Alessandro K.

Budget €5 for online letter services when dealing with German bureaucracy. You'll need it. 😅

#BuildInPublic #UXFail

As someone building digital products, this was both frustrating and inspiring.

If public infrastructure struggles with basic form submissions, it shows how critical good UX design really is. Every broken system is a reminder: we need to build better digital experiences.

Pro tip:

The digital infrastructure: Progress bar frozen, forms never arrived, message system lost my application (timestamp says otherwise), email address doesn't exist, and attachments won't open.

The solution? An online letter service. €1 to print and mail my docs. In 2025.

Got clearance last week. ✅

12 weeks. 3 failed message attempts. 1 non-existent email. Welcome to applying for Gründerzuschuss Phase 2 in Germany. 🤦

LEAP Newsletter: Half-Baked in Romania Half-frozen in Romania. SEO anxieties, survival skills, and lessons from an elite dropout turned woodworker.

Plus: We met Codrin, our Host here in Romania. An elite college grad turned hermit.
It was amazing listening to his stories, why he ditched corporate life to build his own, handmade home.

Full story: buff.ly/jBphytm

#buildinpublic #solopreneur

SEO in the AI era.

My entire strategy depends on organic content.
But I´ve been told "SEO is dead"
What do you think about that?

Current strategy: Build a solid foundation, multi-channel distribution, own your email list.

Stay paranoid. Stay flexible.

Somewhere between half-frozen, half-baked and stunning views in rural Romania, I skipped the thought of public funding for my side project.

The paperwork-to-payoff ratio may not be worth it for bootstrappers.

Here's what I've been thinking about the last days 🧵

Still figuring out how to balance genuine user value with growth metrics. Transparency helps, but monetization will always create tension. How do other "product-/growth" designers navigate this? Where do ethics and growth strategies connect vs. diverge? 🤔

Walking through the city, I can't unsee business models everywhere. That fitness challenge? Funnel optimization. That "helpful" customer service? Upsell opportunity. Once you see the systems behind user experiences, you can't unsee them. 👁️ (Even kittens are marketing tools now 🐱)

The awkward truth: growth designers use data to personalize experiences that drive conversions. User-centered design says, "serve the user." Growth design says, "serve the user AND the business metrics." Building my own product made me even more aware of the challenge ⚖️

"Buy one, get three"
As a UX designer, I spent years optimizing for user delight—reducing friction, building trust, creating seamless experiences. Thinking more about growth design flipped this: it's about processes, systems, and value (revenue). Same tools, completely different lens. 📈 🐾

This is why we test with friends - they get the broken version so someday the real audiences don't suffer through my learning curves.
Anyone else survived newsletter platform pains? What mobile optimization lessons did you learn?

Desktop preview looked fine. Mobile? Complete disaster. Padding, margins, spacing - everything broken.
Picture me staring at cramped text thinking about all the times I've lectured clients about mobile-first design. The irony was not lost 📱💀

Automation immediately broke after just 3 emails. It just stopped. Now I'm in a delightful customer support queue about why their system decided to take a nap. But the real nightmare: opened the email on my phone.

First red flag: Their WYSIWYG editor. Why do platforms reinvent wheels instead of following basic web standards? Spent more time fighting formatting than writing.
But I pushed through, imported friends as test subscribers (always test with friends!), and hit send.

🧵 Thread: When your newsletter setup meets reality -_-
Finally picked KIT for my newsletter. Simple plan:
✅ Profile setup
✅ Template design
✅ Welcome sequence
✅ Import & send
Feeling confident about my organized approach...
#BuildInPublic #Solopreneur

To fellow Substack users: I am genuinely curious how you navigate platform concerns. No judgment, I just want to understand how others weigh these decisions. Because honestly, I could have written 10 posts in the time I spent researching the "perfect" platform.

So from Substack → Medium + Beehiiv → simplified to newsletter-only → ConvertKit (now KIT). Perplexity and claude research looked solid at this point. :P
Real talk: The platform probably matters way less than I thought. The hard part isn't finding perfect tools - it's building the actual habit.

Then I read about their far-right content policies. It made me think - we focus on features and audience but skip the ethics of where we build. I'm not throwing shade at Substack users - every platform has issues. But it's wild. buff.ly/o7h7s9K

I spent eternity choosing the perfect platform instead of just writing. I decided to try this public writing habit changes everything approach. Plot twist: I've platform-hopped more than I've actually written. Classic perfectionism trap. I started with Substack (obviously the choice, right?).

Have been a bit quiet lately but went from "someday" to "let's do this" - finally building my health-tech app.

Biggest learning: Building for yourself hits different than client work. Anyone else made the employee → #solopreneur jump? What surprised you most?
#buildinpublic #bootstrap #longevity

This is so much like in Inception… every time I go to sleep, I wake up to a whole new level of madness, broken rules, exotic new physics and twisted common (un)sense.

Screenshots of the Symbl website and Figma plugin: a design asset platform offering free HTML symbols, emojis, app icons, flags, cursors, badges, and logos. The left side shows the homepage while the right side shows the Figma plugin page, highlighting emoji selection and a clean design for easy symbol access.

Oh, you need to bookmark this one: Symbl, a single place to get all the little design assets we need, over and over as designers: HTML symbols, emojis, app icons, flags, curors, Apple Store/ Google Play badges, social media icons and payment and big companies logos
symbl.revend.group

My First Freelance Job: How I Landed My First Gig and Lived to Tell the Tale From crafting my first proposal to overcoming unexpected hurdles, here's how I tackled my freelance debut

Just published part 4 of my freelance journey: creating my first offer, navigating project challenges, and reflecting on key lessons learned. 🎉 Check it out and let me know your thoughts! #FirstFreelanceJob 🚀 tinyurl.com/3v48kmxa

Just wait for the Category 12 hurricanes. Then you‘ll get your flying cars …

Cargo overloading while walking without shoes and killing wales by throwing piss grenades in public.

(Death Stranding)

YouTube video by WebSurf Turtle uses Skateboard to move faster.

Reminds me of this one
www.youtube.com/shorts/rSfi_...

First @thegetupkids.bsky.social until „refused“ and „Caliban“ pulled me to the hardcore side of music.