Hey, everyone, It's about Desi, your host of product hunt radio, where I'm joined by the founders, investors on makers that are shaping the future of Tech. In this episode, I speak to a long time product hunt. Community member and maker Josh Horror. He is the founder of Exploding Topics. In this episode, he's gonna talk all about how to bounce back from a bad launch and keep finding ways to reiterate on your product. Josh has been there, done it and even succeeded and finding a co founder and relaunching again to achieve a really successful product. So he shows honest perspectives of trying and failing. And I think you'll enjoy this. Josh,

thank you so much for being on Product Hunt Radio J. It's always such a pleasure to have such a accomplished maker from the community on the show, because the majority of our listeners are makers just like you at different stages of the journey, some of them of launch multiple products. Some of them are still waiting, told fresh product. Some of them are beta. Some of them are, you know, venture back founders. But the best thing about the show is just taking everyone's experiences on DTI, turning them into actionable advice that we can all put into the context of whatever we're working on, whatever we're building. So thanks so much for making time for us today.

Thanks for having me. It's great to be a big fan, often listening to this the show, so it's fantastic to be on it.

Incredible. Now, listeners, you're in for a treat because Josh is launched 70 different products and been on such a evolution as a maker learning from each one how to finally get to the place he wants to be. And, you know, he really did this so incredibly with the last few projects to the point where he even got one of his companies acquired. So Josh has agreed to do something fun with this episode on focus on How to bounce back as a maker. So we're gonna reflect on all the different launches, its out over the years, all the different projects that he's worked on, and we're gonna pull out all the different nuggets of advice that he's learned for folks, where the first time you launch it doesn't quite go to plan. But, you know, you just have to keep at it. So we're gonna focus on this idea of resilience as a maker and and how to bounce back from setbacks.

And with that in mind, Josh, I thought it could be fun to kind of go to the very, very beginning of your journey and think about that very first SAS product you set out to build every makers, I could get it built. SAS I'm gonna get my 1st 1000 users. I'm gonna get my six speaker air are, um so yeah, let's kind of like all the way back to the beginning before you even had a company acquired and tell us what problem you want to to solve and how that

turned out. Yeah, well, assesses the dream, right? That recurring revenue and the problem I fundamentally wanted to solve is like paying my rent month on month. I was like looking to my own problem rather than other people's. And best not to get start. Really? So I I was looking around at what other people had built and thought Wow, like this loads of open startups making this much per month, that much per month. And I was doing contract work a time like freelance software development building APS for companies and websites and was like What? I can do this and start making review myself and go like full time products. Be my own boss and lift dream, right? So I was looking around all these other products in the marketplace,

and I was like getting involved in India hackers products on and a lot of startups and companies being quite open with their revenue. On that, I was feeling like, Well, this is my first my first SAS project. I'll start small. There's this guy making, like 1000 bucks a month with this exit in 10 pop up software, and it was the twister. It was that it was like a wheel of fortune, exit and temp up up. So, like when you go to a website like on on my shop, almost and then you get the pop up that asks for your email. Well, this one,

and it gives you a 20% discount if you give your email. This always a bit different because like it's putting email and to spin the wheel, and then maybe you'll win the discard on. So it's not like way higher conversion rates. So for e commerce stores, it really works well. And I was like, Well, if this guy's making money from it, I got I could build something pretty similar and start to make some like process. We're going revenue and start to do my own thing. I didn't choose that because, like I was fundamentally fundamentally like crazy about the idea, like interested in it. I just saw that it was working and saw that I solved a problem and increased people's like conversions for that stores and built it and was like, I didn't give it much more thought than that.

I just built it and thought then then I'm made of money, right? But it's not the case like you build it and they come. You've like, after you've built it took me, like, two months to build the the the APP and then as I get now and obviously you've got to go out there and find customers on I hadn't thought at all about like the channels. And so I was gonna stuck from from Day one post launch with this cess app that I'd spent two months building like with free time. I have to do in contracts work. And so then, like it was learning time from a marketing perspective. And so I dug into ex CEO on Didn't really make sense for projects. Andi. Then I saw it doing direct email I reach, um, Andi.

I must be a few customers like that, but it's quite heavy going and there was a lot of competition. So it was like I spent six months grinding out doing like, email at reach and then to stay. I look online up or the e commerce stores and, like manually, go through websites, see if they have an exit, pop up and see how, like if it's just a regular one, we could help them with the With the spin it cell will be real Fortune one. Andi, reach out to them, try and get on call, sell them and then it's like 30 bucks a month if they sign up on and it was quite sticky, people would stay with it for a long time because it was working and but then six months later,

I got it to 600 bucks a month, and I was like I was gonna stuck. I didn't know where to go next because like, I didn't really have any more leads for the direct outreach because I had been using how I built this dot com to, like, see what other plug ins these e commerce websites of running and see, like if there'd be a good fit, didn't have any more leads, toe go for that. I was really tired of it. And I was looking around seeing all these other like, Sasse companies doing so much better taking off faster and wasn't really interested in it. Didn't really know of any other channels. I put it on the WordPress plug in store on that. Got a few, uh,

side ups, but pretty low quality sign ups. You know, they don't is because we have a free trial to you. Get a lot of lake. Just people come in, try and get hassling you on, then never converting. So

at this stage, did you feel that you had exhausted all of the sales channels that were like, immediately available to you? It sounds like you did a lot of email outreach. So did you sort of get to this point like, based on the levers in my possession Now that I kind of, like, pump them as much as I candidate really see how else to kind of push this, you know, to like five x or 10 x growth?

Yeah, exactly. I tried links in that reach to, um and it was B to be so I think direct outreach was the way to go. I tried linked in that reach, Andi. I just didn't seem to be getting anywhere with it. I looked into S e o thinking that well, I could just rank the top for, like, exit, intense wheel or, well, a fortune pop up. But, like literally, nobody's searching for those things.

They're all just searching exit pop ups. And then if you if you want to compete for the top rankings on Google for exit pop up, then you going against, like, the really big names who have the whole suite of exit pop up offerings and everything so and they have huge demand authorities. So I kind of jumped headfirst into building it, thinking the customers will come. Other people have customers. I'll be able to do that, but really, you need to think about the channels that you're gonna market through before you build it and save yourself all that time. I mean, in this case, it was a proven product, but the competition was pretty saturated to, like other people have had success listing it on the shop fire app store because that's a huge distribution channel.

And the selling point of line was that you could install it on any website, so that opened up like big commerce and WordPress and everything. But then is a huge headache to be ableto support all those platforms to. So I had this, like this, products that need a huge amount of maintenance just be able to run on everything. And then I just didn't have the channels figured out. And yeah, she reach wasn't working. And, like, six months in after two months before that building, it was like, This isn't really what I want to be doing for for years working on an exit pop up at. And so then not only did I realize you have to have the marketing cannot figured out before you go into it, you have to know that you're like you're ready to work on it for, like several years if if you're gonna get it somewhere, but it's

just yeah, I think that's such a great point. If I had to kind of pull out some of the some of the key lessons in that, it definitely sounds like there was a lot of competition that already existed in that space for the product that you're building. And you started to realize, as you were trying to think of other ways to grow, probably You're like, Oh, what are other ways I can differentiate? Maybe that's way I can grow and then you're like, actually just really contested space there a lot of really similar products out there, and then the second point you made is that idea of motivation. So to want to keep Iterating on something and beat the competition and spend, like you said years on it, developing it, changing it and proving it, you have to really passionate about that space. You have to really passionate about the product, your building and and that and it's the passion that get to you through there's harder times. Is that what you mean?

Right, exactly, because like every day, if you're groaning out doing sales and support. And then but fixes and improving the product like all of your times go into it. So you have to be, like, really into it, like passion about a problem. Andi. It should feel like playing at work if if that's the goal to, like, bring your own business and build products and you should go for a space that you're interested in because somebody else who is passionate about they're gonna be you in the end. And then the other thing about this was that, like I could see it being a bit of a fat product, like even if I was prepared to spend, like,

a few years like figuring out the channels to a greater extent and ranking on Google, which I wasn't sure if I could for this products. But even if I was prepared to go for another two years on it and try and get it from 600 bucks to maybe like two K and so on, like I think people they'll just get tired of these like, well, four to unstable pop ups like they were effective because then you like people hadn't seen them before, so it's like what like I can like Put me Merlin to spin is fun. See if you win, like a 50% discount or temps en or whatever prayers. But like once you've seen, like three, it's like you just close it like the rest of pop ups, right? So I thought, Well, I'm putting all this I energy like this Life force into something that's probably just gonna like Flop after a year on become ineffective. So I need to be building something that that's growing.

So I wonder when you get to that realization. Thanks so much for kind of like diving in and and sharing all that detail. When you get to that realization, what comes next? Do you actually get to the point where you're like, Do I kill my baby? Do I turn this off? Do I stop this so I can focus on something? You talked to us about that

right? Well, it's tough because, like, it's still making money. And so even when you're not working on it like assess, so that's the beautiful extort money come in, and so that that project still running. It's just shrinking ever so slowly because customers are turning and So now it's not like 300 bucks a month, but it takes like zero time other than like bug fixes. And so it makes sense is to leave it running. And I've still got a few leads coming in from WordPress and things like that, the plug in store. But it will come a point like where I'm just gonna shut it down, like when it gets to like, less than 50 bucks on him. But at the time,

like after working on it for six months, I'd start thinking about like, What's the next thing? This isn't it. I need toe do the next thing before like I run after. I'm run out of, like, savings from freelance contracts work and, like, I can't pay my bills anymore. It as I was living in Japan at the time and like that, the place is pretty cheap, but we're renting. But even still, like I still needed money, come in and,

like, 600 bucks a month wasn't really cutting it. So I was looking around and seeing these are the guys, like who have been successful in like the maker space, like the classic ones like Peter Levels he made Nomad list on, and that's based on like the digital nomad and, like remote work trends like he kind of tapped into this like this latent demand. That was that. But it wasn't like being fulfilled by the marketplace, like people were interested in this whole, like digital nomad lifestyle and lay where they couldn't go to travel around the world. And what what does the environment is there in terms of like the Internet speeds, Andi, all that kind of thing. And he couldn't find that information for himself while he was trying to do that. And so he put together the APP Nomad list and kind of tapped into that trend and since then grew massively on.

Did he like as an add on? He built the remote Okay job board for remote work jobs, and it seemed so much like easier that way. If you find this this trend that's untapped before it gets saturated by competition like I'd bean like saturated by competition and just trying to differentiate and try and figure out marketing. If there's if it's like a wave, if you can find a wave to ride on untapped demand like the market incomes easy because people wanted this thing and they didn't have it before. I'd like another example that I saw was like podcasting. That was like, That's a huge trend right now, like we're on a podcast right now. Like product hunt. Radio and podcasts are huge right now. I mean, they were huge in the early two thousands and then kind of dipped another. The training again, Um,

and this time, Justin Jackson from Transistor FM. That's that's is another cess that did that does podcast hosting. And they kind of spotted this like second rise of podcasting. And they saw that a lot of companies, like, instead of having a block like every company has there also like now having a podcast as a marketing channel. And so he saw this opportunity of like combining that with the podcasting trend and selling podcast hosting to companies. And so it just started to become really clear that it's like it's 100 times easier to bootstrap, a profitable online business. If you ride one of these big market trends and just looking around, I needed to find one of these if I wanted to do it myself and then I know it was like worth spending a few years on because you'd grow with the opportunity. Onda competition wouldn't be too fierce, either. Eso that's that's when I start started to build a project called Trend. So it's just kind of scratch my own itch,

UH, which would let spot these upcoming trends like, Hence, the name on. Then I could try and capitalize on it

at the point where you started observing what was happening. Nomad list products like no medalists on the work that Peter Levels was doing and Transistor FM and the work that Justin Jackson was doing, both of whom are also makers we've had on the show as well. Were you at that point before you started building trends thinking that you would end up building trends, or were you still like Let me just see what's happening and see if any of the the key words that keep being surged forward, like the macro trends that are happening, align with any of the things I'm already interested in. Was that sort of your first assumption? Or maybe it wasn't I don't know.

I was I just wanted to build something for myself to use like I at first it was just literally some code, like scripts that monitoring the Web for interesting topics on, then plugging them into Google trends to see to calculate if they're trending. And then it would spit them out on the command line. Like in Seattle. I like literally as like command line graphs and numbers. Andi Key. What's? And so I'd look through that and I'd be like, Oh, that's pretty interesting. Like maybe there's something here, so I didn't really intend for it to become a product or a nap in itself. But, like I'd gone to all this trouble and collected, like hundreds and hundreds of, like,

really interesting trance that I thought, Well, this this is solving a problem for me. Um, I might as well like wrap it up in a Web app and throw up online and see if it gets any interest. Just just there's something fun to do because I'm finding it valuable on other people might, too. And so I built the next yes Web app and put it up. I put it on reddit Andi, I kind of I've had experience before posting on Reddit trying market stuff and it's pretty brutal. Like if you're promoting, they're just gonna they're gonna kill you on that. So I kind of came up, came in with my shoulder up with my guard up on bond. I put like the top 57 trends I detected from these programs. Andi said like his a bunch of trends you could use for business stuff.

It was in the entrepreneurship. So bread it, Andi, like, start up Subreddit. Let me know if you think these are any good. I've also wrapped it up in a in an app called trend list. I o ah, and I'd love to get feedback on that on that initial like post on Reddit just after I built it. It did really Well, it got, like, a few 100 up votes and it got reddit gold. People seem to really like it on. Then it was at that stage that I thought, Well,

maybe I have something here in itself. Maybe this isn't just a tool I'm gonna use to find my next SAS project on the next big trend toe ride to build a assess projects around. Well, maybe maybe this could be a test to see how far I can take it on. And I also like I'd learn from this project on from the previous one. I learned for this project. Should I say that I needed to be collecting emails like the next best thing to getting money from people to validate a project is getting their email address. I mean, obviously, if you can get money, that's that's proof, right? That. But an email address, that's that's pretty good, like best worth something.

And people want to hear from you then. So I put like a little subscribe box on the website and just from that reddit post alone, I got like, 80 subscribers as up to a few 100 like nearly 500 I think, within a few weeks on, but was really fast. And so you kind of feel it when you when you have something. I guess that's a big lesson. I've learned from building different things. You can feel it when you have something that people like and that is taking off. It feels so much, well, different, like with it, with the previous sets up, the exits intent thing.

It felt like I was pushing like a Boulder uphill like you push it up and up. It's really hard work just to gain each new customer like 30 bucks a month. And like every time you stop working and start pushing but the huge boulder just like rolls back down on your customers turn and you go backwards. Where is like this thing was like a snowball, like everywhere. Like I posted it. People loved it and shared it, and it just kept growing and growing. And so it just seemed like even though, like I wasn't making money, it was growing and in terms of the number of email subscribers I had, And so it just made sense to keep working

on it. Just going back to that. Josh, you said that you felt a significant difference just in terms of how people responded to it. Was there anything you did differently? I mean, you mentioned you kind of shared it on Reddit. Was there anything that you also did differently the first time you started sharing it publicly with people? Or do you feel that it was purely just down to the utility of it that made folks love it so much?

Yeah, you have to be conscious of, like where you're sharing get, like, the unwritten rules. Like like for Reddit, for instance, like they hate promotion. So if you go in just trying to promote they're just gonna down, even if you like. If even if you've got the best product in the world and it's free, it's gonna make them huge. My money, then they're just gonna down vote if they sense any kind of promotion or anything like off. So like, that's why I went in saying, Look,

I'm trying. I literally said I'm going to try and provide value first and ask for feedback. Second, that was my opening line because I knew like that s so defensive against promotion on reddit on deny. So I gave them the trends, like in text format. So they didn't have to go off platform, um 57 of them so that they could use the news to, like interesting trends like new products that, like people were getting into or new industries on new technologies, all of which, like these entrepreneurs, could potentially use and make money from oh, cell And then at the bottom, I asked for Flynn's check out the app and ask for feedback. So yeah,

you definitely You need to know the channel that your marketing into and like this time I've been around a bit longer, and so I kind of knew that. And so this kind of played into the next launch idea it was on hacker news And hacker news is is pretty tough in general because there's just so much noise on there. But if you can make it to the front page, it could be massive. And so I posted on the main launch. So, like the red, it launches like almost pre validation. I got a bunch of, like, feedback from the improve things with the map. Andi, I actually renamed it from Trend List. The trend Andi like, just made improved,

like the time for him so that you could like a trans like over just one month on over 15 years on all the way in between, not just like five years, which was previously the only option and hold burns for this stuff. And then I took them and that the main launch on on how can you So it is like it was like step by step, you know, like a small launch. Teoh pre validate, get feedback, see if it's even worth continuing grit and then improve it based on the feedback and then do a bigger launch. You don't want to jump straight to like your You're getting a friend of a bunch of people before it's ready and before it's not quite good enough. But then with hacker news that you've got kind of like a secret in with show hacker news projects because a lot of stuff drowns in the noise. But show her how can use projects. Get a bit more attention, a bit more love because like they have projects and makers on that just as much as product centers. And so I posted up there, and then I did the classic like intro comment just to say like,

Hey, I'm Josh, this is what Bill and give a bit of an explainer and it on. Then I was hanging out in comments the whole time to reply. It's people. And so that's kind of how you approach marked, like posting a project on on hacking use. So like you have to know the ins and outs of the marketing channels for short before you post otherwise is just gonna get kind of, like batted away. So it's definitely good to know your audience and to ideally be the person you're trying to to market to, because then you understand them. Like in this case, I was like the one of the entrepreneur, like the warrants runner who's trying to find the next big like trend to ride it, to ride a wave to build projects and successful Internet business around. And so I I know where other people like me hang out.

But then with the previous project that I can guess and I know kind of weather look for e commerce businesses. But like so then I haven't been there before. It's clear that I'm just trying to promote I don't really know what I'm doing been like e commerce, Facebook groups or on linked in doing outreach. So it's it's definitely better toe know your audience and be one of them. If if you're tryingto sell to them but that I can use loans when really well way we jumped onto the front page like after a after a little while. No. And then we went toe the number two spot on. We had, like 400 people on the website at once, and the website crest. It was like Friday at midnight Japan time because I was trying to do it while people in Europe and us were awake. The site crashed like the famous hacking use hug because, like the Dates base would just get flooded and so had to figure that out. And it was because I was on the free database plan like I was doing everything. It's cheap.

It's possible on DSO, upgraded to the paid like plan for the dates base, restarted it and then got back online 50 minutes later. So I was at number two on Hacker News with the website down for 15 minutes. But even still like it did really well, um, we got, like, 2000 subscribers just from that email subscribe us. And it was really clear that people liked it a lot. So again, I thought, Well, this this could be it. Rather than being like what sparked the idea for the next projects. This this could be the projects like it's clearly solving a problem.

People like a lot. I people haven't seen something like this before. I mean, there's other things out there that I'm just like email newsletters, but there's not like a Web app where you can just go in like it. Trends click through the pages, analyze the data, and then the whole thing started to spill over to Twitter. And, like Rand Fishkin tweeted a bag Teoh. He's got, like half a million followers, Andi, loads of people retweeted tweeted on like the snowball just kept growing on the email list. Keeps growing. Andi,

I wasn't even doing anything. So, like, it's just so obvious when you're onto something on it kind of promotes itself and snowballs like that. So that's how I knew, like you can feel it when you're on something with a project on do you can usually tell pretty quickly. If you're putting it out there and showing people and then you can fail faster, move onto the next thing. And that's probably what I didn't do with the previous projects. I probably should have quit after two months trying to sell it, but I persisted for six months, whereas like I I should have stopped sooner and moved on. I think.

Yeah, well, I guess hindsight's always 2020 as they say, but I feel like there's a lot of different, like headline points. I kind of want to pull out from what you said there. So you talked about this idea of having lots of different launches, Almost like many launches as experiments auras tests before you go for that big launch. And I think that's so clever because just a zoo you pointed out instead of putting all your eggs in one basket and kind of going okay, this has to go while because I'm I'm hoping all my traffic is gonna come from this. You're actually getting a lay of the land and kind of understanding. Okay, well, there are lots of different communities and sites that I can share the product with. They all have different audiences and different vibes s. Oh, maybe I should just be a bit more careful and considered and actually think about having a Siris of launches because it with each one I can,

you know, change the angle or the selling points and and learn from those. So I think there's like, a lot of value in that, and the other thing that you mentioned that I just wanted to point out an echo was the fact that it's really important if you are depending on a community for a successful launch. It's really important that you participate in that community and get a sense of for it and also gain some karma in that community. I don't read it. You literally can't get karma. But, you know, I also just mean it in the general sense of the word. So spend some time being active in that community, um, you know, posting in that community, commenting on that community,

giving votes. I know you didn't to say that exact specific detail in this story, but when you've written about trying to launch on how canoes before I know you mentioned that you actually went to submit the post and then like you were blocked because they hadn't seen a lot of activity on your account, even though it was like three years old. And so it's all these little things that you can't really anticipate that could always come up as a roadblock. So, as you advised, if you use a maker of spending time in those communities getting to know them, it's just making it a lot easier for when you eventually share your project.

Yeah, definitely. I'd like it's it's worth pointing out. I didn't launch it on product on yeah, either, because I was kind of as leaving that for later. I wanted to save that until, like, I had improved the products further on. But I didn't really know what I was gonna achieve just yet with it. With a product launch, I was still trying to figure it all that because it wasn't monetized. So I've had all distraction, but it still wasn't monetized, so I still kind of stuck even though I had this growth. But I think it's much nicer. Problems have tohave growth,

but no monetization yet. Then toe have, like the monetization angle, but no growth. Personally, I think it's an easier problem because you can usually figure out how to monetize something later if if it's valuable, Um, but it's not always easy toe to grow something, even if you know how you're going to charge for it. Like I find with the previous project, so like, yeah, that's That's how I spent the next couple months after that, trying to figure out how I was going to monetize it on dumb, improving the up further Trans grow it, Um,

and I started a newsletter. Just keep myself accountable and to keep in touch with all these email subscribers I picked up. So I send in the weekly trance just like literally a list of trends. Andi giving them an update on my progress on dim proving the app on, then randomly like Peter Levels with tweets out about it because he found it, discovered it like Teoh. I ran a complex a Twitter poll toe rename it from trend a trend list to trend like I gave a few options and thought it was like a good marketing opportunity like one of the options, like was like Nice trend, bro or Trend Full Nystrand broke wasn't. My suggestion is there's my wife's on. Then, like pizza levels, Votes for trend and tweeted about it said that he liked it, And so I get these traffic spikes from when, like it was being shared online without me doing anything and new subscribes coming in. And then I'm out of the blue.

In September last year, I got an email from Brian Deane from back link. Oh, on back link owes this huge blawg this scr blawg and I Look, I got the email of Blue and I was like, I kind of this This name looks familiar and I googled it as I are down. That's Brian Deane. He's huge in the S e o World and had a bit more of a look around and that the email said they just great work with Trend is really well done. I wonder if you've considered selling. If so, let me know otherwise. Keep up the great work. It was like, Well, I'm kind of stuck trying to figure out how to monetize it. Andi,

like, I think, would be a great opportunity toe Take his experience and his audience. Andi combined toe to figure out that monetization angle to improve the product like further keep it running. Because I've been running that thing for, like bringing trend for six months and it hadn't made any money, and it's is starting to cuss money with, like serve cost state trusts and all the rest. And so he acquired it, and we we got in a Skype call just after after my wedding. Actually, Andi, after one of our like 15 minutes. We like pretending to shake hands over the screen, having agreed toe for me toe. Sell the site to him and me to get to keep a revenue steak so that we could both jointly work on the projects going further and improving it.

Andi He saw the potential in it. It seemed attraction and he'd been lucky into, like trying to build something similar. And then he saw there's an thought. Well, that's exactly what I was looking to build, like, I'll just get in on this. But as well as potential, he saw, like the monetization problem like thes these trends like it's pretty hard to quantify the value to people. It's like the value is a bit spikey, like if I'm sending an email, lights people with trends like maybe nine out of 10 or 99 100 trends aren't really. They don't use their not valuable but maybe one. They go away and make a whole business around or added as a product in their e commerce business or make a SAS around I.

But that one time out of 100 they're not gonna pay you like 10% of their company. Just given the idea and equally they're not gonna pay you like 100 bucks a month just for a Leicester like awesome opportunities and trends and insights. So it's really hard to price. And so we put the potentials that so that's why you decided to go and a quiet the the app off meat and so is fantastic, really on getting to keep a revenue steak and work on it further with him. So now we both co founders on DWI rebranded it So brain came along and he has been great, really is really smart guy on, and he's got a lot of experience. So he knows for like, the best way to take the project. I was gonna build a whole community around it on to discuss upcoming upcoming trends and look like almost like a product trump, but for trends. But then he was like my headache, my headache detectors going off right here because that's a huge amount of like moderation. You have to do just against span against everything else, and it's not even monetized less just like improve the core value,

which is getting better like cruel hearted trends faster for people. Onda we we rebranded. He brought in like designer on and, uh, everything else, and we relaunched as exploding topics dot com with a brand new site. Design looks 100 times better. It looks like a product rather than like a project now, Andi exploding topics dot com because before it was trend with two ends dot co, it's pretty hard sister like share a verbally with people, and it's you need to have two dot com, Really? So we we went with exploding topics that come even though it's bit longer. It's just so much clearer. Simpler is a dot com, and we launched it on product Hunt as exploring topics with the whole redesign with the streamlined focus on improvements.

And now it's like the technologies scanning the entire Web so identify like upcoming exploding trends across like search social, um, everywhere. And it's detecting products fashion like business, tech, health trends, all of that, and we launch it on product on Start of December. Andi, it did really well, then eso again. That was like the third launch, and it got number one product of the of the month, and it helped because We had quite refined products at this time. My with us, huge number of trans cool trends,

interesting friends with validated interest. And so we thought it do well and it was really good to see, like people that like it a lot. It got like, 2.5 1000 up votes. Onda. We got a huge mouth traffic to, and we kind of coordinated our efforts on that. That was the main launch. I'm really recording their efforts. I wrote up the story behind it and posted it on Medium and put it on hacking use again. And it did well on there and drove a bunch traffic and post it old around like Reddit and stuff on brain. Like told his audience. He's got a huge back link audience. He told them about exploding topics on like his email list and are linked in. And so did this huge coordinated attack to launch product.

Send every to explain topics dot com, and we weren't even converting for email subscribers. Then we were just seeing how people react to the product and the email subscribers bad right down in the filter. Well, it was a link in the footer that took you. It's a whole new page to subscribe. We still got, like, 3000 new subscribers just from that, and people kept asking like what happened toe like we want an email newsletter. What happened? So the previous one, it kind of stopped happening. We were living that. So we started the email newsletter again. But this time,

like way better before, is just like literally 10 or five translate, just literally, what the name of the Tramp. But now, each week we do exploding topics Tuesday, which is five trends with like a huge mass of, like insight and analysis around each trend, telling people how they could attack the opportunity, how they can take advantage of that trend, like specific keywords that are low competition or things like that. So, like, for example, the one trend lately has bean pasta corrector, which is like this contraption,

this device that makes you stand straight with your shoulders back and it and so you could sell. That's an e commerce products, and right now it's like it's exploding in the number of searches. There's tens of thousands of people searching for it, but then when you when you search it. The top resort is like a YouTube video of a teenage girl like Demery and get like how it works. And she's got its tiny channel. But if you had, like, um, an e commerce store for poster correct advices or if you're an affiliate for them, you could make a killing from this on. Then, like an even cooler example off somebody, like using exploding topics dot com like, as I meant for it to be used like Teoh,

find a a wave to build assess app around this guy's made, um, I spotted on India. Hackers actually has made an app called Influence Grid. He's called Andy, and he made a post saying Used exploding topics to find this idea for for influence grid. And it's basically this assassin app that shows Tic Tac influences and nano influences on Tic Tac, and it's like a database for Bond. People can pay to subscribe, and he saw the Tic Tac friend on exploding topics and the mutt Nana influence a topic and like combined them to make this to put two and two together and realize that there was this opportunity here and built this app and now he's making like 1000 bucks a month after just like two months of working on the same. So it's really cool to see that, like somebody go running with, like, the purpose behind, like why I personally bill exploding topics Onda and having success with it and getting to it that as of blacks, like after two months when it it's a quick

yeah, must be so rewarding to build something that folks are finding value. And I just wondered now that you're in a co founder partnership and you've had that experience of rebranding and things like that, if you were to do that all over again, is there anything you'd do differently? Or any nuggets of wisdom you could share with makers that might be at a similar point in their journey to where they built something? And now someone's gonna come on board as a partner and you contribute to a partnership. Just wonder if there anything she could share on

that. I think it's really important to find the right person to work with, like Brian's, like a fantastic co founder for this, because he's got so much experience is really smart guy like he usually knows which direction to go with, something that and he's really, like, fun to work with. And is Gordon is laid back. I went to Portugal tha to visit him in January. Toe hang out on bond It's really important because that you work with them every day and it's crucial toe success of the project. And I wouldn't be too like fast just to choose anybody like I. If you have something that's like getting traction, a lot of people start to reach out to say like, I love to, like, get involved toe work on it with you and you don't really know these people like they're just random people off the Internet and there's a lot of risk in that,

like you have different like ideas off whether products going different, um, like motivations. Different were Catholics and work styles. And like it, I'd probably say, like if you've already got something retraction just like stick with the devil, you know, and that's you, that's yourself. But in this case, like Brian, so huge name in the S e o World Onda Online and I had great report talking to him online of a video. Even in that first call on DSO, it was clear that it was gonna work. And like that,

there wasn't any risk there for me late. If anything, he was gonna make everything move so much faster with, like, his resources, experience and and audience. So I think, Yeah, make sure it's good. Like co founder fit. Make sure that you know them, that they're gonna bring a lot. And if you don't know that for sure, maybe it you don't need to

This brilliant I think you're right. I think understanding the value that they add and knowing that it'll work because you've already either getting along great when collaborating and thinking about projects is is super duper valuable. Now I know you wrote about a lot of your learnings as a maker on medium. Is that something that you still do? Is that something that you're going to do more off because it sounds like you've got a ton of unique experiences that folks can learn

from. Yeah, so that I wrote monthly updates as I was working on projects for the sick first six months and then they were I kind of combined all of those six into the big article that I posted on launch with the whole story with the acquisition store. And I haven't kept writing monthly updates because it was more something I did when I was working alone. I think writing updates Andi Keeping people updated on your progress is fantastic when you're like a soul founder because, like it keeps you accountable like each month you need to have something to write about, so you should make progress. Andi. It helps that, like clarify your thoughts in your direction low just to make sure you're you're making sense with where you're going on. But it helps to, like get support from other people who reach out and offer said, like feedback and advice and guidance. When you're doing this all by yourself, like you don't know if you're going crazy or not. Like I worked on it for six months without making any money, so I just I didn't know which direction to take.

Sometimes I knew I needed to monetize it pretty quick because I was needing to pay the bills, but I didn't know what that stressed. He was looking like, and I was like, there's taking up a lot of my like headspace on DSO. Being able to write things down just helps to, like, solidify things, Andi. I'd recommend it to anybody who's working by themselves. But since then, like because I'm working with Brian Weaken, discuss things with each other, and I feel like we've entered the next phase. I don't really need to do that as much. But if I was to start something again by myself, I definitely absolutely worked on. I'd recommend it to anybody

else. That's also Josh. Thank you so much for, like, sharing on sharing all these learnings you've had on the journey of building think trends and now exploding topics Before I let you go toe my favorite part of the show's when I get ask people about their favorite products. So it could be something cool you just bought for your house that you really excited about, or anything, really, maybe a nap might be a physical product, but you know, we love products. They're a product on, so this is just your time to share some fun stuff with us.

So there's this product called the STO Joe right now, which is like it's this foldable Cup. You can put hot drinks it So it's like this plastic cup that it's like a flask, but trouble friend that you just compacts there, Andi. So, like you can stay cough yet. And then instead of holding this copper they don't want to do it is full of it together on those that exploit a topic. Oh, nonuse, that's a while back. And then, yeah, I guess I have a lot of choices because I every week I'm finding new products on exploring topics and researching them and putting them in the weekly newsletter. So I'm seeing these all the time. Like like the posture corrector I mentioned earlier. A

man like you have a correct or No,

no, no. I suppose you have to have it for it to be a favorite. Can you just like, like it? I want one in for it to be a favorite.

Don't know that it's done if that counts.

So yeah, the stone.

Awesome. Amazing. And for folks that want to find out more about you and what you're working on, where should they

go? Yeah, go to exploding topics dot com so you can see the the app that shows you like where you can discover upcoming topics that, um, you can build a business around across health business, smarting fashion all of these things. Maybe you can find an affiliate products or something's about Assess Around and the newsletter. If you join the newsletter every week, we send, like at least five exploding topics and insight and analysis around them so that you can take advantage of them and build on online business successfully.

Amazing, Josh. Thanks so much for being on product and radio.

Thank you for having me. It's been fun.

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