I have five months off before I go full time. I chose this break so I could work on projects, because I had never gotten around to it during school.
The original plan was to build an MVP a month like Pieter Levels.
But Iāve been working on Quickapply for the last month and a half, and Iām not sure when Iāll stop. The MVP lets you apply to 40 software engineering internships with one application.
In this post, I share whatās been going on with Quickapply the last month and a half. This is best as a read for those curious about the early stages of starting a project.
Origin story
I came up with the concept last December during winter break. To test demand, I posted on my schoolās CS Facebook page:

I had 4 customers paying $49 to apply to 100 internships.
I also asked a lawyer to see if it was legal here.
At this point, I had to decide whether anyone wanted it. To be honest, I had no idea. I could explain the data either way: enough people may or may not want it.
I was then supposed to build it over the summer while I was interning, but I didnāt. I procrastinated. I started building October 1st, 2019.
MVP development
I wanted to launch in three weeks, but it took six.
I didnāt write down a spec, which was the first mistake. I had some notes describing the functionality, but I never looked at them again. As a result, I had crazy scope creep.
I kept a loose reign on time, and to be honest, I wasted dozens of hours. For one thing, I rewrote code and tweaked copy over and over. I couldnāt help myself.
For another, I didnāt tear myself away from tasks once I realized how time consuming they would be. Splitting the Quickapply application into three parts. Automating Facebookās internship application. Setting up rishi@quickapply.io.
Each of those things cost me an engineering day or more.
I also spent three days trying to bypass Recaptcha so I could scale, which was a mistake. Wtf, Rishi. You donāt have any customers, you donāt need to scale.
I came to my senses when I didnāt finish by end of October and then cut scope. I knew an MVP should be light, but I didnāt realize the amount of discipline needed to achieve that.
If I was building another MVP, I would write a product spec and whittle it down. Question every feature if itās necessary. Then, Iād write out engineering tasks and estimates. For each task, Iād ask, whatās the fastest way to do this? Is there a shortcut?
So different from programming at work.
Product market fit
āIf you have to ask whether you have Product/Market Fit, the answer is simple: you donāt.ā Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup
I do have to ask, so maybe I donāt have product market fit, and I just havenāt admitted that to myself yet.
Hereās my data, you tell me:
4 customers paid $49 each to apply to 100 places in January, after I got 500 views (estimate) on my schoolās CS Facebook page.
2 customers used it for free to apply to 40 places this week, after I got 300 views (estimate) on r/cscareers. 50 people opened the form, and these two completed the form.

One of those customers made my day and said:

The pricing suggestions hurt me but letās ignore that for now LOL
These words suggest I at least have product user fit. But product market fit?
These questions remain:
- Are people willing to pay and how much?
- Will enough people pay to make it worthwhile?
- How much does it cost to get a user?
A friend explained if I hustle to 50 user interviews and 50 users, I can probably tell if the market exists or not. So Iāll try that.
But the million dollar question: Should I kill the project, or nah?
Internal conflict over whether to kill the project
A part of me wants to build something, anything, right this instant. Iām OK with small business ideas. Iād rather just get started. Looking for the biggest ideas just invites procrastination.
Another part of me wants to work on only the best ideas. Does it have the characteristics of a monopoly? Would it get into YC? Could it be the next unicorn?
One of my favorite indie hackers, Patrick McKenzie, wrote this:
If I got a do-over on e.g. running my own businesses for a decade, Iād probably skip the relatively unambitious first two (which I did just because I knew I could probably do them) and proceed directly to trying things outside of my comfort zone. (I still have an enormous love in my heart for the aesthetics of small software businesses, but given a do-over, could have done much more interesting and impactful small software businesses earlier than I actually did.)
For context, his first product was straight up a bingo card creator. But he learned a ton about business (long tail SEO, anyone?), and got to financial independence with it.
But regardless. Both parts of me might agree Quickapply is bad business. To check if a business is any good, you can use YC Partner Kevin Haleās criteria, or Thielās monopoly criteria. To check if a market is any good, you can use The Personal MBAās market criteria.
Here are Quickapplyās undesirable characteristics:
- The problem itās trying to solve is infrequent. Students usually apply to jobs once a year, and working professionals even less. Customers canāt use the product again until the next year.
- Thereās a ton of upfront work to solve the problem. Each application I add to the index, can take as little as ten minutes, but often a half an hour. This work would have to be redone every year. Huge pain.
- There are no monopoly characteristics, especially not economies of scale. You need humans to fill out Recaptchas, and so the cost to serve a customer is not pennies, but at least $7.50.
I keep flip flopping on whether to continue with Quickapply. When I first drafted this post last week, I intended it to be a post mortem. But thereās still more I can learn from this project, so Iāll run it for a while longer.
A couple weeks of user interviews and traction tests, at least. Then, Iāll have to decide again whether to continue.
Business model
Unit economics
Cost to serve a customer:
Assuming I canāt bypass Recaptchas, a human needs to man the script as it runs, and fill out Recaptchas. Assuming 1-2 applications an hour, and a minimum wage of $15 an hour, cost to serve would be $7.50-$15.
Cost to acquire a customer:
I need to test traction channels to figure out this number. More on this in the marketing section.
Traction channels with high CAC are out of the question, like search engine marketing. I read the CAC for SEM >= $30.
Willingness to pay:
How much are customers willing to pay? Iāve now upped the price to $9. Hopefully, thereās a good response.
Is it possible that people are willing to pay up to $50, if I up the number of companies from 40 to 100? Iāve decided to ask customers this on the signup form.
TAM (Total Addressable Market):
TAM doesnāt seem like a useful number to think about to me.
Iām more wondering, can the traction channels I use deliver a lot of customers. Seems more concrete to think about.
Idk, let me know what you think there.
Potential pivots:
Upsell customers on resume critiques and mock interviews, or even coaching and courses. Iāve always known the money is in these information products. But I have to ask myself: am I after profits? Then why donāt I pursue information products? Or am I after making software products?

Have the tool become so popular companies pay to be added to the index: This is a whole ānother can of worms, lol
Marketing
Dunno much about marketing. I read this book, Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth, which has been a great help. It has a simple framework to pursue traction called Bullseye + a thorough rundown of 19 traction channels. Iām testing the two following channels to start.
Offline ads: Flyers on student CS lab bulletin boards. Iām having a friend place flyers at UCSD. Iāll check if thereās a promising response. Will use Google Analytics to see which requests are coming from SD.
Targeting blogs: Iāve found some blog posts on getting internships that rank well on Google search results. Iāll reach out to the authors and ask them to link Quickapply. Iāll have to pay them, rip.
Content marketing could be the move for this area, but itās a long term play, and Iām not sure if Iām in it for the long term.
Conclusion
Holy moly, thanks for reading.