Cool new redesign of the newsletter page on @usecommune.com ✌️
I'm slowly building the open alternative to Substack.
If you want to #leaveSubstack or already did, check out usecommune.com.
3️⃣ Watch someone use your product in silence. It's uncomfortable and it's the most valuable thing you can do.
Onward to Cycle 2!
#commune #leavesubstack
Lessons:
1️⃣ 1-week cycles are too short when half your work is conversations that depend on other people's schedules. Moving to 2-week cycles.
2️⃣ The gap between "I'll try it" and "it's connected" is where you win or lose users. Nobody tells you about the bugs they hit. They just leave.
That one sentence changed my priorities for next cycle.
One number: 30 newsletters on Commune now.
The one thing I didn't expect:
@duv.bsky.social kindly offered to screen-share while he connected his newsletter. I didn't say a word. In 37 minutes I learned more about my product's problems than in weeks of building. He hit a wall and said: "I would not have done that on my own without you here"
What didn't happen:
→ The full onboarding audit. I kept prioritizing conversations over the audit. In hindsight, that was a mistake. One of the creators I onboarded hit a bug on his first try. If I wasn't on the call with him, he would have left and I would have never known why.
What I shipped:
→ 3 newsletters onboarded
→ Article deletion feature live
→ Newsletter profile customization nearly done
→ Partnership conversations started
What I planned:
→ Onboard creators (say hi to @duv.bsky.social and @a
→ Ship a product feature
→ Start ESP partnership conversations
→ Audit the full onboarding flow
First week using structured work cycles for Commune.
The idea is simple: plan a fixed set of tasks for a defined period, work on them, then review what shipped and what didn't. No endless to-do lists. Just a few things that matter, a deadline, and an honest look at the end.
"Derrocado en 1973 por la CIA": Imagen de Salvador Allende marca show de The Strokes en Coachella 2026
www.meganoticias.cl/nacional/519...
Cojones como pianos The Strokes, que acabaron así su actuación en el segundo fin de semana de Coachella
Has descrito mi vida hace 10 años 😅 ahora me duele pero por hacer el bruto haha!
Me parece MARAVILLOSO que una mujer joven "de más de 40 años" haga esto sintiéndose bien con su cuerpo. Ojalá todas fuéramos capaces de ser así, de no creer que somos feas o peores por no echar las pocas horas libres que tenemos intentando parecer adolescentes.
I wrote more about this in my latest newsletter issue, including why most people refuse to lead and what actually gets someone to take the first step.
I wasn't trying to lead when I started AsyncAPI. I just built a small tool, open-sourced it, and showed up at conferences to practice speaking. The "movement" part happened in steps so small I barely noticed.
Why? Because moving first means looking dumb in public. A friend told me that exact thing this week. He's scared to start something, fail, and have everyone watch.
I see the same thing in tech all the time. People spot real problems (Substack hosting nazi content, walled gardens trapping creators, closed networks killing interoperability) and they just… complain. They don't move.
That clip got millions of views. Leadership speakers dissected it for years. But the real lesson isn't about "first followers." It's about why everyone else stayed sitting.
In 2009, a guy named Collin Wynter started dancing alone on a hill at the Sasquatch Music Festival. Hundreds of people sat around him doing nothing. He looked ridiculous. He kept going.
A minute later, one person joined. Then three. Then a wave of people rushed up the hill.
You don't need a vision. You need the stomach to look dumb in public long enough for the first person to join.
I dug into this in my latest newsletter. What actually stops people from going first, and what it feels like when you do it without even realizing it.
I think that's the part people get wrong about leading. They picture the dance party, dozens of people rushing up a hill to join the movement. But they forget the part where one guy dances alone for a full minute while everyone watches and does nothing.
There was no grand vision. No master plan. For the first couple of years, I wasn't even trying to build a standard. It was just a neat thing I made. The whole thing grew in steps so small you could barely notice them.
Someone asked me recently how I "envisioned the future" with AsyncAPI.
I didn't.
I built a small tool because I needed it. I open-sourced it because why not. I showed up at conferences because I wanted to get better at public speaking. That's it.
#buildinpublic
Ha! Pretty cool app ✌️
Shipped a feature today because a user needed it last week. Not because it was on the roadmap. That's the advantage of being small: the distance between "this should exist" and "it's live" is measured in days, not quarters. #buildinpublic 🤙
Then @kinlane.bsky.social, one of the pioneers of the API world, showed up on the chat and shared something that completely floored me 🤣 Turns out he was at that exact festival, at a turning point in his own life, right when he was about to start something that would shape an entire industry.
I used it to explore why most people refuse to lead and what it actually takes to move first when nobody's moving with you.
