST_URL/signup/].
Here’s what I’ve built so far:
Is This Book Good?
The chrome extension that helps you spot red flags in reviews when you’re shopping for books on Amazon.com.
Is This Book Good? - Screen books before you buy them
The browser extension that helps you spot red flags in book reviews while shopping on Amazon.com.
Screen books before you buy them [https://www.isthisbookgood.com/]
Things I did to build and launch this product:
Research competing products and interview users of them including Goodreads and Blinkist.
Create a full product spec.
Develop the Chrome extension using a combination of javascript, HTML and RegEx (View the public GitHub repo [https://github.com/Christian-von-Uffel/Is-this-book-good-extension]).
Design and build a dedicated product website [https://www.isthisbookgood.com].
Launch Is This Book Good on ProductHunt.com [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/is-this-book-good]
Terrific Tasks
The todo app that helps you get things done by helping you write better tasks.
Terrific Tasks | The todo-app that helps you get things done
Convert long lists of todos into actionable tasks you can get done.
The todo-app that helps you get things done [https://www.terrifictasks.com/]
Things I did to build and launch this product:
Perform user research and audit competing products
Create a full product spec.
Design and build an MVP and dedicated product website [https://www.terrifictasks.com].
Terrific Tasks is a mobile responsive web-app that’s currently in development.
Perfecting Product
UX design and UX research.
Perfecting Product | UX Research and Product Strategy
Design world class experiences.
UX Research and Product Strategy [https://www.perfectingproduct.com]
Things I did to build and launch this product:
Perform user research and audit competing websites.
Create a full product spec.
Design and build a dedicated website.
Write about building this website from scratch:
Our Website is Our Product | Perfecting Product
For our website to succeed as a product, we need to deliver a high quality user experience, build an authentic brand, and deliver useful and non-obvious advice.
Perfecting Product [https://www.perfectingproduct.com/blog/our-philospohy]
Update:
I’ve also created a basic developer portfolio which you can see here:
Christian von Uffel’s Developer Portfolio
Technologies, applications, websites, designs, and tutorials [https://app.cvonu.com]