Highbrow

Big news—@magritteco is now free! You can browse 3,000+ high-performing ad creatives (growing daily), save ads you love for later, and get unlimited ad inspiration at no cost.

Four months ago, my wife and I launched our very first SaaS, that Google killed in a WEEK. Instead of giving up, we built a new one. Here’s the story: 👇

We just launched @magritteco, your weekly dose of ad inspiration. Every Tuesday, you'll get 5 high-performing ad creatives and a FREE template you can tweak and run in no time. Create better ads, faster ⬇️

Story of my life in one diagram 😂

Just a month ago, my wife, Jane, and I decided to build our first SaaS. We had zero coding experience, and our knowledge of how things work under the hood was pretty basic, so we knew we had a lot to learn. Instead of spending forever searching for the perfect idea, we went with the first one that seemed good enough and wasn’t too hard to build. I believe the best way is to just start building something (anything, really) and then adjust or pivot based on customer feedback or challenges along the way. In our case, I discovered a way to speed up page indexing on Google using their API. Manually, Google Search Console only lets you do 10 pages a day, but with the API, you can do up to 1,000 a day. That seemed like a good enough idea to start with, plus we’d learn a lot, like using external APIs, setting up Google logins, managing subscriptions with Stripe, and so on. After some thorough Reddit research, we chose @nocodebackend for the backend and @weweb_io for the frontend. We looked at our strengths and decided Jane would handle the backend, and I’d focus on the frontend. We chose Xano and WeWeb for one main reason: they let us ship faster since both are no-code. Plus, WeWeb integrates seamlessly with Xano, and their learning resources are built around Xano. Now that we’ve finished building, I can say both Xano and WeWeb are solid products with no major downsides. Today, a month later, our first "baby" is ready! We’ve named it Huxley, after one of my favorite authors, Aldous Huxley. (please, tell me if the name sucks) You might be wondering why I'm sharing this with you... To show that anyone can build a product from scratch in less than a month, even without coding skills. If we can do it, you definitely can too!

Just 10 days ago, I launched my personal newsletter on @beehiiv, and it’s already nearing 1,000 subscribers! 🤯 I’m two episodes in, and the feedback has been amazing. Huge thanks to everyone who subscribed. I’m super excited to see where this goes!

Best email newsletters everyone should subscribe to: AI —> Ben’s Bites by @bentossell Startups —> This Week at YC by @garrytan Tech —> Benedict’s Newsletter by @benedictevans Product —> Lenny’s Newsletter by @lennysan (...)