What a journey it has been. Over the years I have always struggled to be consistent on one project, but after many trials, I finally found a routine and product that kept me persistent and consistent.

Over the weekend I launched www.Emailemu.com

Which is a place to discover emails from industry-leading companies without the inbox clutter. It also lets you keep an eye on competitors’ email communications.

Here are 5 things I learned along the way that will hopefully help someone else in their journey.

  1. Whatever you think your MVP is go at least 50% smaller.

I started thinking about what an MVP could look like and as we got into the development I quickly learned how fast things can scope creep if you try to think of every edge case. I added things like categories, filters, search and image download features, and more. the list goes on. Go SMALL and add on.

  1. Be clear when communicating with developers

My day job is a full-time product designer and I am used to communicating designs with developers, but the level of details and expectation settings when working with overseas devs is another level (I’m in the US) I quickly learned to explain every detail, use case, edge case, interaction, scrolling pattern in more…otherwise you will get a very sub-par result.

  1. Activity within communities plays a HUGE role.

This was some of my first exposure to the online communities where tech founders and tech nerds spend their time. I learned that when I was the most active in these communications were the times I got the most signups to my Pre-launch site. I’m not talking just spamming your link everywhere, but rather actually giving value in areas that your see opportunity. Overtime the places to actually talk about your project just naturally occur and don’t feel like soliciting.

  1. Put up a pre-launch site ASAP to test interest

The single best thing I did was get a web flow site up in like 2-3 hours and then start trying to get people to sign up, with just the idea. This I found valuable because it helped tell me if people had an interest in the idea without having to spend any money or time getting a developer to build the site if there was no product market fit.

  1. Delays are the name of the game, so take a deep breath

There were so many delays along the way which forced me to push out my launch date at least 5 times. I learned to take a deep breath and realize that building a product is a marathon, not a sprint. Many of the delays are out of your control. Enjoy the process.