buildspace

welcome to week 4.

ur 2/3 of the way to finishing the season. do not give up now!

watch recording of lecture #4.

ngl this might be one of the most important weeks if you've made it so far.

so pls make sure that you follow all of the steps for wk 4 — you could make insane progress this week.

watch the lecture here if you missed it. it starts at 27:32.

watch recording of lab# 4.

this was a very straightforward lab. we looked at how to ask the right questions to get real feedback for different domains.

we covered a musician creating their song, a pixel art web game, a content creator trying to launch on youtube, a habit tracking app, and a burger flipping robot lol.

don't worry if you missed it, you can watch the recordings here.

last chance to submit updates from wk 1 — 3. due date is this friday july 12 @3:21 pm pt.

if you wanna catch up, now is the time. we'll still accept your updates.we care more about you working on your ideas rather than meeting deadlines.

but…we gotta give you some kind of forcing function so you actually work on it lol. so after this week, we're closing the submissions.

pls submit here if you haven't already:

go ahead and rsvp for the next 4 streams.

for the next 6-weeks we'll have streams tuesday and thursday at 10:30am pt. that's the scheudle.

lecture #1 — ideas.
lab #1 — decide.
lecture #2 — build a toy version.
lab #2 — plan it.

rsvp to each individually.

we also have master calendar here to make it easy.

watch the video below to see how to subscribe to the calendar. note it's confusing but the word "subscribe" does nothing lol.

also, they will be recorded but we highly recommend showing up live — even if it's not convenient. often people say they'll watch the recordings and then never do. live forces you to show up.

at 0:14 we show you how you can sub to the calendar.

week 4 update is due monday july 15th @11:59 pm pt.

this week's update is pretty straight forward and similar to update #3.

but, we still wanna encourage you to watch the lectures to get what we're tryna do for this week :)

see and submit update 4 here.

required steps for weekly update #4.

01 — show the world what you made, again.

this week is all about iterating on the thing you've made — and launch that iteration.

yes, you launched last week. now it's time to do it again. it never ends.

don't get trapped by perfectionism. just make your idea better little by little. i promise you, this is the best way to make progress.

maybe you added 20 seconds to your song, added dark mode to your app, or edited the script to your film, whatever.

just show the world what you've created this week.

keep it real simple: create it and launch it.

these are all steps to making your thing better — no matter how big or small of a step you've taken. this launch is to share with people about how you've made your idea better this week.

here's a really simple example of how you can share your update.

this week's launch doesn't have to be a video, but they tend to do better.

p.s. we know that it might still be kinda hard to know what's a good launch.

so…we spent 8 hours reviewing launches from x/ig/linkedin/tiktok lol. feel free to watch it here to get a better idea about good launches.

02 — get 3 real feedback on what you've created so far.

you get feedback every time you share what you've made with the world.

but things can be very noisy. maybe a lot of ppl clicked the liked button on your post, but how many of them actually cared?

how do you know if they'll actually want to watch the youtube vids you filmed?
how do you know if they'll actually want to listen the album you recorded?
how do you know if they'll actually want to use the beat maker app you built?
how do you know if they'll actually want to wear the clothing you designed?

and how do you know how to make your thing better so that more ppl will care?

here's what ppl typically do to get feedback. pls don't do this.

"hi. i'm building a beat maker app. wanna check it out and let me know what you think? would love to get some feedback!"

chances are, you've done this. we all have lol. and we get responses like these:

ppl ignore you.
they tell you they like it and give some encouraging words. but they'll will never ever use it again.
they don't typically use/listen/watch the thing you want feedback on — but they start making a ton of suggestions.

i wanna show you how to get real feedback and how to ask the right questions.

there are many different methods to get the right questions like "the mom test."

but all good questions boil down to one thing: ask questions to figure out what ppl are doing now.

never ask ppl what they would do in the future with questions like "would you use a music app that could do x?"

instead, ask questions like: "when was the last time you made music using software?" or "what are some of your favorite instagram reels?" or "how often do you listen to x type of music"

it takes a little bit of time to come up with good questions, but sage can help you a lot with this. check out this prompt :)