I finally crossed 50 submissions on LaunchNests.
It's a small milestone, but it means a lot to me as a developer building a product outside the usual job-and-code routine.
LaunchNests is a platform for discovering and launching products and tools. I've been building it, improving it, and trying to get it in front of founders who might find it useful.
The numbers have started moving in the right direction.
- 50+ total submissions across tools and products
- 40+ users
- 17 submissions in week 45, up from just one in week 40
Here's how we got here.
The numbers tell a story
| Week | Submissions |
|---|---|
| 40 | 1 |
| 41 | 2 |
| 42 | 5 |
| 43 | 5 |
| 44 | 12 |
| 45 | 17 |
The first week brought one submission. The second brought two.
Weeks 42 and 43 both had five. Then week 44 reached 12, followed by 17 in week 45.
That jump from five to 12 to 17 was exciting to see.
It wasn't a perfectly smooth growth curve. There was a plateau, followed by a stronger increase. That's a useful reminder that early projects rarely grow in a straight line.
I'm happy about the direction, but I also know these numbers don't tell the entire story. I still need to understand how many users return, which channels bring the right audience, and whether people get enough value to recommend LaunchNests to others.
Shipping is comfortable. Distribution is harder.
As developers, we can spend a lot of time making a product better.
There's always another feature to build, another bug to fix, another part of the UI to polish, or another performance improvement to make.
But none of that guarantees that people will discover the product.
That's the uncomfortable part of building something independently: you can control how much effort you put into building, but you can't force people to care about what you've built.
You have to earn their attention.
For LaunchNests, that means more than sharing a launch link and hoping for traffic. It means explaining why the platform exists, reaching founders where they already spend time, and learning which messages actually resonate.
I'm starting to treat marketing as part of the engineering process: run an experiment, measure the result, learn, and iterate.
What I'm taking away from this milestone
First, early progress can be easy to overlook.
One submission doesn't look like much. Two doesn't look dramatically better. But looking back at six weeks of numbers makes the progress easier to see.
Second, building and growing are different skills.
I can write the code for a feature, but growth requires a different set of habits: talking to users, creating content, testing distribution channels, and understanding what makes someone take action.
Third, milestones are useful only if they lead to better questions.
Crossing 50 submissions feels good. Now I want to know where those submissions come from, what makes a founder choose LaunchNests, and how to make the platform more useful over time.
I'm not claiming product-market fit. I'm looking for evidence that I'm moving in the right direction.
What's next for LaunchNests?
I'm going to take marketing more seriously.
That means sharing the founder journey, publishing lessons from building the platform, improving product discovery, and experimenting with different ways to reach founders.
I'll share what works, what doesn't, and what I learn along the way.
If you're also building a side project, I'd love to hear about your experience.
What's been harder for you: building the product or getting people to discover it?
I'm building LaunchNests in public, and this is only the beginning.
Check it out: https://www.launchnests.com
Follow along for more updates from the journey.
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