Max Rohowsky, Ph.D.

20 Nov 2024

Created a Build in Public starter pack. 🎉 If you're an indie hacker building in public, feel free to join: 👉 Share your project below 🧡Like this post for the algo push 🔄 Repost this for visibility go.bsky.app/PvitcMe

Not proud but man enough to say it: I've become a LinkedIn poster. Any other builders/indie hacker want to link up on LinkedIn?

Came across an captcha for humans for the first time. 👀 You need to turn all squares green. But each time you click, multiple others change color. If you don't solve it, it says you're human because you're probably too lazy to solve it. 😆

Crosspublish has a new landing page. 🤩 I've redesigned it a few times since starting the project. Each version got a little better, but I was never completely satisfied with how it looked. The new one is a bit more playful, and honestly the best site I've made in a long time.

POV: Me fighting a bug from a user that I can't replicate. Opus 5.5 needs to save me today.

Added cookie a cookie consent dialog. Not the kind of SaaS feature to brag about... ... but I'm German, so I'll play by the rules before I get in trouble. 🥲

I used to treat my SaaS MVPs like lottery tickets. If the MVP didn't take off right after launch, I'd drop the idea & move on to the next. It all changed once I understood that finding the right way to market a product is the real game...

Having trouble distributing your content across socials? Try Crosspublish.com

My visitor to trial conversion went up recently. I can't prove exactly why, but I think these changes helped:

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3. There's now a short section about me, with a "Talk to the founder" button.

I think people appreciate when they see there's a real person behind the product, and they can reach out directly. Removing small bits of friction one-by-one seems to help. But I'll be honest, 99% of this is trial-and-error.

My visitor to trial conversion went up recently. I can't prove exactly why, but I think these changes helped:

1. Google sign-up right on the landing page. Before, you had to click "Start trial", land on a register page, and only then could you continue with Google. Now that button sits on the landing page itself. It's one less step.

2. The new landing page is a lot simpler and easier to read compared to the old one. It also has a nice clickable demo that people can play with.

This is a test post from Max over the API, nothing to see here. :)

This graph was flat for 6 months. Still can't believe that there are a few people every week who decide to sign up to use something I've built.

Customer support is the most satisfying part of bootstrapping. People don't expect a fix within minutes of asking. Messages from early users like the one below have become addictive. 🤩

Everyone in SaaS rn:

Promote your work. Nobody will do it for you.

In the past I'd launch something, get no traction, and move on to the next idea. Not this time. I'm sticking to Crosspublish and focusing on marketing. Pivots within the social media idea-space are fine. Quitting the idea entirely isn't. The goal now is simple: do more marketing.

If you post on more than one platform, Crosspublish lets you write once and publish to X, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon and more. This post went out with it: https://crosspublish.com

Setting up Grok Bot has been my biggest productivity unlock 2026. - Content scout: Runs on Monday tells me what's new - Script writer: Helps me write YT scripts - Thumbnail designer: Makes all my thumbnails - Personal Brand: Updates my personal-brand GitHub repo - X Helper: Helps me engage.

Whenever I stop posting for a few days, I forget how to write content. Feels like starting from scratch 😆 fml

Need help distributing content? Try: crosspublish.com

Back from vacation. Felt good to be off-grid for a few weeks. Now back to figuring things out with Crosspublish.

12 Sept

Build in public update: - Submitted 9 new permission requests to meta. - Added an inbox that gathers messages across socials. - Fixed some small bugs. - Planned my next holiday.

11 Sept

Grok 4.6 is still my main LLM. I've tried different models, but Grok still wins on value-for-money. If money didn't matter I'd probably just use Fable 5.1 But for now it's just Grok 4.6 on the Cursor Pro subscription.

11 Sept

Build in public update: Improved the analytics overview today. You can now see all account and post level metrics in one place.

10 Sept

3 weeks ago on threads: - 0 views - 0 posts - 0 followers Today after cross-posting daily: - 93,800 views - 100 posts - 62 followers Showing up is all it took.

10 Sept

Biggest life hack: Build something you use every day. I was annoyed with checking my inbox across different social platforms. Now I just made an inbox that gathers all messages from all accounts. Next: Applying for API permissions with meta to make this publicly available.

10 Sept

Well that's it for today I guess...

9 Sept

Build in public update: - Requesting more permissions from meta (again) - Adding first comment option to all providers - Working on onboarding e-mail - Reached out to new test users.

9 Sept

LFG! First step to getting LinkedIn API access! By far the hardest to get!

8 Sept

I posted ~400 times this month. That's ~100 posts across 4 platforms. Next improvements to Crosspublish will be: - Option to add first comment (useful for plugs) - Get meta permissions for analytics data.

8 Sept

Build in public progress: Shipped a change log. Used a template from magicUI.

7 Sept

Build in public progress: Creating assets for custom landing pages. So much manual work if you want to make it look half-decent.

6 Sept

The more I work on my SaaS, the more I realize simplicity is key.

5 Sept

"No free trial" is bad advice. If you: • Have no social proof • No marketing budget • Aren't solving your own problem There's no better way to get early feedback.

4 Sept

I've don't really watch YouTube or read books anymore. Every time I need some information, I just prompt. - No watching of unnecessary ads - Less friction for finding information - No wait time Anyone else completely stopped consuming that kind of stuff?

3 Sept

My x community is growing, without being a reply guy. What's working: • I genuinely caring about connecting with fellow builders • I don’t sell here; it’s all about community, not sales • No AI replies, it hurt your reputation It’s a slow grind; there are no shortcuts.

I launched on ProductHunt 4 hours ago. Here are the results: • 0 sales • 22 upvotes • 4 comments • 48 page visitors Thanks for the support 🫶 Link in comments

Appreciate all your support 👇 https://www.producthunt.com/products/crosspublish

Aaaand we're live 🚀 I've launched my Startup on ProductHunt ☺️ Crosspublish is for creators, founders, marketers who want to post their content broadly & value granular control over every post. I'd genuinely love your feedback on my first bootstrapped SaaS. ❤️

Here's the link to the ProductHunt listing: https://www.producthunt.com/products/crosspublish

1 Sept

Landing page before and after. ~5 months of learning in one image.

1 Sept

Marketing is a habit, not a PH launch. Sustainable long-term distribution will involve far more: - SEO on Google and Bing - YouTube videos - Cold outreach and DM's - Posting on social media That's going to be the main focus after tomorrow's launch.

1 Sept

@ProductHunt launch in 1 day 🚀 A big advantage of launching is that it makes you do the "small-stuff": - Try the onboarding - Retry the email sign-up - Check the payment flows It's things I don't check often because I use my admin account.

31 Aug

Desktop landing page is more or less ready. Mobile is getting close. Honestly, I'm still not 100% happy. But there's other higher-leverage tasks to do before the ProductHunt launch on Wednesday.

31 Aug

Launching in 2 days! 🚀 It's been long since I last launched on @ProductHunt. Completely forgot how much work it is! To-do's for today: - Test all key user flows - make landing page look nice - prepare launch day marketing - record a demo Launching always feels like a momentum boost.

31 Aug

Marketing involves a lot of experimentation. And a lot of the time, it'll look quite silly: - Posts that get 0 views. - People being mean for no reason. - Campaigns that don't bring any traffic. But it's part of the journey toward finding high-quality traffic. Keep goin'