
Show HN: I’m building a startup and recording the entire process on YouTube - sampl
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFP8wPiIB7kz7pbYCnjIcYN8EhL9NAnGt
======
sampl
Hey HN,

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.

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.

All videos:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFP8wPiIB7kz7pbYCnjIc...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFP8wPiIB7kz7pbYCnjIcYN8EhL9NAnGt)

See the live product:
[https://getshuffleboard.com/](https://getshuffleboard.com/)

What I've been doing:

    
    
      - 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
    

Next steps:

    
    
      - Sales
      - More usability tests/interviews
      - More features
      - Improving the visual design
      - Subscriptions with Stripe
    

Tech stack:

    
    
      - React + Create React App (with styled components)
      - Firebase for the db (Firestore), plus Firebase auth and hosting
    

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.

Would love to hear what you think :)

Sam

~~~
new_guy
If learning how to secure a database took you almost a week I'd respectfully
suggest forgetting about YouTube and concentrate on learning the basics.

~~~
sampl
Yeah, it's normally a pretty basic task--in this case I was working with
Firestore, which required a special nested structure to be able to write the
security rules I needed. A week is a bit of an exaggeration anyway--it's a
couple hours a day for a few days.

------
mellosouls
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)?

If nothing else, the goldfish bowl effect should keep you focused...

Best of luck.

~~~
sampl
Thanks! Yeah it's almost an insane amount of video, but I've made it fairly
easy to skip to the interesting parts if you want to see them. We'll see how
it goes :)

