Why did I launch Scheduled?

Scheduled is a Notion extension to schedule and publish your content from Notion to LinkedIn for free. You can connect a Notion database to Scheduled in less than 5 minutes, then connect your LinkedIn profile, and you’re ready to share text, images, or video to LinkedIn. The first plan is free; you can publish one post weekly.

Now you know the “what” and the “how” let me tell you more about me and the story behind it. Why did I launch Scheduled? Here are the 3 factors.

As a solo founder, you must get out of obscurity

At the beginning of the year, I started a new challenge. I wanted to write and share a daily newsletter about my last intense experiences in the startup world. It was about my experience as the first employee at Qonto (the fastest fintech startup in France, valued at more than 4 billion dollars in 2021) and as the ex-cofounder at Lago, a company backed by Y Combinator.

It was like an introspection because I decided to leave all of this. I left the startup world, I left Paris, and I started something new on Reunion Island close to my family.

I didn’t know what to do next, but I thought it was a good time to share my experiences and step back.

I wrote every day for 4 months. It was magical. I’ve learned about topics like habits, courage, grit, vulnerability, distraction, and focus, … I’ve learned about myself, and it helps me to accept some bad experiences and move forward.

However, something was frustrating. For 4 months, I had only 55 subscribers. After a fast-growing experience like Qonto and a startup backed by YC, it was maddening to see no growth for my newsletter. Even if I said to myself: “I don’t do it to have more people on my mailing list.” It’s easier to say that when you have a 0% growth rate...

You can find many stories where people tell you how to growth hack your audience and hit thousands of people in a few days. They are super appealing stories, but most of the time, they miss the context. Those people already have an audience and have developed it for years.

It’s easier when you already have a public waiting for you.

But what happens when you have to start from 0? What did they do to develop this audience for years? You don’t have many options.

You must expose your stories, expertise, journey, ideas, work, or whatever to get people’s attention. You must cultivate your difference and cultivate it for a long period. It can take months and years, but you must get out of obscurity consistently if you want people to see you.

This is a problem I want to solve with Scheduled; I want to help new makers to be visible. I want to help them to develop their audience most simply.

Focus on the recurring problem and choose simplicity.

Of course, today, there are a lot of alternatives to be visible on the Internet and build your audience. You can create your profile on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, or whatever, and start posting. The tough part is to do it consistently. Being consistent with your message and the frequency is difficult.

The less friction you will have to write and share your message, the fastest you will develop the habit of doing it. This is why Scheduled is not a new tool but an extension of an existing one. You don’t need to change your current habit. You need technologies to push your current actions further.

Before building Scheduled, I built: Split. Split had the same mission as Scheduled: help new makers escape obscurity. But it was the opposite of simplicity. I reinvented the wheel by building a new social media tool where you can organize your content and share it on LinkedIn.

I decided to be a direct competitor of strong tools like Buffer or Hootsuite. That was ambitious and stupid. How could I compete with them? I’m starting from scratch; I’m alone and have no money. It sounds obvious now, but you know when I realized it? After getting out of obscurity.

I talked with some friends; I shared publicly on LinkedIn, and what happened? Nothing. No reaction. When I had a few, they were questions like: “What’s the difference between Split and Buffer?” When you have this kind of question at the beginning, I think it’s a signal to stop doing what you’re doing and think about the message you’re sharing.

This happens when you focus too much on the solution before focusing on the problem. I decided to step back and observe what people do today to be visible. I focused only on people who want to share their ideas or work on LinkedIn. I took time to understand the journey.

I saw that people who want to reduce their effort to post frequently are using Buffer. So I started using Buffer to understand if it’s useful to build something new.

This is what I discovered: for 3 years, I’ve been a fan of Notion. I started using it when I was at Qonto. It helps me a lot to organize and clarify my work. So, it was natural to start writing my first posts on Notion before using Buffer to schedule them. And here is the problem.

I need to think about the publication I want to schedule in Buffer each time. I must copy/paste the content from Notion to Buffer each time. It was a bad experience. This small task became a pain. If I wanted to change the content on Buffer, I need to update it on Notion. Sometimes, I preferred creating the post directly in Buffer, but it broke my organization in Notion. I felt the pain before knowing if others had it.

And now, it was simpler, and I had momentum. I decided not to build a new tool but an extension to help people who use Notion share their content on LinkedIn. The answer to this question sounds obvious to me now:

“Do you need another tool to share your work from Notion to LinkedIn?” No. You don’t need it.

Split has been killed, and Scheduled was born.

Be an example to inspire the Makers community on Réunion Island

The last factor is linked to another project I’ve launched before Scheduled, Makers.re, a community of entrepreneurs in Réunion Island. Even if I worked at Qonto and launched a startup backed by Y Combinator, I still have this impostor syndrome. I don’t feel advising people on how to build their startups is legitimate.

Moreover, what I saw with hyper-growth companies is not what other entrepreneurs see. They see fundraising as something mandatory to build something people want. They only see the positive consequence of a hyper-growth company and not the negative impact. They don’t pay attention to all other opportunities to build a profitable business first, not a dead startup.

With Scheduled, I want to be an explorer to tell everyone how I did it. Scheduled is an opportunity for me to live first and inspire second. For me, the best way to inspire someone is by example. If you can show him how to do it, it will increase his trust to be able to do it. I want to be authentic about how I will build this bootstrapped business.

Why Réunion Island? Because I was born there and want to share a maximum with this community to help them make a difference tomorrow.