#009 - Michelle Marcelline - Taking a leap and working with a team towards #1 Product of the Month

Today's Maker: Michelle Marcelline - Taking a leap and working with a team towards #1 Product of the Month

WHY SHE'S FEATURED:

• Building Typedream (YC W20), which was #1 Product of the MONTH on Product Hunt in July

• Co-founded Cotter, which got #1 on Product Hunt in March 2021 and sold to Stytch earlier this month

• Big believer in #BuildInPublic and #LearnInPublic, dropping valuable how-to's and lessons learned on her Twitter

Three months after Michelle graduated from college (another UCLA Bruin!) she quit her day job to pursue her dream of building a start up. Fast forward a few years and you could say Michelle is on a ROLL. A Y-combinator alum with multiple #1's on Product Hunt, and a successful exit? Yeah, she's crushing it. But she doesn't do it alone. Michelle partnered early on with her co-founder Kevin Chandra and has built small teams around her products to enable them to go after huge markets like authentication and website builders. It's a testament to how far you can go with a team.

What habits does Michelle have that helped her find this early success? Let's find out👇

3 Habits that changed Michelle's trajectory:

• 🪂 Take risks (especially when you're young) - Your risk appetite decreases as you age; therefore, the best time to take a huge risk is when you are young and don't have a lot to lose: no dependents, etc.

• 🔁 Fail fast, fail cheap, fail often - Nobody knows how to be successful; however, you can keep trying and failing which subconsciously guides you to make fewer and fewer mistakes. We've made over 1000 mistakes and we'll probably make 1000 more!

• 📣 Pay it forward - The most efficient way to learn is to learn from other people's successes or failures. There are the publicly available resources for you to learn from such as Y Combinator and Twitter's #buildinpublic.

Consider this your sign to take that risk or try that idea you've been thinking about. On paying it forward--Michelle is constantly sharing detailed write-ups of things she's learning along the way. You can learn from her most popular tweets on her website (built with Typedream, of course).

I also recommend following her on Twitter @michwirantono to make sure you catch her new stuff as well.

Build the habits of the top makers

Level up your daily habits with Harold, a quirky SMS bot that checks in with you once a day to help you stick with new habits. Channel your inner Michelle and build habits like "Did you pay it forward today?"

You'll be surprised what can follow when you develop the right habits!

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Check out my new product Prompty.so (launching soon!)