From Tweet to Launch 🚀 – My Open Source Journey

What you will find in this article?

Are you intrigued about taking your idea from a mere tweet to launching it as an open-source project? In this article, you will walk through my journey of building Papermark, where I'll share the importance of community engagement, lessons learned, and the tools and technologies I used to bring this project to life.

Papermark - the open-source DocSend alternative

Before we begin, let me introduce you to Papermark. It's the open-source DocSend alternative that helps you manage secure document sharing, including real-time analytics and custom domains. It's all open-source!

I would be absolutely thrilled if you could support us our launch today! Don't forget to share your thoughts in the comments section ❤️
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/papermark-3

The Tweet

On May 23, 2023, I bet my wife that a tweet would get 50 likes so I can work on an open-source project idea.

The tweet received 265 likes.

The MVP

I knew it was possible to build out the MVP in a weekend because of the incredibly powerful tech stack:

• framework: Next.js
• styling: Tailwind CSS
• database: Vercel Postgres
• file storage: Vercel Blob
• database ORM: Prisma
• authentication: Next-Auth

And right on time it was done! The launch tweet received 450 likes and over 95,000 views. I was onto something!

Building the product

I spent the next couple of weekends to build more features and polish the UI.

And I took the time to document how I built it open-source out in the public!

Post #1

👉 Building an Open Source DocSend alternative with Next.js, Vercel Blob and Postgres

Post #2

👉 Building a Beautiful Product Onboarding 👋 with Next.JS , Framer Motion, and Tailwind CSS

Post #3

👉 How to send a warm welcome email with Resend, Next-Auth and React-Email

Post #4

👉 Building a Real-Time Analytics Dashboard with Next.js, Tinybird, and Tremor: A Comprehensive Guide

Post #5

👉 Building a Document Viewer with react-pdf

Post #6

👉 Build an Expandable / Collapsible Data Table with 2 shadcn/ui Components

Finally, after the product felt "ready", I launched it on Product Hunt.

The Launch

On September 4, 2023, we launched on Product Hunt.

Conclusion

From a tweet to a launch, building Papermark has been a rewarding journey. Along the way, I learned the importance of community engagement and the role of choosing the right tools and technologies in building a successful open-source project.

I am Marc, an open-source advocate and the created the open-source project behind papermark.io - the open-source DocSend alternative. Remember, the journey of coding is a continuous process of learning and discovery. So, keep coding, my friends!

Help me out!

If you found this article interesting and maybe inspired you to build your own open-source project, I would be extremely glad if you could show your support on Product Hunt! And don't forget to share your thoughts in the comments ❤️

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/papermark-3