Whit Anderson is a startup founder. He works at a startup accelerator called Techstars and runs the Bad Unicorn product studio. He is an advocate of the build in public and no code movements.
He is also a “founding fellow” of the On Deck No-Code Fellowship.
In 2017, he started tracking his daily habits in a Google Sheets document. This tweet shows the evolution from Month #1 to Month #41. He also shared a link to the document for those who wanted to clone it.
In early 2020, he posted a list of the products he’d shared at Product Hunt. He emphasized the connection between the time spent on the platform and the amount of votes he’d received.
Stats
- Whit hit 1000 followers in October, 2020.
- November 2019 vs November 2020 Twitter Summary. These statistics show the difference between lurking and actively tweeting
Threads
- How to build your side project for less than $100. This thread earned him over 100 followers.
- A thread of his best bookmarks. This ‘threadception’ curates his favourite threads by others.
- Easy template to build a big business: tiny thread
- Lessons learned from prolific tweeter, KP
Bad Unicorn
Bad Unicorn is a product studio. Each fortnight, the founders bring the worst startup ideas to life. It was launched in August, 2020.
Interesting Facts
- It was initially branded as a newsletter.
- He created a Twitter thread about what he’d learned after running Bad Unicorn for two weeks.
- He shared an overview of the tools used and the costs involved at Indie Hacker.
- He has shared regular updates about the growth of the Twitter account. Bad Unicorn hit 200 subscribers on September 22. By November 2, the account had 700 subscribers. It reached 1000 subscribers on November 18.
Products
Musk On Mars
Bad Unicorn launched Musk On Mars in September, 2020. Visitors could bet on the day that they thought Elon Musk would actually land on Mars. The person who picked correctly would keep the pot.
Whit described it as the product he was most proud of.
The product was built entirely using a no-code stack. He shared the products he used on Indie Hackers. He also shared more about the Product Hunt launch.
Slow
Slow is a Chrome Extension that adds a little friction to your checkout process. It is described as the world’s slowest checkout. It was launched mid October, 2020.
For fun, someone temporarily redirected the slow.com to the slow.sale website.
Check out the Product Hunt Launch.
Unslack
Unslack is Slack rebuilt in Google Sheets. It was launched mid November, 2020.
Check out the Product Hunt launch.
Dollar Doer Club
Dollar Doer Club is a 30-day challenge that ensures you achieve your 2021 goals. If you fail, the founders run an embarrassing ad in your local city. He shared more about the concept in a Twitter thread.
It launched in early January, 2021.
Meme University
Meme University is a short ebook about memes. It was inspired by Anthony Pompliano, who tweeted that ‘somebody needs to create a meme university.’ One week later, Bad Unicorn launched their third product.
Mid January, 2021, Whit reported that the ebook had gotten 316 downloads without any promotion.
Other Projects
Random Pizza
Random Pizza is a subscription service that randomly delivered people pizza. Users paid $19.99 a month and would receive two pizzas delivered from a random pizza joint at a random time.
In launched in January, 2020. He wrote a Twitter thread about the products he used to create the service. It was the #5 Product Of The Day at Product Hunt. Within 24 hours, the project was at $240 MRR.
He wrote a Twitter thread about why RandomPizza is going to usurp Uber as the “most valuable startup” in the game.
He used the service to support causes. RandomPizza #BLM allowed people to buy a pizza that will be randomly delivered to those marching for Black Lives Matter. He also offered a service where you could send random pizzas to hospital staff.
Past Projects
Adhunt
Whit launched Adhunt in January, 2019.
He built the site to help makers showcase their product to marketers before a big launch.
He credited Bram Kanstein and KP for inspiring him to ship a product despite his lack of technical knowledge
The website is no longer online. You can check out the launch on Product Hunt.
SmartMate (R2d2)
The SmartMate was a sound chamber that amplifies the sound of the Alexa Dot using acoustics.
Whit built the product for an accelerator program but stopped pursuing the idea, largely due to the the hurdle of obtaining the character rights.
He decided to share it on Product Hunt so other fans could download the 3D print file.