Announcing lookSideway
Introducing a more efficient way for designers to share your published work with looksideway.com
After 1000s of lines of code, 100s of coffees, 4 domains/3 product name changes, several iterations, I am finally excited to share with the world the first look at https://looksideway.com/
ICYMI
I launched a community for designers called looksideway.com I wrote an introductory post about this a few months ago. You can find it here.
USP for designers: All the projects on Sideway are required to be live/published work.
USP for HRs/Companies: Find talent who constantly ship live work. A portfolio of all the things they have actually worked on and helped bring to life.
Some initial Stats
Within the first day of announcing the platform, I had about 700+ signups on the waitlist. In a week the number reached about 2000+ and currently, we have about 3000+ people on the waitlist.
I released the Beta Platform in batches to throttle the growth. So far Sideway has close to 500 people already on the private beta. This has helped to get feedback and iterate.
What happened in between?
I have been working all this time to simplify the site(it’s harder than it seems), create better user flow, etc. But there were some major features that I have added since then:
Jobs
The goal is to connect our community with more opportunities (contract/freelance) in general.
The focus will be having contract jobs on the platform. Particularly beneficial for freelancers.
- Jobs are for Designers and Front End Developers.
- We’re offering free job posts till the platform is in beta.
Hiring designers? Post a job for free
Spotlight
Spotlight is a list of hand-picked projects from across the web.
Team Accounts
Within the first couple of weeks, I had a request from a really cool design studio wanting to get their whole team on board. I had this on the roadmap but I wanted to work on the core functionality of the website first.
Finally, Team accounts are shipped and free till the platform is in Beta.
What’s next?
1. Generate Personal Websites with Case Studies in minutes
A complete website, along with case-studies generated from your posts on LookSideway. Choose a theme. Hosted over yourusername.looksideway.com . All for free :)
2. Private Projects
- Share via Link or Password Protection
A lot of people wanted a solution for sharing work that’s under NDA. Of course, there might be a better way and we’d love to know if you think you know one — kshitij@looksideway.com
3. Case Study Mode
Projects can be represented or consumed as case studies. We want to do this to make a project conveyed more than just a set of images. Users will eventually be able to showcase this on their websites too if they choose to make their websites with Sideway.
4. In-App Messaging
Kinda self-explanatory.
Join Sideway
If you haven’t joined Sideway yet signup here — www.looksideway.com
Any ideas or suggestions? Send a mail kshitij@looksideway.com
We are also launching on ProductHunt today 👀, Show us some love 😛
A special thanks to these people: Siddharth Arun, Beasty, Rahul Chakraborty, Kieran Parker, Alli Mckee, Chris from Hatchbox, Devyani Bhati, Matteo Pasuto, Darshan Gajara, Yshai Sutton, Nate Butler, Shaun Miller, J. Glerum, Paul Mederos, Oscar Gonzalez, Athul Suresh, Leon and everyone who has supported the idea so far.
