At $900 MRR, Clay app, the effect of Apple Watch and a school in Jaisalmer

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Side-project updates

So some of you know that I am working on a SaaS called Pika.style, an app that helps create beautiful images from boring screenshots quickly. This month, Pika has crossed $900 in MRR, up ~$150 from last month. The start of October made me feel like this month there wouldn’t be much growth, but the second half of the month surprised me with some new paid users

I’ve also increased subscription price of Pika’s Pro tier to $12 from $9. The app has tons of new features and improvements which provide more value, save more time and produce quality images, so increasing price made sense. I talked to some users before making this change and they all were good with it

Also pushed tons of new features, a new template, added a Pika education plan to make Pro plan more accessible to students and teachers. I honestly have so many ideas to work on and not enough time which makes it disappointing sometimes

I was also hoping for Pika to cross $1K mark in October and fell short on that milestone. But hopefully in coming days 😇

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To make your life like 49% more interesting!

If you like learning, adventures and would like to have an interesting and busy life(and occasional headaches 😅), start a business(read sell your ideas). It doesn’t have to be big, but anything that makes you feel more creative and satisfies your soul

You don’t have to set aside your studies/work/commitments for that, just give it sometime from your routine and try to sell your skills. Maybe you’re good at painting, so try to sell your paintings online. Maybe you’re a Notion user, try to create and sell a course on using Notion. Maybe you’re learning web design, try to sell HTML CSS themes. Maybe you like reading books, share summarised versions of the books in a small monthly subscription. It can be anything

Why? It’ll not only make your life super-interesting and more involved, but also help you learn tons of stuff that you would never learn otherwise. You’ll wear multiple hats while pursing something like that and when you do new things, you open yourself to new possibilities and grow exponentially. You’ll learn to sell, you’ll learn to market, you’ll learn to present and what not. You’ll gain skills which you wouldn’t gain reading any book or from watching a YouTube video

Give it a try :)

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Interesting app that updates you about your network

Last week I signed up for this app called Clay Clay connects to your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. and gives you a feed of updates from your connections in a visually appealing interface

You can use Clay to make deeper connections. Clay lets you make searches like “in Berlin”, or “active in last week”, or “writes about programming”. This information is useful if you want to connect to specific set of people from your connections. I am still exploring the app, but so far I love the experience

→ clay.earth

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The effect of wearing Apple Watch

rishi 🌔 @thelifeofrishi

started wearing Apple Watch again since last month and since then I've been walking more on average(5 to 10kms a day) it has almost turned a routine now, nudges WORK!

I had switched to analog watch some months back to feel the aesthetic of it. And also I sometimes like to keep the watch close to my ears and hear the tick-tock sound, it somehow makes me a feel a bit more alive

But then after a long time I switched back to my Apple Watch to see what’s new in WatchOS. I absolutely hate notifications on my watch so I had disabled those. But notifications that make huge impact on me are the reminders to stand up, and to exercise. Since I started wearing Apple Watch, I’ve been averaging 5km to 10 kms of walking every day and it has become a routine now which was pretty much non-existent when I wore the analog. A good example of how well they’ve gamified it with rings and badges

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A school in Jaisalmer

sanjana samraj @SamrajSanjana

I am honestly mind blown by this school I found out about today located in Jaisalmer!

I am mind blown too. This is such a great looking architecture in the middle of nowhere. Would love to visit it someday, Jaisalmer is not too far from where I live

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A great personal website

SJ Zhang @sjzhang_

I rebuilt sj.land with @nextjs to be more like an app. Sharing some details on why I redesigned it, what's in it, and how I built it 🧵

→ sj.land

Tiny reminder that you don’t need to finish that book that you don’t find interesting. Or that series you’ve been pushing yourself to watch

Life’s too short to do that, do what interests you :)

That’s it for October. I hope you had a fun and healthy October

September is more likely the month I’ll start travelling again after being at home for more than 3 months working on Pika and some other stuff. Maybe I’ll go back to being in Goa again for some time, or take a trip to Jaipur. What are you planning for September?