От сотрудника Product Hunt к созданию и продаже Makerpad

Makerpad was announced in the very same post where Ben shut down its direct predecessor, newCo. He frames Makerpad not as a new idea but as a return to the original, simpler version of what he'd already been trying to do (teach people to build without code) after newCo grew unfocused and failed. His underlying motivation traces back further, to his time as community lead at Product Hunt (from 2016), where watching hundreds of tool launches got him tinkering and building his own no-code products.

“With this reflection, my goal of pushing the boundaries of building without code and teaching others to do the same is still true.”

Makerpad's first users were not acquired from scratch: when Ben shut down newCo on 31 Jan 2019, he rolled its paying members straight into the newly announced Makerpad at no extra cost, giving Makerpad a ready-made base on day one.

“Any lifetime/yearly members get automatic access to Makerpad, my courses, templates, support and anything I can do to help them.”

Makerpad launched on Product Hunt on 31 January 2019 with a free tier at the front: sign up for nothing, join a queue, get a tailored one-to-one plan and maker sessions, then optionally upgrade to a paid lifetime PRO membership. Ben describes exactly that path in his own maker comment on the launch page, so the first paying members came out of the free intake rather than a separate sales motion, drawn from the newCo members he had just rolled over, his Twitter following and the roughly 3,000 launch-day visitors he reports in his June 2019 interview. The launch-week site priced PRO at $169 for lifetime access, marked down from a listed $269.

“People can upgrade to the PRO membership which gives you”