Thank you! 🤗 Yes, after two Django projects, I’m feeling fairly comfortable with it…and I suspect I will reuse some of the machine learning I picked up. The data and ML problem solving comes a lot easier to me than getting the UI to look nice! 😆
This whole experience just shows what a great product person you are, Karen. You’re so complete as a builder and have such a wide range of skills that I’m sure will take you far. So really I just want to say I can’t wait to see what you build next. I'm sure it'll be amazing. Count on me to cheer you on and help however I can.
Thank you! 🥰 Even though StackDigest didn’t ultimately make it, I’m proud that it went so much further than my last attempt at a product. And working with everyone who helped test and promote it was truly the best part.
And now I have a couple of ideas and a whole lot of Claude Code credits… 🤔
This is the type of writing I enjoy the most, honest and transparent. You've build something great, but you also knew when to pivot, that's product thinking at its best. I know you'll build something even better Karen. Thank you for sharing your learnings with us🤗
You’re very welcome! 🤗 This was a tough call, but I immediately felt better once it was made. The legal and compliance risk was just too high for me to feel comfortable continuing.
Thank you for all the work you did in putting together StackDigest. And thank you for walking me through setup, providing complete support almost immediately! I enjoyed StackDigest, loved the Deep Dives, can't wait to see what you come up with next!
What a journey this was to witness! This is what building in public should look like. You validated, shipped, iterated, shared every step.. even this painful shutdown.
Definitely one of the most interesting encounters on Substack so far is you, dear Karen.
Though we on opposite sides of the globe, and we still know so little of each other, I really came to appreciate a person that - while completely different from me - gave me inspiration, acted as a model to follow and did many of the things I recommend my clients. Five stars.
.
I also saw you being consistently genuine, authentic, responsive and humble like so very very few - notwithstanding their generosity and openness - are here.
.
All this praise because the loss of StackDigest has been so very painful, that transforming it in an opportunity to see some good it's the only way to avoid being frustrated by it.
.
I have no idea what you are going to build next, but one thing I know: StackDigest - the app you developed - contained some uniquely useful functionalities that - in my opinion - are going to be of increasing use in the future. Unless we have tools that allows to navigate this ocean of stuff, and find the little-known, undiscovered pearls while connecting them and creating new meaning at their intersections, we are going just to add more to the deafening noise growing out there.
.
Since StackDigest rapid growth somewhat validated several use-cases that have commercial potential and demand, I hope your next move, will compound on this, by exploring alternative approaches to filtering and organizing this tsunami of info. Though I may be wrong, it looks to me as RSS may very well be the best way to look in this direction as there are millions of sources openly sharing their content through this standard protocol.
.
What I dream of is a tool that does most of what StackDigest did, by monitoring and allowing me to search and extract information from designated sources, but without being strictly connected to Substack.
.
I would also consider consider going as much as possible in the direction of making such technology as distributed and local as possible, leaving to each individual user/machine the load of storing and organizing this content, while providing only the intelligence (and part of the filtering) units in the cloud.
.
I think there's also great opportunity for who will enable curators to share/rent/sell bundles of curated sources (always vetted and updated) to follow in specific interest areas. This has a lot of value as our capacity to discover and subscribe to the right content diminishes proportionally to the amount of new content and authors springing up online everyday.
.
Don't listen to me. Do as always. Listen to everyone and then pick what's best from each.
It was a joy to work with you! 🥰 And it was amazing to find someone who cared about the tool as much as I did and was willing to provide real, honest feedback and encourage me to make it better!
I saw a stat the other day that AI generated content makes up most of the Internet now. The curation problem you outlined is real and getting worse. As always, you’ve given me a lot to think about! 🙏🤔
Robin, I want to echo that local part! I think hybrid models are such a big area of untouched value, especially as privacy and energy usage become an increasing concern with AI. We need to get creative with our architectures on that front.
This has been such a wild roller-coaster journey with StackDigest. It’s exactly the kind of story I love to read and support! I’m really sorry to see it go. There was a moment when I told myself, “Karen is the one for this idea of digesting blogs and newsletters.” Your drive and determination to carry it out have been incredible.
I’m partly glad we got to discuss the possible futures of StackDigest and this being one of them. It’s great to see how much you’ve learned along the way! The tech stack you used is literally what I have in some of my own projects. Huge salute to your devotion in figuring all this out.
The only questions I have: if you stick with Substack RSS, it should still work within the TOS, right? And since you mentioned expanding it to include other blogs beyond Substack, do you see that happening as a pivot without archiving everything?
Either way, I know you’ll come back with something even better.
Yes, the StackDigest story was filled with lots of ups and downs! 🎢 And I think your question about its future was right on and something I’d considered myself. While I’d hoped for a different outcome, I’m still really grateful for the experience. 🙏❤️
I’m still thinking through whether an RSS-feed based spinoff tool is a real possibility. When I used them in the earliest versions of SD, they were brittle and failed pretty often; a lot of the digests based on bigger newsletter libraries would be missing an article or two or even more. That’s why I started with the undocumented API in the first place. Also, when testing RSS feeds from other platforms, I noticed they were all different…
But with stronger data validation and a normalization algorithm of some kind, who knows? 🤔
I looked at Beehiv and Ghost at one point…adding them to SD as RSS feeds would have required a processing step to “convert” them into Substack’s RSS format. I opted to add new Substack-specific features, instead!
This is a fantastic article and I’m so impressed by both your abilities and, even more so, the courage to stop and pivot. I’m sure this is just the beginning of your next big thing. And THANK YOU for the insight and transparency that we can all learn from!
Karen it was so fun to watch you build this, and a big bummer to see that you had to shut it down. Your curiosity and roll up your sleeves attitude is infectious.
I had a wonderful time helping you refine the onboarding experience and really appreciate your call out :) Cheering you on for your next project adventure and am always here to help! I am always looking for more collaborators — that's what makes making products such a joy.
I'm so glad you posted this. I was going to DM you after seeing your note about sunsetting the project but I comment probably sufficed. My take? I celebrate my failures as hard as I celebrate my wins. This is the way of a creative person as it's mostly failure (think of the mess of an artist studio & all that discarded work) until pop - something remarkable emerges. I think you're made of really special stuff Karen. It's quite clear to us that this is the case and so the path you're on is 💯 leading to a breakout success and one that compounds because of you. This is rare. Thanks for sharing the pain of this one & we'll be here to support you on all the others coming down the track !
Really appreciate the kind words! 🤗 This was one of my favorite failures, since I ended up learning a bunch of new tech and making some wonderful new Substack friends in the process.
And thank you so much for the encouragement at every step along the way! 🙏
Thank you! 🤗 It was definitely a valuable learning experience. And anyone who wants to create their own digests can try the library on GitHub, which uses RSS and not the possibly problematic Substack API.
This is a terrific post and even more so cause Claude is a great editor 😜
What impressed me the most is that you took a "simple" project and enhance it with features that require real engineering (particularly RAG and ML).
I don't know what technical level you have before but after this project I consider you a colleague (if I were back to my developer days that is 😆)
Tip: For next projects you can spin up user interfaces with some HTML and Tailwind, so you can focus and the actual nitty gritty of the solution instead of figuring why that freaking "div" is taking much more space and breaking the layout. 😂
Excellent article, Karen!
I have a graveyard of 100+ projects that never reached the level you achieved on your 2nd one. But I'm a slow learner and need more repetition 🤣.
The good news is that the lessons (and even code snippets) can be re-used in the next projects.
Once you figure out Django and Jinja2 templates, building next website is much easier.
Thank you! 🤗 Yes, after two Django projects, I’m feeling fairly comfortable with it…and I suspect I will reuse some of the machine learning I picked up. The data and ML problem solving comes a lot easier to me than getting the UI to look nice! 😆
This whole experience just shows what a great product person you are, Karen. You’re so complete as a builder and have such a wide range of skills that I’m sure will take you far. So really I just want to say I can’t wait to see what you build next. I'm sure it'll be amazing. Count on me to cheer you on and help however I can.
Thank you! 🥰 Even though StackDigest didn’t ultimately make it, I’m proud that it went so much further than my last attempt at a product. And working with everyone who helped test and promote it was truly the best part.
And now I have a couple of ideas and a whole lot of Claude Code credits… 🤔
time to spend those Claude credits then 😄
💯
This is the type of writing I enjoy the most, honest and transparent. You've build something great, but you also knew when to pivot, that's product thinking at its best. I know you'll build something even better Karen. Thank you for sharing your learnings with us🤗
You’re very welcome! 🤗 This was a tough call, but I immediately felt better once it was made. The legal and compliance risk was just too high for me to feel comfortable continuing.
Thank you for all the work you did in putting together StackDigest. And thank you for walking me through setup, providing complete support almost immediately! I enjoyed StackDigest, loved the Deep Dives, can't wait to see what you come up with next!
You’re very welcome! 🤗 And I really appreciated all your patience with some of StackDigest’s rough edges. Looking forward to the next challenge!
What a journey this was to witness! This is what building in public should look like. You validated, shipped, iterated, shared every step.. even this painful shutdown.
Thanks for including me in this chapter.
Rooting for you on the next one ❤️
You’re very welcome! 🤗 And while I’m sad about this ending, I’m also looking at a few interesting new ideas…
Definitely one of the most interesting encounters on Substack so far is you, dear Karen.
Though we on opposite sides of the globe, and we still know so little of each other, I really came to appreciate a person that - while completely different from me - gave me inspiration, acted as a model to follow and did many of the things I recommend my clients. Five stars.
.
I also saw you being consistently genuine, authentic, responsive and humble like so very very few - notwithstanding their generosity and openness - are here.
.
All this praise because the loss of StackDigest has been so very painful, that transforming it in an opportunity to see some good it's the only way to avoid being frustrated by it.
.
I have no idea what you are going to build next, but one thing I know: StackDigest - the app you developed - contained some uniquely useful functionalities that - in my opinion - are going to be of increasing use in the future. Unless we have tools that allows to navigate this ocean of stuff, and find the little-known, undiscovered pearls while connecting them and creating new meaning at their intersections, we are going just to add more to the deafening noise growing out there.
.
Since StackDigest rapid growth somewhat validated several use-cases that have commercial potential and demand, I hope your next move, will compound on this, by exploring alternative approaches to filtering and organizing this tsunami of info. Though I may be wrong, it looks to me as RSS may very well be the best way to look in this direction as there are millions of sources openly sharing their content through this standard protocol.
.
What I dream of is a tool that does most of what StackDigest did, by monitoring and allowing me to search and extract information from designated sources, but without being strictly connected to Substack.
.
I would also consider consider going as much as possible in the direction of making such technology as distributed and local as possible, leaving to each individual user/machine the load of storing and organizing this content, while providing only the intelligence (and part of the filtering) units in the cloud.
.
I think there's also great opportunity for who will enable curators to share/rent/sell bundles of curated sources (always vetted and updated) to follow in specific interest areas. This has a lot of value as our capacity to discover and subscribe to the right content diminishes proportionally to the amount of new content and authors springing up online everyday.
.
Don't listen to me. Do as always. Listen to everyone and then pick what's best from each.
Thank you Karen
It was a joy to work with you! 🥰 And it was amazing to find someone who cared about the tool as much as I did and was willing to provide real, honest feedback and encourage me to make it better!
I saw a stat the other day that AI generated content makes up most of the Internet now. The curation problem you outlined is real and getting worse. As always, you’ve given me a lot to think about! 🙏🤔
Robin, I want to echo that local part! I think hybrid models are such a big area of untouched value, especially as privacy and energy usage become an increasing concern with AI. We need to get creative with our architectures on that front.
This has been such a wild roller-coaster journey with StackDigest. It’s exactly the kind of story I love to read and support! I’m really sorry to see it go. There was a moment when I told myself, “Karen is the one for this idea of digesting blogs and newsletters.” Your drive and determination to carry it out have been incredible.
I’m partly glad we got to discuss the possible futures of StackDigest and this being one of them. It’s great to see how much you’ve learned along the way! The tech stack you used is literally what I have in some of my own projects. Huge salute to your devotion in figuring all this out.
The only questions I have: if you stick with Substack RSS, it should still work within the TOS, right? And since you mentioned expanding it to include other blogs beyond Substack, do you see that happening as a pivot without archiving everything?
Either way, I know you’ll come back with something even better.
Yes, the StackDigest story was filled with lots of ups and downs! 🎢 And I think your question about its future was right on and something I’d considered myself. While I’d hoped for a different outcome, I’m still really grateful for the experience. 🙏❤️
I’m still thinking through whether an RSS-feed based spinoff tool is a real possibility. When I used them in the earliest versions of SD, they were brittle and failed pretty often; a lot of the digests based on bigger newsletter libraries would be missing an article or two or even more. That’s why I started with the undocumented API in the first place. Also, when testing RSS feeds from other platforms, I noticed they were all different…
But with stronger data validation and a normalization algorithm of some kind, who knows? 🤔
Yeah, what I’m still hung up on is the dramatically different structures across platforms. It takes a lot of effort to comb through everything.
I looked at Beehiv and Ghost at one point…adding them to SD as RSS feeds would have required a processing step to “convert” them into Substack’s RSS format. I opted to add new Substack-specific features, instead!
Love how you didn't wait for perfection... launch in 5 days... then figure it out.
The only way to fly.
💯 People tolerated more bugs than I thought they would as long as I explained what was going on!
Valuable reflection! How will your experience with compliance and TOS constraints shape the way you approach your next AI project?
Will consider legal and compliance issues much earlier in the process! 😆
This is a fantastic article and I’m so impressed by both your abilities and, even more so, the courage to stop and pivot. I’m sure this is just the beginning of your next big thing. And THANK YOU for the insight and transparency that we can all learn from!
You’re very welcome! 🩷 I’m looking forward to my next project.
Keep us posted!
Thank you for sharing the experience!!!!!
You’re very welcome! 😊
Karen it was so fun to watch you build this, and a big bummer to see that you had to shut it down. Your curiosity and roll up your sleeves attitude is infectious.
I had a wonderful time helping you refine the onboarding experience and really appreciate your call out :) Cheering you on for your next project adventure and am always here to help! I am always looking for more collaborators — that's what makes making products such a joy.
Thank you so much! ❤️ 🙏 Will definitely keep you posted on the next project…I already have an idea in mind. 🤔
Bittersweet overall - but excellent article this...
All-in-all the whole thing was actually amazing (apart from the shutdown ofc)
I am sure the next one will be better, more beautiful and get even bigger.
All the very best Karen!
Thank you so much! 🤗
I'm so glad you posted this. I was going to DM you after seeing your note about sunsetting the project but I comment probably sufficed. My take? I celebrate my failures as hard as I celebrate my wins. This is the way of a creative person as it's mostly failure (think of the mess of an artist studio & all that discarded work) until pop - something remarkable emerges. I think you're made of really special stuff Karen. It's quite clear to us that this is the case and so the path you're on is 💯 leading to a breakout success and one that compounds because of you. This is rare. Thanks for sharing the pain of this one & we'll be here to support you on all the others coming down the track !
Really appreciate the kind words! 🤗 This was one of my favorite failures, since I ended up learning a bunch of new tech and making some wonderful new Substack friends in the process.
And thank you so much for the encouragement at every step along the way! 🙏
Sorry to hear that Karen, loved your content about it!
Thank you! 🤗 It was definitely a valuable learning experience. And anyone who wants to create their own digests can try the library on GitHub, which uses RSS and not the possibly problematic Substack API.
This is a terrific post and even more so cause Claude is a great editor 😜
What impressed me the most is that you took a "simple" project and enhance it with features that require real engineering (particularly RAG and ML).
I don't know what technical level you have before but after this project I consider you a colleague (if I were back to my developer days that is 😆)
Tip: For next projects you can spin up user interfaces with some HTML and Tailwind, so you can focus and the actual nitty gritty of the solution instead of figuring why that freaking "div" is taking much more space and breaking the layout. 😂