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Harsh
Harsh

Posted on • Updated on

I Lost my job, spent months building something like Pinterest for links, now has 900+ users

Hey builder, here's my story of building linkcollect.io , and how it grew to around 900 (almost 1k 🤩) users.

I was working at an early stage startup till march 2023, things went otherwise. I lost my job (fired) because the company kinda went bankrupt.

Just after this happened, i started thinking of building some side projects and that's where i got this idea of building a resource aggregator because lots of people were asking me how did i learn software development and stuff again and again and i wanted to be able to just share them the resources i used. So i thought of building a tool that does this.

I went ahead, and started building linkcollect.io. the V1 MVP got ready within 3-4 weeks, which at that time was just a browser extension that helped people save and organise resources and links in folder, just like any other bookmark manager.

Me launching linkcollect on twitter

V1 launch did fine, i built it and launched on twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. I got around 200 people using it after 2-3 weeks of the launch.

v2 launch was pretty good, before the launch we were at around 490 something users, but as soon as we launched and started posting everywhere we could. the user base kind of started going, which means now we had more than enough users to collect feedback from to iterate for the next version.

But what i wanted to build, initially when i started is live and the fact the people are using it, and it's helping them a lot (from feedback) is amazing.

Me launching linkcollect on a subreddit

Top comments (12)

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hakan_turan profile image
Hakan Turan

Wow, Harsh, your journey is truly inspiring! Losing a job can be a tough pill to swallow, but you turned it into an opportunity to create something valuable for the community. It's amazing to see how linkcollect.io has grown in such a short span of time. Your story is a testament to the power of resilience and innovation. Keep soaring, and can't wait to see what you build next!

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askwhyharsh profile image
Harsh

thanks hakan ❤️

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artydev profile image
artydev

You are amazing, good Luck😊

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askwhyharsh profile image
Harsh

thanks brother ❤️

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lexpeee profile image
Elex

This is genuinely awesome. This is really like pinterest but somehow feels like for developers. Great job on this one!

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askwhyharsh profile image
Harsh

thanks Elex, i wrote this blog about how people are using linkcollect to curate resources and mentioned some of my favourite :)
dev.to/askwhyharsh/compiled-100s-o...

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gabidesa profile image
gabironman • Edited

Great story. Thanks for share your service.
I installed on chrome now.
Cheers from an Venezuelan dev living in Paraguay, South America.

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askwhyharsh profile image
Harsh

thanks man :), if you are a software developer i have curated some good resources here :)
dev.to/askwhyharsh/compiled-100s-o...

might help. Thanks again for giving linkcollect a shot, how is it going?

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hunzaboy profile image
Aslam Shah

Great work. 👍

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dalalord profile image
Havilah Uche-Aniche

Good Job all that hard work finally became a success

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dalalord profile image
Havilah Uche-Aniche

Keep on keeping on brother.