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I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

indiehackers.com

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Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#121

Post by andreygrehov »

narrator wrote: post #108
weitendorf wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't understand the indiehacker community/product mindset until I discovered the indiehacker "influencers" / lifestyle vloggers / etc. that might be the only ones actually turning a profit on all of this. The influencers sell a lifestyle of throwing a million darts at the board with simple apps and building tiny businesses off the handful that get a lot of interest or seem to resonate with users. And the apps the…

Well Pieter Levels has a negative customer acquisition cost because he gets most of his business off of X and he gets so many impressions that he gets paid to post there. That's a pretty incredible marketing hack if you ask me. I invest in startups and the ones who do really well hack marketing. They have tech in their stack that is specifically devoted to automating and scaling their marketing.

> They have tech in their stack that is specifically devoted to automating and scaling their marketing.

Interesting, what are some examples?

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#122

Post by KurSix »

Slow growth can feel like failure in the early days, especially in the indie/startup Twitter bubble where people post their $10k MRR screenshots two weeks after launch. But what was said really resonates: many of those "failed" projects are actually just early

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#123

Post by KurSix »

nzach wrote: post #19

I just want to share my recent personal experience. Recently I've finally decided to try creating something new that people would find useful hoping that some day I would be able to turn a profit from that. So I vibe coded a pretty bare-bones (but fully functional) version of my idea and started to talk about it in several platforms, including IndieHackers. And the main "advice" I've got after talking with a few peop…

There's definitely room in this space for building stuff just because it's interesting or fun or weird. Some of the coolest tools and communities started that way

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#124

Post by KurSix »

weitendorf wrote: post #46
nzach wrote: post #19

I just want to share my recent personal experience. Recently I've finally decided to try creating something new that people would find useful hoping that some day I would be able to turn a profit from that. So I vibe coded a pretty bare-bones (but fully functional) version of my idea and started to talk about it in several platforms, including IndieHackers. And the main "advice" I've got after talking with a few peop…

I didn't understand the indiehacker community/product mindset until I discovered the indiehacker "influencers" / lifestyle vloggers / etc. that might be the only ones actually turning a profit on all of this. The influencers sell a lifestyle of throwing a million darts at the board with simple apps and building tiny businesses off the handful that get a lot of interest or seem to resonate with users. And the apps the…

The sad part is, there are people building genuinely useful tools or creative projects, but their stuff gets buried under the avalanche of low-effort trend-chasing

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#125

Post by KurSix »

dlcarrier wrote: post #98
LargeWu wrote: post #3

Is making ~8 products a year for 5 years perceived as a viable way to be successful?

I worked for a company where I designed hardware products at that rate, although not for as long. Someone in management discovered that each time you release a new product you get a huge sales bump from distributors filling inventory. We already had a crowded and confusing product line, so the distributors eventually started sending the old unsold products back and asking for a refund, and that stopped that release c…

Yep, chasing short-term signals (like launch bumps) can backfire if it's not grounded in sustainable demand

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#127

Post by gexla »

nzach wrote: post #75
satvikpendem wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are putting too much effort in your product, your focus should be on finding the right market fit for your idea How is this not excellent advice? There are lots of stories of founders building first (sometimes for years, even), then finding out that there is no market for it (as it seems you have done). The people evaluating your product might have even just read your post and concluded that there's no market,…

> How is this not excellent advice? I do understand that in order to create something popular you need to create something good but you also need to properly communicate what you do. And proper communication is as hard as creating something good. So, I do know you need to "find an audience", and that is why I've posted it in a few places. Having said all that, reading these comments made me feel somewhat demoralized…

The thing I'm working on right now with a partner is an idea we got with yet someone else who was working with us. He was working in the sort of role that nobody would think of. I would have never known the area even existed. We're working on finishing the MVP this week and we have multiple people per target industries that are asking to check it out.

The trouble with influencers, is that they have ready-made consumer audiences.

Everyone else should be looking at things that create inarguable value. If I'm charging $XX per hour and this thing saves me multiple hours per X time period, then it sells itself. Even if the thing isn't saving me money (costs as much as the time saved) - it still may be worth it because maybe faster delivery and less drudgery is worth the outlay. And it would probably cost more to hire someone to do that anyway.

So, I agree with the dude who told you to find users first. But maybe the advice should have been "find pain points that you can solve." Say you figure out a service that could save lawyers loads of time. Then rather than say "try out my app" you could say something like "let me join on as a free contributor for a while so that I can work with you to improve X process." Once you have proven it works and you get the buy-in, then sales should come easier. But I don't see how you can discover / develop these things without being embedded in X field.

Re: I've launched 37 products in 5 years and not doing that again

#128

Post by fxtentacle »

fxtentacle wrote: post #31
TimPC wrote: post #14

A product with $6000 in revenue selling for only $12,500 seems crazy to me. Why were you so eager to get rid of it?

Most likely, they booked some advertisements to push revenue but didn't honestly account for the ad expenses. I've seen that way too many times with Indie products that they brag about large revenue numbers and "forget" to mention that profit margins are negative. I remember once hearing about a start-up that resold baby diapers at a loss. Obviously, they were easily able to scale up customers and revenue ...

found it:

"Critically, he did not understand margin. At the end of December when things were getting truly desperate, he said to me “Phil, just bring me a forecast that shows how much we need to sell to break even.” He did not understand, after three years of negative margin, that increased sales resulted in increased losses."

from Ecomom Post Mortem by Philip Prentiss

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