Log #1: Delivery Ravens enters early-bird access

I thought I’d try out a sort of development log for some of my projects. I used to write monthly retrospectives a few years back, but I didn’t enjoy publishing them. A log feels more casual. More of a thought dump than anything.

I’m not sure on the cadence these will be yet - once a week? Once a month? Once? Let’s just see how it goes first.

Delivery Ravens is my focus for a little while. I deployed it a little before Christmas. And after a few tweaks, I’m now ready for others to use it if they want. So it’s now in early-bird access. I could have kept waiting until it feels ready, but I remembered the idea that ‘if you launch and you’re not embarrased by something, you’ve launched too late’ and Paul Graham’s idea of launching when ‘some single person can find it useful’:

Launch as soon as you have a quantum of utility, which means as soon as there’s one person in the world who is glad you launched because now they can do something that they couldn’t do.

I am that one person. Kind of – I don’t yet have a digital product to sell (I’m working on it). But as soon as I do, I’ll be using Delivery Ravens to deliver them.

This week, I:

• Added a blog to the marketing site
• Published a short article announcing early-bird access on the blog
• Added a changelog to the marketing site
• Added a logo and favicons
• Added an about page
• Added a contact page

This is the first time I’ve separated the marketing site from the actual service, and I like the paradigm. There’s this separation of focus. And I just prefer the workflow - it’s the same as my other static sites.

So marketing starts? Yes – marketing should start earlier, find you first customer before you build etc. etc. etc. I’m my first customer. And if I remain the only customer, that’s fine.

Next steps:

• Put together a real landing page
• Think about an actual pricing model (currently just set it to $5/month)
• Actually tell people about the service