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My solopreneur story

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Re: My solopreneur story

#381

Post by imiric »

iancmceachern wrote: post #359
imiric wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dont think all "success stories" should be celebrated. I agree, and I never said so. I get the perspective of being jaded by vapid success stories of "here's how I got rich, buy my book/merch/MLM and you can get rich too", but this is far from being the case here. If you read the article, the author clearly states they were lucky several times, and towards the end: > There is no formula to guarantee success. This…

>I mean, that's your preference, sure. But companies are measured by their finances, and it's difficult to talk about growth towards financial independence without mentioning numbers. If they were discussing their fitness journey, they would need to mention their weight and exercise statistics, so I don't see how this is any different This is exactly what I'm trying to highlight. While this kind of behavior seems nor…

Financial independence is a big deal, though. Especially for people living in poorer areas of the world, where the majority of the population is struggling to get by. This type of content, where someone shares their legitimate road to FI instead of using some get-rich-quick scheme is a big deal. It's very insightful, and inspires many to want to do the same, which is a good thing.

I'm sure that if your plumber or proctologist shared their journeys this openly that others would find it helpful as well. Mentioning incomes can be tacky, and I too scowl whenever someone boasts about theirs, but this article didn't strike me as such at all. Which is why I think the negative tone here is unwarranted.

Re: My solopreneur story

#382

Post by nico_h »

imiric wrote: post #370
shrimpx wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the guy’s aesthetic just turns people off here. He seems intensely invested in how to make virality happen in any way possible, and building simplistic stuff that’s not advancing the state of tech. People here want to see technical contributions and organic success. It’s kind of ironic since this is a forum made by a VC company, but I doubt the Tony guy could get into YC with his ideas, despite his 70k follow…

What was eye opening to me about his story is that it doesn't take a "disruptive" product to achieve _moderate_ amounts of success. And I do stress _moderate_, since the traditional VC formula popularized by YC is that companies are meant to grow infinitely YoY, making all shareholders rich far beyond their needs, and if there's no growth, then investors aren't happy. That's a skewed hypercapitalist perspective that…

I mean 45k MRR with 90% profit is far from moderate success when compared to US minimum wage (or even of a more civilized country like Switzerland where it’s $4k), especially when living in moderate or low cost of living locations like Vietnam or Bali (he also mentions Lisbon but i doubt the CoL is comparable to vietnam)

Especially when working only “4” hours a day.

I think the only concern with something like that is the sustainable lifetime of the product, seems to me you have to re-invent the business every few years if you want to keep your solopreneur story going ( the product grows beyond the solo part or gets overtaken by the competition).

Re: My solopreneur story

#383

Post by cornholio »

actionfromafar wrote: post #292
cornholio wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a massive amount of luck and/or first mover advantage"

Again, I want to emphasise that sometimes a project or set of ideas not only thrives, but completely dominates .

Sure, but how does that help you chose an effective strategy? For example, winning lottery players absolutely dominate when it comes to risk vs reward. But that doesn't mean playing the lottery is the way to achieving your financial goals.

Without an understanding of the underlying odds of success, isolated success stories are just random noise. And you have to ask: are they really success stories? Did Linus set out to create a world known free kernel, or was ìt just serendipty, he was just a random bloke who filled a role that needed to be filled at that particular historic time, so in fact had no control over the story and did not, in fact, change the world, he just gave a name of the rough thing that was to appear at that rough time.

Re: My solopreneur story

#384

Post by braza »

elboru wrote: post #157
EddTheSDET wrote: post #130

Hackernews seems overly critical and anti-“hacker” nowadays (new acc but been around for years). Anyone have a guess why that’s the case? Influx of new users?

I’ve also been around for years, but I don’t see it as a recent phenomenon. I’ve noticed that usually most top comments (for most topics) contain contra-arguments, or critical comments of any sort against the article. Sometimes it’s useful to learn about other perspectives, but often it feels forced or just plain negative/ego inspired. I could go back years and check old posts and notice that same trend. One famous e…

I think this is the beauty of HN: having people that does not share the hive mind from Social Media, edgy comments, contrarians, insiders, builders and people that reflects over the topics posted here.

Re: My solopreneur story

#385

Post by johntiger1 »

fullstackchris wrote: post #114
sokoloff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got an unsatisfactory reply to a support ticket. What's the realistic alternative with other software vendors of $20-50 products? IMO, the most common is not "a satisfactory reply" but rather "no [edit to add: human-generated] reply".

see, i just don't get this. one of my SaaS products is essentially 100% hands off (aside from occasional package upgrading, random refunds or upgrade issues every few weeks) but i still absolutely LOVE adding new features or fixing bug requests that customers bring into my view. it gives me the classic feeling of really helping someone, even if it is just a single individual out there. then the bug reports start to g…

Yep, well it's clear how indexed on money Tony is in this post. Not passing judgment either way, but for some people software is just a means of making money. And that's okay.

Re: My solopreneur story

#386

Post by DantesKite »

jart wrote: post #341
allenu wrote: post #264

As a fellow indie hacker (I quit my job 18 months ago to build and sell my own apps), I am super jealous. I don't have the success of this guy (only getting close to $1k/mo these days), but I can understand the success. This guy knows how to market and ship product. I've seen him pop up a few times on indiehackers.com and social media. His "brand" is super simple to understand, which helps gain followers. He knows ma…

> at the end of the day, we're trying to exchange useful products for money If you're just trying to make money, then you shouldn't call yourself a hacker.

Since when did financial success invalidate technical expertise?

Re: My solopreneur story

#388

Post by gumballindie »

satvikpendem wrote: post #183
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's true that niches work, the actual money maker is to create your own niche by forking an existing one. While 45k / month is impressive, the ones who are making 6 figures and above per month, are doing it in niches which aren't "built in public".

Yep, I know people in the "boring" industries, making software or running the marketing for plumbers, electricians, med spas, etc. They're at 6 or more figures a month doing that, and they're in industries most software engineers won't dare look.

This is the kind of stuff i want to know more about. I wish it was promoted more on HN. Those people are what I like to call hackers and painters. Nothing hacky about getting VC money or winning the lottery. Building a small thing that works in the 6 figures is.

Re: My solopreneur story

#389

Post by cellis »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #285
cellis wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone thinks like this then no, it won't get better. But I stand by my statement, no matter how many downvotes I get. If you don't like a product, stop paying for it, and either find alternatives or build your own. Its quite rare that you're going to influence their roadmap by getting a ticket filed.

Don't you think it'd be a lot quicker if multiple people were filing a ticket for the same issue then to build the entire product yourself?

I could write many Series A angel checks if I only had a penny for all the tickets on product issues I've had that were never resolved.

It's for this reason if I find an NPM library that doesn't meet my needs and I have the time, I'll write a new one that solves only my use case.

Re: My solopreneur story

#390

Post by satvikpendem »

musicale wrote: post #378
satvikpendem wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it is infamous precisely because people, especially developers, on HN discount the value of good user experience. No one but the most technical will set up their own FTP server to rsync files back and forth, but they will drag and drop files into a folder that "magically" syncs. To say it more flippantly, this is why Drew is a billionaire and BrandonM is not.

> To say it more flippantly, this is why Drew is a billionaire and BrandonM is not Seems a bit mean-spirited, and I'm not sure I like the implied value assumptions. I expect there are other important reasons as well including connections, timing, luck, etc.

I was just mentioning it in the same spirit as the parent comment. It's not about "billionaires bullying" at all but the fundamental disconnect engineers often have to user experience.
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