#14 - Rabbit Holes
This last week, Nick and I spent time jumping down rabbit holes.
I spent a lot of my time on Reddit, trying to find ways to grow the Software Mentor newsletter. I’ve learned a lot about engaging with the Reddit community, a group of people who notoriously hate being marketed towards. Sometimes they love me. Sometimes they hate me.
Nick spent much of the week grappling with web security and experimenting with passwordless login architectures for Ram and SpaceTime. He made this observation:
Very amusing how authentication providers and advertisers are effectively using the same techniques and facing the same challenges
The technique he’s referring to is the “third party cookie”, which is a browser feature that is going away in a couple years. And reason for the similarity:
They each want to know who the person behind the keyboard is
Your identity on the web is often just a cookie. Isn’t that sweet?
Changelog
Now that Ram and SpaceTime are on the back burner, this is how we spent our week:
Grew Software Mentor by another 70+ subscribers. If you know anyone in the first couple years of their software journey, this newsletter might just turbocharge their progress.
Held our weekly IndieHackers hangout, where I presented on Reddit (video, Reddit presentation starts at around 12 minutes)
Building out a passwordless login for Ram and SpaceTime!
Miscellaneous
📨 Last week we did a rundown of companies/trends that were seeing positive growth due to the coronavirus. We got some good feedback, so this week, we’ve put together another list of companies. This time, the theme is email newsletters:
Email-first startups - an essay by Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt, before he started Product Hunt. Unsurprisngly, Ryan later started Product Hunt as an email-first company. And years later, his company got acquired by fellow email-first company, AngelList.
[new blog post] Email-First Startups: buff.ly/13ah61D mentioned: @timehop, @idonethis, @AngelList, @sunriseapp, @ThrillistNewsletter-first product launches - a trend is emerging where communities are sprouting around newsletters, and those newsletters are offering exclusive products to paying subscribers. Example 👇
Substack - we love Substack. It’s what powers this newsletter. Its simplicity allows users to jump straight into reading and subscribing (and for others, paying). But did you know about all of these alternatives?
Buttondown - a bootstrapped alternative to Substack
MailChimp - the thing everyone used before Substack
TinyLetter (acquired by MailChimp in 2011) - a thing people still definitely use
Is there an API for that? Sure is:
Amazon SES - “Simple Email Service”, everything by AWS is “simple”
Sendgrid (acquired by Twilio)
Some newsletters actually give you the news. These three are massive now (millions of subscribers): The Hustle, Morning Brew, The Skimm
And finally, a little baby company that might be up to something interesting, Mailbrew:
We think email is cool again. And because you’ve made it this far on this email, maybe you do too :)
Stay safe out there! 😷