Starting a Newsletter for College Founders, by College Founders

📲 The Cold Open

Lessons from the week.

Building can be exhausting, don’t go it alone. Learn from my successes and mistakes over the past week and apply them in your own ventures.

Start Small.

• High Expectations: Being online in the startup space is an absolute treasure trove of knowledge, but it also breeds unrealistic expectations. You don’t have to build a $10k MRR SaaS as your first project. Start with small projects like WordPress Plugins, small automation scripts, (Or even a Newsletter 😉!).

• Just Get Experience: It’s super tempting when you have a great idea to jump in and try to make it perfect. But when you’re just starting out, you might not have the know-how to actually build a product how you envision it. Start small and iterate, it will pay off.

Always, ALWAYS, Be Working On Something.

• Time Management: I’ve found over the past few months that I go through week long slumps where I don’t work on startup stuff at all. I’ve had weeks where school totally takes over, and I stop working on projects. Lately, I’ve found that even 5 minutes a day to send a cold email or writing down an idea, helps keeps the momentum alive.

• Building Is Fun: If you’re here, you like building things. You love the satisfaction of making a product that solves a problem. So chase that feeling! Find pain points in your life and make tools to fix them. Ask your friends for the same thing. Always be on the lookout for an opportunity to solve someones problem.

🗞️ Why Do We Build?

Let’s figure out why I’m here writing this, and why you’re here reading it.

I’ve always been on a decently high agency path. I got good grades in high school, got accepted to T20 University, and started pursuing a valuable degree in CS. Seeing people in my life follow that exact same path and experience success was a huge inspiration for me, and I always thought I’d do the same.

Nothing wrong with a 9-5, and I really do mean this! Builders like to romanticize quitting your job / school, but a stable income (or future stable income from your degree) is super admirable.

But I began to compare myself to other people my age. I saw individuals online, and even in my own life, doing things I wanted to do, but was too scared to. I was happy with my achievements, but they were starting businesses, making content, and carving out their own niche in the world.

I realized that I love to create. There’s a certain pride that comes from making an idea into reality. The financial appeal of pursuing startups is of course a prevalent reason for pretty much anyone in the space, but at the end of the day I find myself making things, regardless if they make money or not.

I think we all just want to leave our own mark on the world, and hopefully Launch Letter is the start of that for me (and maybe you too!).

🚗 Fast Four

Four quick bullet points to think about!

• 🧰 Tool: ChatGPT has free Plus Subscriptions for students through May. Helpful for finals, and even more helpful for building!

• 🔨 Another Tool: Workflowy is an awesome note taking app. Learned about it from Adam Nathan’s Startup Tycoon newsletter (Highly Recommend!)*

• 🔥 Build Idea: Lightweight Caching Plugin for WordPress. WP Rocket, a big player in that space just changed their pricing and people are mad. Could totally capitalize on that.

• 📈 What I’m Working On: Finished up a WordPress Plugin to show menu items for a client’s personal chef website. Started this newsletter. Want to follow me in real time? I’m on Twitter!
  
  * That’s my referral link for Workflowy — I’m out of free space 😅 so if you sign up through it, it helps me out!

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