Building a product in less than 24 hours and getting to #4 on Product Hunt
I can’t believe it’s only been 4 weeks since we all quit our jobs to pursue our cryptocurrency startup Ember Fund, it feels like it’s been months. It’s all been a blur, but in the best way possible. A bit of a cliche, but it really has been a rollercoaster ride. From one moment to another, it’s been depressive lows to manic highs. The cryptocurrency industry is moving so damn fast. Within weeks, new competitors surface, technologies become obsolete, and $100 million ICO funded projects promise the world… and we have to compete with that. Then, literally the next day partnership opportunities arise, we make new breakthroughs in our technology, get validation from users, and then the cycle continues. Every second seems like we’re on the brink of a breakthrough or … breakdown.
Through it all, one thing kept us sane….. music.
There are 4 of us and we come from very diverse backgrounds. I’m Asian American, Guilluame is French, Mario is from Spain and Walid is Arabic but one thing we all have in common is music. There are times in the work day we need to do what we’ve coined our “conceptual talks” but then for hours, we all plugin, throw on headphones, and get in our own zone.
Music for me opens up a dimension of thinking. It frames the way you look at the world in such a special way. It inspires, heals and focuses you and I think we all feel that way a bit. That's why we were intrigued by Ryan’s idea.
TLDR: Today, we got an idea, built a product, got to #3 on Product Hunt, all in less than 72 hours…… and it was all because of an accidental text message on Telegram
Telegram’s UI makes it really easy for you to send a message to the wrong group or person (ahem Telegram). 8pm Monday night Walid accidentally sent a group chat instead of a private message to himself. The message looked like this:
Immediately I turned to Walid: “Amazing idea man! Lets build it!”
He turned to me and was puzzled: “What do you mean?”
Me: “The tweet!”
Walid: “Oh that! I meant to just send it to myself for reference, haha”
He had no idea what I was talking about and meant to just send it to himself because he was referencing something else in the image. After we cleared up the confusion which took some time, we spent the next few hours deliberating if we should build it or not. Our Product Hunt launch for our cryptocurrency startup is in 2 weeks and we’ve been up till 11pm–12am every night 6 days a week trying to prepare for it. Taking away a day to build this would be a huge hit to our productivity.
But we liked the idea too much, we had to do it. I left at my usual hour and went to sleep. The next day, I wake up to a telegram message:
And of course, I replied with a ton of emojis.
They had stayed up all night building the product. Mario, knowing very little HTML (but is probably the best backend / adserver engineer in LA) basically learned it on the fly. Guillaume built the entire backend.
A few hours later, we teed up an email to an address we guessed because none of us had Ryan’s email, then hit the send button. Walid and Mario took care of the harassment on Twitter to make sure Ryan saw it :)
Ryan Hoover, true to form, was super cool. He got back to us within 30 minutes, said it was awesome and told us we should post it on Product Hunt. He had subscribed to our ship page for our crypto project. The 4 of us started screaming at the top of our lungs so the neighbors came over and told us to shut it. We did.
We launched the project the very next day and got to #1 (it’s currently at #3) It’s been so much fun. Thanks for reading and checking out our project(s). Have any fun startup stories? Please share!
Questions about either project Ember Jams or Ember Fund? I’d love to hear from you, feel free to email me at alex at emberfund.io.
