rdavis0720
New member
I was a product manager at a small-medium SaaS company. 2 months ago, I got laid off because the (0 to 1) product I was leading (AI enabled influencer marketing tool) wasn't working out, and the company was running low on cash to continue funding it.
It was a serious punch in the gut, mainly because I was the main driver of that product and felt responsible for its failure and my teammates' layoffs.
But after getting past that, I started getting excited about starting my own projects with my new found time. I've been following the developments in AI closely, playing with it, using it at work etc. I saw that there's a lot of cool stuff that you can do now that wasn't feasible just 1 year ago and so i've been itching to get more hands-on with it. Now's the time I guess!
What I built for my first project:
A website that shows you the top portable monitors according to Redditors.
Timeline:
2 months ago - started (seriously) learning to code
1 month ago - deployed first version of website
Nonetheless, it was quite energizing to see some validation from my few instances of sharing
https://preview.redd.it/dj4xz52db0u...bp&s=d676042d092999e3e2047bf921499a09bb10b5dc
https://preview.redd.it/ifie50tdb0u...bp&s=6562518107619aa00138a418cd5cfd2db53d4cb4
How I decided on the idea:
I had a bunch of project ideas, but I went with this first because:
I personally struggled when I was first researching portable monitors
I had a relatively good idea of how I could put it together
Some notes that may help others new to coding:
I've been using Replit as my main IDE
Some of the key things that I plan to work on:
Distribution
My very simple tech stack:
If you want any personal advice on portable monitors, feel free to ask too.
UPDATE 15 Apr 2024:
I realized there was a typo in the site code (from a last fix that I didn't test thoroguhly) before publishing this post
If you want to zoom into specific aspects (e.g. portability, negative comments), the relevant parts of the comments should be highlighted
https://i.redd.it/dhvmqbgmpnuc1.gif
There was a typo in the mark.js CDN and so the highlight wasn't working
It was a serious punch in the gut, mainly because I was the main driver of that product and felt responsible for its failure and my teammates' layoffs.
But after getting past that, I started getting excited about starting my own projects with my new found time. I've been following the developments in AI closely, playing with it, using it at work etc. I saw that there's a lot of cool stuff that you can do now that wasn't feasible just 1 year ago and so i've been itching to get more hands-on with it. Now's the time I guess!
What I built for my first project:
A website that shows you the top portable monitors according to Redditors.
- Because Google results are now terrible
- Based on AI (+ human checked) analysis of relevant (and recent) posts and comments across Reddit
- Monetization via amazon affiliate links
Timeline:
2 months ago - started (seriously) learning to code
1 month ago - deployed first version of website
- Shared on Reddit in reply to people to people asking for recommendations
- Main criticism (from friends, and myself) was that the comments were hard to parse, which I agreed.
- Looked into SEO and started a blog using Hugo
- Mainly from replying to people on Reddit - posted \~8 replies so far
- Nothing from SEO so far, will probably need to invest more time to figure it out
- Launched v2:
- You can now quickly zoom in to comments that you're interested in (e.g. what's good about the monitor, what are people saying about portability etc)
- Relevant parts are highlighted for easier parsing
- Will be starting to share this more widely in places that I think people will find this helpful
Nonetheless, it was quite energizing to see some validation from my few instances of sharing
https://preview.redd.it/dj4xz52db0u...bp&s=d676042d092999e3e2047bf921499a09bb10b5dc
https://preview.redd.it/ifie50tdb0u...bp&s=6562518107619aa00138a418cd5cfd2db53d4cb4
How I decided on the idea:
I had a bunch of project ideas, but I went with this first because:
I personally struggled when I was first researching portable monitors
- Google sucks now with all the bullshit SEO listicles
- I ended up wasting money on a bad one on my first buy
- People asking for recommendations on Reddit
- Growing trend of adding "reddit" to Google search results
- I have first-hand experience on what is confusing and what matters when choosing one
- I am somewhat up to date with the digital nomad niche and community
I had a relatively good idea of how I could put it together
- From playing with LLMs, I already knew how to use it for cheap yet accurate sentiment analysis and data extraction
- A quick check confirmed that Reddit has an API for getting post and comments data, so I knew I didn't have to deal with scraping which can get complex
Some notes that may help others new to coding:
I've been using Replit as my main IDE
- Upside is that you can skip some of the boring stuff (deploy in a few clicks, don't need to install as much stuff)
- Downside is most tutorials and AI (even Replit's) don't assume a Replit environment which causes confusion for me sometimes
- Replit AI is pretty good. I used Cursor for a while and its a bit better. But Replit AI is cheaper and comes with hosting.
- I love this because I get to see something work faster for the things that I'm excited about
- Previously, I would have to grind through boring examples prescribed by tutorials first to learn the fundamentals, and then try to apply them to build what I wanted
- Now, I can run the generated code and see if it work first. If it works, I can then go learn why it works and how to manipulate it to do more things
- This way of learning feels more energizing and motivating
- But it does helps a ton to be familiar with the language
- Very often, AI will get you only 80% of the way. Knowing the language gets you the last 20%
- When you know the language you can ask the AI to focus on more specific areas and get more specific help
- Knowing how to use AI effectively feels like a bit like knowing how to Google effectively. There's some skill involved which I can't full articulate yet. Something about:
- Knowing how to scope the problem for the AI
- Knowing how much context to provide
- Knowing what keywords / references you should include in your ask
- Static website - no calling to a db in a server (haven't learnt how to do it yet)
- DB is just a sqlite .db file
- To extract and analyze data, I'll have to run the script and update the site manually
Some of the key things that I plan to work on:
Distribution
- Sharing to communities that would find this helpful (let me know if you know any!)
- Try out programmatic SEO
- Detect and filter users that may be affiliated with or incentivized to promote certain products
- Fix some instances where newly posted comments aren't captured
- Extract key specs (e.g. screen size) for easier narrowing down
- System for visitors to flag inaccurate data extraction / classification
My very simple tech stack:
- Replit (IDE and hosting)
- Javascript, CSS, HTML
- Vue.js
- Bootstrap
- Python
- OpenAI
If you want any personal advice on portable monitors, feel free to ask too.
UPDATE 15 Apr 2024:
I realized there was a typo in the site code (from a last fix that I didn't test thoroguhly) before publishing this post
If you want to zoom into specific aspects (e.g. portability, negative comments), the relevant parts of the comments should be highlighted
https://i.redd.it/dhvmqbgmpnuc1.gif
There was a typo in the mark.js CDN and so the highlight wasn't working