Last month was about finding my bearings doing this new thing: solopreneurship. Back then I updated you about getting the first users for my new product, some good traction on social - but now I’m proud to announce that since then I also made my first internet money! 🤑
Here’s the May recap:
Spell:
First revenue: $1133 one time + $589 in MRR 🥳
Product: full focus on autonomous AI agents with access to 100+ plugins
Had some first critical downtime
Started building Spell SEO reputation with a blog
Experimented with Reddit and Google Adwords - with mixed results
A lot of users signed up for Spell but also not subscribed after the trial. Almost every canceling person was kind enough to provide valuable feedback though!
Personal:
I more than doubled my Twitter followers: 700 → 1645 🎉
A ton of people DMing, supporting, helping
I started this newsletter and got 9 subs 🫶
Gave my personal website, rafalzawadzki.com, a fresh coat of paint. Now it looks awful but at least it is functional thanks to running with Notion as CMS 🤓
What’s next for Spell
AI agents are new, not very well understood, and not very reliable. Therefore I have two short term goals:
Build up the use cases: make sure that popular & in demand tasks (eg. marketing or data processing) work smoothly and users quickly & reliably find value in Spell
Build the reputation: create a portfolio of recipes, how to’s etc - and educate, educate, educate! I realized that a lot of work needs to be done in not only making agents work, but also teaching how to use them effectively!
This conclusion comes from the feedback coming from users who churned or not extended their trial. Recurring themes were:
“AI agents are not there yet”
“As of now I can’t find any use for AI agents”
So let’s improve that! 💪
(btw, I used this prompt to process all user feedback and come up with actionable items)
What’s next in general
I’ll have to get over it and do my first Product Hunt launch! I am lucky to have a lot of people expressing support and willing to help. Planning it for some time this month so stay tuned!
I also consider adding more notes here. So much is happening in a month and there are a ton of topics I’d love to go more in depth, not only summarize! Maybe once a month + irregular posts? I intend on steadily growing this newsletter. Twitter is great, but I want to avoid platform dependence. Who knows when & what happens to it?
Besides all that, I’m a maker so I’m gonna make. I’m already itching to start a new project ☺️ Very likely it’s going to be something with AI again. I might also resuscitate one of my old projects…
See you next month!
Rafal