Untitled topic

I joined IH when the interviews were on the front page. Got a lot of value out of reading them.

When the forum was introduced I was bummed at first but it’s really turned into a fantastic community and resource to me. It’s what I feel HN might have been like in the early days.

HN draws a really diverse audience beyond founders and the even smaller niche of bootstrap founders. People that I feel might shut down basic or “dumb” questions about business and marketing. I like HN just the way it is but it’s not an effective platform for these discussions.

The IH community is smaller so that I feel like I’ve gotten to know a lot of regulars. My questions and requests for feedback spark real valuable discussions. It’s been a really motivating and helpful resource for myself as a solopreneur.

All that being said, I hope (and know) Courtland and Channing can find good ways to serve everyone who gets value from the IH brand and content.

Out of interest, are the MMR $ amounts independently verified?

I have the sense some founders are inflating those figures but I could be wrong.

Hi Courtland, as my username suggests, I am a big fan of IH but I've almost completely stopped visiting. All feedback/suggestions are in good faith.

- Blog : this was the single most valuable part of IH in the early days. Your struggles to grow, make money were so relatable. While the numbers might not have given you an idea of how wonderful the blog was, I'm sure people who've read it feel the same. Please consider restarting the blog. Share your struggles, what metrics you track, what goals if any Stripe expects you to hit, life post acquisition, why you make certain decisions (pushing for signups which IMO is a terrible idea) etc. The blog can be a great way to get feedback before making changes.

- Don't push for signups. Someone mentioned that signing up was required to read the transcripts. This pushes people away. While the numbers might be great, moving away from a no BS design rarely works long term. It's good that you reverted that signup requirement.

- Community participation : You and your brother's participation is extremely valuable but I've noticed that you guys are taking a back seat and letting the community grow organically. In theory it sounds good, but I urge you to reconsider. The community is not large enough to be self sustaining.

- Development speed : Why do you take sooo long to make simple changes like changing the navbar? If there's a reason, I'd love to learn why this is so. Please move a little faster. All the changes like badges, changing the podcasts page. interviews page, adding Stripe verified revenue actually make the experience worse. The interview and podcast pages are unusable now with so much going on. It's so cluttered. The old one was way better. The new design has actively pushed me away from the interviews and podcasts. Focus on building features that actually make a meaningful difference : DMs, software to organize meetups etc.

- Speed : the IH site is slow and full of junk tracking. Please make it work faster. SPAs are great in theory but are almost always worse than server rendered pages.

The biggest problem to me is that while IH started out as a curated collection of interviews, it's turned into a forum where basically everyone has advice in the form of articles they want to share and success stories...even when they're brand new. The early content had a sense of authority and assuredness that the tips and successes were genuine.

There's a thread on IH right now called "Why would a company lie about their revenue on IH?" [0] that perfectly exemplifies this. Earnings mean absolutely nothing if people lie. One bad number can spoil the whole lot. It shouldn't because that's just how statistics works, but it calls into question every non-verified number on the site. It's not motivating that people claim to get $x thousands of dollars per month without something backing it. It just starts to look like fake critical mass.

As counter-intuitive as it is, I'd like to see less company names. More founder names, less companies. Less "here's how I got my first users for SUPER PRODUCT" articles, because it feels like it's all just a way to promote SUPER PRODUCT. SUPER PRODUCT made $100k a month (and you've never heard of SUPER PRODUCT). That might help cut down on fake revenue numbers and inspire more integrity. As it stands, it seriously does feel like a part time ad forum.

[0]: https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/why-would-a-company-lie-a...

Yup, I visit IH no more. I feel there’s way too much noise now.