How to create your own luck

In my previous SaaS, it took me a while to realize that I needed to validate a problem before building a solution. Rookie mistake I know, but I started doing user interviews. I struggled a lot to find people willing to talk to me.

In my current SaaS, it is easier to find people but still not a walk in the park.

But then something happened.

3 of the people asked ME to be interviewed.

Reflecting on this I finally understood the concept of "putting yourself in a position to be lucky"

Let me explain.

But before I tell you about this, let me give you some context:

• I'm building a SaaS in public, posting progress every day today is day 26.

• I'm adding lessons from my mistakes and learning from current events.

• I'm live-sharing as I build holding nothing back.

• If you're interested, you can binge-read all the past updates in my newsletter.

It turns out that you can create luck.

No there isn't a magic incantation to chant at midnight. I wish that was the case.

Here's what I did:

I started to post about my effort in public. I posted on Reddit and LinkedIn every day. That helped me with accountability and allowed me to meet many wonderful people.

I then started to put my post under one roof, my newsletter. I did it so that people could find my updates in chronological order and get notified about new updates.

I didn't have any other reason to do so, I wanted to be helpful.

Doing this put me in a position to be lucky.

Here are two examples of how that helped:

In one of my updates, I asked people if they were game to take part in a user interview. I was hoping that people would see and comment on my post. That didn't happen immediately.

I added that post to my newsletter and forgot I asked that I even asked that question.

Fast forward a week and I get an email from Behiive saying that I have a new comment on one of my posts.

Never happened to me before. How exciting!

I went to check and it was a person telling me that they would be willing to jump on a call with me.

That was EPIC. And it would not have happened if I hadn't started the newsletter.

The second story is even more incredible.

In one of my updates, I explained how I was structuring my user interviews.

I posted that on X and I started a conversation with another SaaS builder. He told me that he hasn't had much experience with user interviews and he was keen to learn more.

So I asked him "Hey do you want to practice your user interview on me?" I love helping people, and that 20-minute call was a chance for me to help out.

He sent me a Calendly and we scheduled an interview the day after.

At the end of the call, he asked if I was still looking for people to interview. He offered to repay the kindness by being interviewed by me. Sure enough, the day after was my turn to interview him.

I think about this specific interview a lot:

• It would've never happened if I wasn't posting my stuff on socials

• It would've never happened if I didn't offer him to practice his user interview

• It would've never happened if he wasn't a genuinely lovely human being

The concept of "putting yourself in a position to be lucky" finally clicked. Luck exists I'm not denying that. I can't actively chase it. 

All I can do is to be ready to jump at an opportunity and see where that takes me.

None of this would've happened if I just built my product and cold-emailed/messaged people.

None of this would've happened if I'd let my failures take me down and abandon my dreams.

None of this would've happened if I'd let all the negative comments I get daily get to me and stopped posting.

If you can learn one thing from me is: be in as many places as you can, it'll pay off!

Speaking of user interviews, here are all the people I've interviewed who gave me permission to mention it publicly. Please show them some love!

Stuti Lilani - She's a designer working for a YC-backed company! Give her a follow on LinkedIn and check out her portfolio

Petar Slovic - Building Automateo an LLM prompt workflow orchestrator. I cannot wait to try it out. He had me at "consistent output" my biggest struggle with LLMs

Alan Budyta - Runs Lil' Baby Cakes. Give him a follow on LinkedIn and check out Lil' Baby Cakes

Richard Holmes - Owner @ Ampersand Studio. Give him a follow on LinkedIn. Also check out Ampersand Studio

MysteriousShadow - developer of Grammarsen. Check out the product, is brilliant!

Jenny Prochoryceva - Founder of Potenic and business strategist. Give her a follow on LinkedIn and check out Potenic

Celebrations

More and more legends joining the ranks!

• The newsletter is stuck at 44 subscribers. Always happens on the weekends. Still, 6 more to go for a 50 pushups video!

• The LinkedIn newsletter is growing again! 166 at the time of writing

• If you're there, come hang out on X. 2 more to 200 followers!

I cannot thank you all enough for your help and support, you're all legends!