51: Recast - The Origin of Level from Startups for the Rest of Us - a podcast by Ben Orenstein and Derrick Reimer

Ben is out of town on a retreat with his Tuple co-founders, and Derrick is deep into building Level. So, this episode features Derrick as a recent guest on the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast. Rob Walling interviews Derrick about Level - what inspired the idea and how he went about trying to validate it.
Today’s Topics Include:Level’s landing page and current query of number of members; scarcity play is effective
Level is a Slack competitor, but much less interruptive and more asynchronousDerrick discovered Slack does not scale well as a team grows, interrupts people’s flow; Level is Derrick’s take on the solution to those issues
Derrick hit the ground running with his manifesto and getting people signed up for LevelHis efforts on Twitter were effective because it’s a product marketed toward developers
Dealing with feedback, ill-informed comments and conversationsDerrick wanted to talk to too many, rather than too few people about value of creating a new product to address pain points
Differentiation from Slack: Level niched down to developers and open sourcedDerrick plans to offer free and on-prem versions of Level
Whiteboarding to go over ideas and transform them into something tangibleDerrick is working on mock-ups; challenging to lay out UI elements, such as the Inbox
Risks are involved; when building something new, the challenge is to validate your most risky hypotheses - the ones that are most likely to failLevel is the third Saas startup that Derrick has worked on; first time he will not earn income or revenue while building Level, so had to make adjustments
Links and resources:Derrick Reimer Website (http://www.derrickreimer.com/)
Derrick Reimer on Twitter (https://twitter.com/derrickreimer)Ben Orenstein Website (http://www.benorenstein.com/)
Ben Orenstein on Twitter (https://twitter.com/r00k)Level (https://level.app/)
Derrick’s Manifesto (https://level.app/manifesto)Tuple (https://tuple.app/)
Fostering a Culture of Creativity with Rob Walling (http://artofproductpodcast.com/episode-42)Exploring the Open Source Business Model (http://artofproductpodcast.com/episode-44)
Startups for the Rest of Us: How Derrick Reimer is Validating His Ambitious Third Saas (https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-399-how-derrick-reimer-is-validating-his-ambitious-third-saas-application)Application (https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-399-how-derrick-reimer-is-validating-his-ambitious-third-saas-application)
Drip (https://www.drip.com/)Codetree (https://codetree.com/)
MicroConf (https://www.microconf.com/)

Further episodes of The Art of Product

Further podcasts by Ben Orenstein and Derrick Reimer

Website of Ben Orenstein and Derrick Reimer