this is a great resource, a lot more stuff in here than a typical blog post
Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers
31–40 of 158 posts
Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are obviously thinking along the same lines :)
Quite a bit of coincidence. Unfortunately, our conclusions are poles apart.
Yes that is an interesting point. While on some level I agree with you (in the same way all people die from lack of oxygen to the brain stem), the path that failed startups take to get to the point of failure is very diverse. Every time I think I have seen every possible way for a startup to fail I am surprised with something new.
If I was going to go with your thesis, the common thread of failure is to be found very early - people are working on startups that just will never be successful because the underlying idea is bad. It is really hard to come up with an idea that can allow the unavoidable mistakes to be made and still succeed.
Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers
#33All good advice, but I'm going to propose something that may be a bit contrary to current wisdom: if you really want a decent lifestyle/work-life balance don't start a business! So what's the alternative? Go contracting. Reduce your expenses to the bone, and limit the contracts you do. I now only take 3 month contracts and I do one a year. I make about £24K from that - I know many developers making double my rate. Th…
How did you get started with contracting? And do you find yourself having to commute a lot? I haven't found a huge number of jobs near each other in the UK outside of London.
Good question. The company I was working for at the time went bust - I'd been with them about 7 years. I just searched online for contracts (I'm actually a tech writer, not a developer, but have coding skills - there are a lot more contracts out there for coders compared to writers). My very first contract was with a wonderful web company in London.
Anyway, as to the commuting. Yes - you are right - it's a total pain in the bum. Sometimes if the gig is a long way away I will stay up in cheap B&B. It depends. But - you can put up almost anything for three months right? That's the beauty of it. You know the pain will end - you know the exact day.
The commuting is soon forgotten when you are heading out to a wreck dive by boat in the Philippines. :)
Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers
#34All good advice, but I'm going to propose something that may be a bit contrary to current wisdom: if you really want a decent lifestyle/work-life balance don't start a business! So what's the alternative? Go contracting. Reduce your expenses to the bone, and limit the contracts you do. I now only take 3 month contracts and I do one a year. I make about £24K from that - I know many developers making double my rate. Th…
Well here in the states we gotta have health insurance at like 600 bucks a month if you are single and over 40.
Developer salaries in the US are much higher than the UK, more than enough to offset that cost.
Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers
#35All good advice, but I'm going to propose something that may be a bit contrary to current wisdom: if you really want a decent lifestyle/work-life balance don't start a business! So what's the alternative? Go contracting. Reduce your expenses to the bone, and limit the contracts you do. I now only take 3 month contracts and I do one a year. I make about £24K from that - I know many developers making double my rate. Th…
You can make a lot more than £24K a year running a lifestyle business. Running a lifestyle business does not mean you have to sacrifice a work-life balance. Think hard to avoid working hard.
Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers
#36All good advice, but I'm going to propose something that may be a bit contrary to current wisdom: if you really want a decent lifestyle/work-life balance don't start a business! So what's the alternative? Go contracting. Reduce your expenses to the bone, and limit the contracts you do. I now only take 3 month contracts and I do one a year. I make about £24K from that - I know many developers making double my rate. Th…
This is great until you have dependents and your expenses grow. It requires everyone to be on board with your vision which is a lot more challenging to maintain over time.
Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers
#37All good advice, but I'm going to propose something that may be a bit contrary to current wisdom: if you really want a decent lifestyle/work-life balance don't start a business! So what's the alternative? Go contracting. Reduce your expenses to the bone, and limit the contracts you do. I now only take 3 month contracts and I do one a year. I make about £24K from that - I know many developers making double my rate. Th…
This is great until you have dependents and your expenses grow. It requires everyone to be on board with your vision which is a lot more challenging to maintain over time.
You are absolutely right. It's much harder to do with young dependents. I'm 55 now and my son is 27 and daughter 24!
However, I still think the same rules apply. Ram down expenses as much as possible. I did this when my kids were much younger. I couldn't get away with working 3 months a year, but I often did a six and maybe a 3 and had 3 months off. Back then I'd spend the free time with my kids. These days because they do their own thing I head off to Phils or Thailand and go diving.
Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers
#38Yeah this is the best for me: > Ship. Ship. SHIP. The overwhelming failure case among people who read interviews like this one is that they spend 98 units of effort reading about running a business for every 2 units of effort running a business. Flip that on its head. I wonder how many successful entrepreneurs actually spent time reading advice blogs when they were starting.
It's interesting.
I can't stand reading about startups, advice, etc. I regularly watch my friends, people on HN or Reddit fall into the folly of discussing different strategies or trying to create the "perfect team" or "perfect business" prior to launch.
I create products regularly, and many of them make a profit (not a ton yet, but all growing). My consumer facing apps include https://easy-a.net/ or https://projectpiglet.com/ both are (clearly) boot strapped together, but I launched as soon as I had anything resembling a product. What I will caution is that I did wait to launch the products until they were stable and easy enough to use. Sure, they don't look pretty, but it works.
I think advice (blogs or otherwise) are one of the largest hurdles an entrepreneur has to over come. Starting a business isn't about other people, it's about yourself and your business. Even going through things like YC's Startup School can be a detriment, because they fixate so heavily on various components of the business. Often, you just have to tune it out and do what's right. In this case, that's building something, speaking to customers, and improving.
Ironically, I think even this article is the same rehash of the 30 other stories I've seen (assuming the quote you took is from the article, as I didn't read it).
That being said, I do see value in interaction. Which is why I post comments like these on HN or discuss an idea. It's generated tons of leads and that is much more valuable.
Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers
#39Yeah this is the best for me: > Ship. Ship. SHIP. The overwhelming failure case among people who read interviews like this one is that they spend 98 units of effort reading about running a business for every 2 units of effort running a business. Flip that on its head. I wonder how many successful entrepreneurs actually spent time reading advice blogs when they were starting.
Not yet successful, but I recently launched a product that I'm sure wouldn't be launched yet if I hadn't read the recommendation to ship early.
It's all about proportion :)
Re: Things I’ve Learned from Reading IndieHackers
#40All good advice, but I'm going to propose something that may be a bit contrary to current wisdom: if you really want a decent lifestyle/work-life balance don't start a business! So what's the alternative? Go contracting. Reduce your expenses to the bone, and limit the contracts you do. I now only take 3 month contracts and I do one a year. I make about £24K from that - I know many developers making double my rate. Th…
What do you do with the other 9 months of the year? side projects? travel? Id be interested to hear how your lifestyle is with all the free time.
I've considered this approach myself too but more 6 months on, 6 months off. Scala in particular seems to pay extremely well (£600-£650 /day) so easy to make the money to live a comfortable lifestyle in 3 or 6 months per year. I think other dev contracts are usually around £450 in London which is still more than enough.
Id love a permanent 2-3 day a week job too for work/life balance but those seem non existent for devs unfortunately.