Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles this week

What I learned:

• Creating a class (database table) diagram for all the links between data classes is hard if I try to draw it on paper from the start. It was easier to walk through one class at a time, defining its relationship with other classes and the type of relationship (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many) with each class. AI helped me through this exercise and created a JSON output that documents all the relationships. I then used the JSON output to create the class diagram.
• The UI doesn’t need to be spectacular for an early version of a software product. It just needs to work. But engineers who aren’t full stack want an example of the UI they should build. Finding examples of UIs from other products and asking a developer to clone one of them (or parts of it) is an efficient way to get a developer what they need.
• Categorizing the use-case types that entrepreneurs will want to use the “book library” tool for was a great exercise. Each type of problem can have a specific, repeatable solution. Creating an approach or framework for each problem type was a nice unlock.
• Thinking about the use-case types as one big process and creating a flow process diagram to document it was a big step forward. The document also fostered alignment between my developer friend and me because he could see how I envision the user flow.
• I need to collaborate with people who complement me, especially in marketing. I had a chat with a friend who’s skilled in marketing. We uncovered some low-hanging-fruit opportunities that could be great ways to drive long-term awareness of this tool organically (i.e., not through paid marketing).
• Headway is a bootstrapped book-summary app founded in 2019. It’s rumored to do over $200 million in annual revenue with 30% profit margins (source). It raised $100 million at a $2.3 billion valuation in 2024 (source).

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!