Series: Kick & the Pitch

Engineering & Entreprenuership
Kick & the Pitch is a series documenting the journey from engineer to entrepreneur, focusing on creating SaaS products under specific rules and using a tech stack that includes React, AppSync, and Cloud Developer Kit. The goal is to launch multiple products in a short period, leveraging AI components and tools like Github CoPilot to increase productivity and learn from failures. The approach involves finding niche markets, using platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and Product Hunt for inspiration, and utilizing Google Ads, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook for marketing

The Rules

  • Find or come up with an idea for a SaaS product
  • Build it in under 30 Days
  • Spend $500 on marketing and launch
    • Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok

Why I am doing this

  • 1 in 7 business succeed, theoretically if I launch 10, I like my odds of finding a niche that can have a return
  • Riches in niches, even the smallest niches can be wildy profitable given the amount of people that are on the internet and the ability to find those cusomters using google ads, instagram, tiktok or facebook
  • Can I launch 10 products in 6 months? Learning to distill a product to an MVP is a skill, I want that skill to build and ship fast
  • Building a product is a skill. Writing code is a science, but building a business, launching a product has more nuance and levers. I think the only way to build that muscle is to do it (and fail consistently)
  • LLMs (ChatGPT, Perplexity etc) offer a tremendous amount of leverage to developers to increase the velocity of development
  • I am expecting a huge amount of failure from this experiment, that's the point. It is likely not 1 product ever makes $1 dollar, but I will learn a ton
  • I've had a lot of ideas for apps, and then attempted to validate them, always finding a reason to not build it. I'm doing the opposite, I'm not going to waste time looking for a reason to not build, I am just going to build and launch with either a stripe link, or waitlist link with a working version see if I actually have users.

Find an idea for an app

I have no plan to how I am going to find ideas, in fact I might steal ideas that are working put a twist on them and repackage them. Twitter, Reddit, Product Hunt has always been a great place to find product inspiration.

Build

Using tools like Github CoPilot, and LLMs (OpenAI, Perplexity etc) can increase developer productivity as much as 40%. Using AI, LLMs, Agents, I am very interested into how automated and how much I can scale without hiring any offshore developers or outside help.

Tech Stack

I will be using Amazon Web Services (AWS). Specifically AppSync, Amplify and the Cloud Developer Kit (CDK) to orchestrate infrastructure.

  • Frontend: React (JS/TS)
  • Backend API: AppSync
  • Infrasructure as code (IAC): Cloud Developer Kit (CDK) in TypeScript

Product Thoughts

  • Much of what I build will have an AI component
  • So much of building a product is boilerplate code, if I can have that templated out, development time would be driven down to zero for the components below. Removing the overhead of the items below to zero will allow me to focus on BFF
    • Authentication/Authorization -- AWS: Cognito
    • Hosting -- AWS: Amplify
    • API -- AWS: AppSync
    • Storage -- AWS: DynamoDb, S3, ElasticSearch