Reinvention 101!
The messy middle building in public in real-time!
When I launched a newsletter a few months ago, I wanted to try out beehiiv and get a feel for how it worked.
Like everyone else in the world, I also wanted to become famous immediately, so - also like everyone else - I went straight to the AI gurus ChatGPT/Claude to get some ideas for how I could use my company name in a flashy, memorable way.
I wound up with “Startup Founders, GoBoldr!”
…which is a terrible name
You can look at that and immediately see, it’s not great. The visual style is even worse.
But why? Simple:
It’s eye-catching, but too wordy
The words don’t make sense together
It’s not memorable
It’s busy
It looks terrible as an Email header
The play on my business name assumes it’s already famous
In short, it doesn’t accomplish anything I set out to do.
And, things like how it looks in a recipients inbox, came up after I started:
Finally, I used a template someone else had put together, and ran in to issues using it, editing it, and making it mine.
Because it wasn’t.
And because it wasn’t mine, I went too far, did too much, lost track of my fundamentals…
I didn’t actually write it beyond a few posts. It felt wrong, I didn’t actually like what I was doing - even though I’m absolutely the kind of person who enjoys writing newsletters, and was very happy with the good parts.
Long story short, my first attempt at a newsletter was a train wreck
Which is awesome!
I found some things that worked really well, I learned how to use the tools, and - most importantly of all - I took the first step.
Revising something that already exists is whole orders of magnitude easier than starting from scratch. The hard part is over. Now, I’m tearing it down to the studs, and starting with something that’s dramatically improved because of what I’ve already learned.
So, why SHIPPED.?
It’s a single word. Punchy, dramatic. It stands out on basic graphics. It’s memorable, shareable, repeatable. It matches GoBoldr’s existing basic-but-bold color scheme and tone, and ending with the “.” makes it arguably unique. Finally, it’s a big bold invitation to my ICP to open the email.
Since the audience I’m writing for is startup founders, tech junkies, investors of all types, and (most of all) “builders,” what do startup software founders talk about all the time?
Shipping software. Day in, day out.
What do investors want? Technical founders who deliver - who ship.
So!
Welcome to SHIPPED.
More to come!