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Five years of indie hacking

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Re: Five years of indie hacking

#21

Post by xupybd »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #8
asebold wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here - Glad you found that line helpful. Of course, the goal would be building your business on the side until it's making a substantial amount of money, and then quitting your job. But I know that isn't a feasible path for everyone. Personally, I tried starting my initial project as a side project, but made very little progress over two years, which was the catalyst for going "all in". I'd still suggest tryin…

Agreed. It really comes down to side business model, the culture of where you’re at full-time and how much you’re willing to sacrifice personally. I never quit my day job after growing my business to ~$5m annually mainly because it’s e-commerce which is easy to automate and I’ve hired a great team. It’s sad to say but unless you’ve cleared $15m; making a few million really isn’t a lot of money truly so I recommend th…

Can you share more about your side business? For some reason it's really exciting to hear some is doing something other than SAAS.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#22

Post by neilv »

> And that most people take many years, and many failed ventures, to eventually build a sustainable, profitable business.

I'm not sure how to parse that.

Sometimes people need to hear that it's not going to be easy, and they have to stick with it. (How I've sometimes put it, something like: "You know how, when a startup person is telling the story of how they succeeded, and the hardest part was when we thought we wouldn't succeed? This is one of those times. And if we can pull it off, someday we'll tell the story of how we didn't know whether we'd succeed, and no one will really understand until they experience it themselves.")

But other times, people need to know that many people will never succeed at building a viable business, no matter how many times they try. There are many factors, including dumb luck. Someone trying to start a business can lose a lot. They should go into it knowing that odds are that they will probably fail to build a viable business, that it's harder than it sounds, so they should take it seriously, and cover all the non-luck bases that they can.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#23

Post by jart »

Here's a link to the author's project: https://pagefactory.app/ For an indie hacker project that you're doing for passion, you really have to pick something that connects with the dreams of people. Especially if the thing is a tool that empowers ordinary people. No one dreams about how much better the web will be with lots of auto-generated content. In order to sell something like that, you'd have to do a YouTube hustle talking about how rich you got doing it, and how rich you can get too if you buy the product. A bunch of people have been doing that lately encouraging people to submit ChatGPT generated articles to publications that pay for content, and a lot of those organizations are now shutting down their open submissions due to the avalanche of low-effort content.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#25

Post by FlyingSnake »

xupybd wrote: post #21
jollofricepeas wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It really comes down to side business model, the culture of where you’re at full-time and how much you’re willing to sacrifice personally. I never quit my day job after growing my business to ~$5m annually mainly because it’s e-commerce which is easy to automate and I’ve hired a great team. It’s sad to say but unless you’ve cleared $15m; making a few million really isn’t a lot of money truly so I recommend th…

Can you share more about your side business? For some reason it's really exciting to hear some is doing something other than SAAS.

Not OP but they seem to be in the DNVB/DTC business. It is an interesting eCommerce sector.

1: https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/dnvb-digitally-native-vertical-...

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#26

Post by margorczynski »

I think an important thing is to identify what your end goal is - is it to create some cool app and get some people to use it or create a real business. The latter is much harder and even startups/companies with big funding and millions of users struggle to do it.

And just by implementing some cool app you don't magically obtain business knowledge required to get it to the next level - probably the ability to sell stuff and marketing being the most fundamental.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#27

Post by xupybd »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #25
xupybd wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share more about your side business? For some reason it's really exciting to hear some is doing something other than SAAS.

Not OP but they seem to be in the DNVB/DTC business. It is an interesting eCommerce sector. 1: https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/dnvb-digitally-native-vertical-...

Thanks, I've never heard that term before but I'm pretty sure I work for a DVVB.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#28

Post by margorczynski »

pengwing wrote: post #24

For some guidance on successful bootstrapping, I would suggest to look into Alex Hormozi (Youtube, Podcast).

> Get RICH in the A.I. Revolution (2023)

> Get RICH With These 24 Investing Rules

Looks like your typical get-rich-fast Youtube financebro selling you his "ultra-limited now just $500" course on starting a business.

Yep, on his website is some super-special course.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#29

Post by safety1st »

armanm wrote: post #12

I'm about to launch a bootstrapped project on my own (my third idea). Your post really resonated with me because I have been thinking about the same feelings and outcomes as you shared in your blog. My conclusion is that the only guaranteed outcome from ventures like this for people like us (who are trying to build wealth from nothing) is and should be the learning. I have accepted that today I don't know how to crea…

I wish you success on your next venture, but if the problem you're focused on solving is "creating wealth by building a SaaS product," your focus itself might be holding you back.

Imagine going into a meeting with a potential customer and saying "Hi, my name's armanm, and I'm looking forward to our chat today about how I'm creating wealth for myself." They would probably walk out of the room!

If there's any one commonality I've observed across almost all the successful business owners I've met, it's that they're intensely focused on one or more customer problems. They've picked a market that they know well (meaning they know a lot about it, and they also know a lot of people who are in it). And they ultimately spoke with hundreds or thousands of people in that market, figured out where there was a common need and how much everyone was willing to pay to fulfill that need, and they they came up with a solution. They're usually so obsessed with solving this problem their customers have, that it's hard to get them to talk about anything else!

If you approach it as a personal or passion project to fulfill your own goals, the response of the market will probably be lukewarm because your pitch, your product, or any other number of things probably won't be calibrated correctly. Whereas if you dedicate yourself to understanding, mastering, and solving a pressing problem for a bunch of people who want to spend money, you have a much higher chance of success.

One way that your own interests definitely factor in is when you have personally been a member of that market, experienced the need yourself and would be willing to pay for the solution and have spoken to a bunch of other people who feel the same way. That's a long list of criteria but if you meet them all you have a very high chance of success. That's why the average age of a successful entrepreneur when they found their company is 42. It takes years and years to acquire all the knowledge and meet all the people but once you do, it becomes vastly easier for the rest to fall into place.

Re: Five years of indie hacking

#30

Post by pengwing »

margorczynski wrote: post #28
pengwing wrote: post #24

For some guidance on successful bootstrapping, I would suggest to look into Alex Hormozi (Youtube, Podcast).

> Get RICH in the A.I. Revolution (2023) > Get RICH With These 24 Investing Rules Looks like your typical get-rich-fast Youtube financebro selling you his "ultra-limited now just $500" course on starting a business. Yep, on his website is some super-special course.

The wording of a video title is determined by the rules of copywriting. You try to maximize clicks and gain virality. There is no correlation to the quality of the content.

In terms of website, I am not sure what you are referring to: acquisition.com is the actual website, that is dedicated to buying businesses. There is no paid course, all content is free. Technically the e-book costs 99 cents.

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