You've probably heard of WIP or BetaList, especially if you're a founder or maker. You've probably also heard of Marc Köhlbrugge, the founder of both WIP and BetaList. We already know Marc's Product story.

Yet, there's something's that we've never got to cover, how did Marc actually build WIP and BetaList, and what's the story way before his big break? Here's the full story, From start to end.

Tell us a bit about yourself, and what you do?

I'm Marc Köhlbrugge, and maker of a variety of products most notably WIP, BetaList, and Startup Jobs

How did you get introduced into the tech world?

I've been fascinated by computers ever since I was kid. I think I first started using a PC when I was around 9 years old. It ran both MS-DOS and Windows 3.11. I was a very curious kid so I explored every little part of the Windows operating system and MS-DOS command line interface.

What was your first "I get it now" in coding?

My first time experiencing the thrill of programming was editing a text file that contained the scores for a game I couldn't beat. I figured out I could write "edit highscores.ini" and just write my own name and score. Then when I launched the game my name and score would show up in the highscore list. That was a very exciting feeling.

This later inspired Highscore Money which is a highscore leaderboard where you pay to get included. Whatever you choose pay, that's your score.

Where did the idea for WIP.co come from?

I've been working on different variations on WIP for many years. Many years ago (before Slack was a thing) I started a paid chat group for founders, but I couldn't get enough people to participate. A while later me and a group of friends used a project management tool to share the todos we were working on. That worked for a while, but when the novelty wore off most of us stopped using it. I think I was the last one left haha. I also worked on a few projects very similar in nature to WIP, but I never shipped them.

I got too excited and built all these features, but the truth is that a community product has to start simple. It's okay to think long-term, but in the early days a community needs a very different product then at its later stage. I was building a product for a late-stage community, when I didn't have a single user yet.

It wasn't until three years ago that I started a simple Telegram chatgroup for BetaList things really took off. I didn't want it to become yet another distracting chatgroup, so I took all my lessons and ideas from the past years and quickly developed a chatbot to share what people were working on, added a website with profiles, etc. That's how WIP was born.

You’re really open and out there in the community knowing people like levelsio, Fajar Siddiq. What do you say to founders looking to grow their connections?

I don't really look at it this way. I just try to make cool stuff, share it publicly, and help others where I can. If you do enough of that you'll eventually start meeting people who share similar interests and values. That's how you make genuine connections.

I don't really believe in networking or intentionally working towards meeting certain people. That might work for some, but to me that just seems like a lot of work.

What did you want to be as a child?

An inventor! I think that's pretty much what I am, so it worked out well :)

What was your first job, and what was it like?