Steve McLeod
@steveofmcleod.com
Buy my book! "Kill the HiPPO: How bootstrapped software companies decide what feature to build next." Find it at killthehippo.com or on Amazon. My personal site: steveofmcleod.com
This week I’ve been personally helping the team at probably our biggest video games industry customer so far launch Feature Upvote to their players. It’s gone swimmingly. Our systems haven’t had a single hiccup. But my anxiety level is through the roof!
It’s Kill the HiPPO newsletter day! It’s a short one this week as I’m on holiday in Andorra with my family. killthehippo.com/posts/kill-t...
Kill the Hippo on the Rogue Startups podcast
killthehippo.com
Google AI was reporting wrong info about my product. A freelance content writer I work with suggested some concrete steps to fix the situation. The steps worked, and quickly at that. She’s now writing a short case study about this.
I’m in Andorra, way up in the Pyrenees for a few days. The main drawcard: the relief of getting away from Barcelona’s relentless summer heat and humidity. The stunning mountain views and outdoor activities are simply a bonus.
Dependabot is beginning to overwhelm me with alerts, most of which are petty, and don’t affect my product really. My prediction: this will last for some years, but eventually all these little issues will be fixed and software overall will be much more secure.
Manage an 800,000-member Discord? That’s one of the challenges @divok232.bsky.social told me about on The Community Lounge podcast - Conversations with Community Managers from the video game industry. Listen on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts or directly here: featureupvote.com/thecommunity...
Do the Job Before You Have the Job - Feature Upvote
(You can also watch this episode on YouTube.) Today’s guest is Greg Castle, Community Growth Manager for Essential Mod at Spark Universe. Greg started out as an archaeologist before finding his way in...
featureupvote.com
Another penny-pinching email from Stripe today. They are getting quite creative at finding new ways of helping themselves to more of every transaction they process for us.
Oh look I’m on a podcast talking about my book, my company, and how much harder it is to get a bootstrapped SaaS off the ground these days. overcast.fm/+AAECTDTh118
RS360: Kill the Hippo — Rogue Startups
If you’re building a SaaS company, one of the hardest questions you’ll face isn’t how to build a product. It’s what to build next. In this episode of Rogue Startups, Craig Hewitt talks with Steve McLe...
overcast.fm
Google AI now agrees that, yes, Feature Upvote DOES have a public REST API. The winning move seemed to be using Google Search to request Google to index the relevant blog post. Sometimes the old ways still work. Hat tip to Siew Ann Tan for suggesting this.
Steve McLeod@steveofmcleod.com · 2w agoWe created a V0 REST API for Feature Upvote 2019, waiting for it to be stable before we made it publicly available. Seven years later? After what can only be called an overabundance of caution, we finally made the REST API public. Now I have to work out how to make Google AI change its opinion!
It’s Kill the HiPPO newsletter time! Just published: "You are NOT doing it wrong". Because it’s your product and you can run it any way you want. Check it out and subscribe to get everything I'm writing. killthehippo.com/posts/you-ar...
You are NOT doing it wrong
killthehippo.com
Last week we added a public REST API to Feature Upvote. Naturally, the scripted attacks started immediately. I wrote up about how we protect our API from these attacks. featureupvote.com/blog/securin...
Securing Feature Upvote's public REST API - Feature Upvote
The Internet is full of bad actors. Luckily, defending a REST API is a common, well-documented task, made straightforward by the fact that all our site traffic is already funnelled through Cloudflare....
featureupvote.com
BTW I started using htmx in Feature Upvote 3-ish years ago, and it let me rip out two-thirds of all the app’s JS. As a result the Feature Upvote codebase is now simpler to understand, easier to maintain, and faster to add new things.
Steve McLeod@steveofmcleod.com · last wk.“I released a new version of my JS library” Reaches no-one, no response, too many similar announcements. “I released a new version of my JS library as a cartridge on the Game Boy platform” The world notices. Brilliant! swag.htmx.org/en-eur/produ...
“I released a new version of my JS library” Reaches no-one, no response, too many similar announcements. “I released a new version of my JS library as a cartridge on the Game Boy platform” The world notices. Brilliant! swag.htmx.org/en-eur/produ...
htmx 4: the game
HTMX 4.0, the first JavaScript library to release exclusively on the Game Boy® platform! Experience the power of HTMX, now on your favorite portable handheld. Four levels of pickle-collecting exciteme...
swag.htmx.org
Just found out my girlfriend has no knowledge (or perhaps it is memory?) of the “I can haz cheezburger” meme.
So Hannah Fry just deservedly won an award for communication in mathematics. But I’m still hung up on the time she described New Zealand as a “tiny island nation” on her Uncharted podcast. New Zealand is geographically bigger than the UK! (Yeah, I know, I should let it go.)
Most of my network on here knows me for what I do in the games media space. But I'm also going on 10 years as a community manager. Thank you @steveofmcleod.com for having me on #TheCommunityLounge podcast to talk about the journey and what lies ahead. featureupvote.com/thecommunity...
Every Community Manager has a different way of doing things - Feature Upvote
(You can also watch this episode on YouTube.) Today’s guest is Danreb Victorio, Community Coordinator at Gamers Outreach — a nonprofit that brings video game entertainment to children in hospitals thr...
featureupvote.com
We created a V0 REST API for Feature Upvote 2019, waiting for it to be stable before we made it publicly available. Seven years later? After what can only be called an overabundance of caution, we finally made the REST API public. Now I have to work out how to make Google AI change its opinion!
According to some programmatic SEO page, Feature Upvote is #17 in the list of notable SaaS companies based on Barcelona. Not sure how the metric is calculated…
I watched this all the way through. It had me questioning things about my relationship to my own business (in a healthy way) - and what I could do to break out of the revenue plateau.
Jason Cohen@asmartbear.com · 2w ago$32K MRR, 9% churn, flat growth, but we figured out a strategy for how to restart growth. Come see the thought process behind the analysis and determining a strategy, not just knee-jerk answers.
One of the SOC 2 boilerplate documents I’ve been given to edit is written as if we are using the old “waterfall” dev lifecycle... ...which got me thinking: I guess some teams inside banks, etc, still have to do waterfall? Unfortunate for them.
AI found a 3-year old bug in Feature Upvote. Do we a) fix it? b) delete the feature that it is part of? The argument for b) is, nobody reported the bug because nobody is using the feature. We’re going with c) add some tracking for a month to see if anyone is using the feature, then decide
The best niche is often one sentence more specific than you're comfortable with.
Starting this week I’m working for a while in an office shared with a video game studio. You think developers are precious about their big monitors? Ha! Your monitors are tiny in comparison! These people have the biggest displays I’ve ever seen people work with.
Surprising clause in a SOC 2 boilerplate doc I’m working with right now: > “Users shall not keep files/shortcuts on the desktop screen” Seems like overreach to me; I’ll be removing that clause.
It’s Kill the HiPPO newsletter day: Just published: "Without maintenance everything is in ruins". Check it out - and subscribe! killthehippo.com/posts/withou...
Without maintenance everything is in ruins
killthehippo.com
Such a nice atmosphere in Barcelona today, despite the summer heat and humidity. Everyone is happy, smiling, talkative* - and very tired. Spain should win World Cups more often. *except the many Argentineans living here.
A generation of managers made a career out of copying ideas from other apps they've seen into their own app. Today, AI (which has seen every app) can do this a hundred times faster than any of them. The only problem is that doing this was always pointless.
Thoughtless features never add up to a thoughtful product
Your first idea for how to solve a problem is most likely to be a low-impact hack. Delightful user experiences require a higher level of thinking.
productpicnic.beehiiv.com
My Barcelona neighbourhood, as the World Cup final second half is about to start.
Today’s SOC 2 preparation nonsense: “A national disaster such as a nuclear war is beyond the scope of this plan.” Like, you don’t need to say this. Nobody will care about our SOC 2 compliance when we’ve all been incinerated. Least of all me.
