2023 reflections on Momentum growth
2023 was challenging, yet innovative.Here's the foundation we've built for Momentum growth in 2024.
Igor Krasnik
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Dec 30, 2023
216 views
My 2023 was challenging. Emotionally, intellectually, financially.
Main lesson: it's super hard to grow products and communities. It requires extreme dedication, desire and confidence to change the way things work, while sustaining yourself and your team financially.
The entrepreneurship path is definitely not for everyone. Small percentage of people will appreciate the ride, and even less founders will "make it".
Yet, being on the mission will push you hard to meet great people, learn lots of skills and accomplish impossible goals.
I’ve looked back at the key events of 2023 to understand the results and goals for upcoming 2024.
PS Here's what I published in the very beginning of the 2023:
Before we started, a quick intro
Momentum is a set of products to build digital products with ease.
Back in January 2023 we didn't have a product. During 2023 we've built 7 products, launched 2 startup bootcamps and grew Momentum to 2,400 users.
Here are some of them:
Paralect — a startup studio that builds Momentum (I am CMO, ex-CTO)
Nano — an internet community of early-stage founders
ClipWing — AI video editing SaaS
Salt & Bold — productised design agency
2023 in review
Here are some of the projects related to Momentum that happened in 2023
☑️ With my key learnings
1
Momentum Feed — Alpha
Few beta testers from Paralect start using Feed to feature their social media posts. We've got notified about new posts via Slack. Now we were able to monitor the updates from different projects.
☑️ It’s hard for people to start posting online
☑️ Creating quality content requires skill, taste and using creative tools
2
Bootcamp, Momentum Page and Wave Alpha
5 founders joined bootcamp program to validate and build startups in public. This was the early test of Momentum tools and philosophy.
☑️ Building in public helps us track founder growth.
☑️ Momentum is proven to be useful for founders
☑️ We can and should handle more founders to have competitive environment. We need to be tougher with requirements.
3
Nano Community, Momentum Beta Test
We've onboarded 20 founders to free 1-month program. Founders were intensively posting and using Momentum. 2 startups got cash prize of $3k, 2 startups got $30k investments from Paralect.
☑️ Community is a full-time job. Stimulate people to collaborate intensively, lead by example
☑️ Need to separate pre-product and post-product batches
☑️ Building fund is a tough job, need VC partners
4
Momentum Page ProductHunt Launch #1
ProductHunt launch was a big success: 1,000+ upvotes, 1,000+ pages created, lots of love in Twitter 🫶
☑️ Prepare the audience before the release few weeks in advance so they learn your face
☑️ Support other makers like it’s your own project
☑️ PH is a great source of "product people" traffic + backlink (gave 8k views in our case)
5
Paralect Branding Marketing Campaigns
We've doubled down on Twitter and social media and made an attempt to bring the whole Paralect team (~200 people) to public. We've accompanied this with few loud campaigns.
☑️ Some of your decisions won’t be accepted by people around (including team and partners). It’s the price of opinion
☑️ Big vision requires long time and collaborative effort to build
☑️ Commit in public keeps you accountable
6
Do It In Public Podcast (20 episodes)
I've launched podcast out of call recording. Thanks to this scrappy podcast I had an opportunity to meet with dozens of talented builders and learn.
☑️ Meeting cool people is the best way to grow
☑️ Having the project like podcast give you an opportunity to get awesome people on a call without being pushy
☑️ Don't overcomplicate content/product first launch, just start
7
We've put our knowledge about building startups into structured docs that other people can follow. The idea is to make our community asynchronous while engaged.
☑️ Present and market each individual page well
☑️ Don't let the document grow. Launch few pages first☑️ Avoid complex philosophical concepts, explain the basics
☑️ Make sure your info-products are indexed in Google properly
8
Salt & Bold validation and Studio built
We've launched a productised agency for the first time to scale our services and learn how we can launch other offerrings.
☑️ Productised offers require very limited and detailed scope. Define timeline, deliverables, portfolio and testimonials
☑️ Create the free tools to use in your services and publish them. Limit productised service with your frameworks
9
Paralect Stack Release, Paralect Website Rebrand
We've used our validated content about no-code tools and turned it into the app. We've simplified the copy and clarified Paralect offers.
☑️ Directories are great way to gain SEO traffic and build trust
☑️ Make interactive websites with less copy to demo value fast
☑️ You can "hack" SEO with Reddit posts
10
Momentum IDE build, including in commercial proposals
Implementing great design, directories, blogs, forms and interactive apps in Momentum. Moving our products to Momentum to consolidate team efforts.
☑️ Relying on MRR growth is too slow and risky, need to link with services to earn revenue early
☑️ To get Momentum to the new global level we need rather get the investments or generate revenue with productised services
☑️ You can sell services using product that is not released yet to polish it
Momentum goals for 2024
Here are few important things we'll be focused on to push Momentum to the new level.
Focus on revenue growth
Grow Momentum internet community, users and partner network for productised services.
• Productised services
• Subscription sales
• VC/community cohorts
Get outside investments
Publish investment offers for Momentum and other products (Ship Low-Code, ClipWing).
Find the VC partners to launch startup cohorts on top of Momentum/Nano.
Consolidate team efforts
Use Momentum for internal and client's projects for dog-fooding and polishing.
Use Momentum as a main destination to drive traffic to.
Want to see how it unfolds?
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