February 2023 Summaries

The author of the text documents their experience building a waitlist for their product Resend. They share what worked well and what didn't, highlighting the importance of creating a simple yet unique landing page to differentiate themselves from competitors. The success of social media posts in growing their following is also mentioned, emphasizing the value of consistency and engaging content. Additionally, they discuss the challenges of performance testing, email address validation, and processing the waitlist, offering actionable tips for founders building their own waitlists.

The author, Zeno, shares his experience with choosing and acquiring a strong brand name for their company. Initially, they focused on building the product and didn't spend much time thinking about naming until it was necessary. They started with a domain that combined their first names, but later realized they needed a better name as their MVP evolved. They brainstormed a list of words, combined them in different ways, and used various methods to filter their options. To narrow down the choices, they set a timebox and checked if the desired domains were available by looking for clues such as whois records or web.archive.org snapshots. After persistence and negotiation, they finally acquired resend.com for $25,000. The author emphasizes that having a good name is not the key to success, but rather utilizing it well in conjunction with a great product.

We're excited to announce that Resend is now backed by Y Combinator, a goal to reimagine how email can be done in 2023 and beyond, with an email API for developers that aims to replace next-generation Sendgrid. Since launching four weeks ago, we've seen significant traction, with over 4,949 people on the waitlist and our open source project already gaining popularity with 4,168 stars on GitHub. Being part of YC's Winter '23 batch alongside other successful founders is a special opportunity for us, as companies like Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Gitlab, Zapier, and Supabase have all come out of this program, and we're looking forward to sharing our journey with the community.