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My solopreneur story

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Re: My solopreneur story

#41

Post by riddley »

sokoloff wrote: post #18
unsupp0rted wrote: post #4

I paid for & use one of Tony's products (Xnapper for screenshots). It's good, but I reported a cropping bug, along with a replication bullet list and .gif screencast of me replicating the bug. I got a response from a support person telling me to increase border padding beyond any reasonable aesthetic level. Aesthetics is the purpose of buying the product, otherwise non-aesthetic screenshots are built into macOS. The…

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".

Responses like yours are always so strange to me. Perhaps I misunderstood your response but it feels very much like a defense of the status quo. As if the PC was expecting too much to get support for software they paid for and that their raising of the issue in the comment was unwarranted.

How do things ever get better if everyone just accepts everything that ever happens without complaint?

Re: My solopreneur story

#42

Post by public_defender »

gumballindie wrote: post #16
public_defender wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm an optimist, but I'd like to think the downvotes are because the user showed in the space of a haiku that they understand neither capitalism nor communism.

Au contraire. Corporate communism is very much alive and kicking. Capital is clogged. The only way to make it move is to allow small to medium sized true capital makers and movers to thrive. Corporations are the new communist apparatus. Roles have been reversed.

This whole analysis reads like the economic version of flat earth theory to me, but I thank you both in advance because I am about to go down a research rabbit hole on "corporate communism."

Re: My solopreneur story

#43

Post by kubb »

gumballindie wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Corporate communism? I wonder what’s that, let me check, oh it’s some US conservative talking point.

Wait, isn’t a politburo the executive committee of a communist party? How can that be corporate and own the media?

Wait how is selling apps capitalist success? What capital is winning here? I guess the corporate capital of the company owning the App Store. Or is it the capital that the app making guy is building up?

I guess when you use your own language, the things you say sound very alien, and can’t be used to communicate. You could be saying anything so you’re saying nothing at all.

Re: My solopreneur story

#44

Post by keiferski »

Aurornis wrote: post #31

I always enjoy reading success stories of developers of small apps. At the same time, I can’t shake the feeling that we’re seeing only a cherry picked part of the picture. There is no mention of advertising spend or customer acquisition costs. The trend among indie hackers is to talk about MRR without mentioning a single expense, then to interleave it all with “follow me on Twitter” so you’re inspired to join their a…

> The thing is, we don’t know

In the first paragraph:

At the moment, my total revenue across all products is about $45K/month at ~90% profit.

Re: My solopreneur story

#45

Post by ahoka »

demondemidi wrote: post #10

An arrow indicator for a twitter profile pic, a screen cap tool, and a wrapper around ChatGPT. I kinda want to shoot myself. Largely useless products that made someone rich that rely on two other ecosystems. That’s the way I guess? I’m so not an entrepreneur. Edit: apologies for using a suicide metaphor. I was being sarcastic. I’m in my 50s, really like my job, and am on a path to a good retirement. It just amazes me…

Yes, you would only create products you really believe in and find useful to society. But you then would need to compete with the Tonys of the world, who try selling ice to eskimos or simply ads, malware and online casinos.

Re: My solopreneur story

#46

Post by [deleted] »

OmarShehata wrote: post #26
demondemidi wrote: post #10

An arrow indicator for a twitter profile pic, a screen cap tool, and a wrapper around ChatGPT. I kinda want to shoot myself. Largely useless products that made someone rich that rely on two other ecosystems. That’s the way I guess? I’m so not an entrepreneur. Edit: apologies for using a suicide metaphor. I was being sarcastic. I’m in my 50s, really like my job, and am on a path to a good retirement. It just amazes me…

There are two ways of approach entrepreneurship, and the conflict between each is why there's some dissonance here: 1) Do it to escape the grind, as one commenter here mentioned. In this way, it doesn't matter what product you make, or how you make it. The goal is self sufficiency, to find a niche that you can fill, etc. 2) Do it because you're trying to effect some specific change in the world. Something doesn't exi…

[deleted]

Re: My solopreneur story

#47

Post by kubb »

demondemidi wrote: post #10

An arrow indicator for a twitter profile pic, a screen cap tool, and a wrapper around ChatGPT. I kinda want to shoot myself. Largely useless products that made someone rich that rely on two other ecosystems. That’s the way I guess? I’m so not an entrepreneur. Edit: apologies for using a suicide metaphor. I was being sarcastic. I’m in my 50s, really like my job, and am on a path to a good retirement. It just amazes me…

Go for it, 1% of the time it works all the time. If you fail, you just weren’t good enough.

Re: My solopreneur story

#48

Post by gumballindie »

demondemidi wrote: post #10

An arrow indicator for a twitter profile pic, a screen cap tool, and a wrapper around ChatGPT. I kinda want to shoot myself. Largely useless products that made someone rich that rely on two other ecosystems. That’s the way I guess? I’m so not an entrepreneur. Edit: apologies for using a suicide metaphor. I was being sarcastic. I’m in my 50s, really like my job, and am on a path to a good retirement. It just amazes me…

You are only angry because you too want to escape and are externalising the frustration of not finding a similar path. At least thats what i learned about myself when i had a similar reaction seeing such success stories. Then it struck me - this is it. This is the way for indie success. Build stuff that makes sense to a niche market. To me the product is irrelevant. But the fact that the author escaped is absolute bliss.

Also arent most products just useless things relying on other ecosystems?

Re: My solopreneur story

#49

Post by mrits »

Whiteshadow12 wrote: post #19
demondemidi wrote: post #10

An arrow indicator for a twitter profile pic, a screen cap tool, and a wrapper around ChatGPT. I kinda want to shoot myself. Largely useless products that made someone rich that rely on two other ecosystems. That’s the way I guess? I’m so not an entrepreneur. Edit: apologies for using a suicide metaphor. I was being sarcastic. I’m in my 50s, really like my job, and am on a path to a good retirement. It just amazes me…

I get it, with the right positioning, you can convince people to buy bottled water for $30 or more, Tony built or found really good positions, you can do the same.

If you were first to market with a patent you'd be able to charge a lot more than that.

Re: My solopreneur story

#50

Post by donnythecroc »

OmarShehata wrote: post #29
OmarShehata wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two ways of approach entrepreneurship, and the conflict between each is why there's some dissonance here: 1) Do it to escape the grind, as one commenter here mentioned. In this way, it doesn't matter what product you make, or how you make it. The goal is self sufficiency, to find a niche that you can fill, etc. 2) Do it because you're trying to effect some specific change in the world. Something doesn't exi…

One the flipside here, you can argue that, every time you get another "1", this is great for the economy. You now have someone who's making their own money, leaving a salaried job spot open for another person. A lot of these indie hacking ventures probably wouldn't exist at all if the person making them decided not to. If that is, or for the subset of indie hacking companies for which it is true, it means this is gro…

This is a great point. He's literally created a job.
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