Readit NewsI did this 4 years ago on my personal email address and I never had to recover any email.
The emails are not deleted; they are labeled and skip the inbox.
https://blog.leftium.com/2023/11/automatic-inbox-cleanup-wit...
- Lisp S-expressions are powerful because they represent both code and data. So data is code; code is data: it is very simple to augment the language.
- Lisp S-expression syntax conveniently mirrors the tree shape of Abstract Syntax Trees.
F# also supports macros and meta-programming: futures (F# version of async/await) were added to existing versions of F#. No need for a new language runtime!
If JS had that level of meta-programming, I wouldn't have to wait for pattern-matching support! And pipes!
Theo Browne (T3) detailed the different methods he used to sync user data for https://t3.chat: https://youtu.be/3gVBjTMS8FE
He looked into several solutions like https://zero.rocicorp.dev, but decided to roll his own.
He finally decided to let Convex handle sync for him:
The key insight was: marketing was the most important part. And the most important part of marketing was finding (and validating) a painful problem businesses would pay for.
- It is important to talk directly with real prospects: real business owners. You can use stuff like Gartner reports to help find a niche, but it is essential to talk directly with real people who have the problem.
- Validation involved getting a prepayment even though the software did not exist. Not even a design. Prepayment got the initial 10 or so "champions" a lifetime discount and personal input into how the app would be developed.
- The prepayments served as a much stronger validation than a verbal "yes." Also it funded development of the initial version. The 10 champions' input also made the initial version much better.
- Generally, a "painful" problem will result in at least a 10X ROI (additional revenue, saved expenses, saved time, etc). If you describe the painful problem better than the prospects themselves can, they will assume you have the solution and jump straight to "how do I pay you? (sign up)"
- The market research math is roughly: find a niche with at least 10,000 prospects. Plan to capture 1% of this market, or 100 customers. If you can find a painful problem whose solution is worth paying $100-200/month, you should be able to achieve $80K profit/year.
(The Paperless Pipeline origin story is slightly different. For example, there was really only a single true "champion." But this champion was the happy customer of another SaaS that was built with the same process. This champion kept asking for this other SaaS that turned into PaperlessPipeline.)
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So I think the resources below provide the most risk-free (highest chance of success) way of achieving your goal (I think YC targets "unicorns" with much higher potential ROI with the understanding at least 90% will fail):
- The founder of Paperless Pipeline has been teaching his method: https://startfromzero.com (Specifically "Idea Extraction" is the most important part)
- Apparently he is going to start a YouTube channel where he teaches his stuff for free.
- https://30x500.com is another great course that teaches a similar method, and more geared toward engineer-types.
- https://shop.stackingthebricks.com: Kind of like the a-la-carte version of the 30x500. The two most valuable parts are probably "Sales Safari" and "Just F*ckin Ship."
Some samples:
- https://veneer.leftium.com/v/s.1o5t26He2DzTweYeleXOGiDjlU4Jk...
- https://veneer.leftium.com/v/s.1pk4C9jFI02CnZaxo9obsD4oAmLla...
Vercel is ending support for Node v18. Instead of updating my old app, I decided to finish the rewrite of the better version. The old version currently powers this site: https://viviblues.com
Compare to the new version:
- https://viviblues.com/pretty/sheet?u=https://docs.google.com...
- https://viviblues.com/pretty/sheet?u=https://docs.google.com...
Then my "uninteresting sender" rules catch most of the remaining SPAM/uninteresting emails. These are accounts like "noreply" that automated emails often come from.
I had to set up a very special rule for a single company because they successfully dodged my other filters but always started with "Because you're a valued Vanguard client, we thought you'd be interested in this information."
More details: https://blog.leftium.com/2023/11/automatic-inbox-cleanup-wit...