The launch failed, but the product isn't dead

Hey y’all, Last week was pretty tough with the failure of the [Screencasting.com](http://Screencasting.com) launch, but this week has been much better. I received so much helpful and positive feedback from y'all here and from people on Twitter. I'm feeling very grateful for all the support and suggestions for how to improve it. I don't think the product is dead. I think the launch failed. And there are a lot of things we can do to try to keep it going. I’m feeling a lot more optimistic, but for now I think we're going to refocus on databases. That’s where we’ve seen the strongest product–audience fit, we’ve had real success there, and I really enjoy databases. So while we steady the ship, that’s where we’ll be focused. Once things feel solid again, we might branch out again, but for the foreseeable future, it’s going to be databases and developer-related content. One interesting thing that might be helpful, if there’s *something specific* you want to learn from me, what is it? What’s the thing you wish I would teach? I think we should be focusing on databases, but if there's something out there that you absolutely think, "I cannot believe that Aaron is not doing this" let me know. I don't pretend to have all the answers, and it would be be helpful to hear what y'all think. --- ### Thoughts from the week Right now, I am sitting in an Airbnb in the Hill Country of Texas with 11 of my closest friends. We have a group of college guys that does a guys trip every year and we're here right now. As soon as I hit “send” on this newsletter, I’m heading down to sit in the river. I feel very lucky and very grateful to have such a large group of close friends. I think one of the secrets of why we've stayed together is everyone has made an effort. We have people who plan things. I think the value of tradition and routine is very important. We do this trip every year without question and I know that at 36 most people don't keep up with their college friends, but I'm very grateful that I keep up with mine. If you have a group of friends that you don't see often enough, it might be worth taking charge and planning a thing. Everybody wants to show up somewhere, but nobody wants to plan a thing. But if you’re the planner, you might get a whole set of people gathering around you. --- ### Tweets from the week [](https://x.com/paulg/status/1927786668729270646) This is not only true for kids, but also true for adults. As I've started working more and more with AI, I am realizing more and more how valuable it is to have a baseline understanding of the tools that I'm working with. Because I am so knowledgeable in certain areas, that makes me even better at using the AI. And the way that I became knowledgeable in those areas is I read the documentation and I read the books. Now that nobody is doing that, but the benefits for doing that accrue unfairly even more to the people that are willing to put in the effort. --- [](https://x.com/liamesp/status/1927906653619319204) As I'm redesigning my blog, I'm looking for reproducible image styles that I can use for Open Graph images, and I'm going to be generating them at least in part with AI. I don't want them to look like AI images that everyone else is producing so I'm looking for low fidelity styles that don't suffer from the uncanny valley gap. I think this Riiso prints can be an effect that I add after the fact, where I can take an AI generated image, add my own little effect, and it becomes more of an Aaron image versus just a chat GPT image. --- [](https://x.com/Artedeingenio/status/1929212663965606180) This is another example of that “low fidelity” style I really like and I think it could be a unique visual direction. I probably won’t go with this exact line art look, and I’m almost settled on the style I’m going to use. But when I generate AI images, this is the kind of vibe I have in mind rather than futuristic dystopian cityscapes with a bunch of neon. --- [](https://x.com/aschmelyun/status/1930777217593659665) This is a great video from my dear friend Andrew. He's talking about the industry changing and YouTube no longer rewarding certain types of content because of AI. It's a short video, it's only five minutes, but it really spoke to me as well as I'm trying to navigate this changing landscape of being a developer educator in the age of AI. --- [](https://x.com/catehall/status/1929017169855049929) I think Twitter has poisoned my brain in this same way. Every time I'm writing something I'm thinking of the 10 angry people that are going to say, "But what about this thing that you obviously forgot about?" I think it is good to highlight counterpoints and maybe address them, but I certainly need to get out of this habit of trying to head off every argument in my writing before anyone actually makes it. --- [](https://x.com/tqbf/status/1929646141257535915) This is a fantastic post on basically being a senior developer who uses AI. It's kind of cynical and it's kind of brusque, but I think the points are very well stated. This is a good rebuttal to anyone saying that AI is useless. I don't personally think AI is useless. It is massively useful while also being somehow overhyped. And this is a good blog post that cuts through the hype. --- [](https://x.com/david_perell/status/1929017246879228134) I both believe that this is true and don't want this to be true. The absolute best way to learn or internalize information is to grapple with it like he's talking about here, but boy do I want a shortcut. This ties back to Paul Graham's tweet from above that if nobody is reading and everybody is asking for summaries, then there's relative advantage in reading. I think Nassim Nicholas Taleb has said something similar that if it's able to be summarized, it's either not good or not worth reading. He can be a little bit harsh, but the idea that all of the good stuff, all of the interstitial connections, and the hidden insights come from actually working with the material and grappling with it and not trying to get the summary out of it. That’s definitely been true in my experience. --- [](https://x.com/ImSh4yy/status/1929231969885286908) We love a plain text email, or at least something approaching plain text. I think this is a super cool example of putting a bar chart in a plain text email just using plain text. Also, if you don't follow Shayan, you should. He's a very reasonable tweeter in the tech Twitter space. --- [](https://x.com/luusssso/status/1929136224255479813) I swear one of these days I'm gonna convince my wife to let me dig a pool in our backyard. I don't know how, but I'm gonna make it look like this. I'm sure it can't be that hard. I'll figure it out along the way, right? --- If you’ve been enjoying the newsletter and think a friend may enjoy reading it each week too, please forward it to them! They can sign up to receive it weekly here: . That’s it for this week! I enjoy reading all of your replies, so if you see something interesting or just have a thought you want to share, please hit reply and let me know. Talk soon, Aaron {{ ENV.unsubscribe\_personal | default: visitor.unsubscribe\_url | hyperlink: "Click here to unsubscribe." }}