Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My solopreneur story

news.tonydinh.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 669 posts

Re: My solopreneur story

#501

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

gumballindie wrote: post #459
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".

The question is how do you create a niche? And the reason i ask this on hackernews is because there must be more interesting stuff happening than spammy newsletters and cheesy “self help” books.

You create a niche by looking at layers of a niche. What appears like one niche is actually a rubble pile of loose rocks held together by some gravity. You can pick off some larger rocks and create your own niche around that.

Basically niches are a bit like Mandelbrot sets. If you study then you will see more creases and patterns at the edges.

Re: My solopreneur story

#502

Post by barry-cotter »

aryamaan wrote: post #466
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't do, teach. If you can't teach, write an online course. If you can't write an online course, teach phys ed.

This kind of narrative stops aspiring teachers to go in the domain of education. Teachers play such an important rule. They have to swallow the pill that the common narrative is that cause they didn’t do whatever they are teaching hence they teach

Anyone who is less than 100% confident that they can in fact “do” should not be teaching. If your ego is that fragile you’re not going to last, whether because students don’t worship you, or because management ask you to do something differently.

Re: My solopreneur story

#503

Post by basisword »

skwee357 wrote: post #465

I’m very happy for Tony, it’s a great achievement indeed. Having said that, as an aspiring solopreneur myself, this article misses a very big part. Engineers like to talk about how they build products, but we rarely talk about how to market them. I quit my job 5 months ago, launched my first SaaS 3 months ago, and got zero users. I then started to tweet, write in LinkedIn, and focus on my newsletter. But I barely get…

>> I refuse to participate in algorithm games, and try to be authentic. But maybe that’s not what people like.

This is a mistake. It’s great to authentic when you tweet, post on LinkedIn or write in your newsletter - but if you have zero followers you’re just shouting into the void. You need to play “the algorithm game” so people see your messaging.

Re: My solopreneur story

#504

Post by satvikpendem »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #500
satvikpendem wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IndieHackers has more on this, they have a forum but their podcasts especially are the real value [0]. But most people on there are tech people, not marketers, so you'll still get a skewed version of reality. I've found great insight through following actual marketers though, such as Jordan Platten on YouTube who builds a social media marketing agency from scratch via cold calls [1]. Now this is, in my opinion, what…

While this is true and I agree partially, I think there is a big elephant in the room. Today's hackers are simply copycats. Now this is not their fault. In the 90s and early 2000s when I grew up, the web was just getting established which means we had to learn stuff to do interesting things. Nowadays, people start learning React and useEffect hooks as their "first programming" experience. That is simply insane to me.…

There is a difference between indie hackers and the hackers of the 90s, even though the words are the same. You seem to be referring to the 90s ones, who are technological nerds, basically. Andreas Kling, building his own OS, falls into this camp. But indie hackers are first and foremost those who are trying to make money where the technology is only incidental to their success (as it should be, technology is simply a tool for humans, there is no point to making technology that has no use, except for the sense of accomplishment that a craftsperson might similarly have over making some sort of well-built but useless piece of furniture).

So, no I would not recommend Andreas, gifted as he is, to anyone who is an indie hacker. His work is almost purely an intellectual exploration of the problem space of operating systems, something which has next to no business value these days when Windows, macOS and Linux exists. The riches (if you mean material riches and not intellectual riches) in tech exist by selling and marketing the product, not by the technological decisions of building the product itself. There is a reason YC tells you to create an MVP quickly with whatever technologies you know and to iterate on it after customer feedback.

For many indie hackers, who are not the next Elon building rockets in some novel way and who just want to make $10k a month, copying and improving on an existing product is good enough.

Re: My solopreneur story

#505

Post by kyawzazaw »

Aurornis wrote: post #59
keiferski wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Right! Did you notice the phrase “at the moment”? A snapshot in time that makes the narrative sound optimal. No mention of how it reached that point. No mention of what advertising routes were tried in the past. Another trick I’ve seen is for solopreneurs to create a “HoldCo” that holds their individual businesses, then to find creative ways to spend marketing dollars out of the parent company so they can keep it off…

Have you checked the twitter too? A lot of details are out in the open.

Re: My solopreneur story

#506

Post by kyawzazaw »

endisneigh wrote: post #22

mixed feelings - this is a good story, but it's sort of impressive in the same way it's impressive Six Flags gets away with selling Corn Dogs for $10. but all in all I wish more people did this. it would create a more competitive environment the ultimately result in driving the price down for many things and lowering hopefully making BigCo weaker.

Same way how?

Re: My solopreneur story

#507

Post by kyawzazaw »

danbruc wrote: post #496
hackerdrew wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don’t you exploit that market failure?

Not interested. I would feel bad for overcharging people and getting rich from that. And if I would charge them the actual costs, then I would mostly just destroy that guy's business and save some thousand people each a couple of bucks on some utilities that they almost certainly do not really need and are voluntarily paying for.

How are you able to tell with that much certainty of the users needs?

Re: My solopreneur story

#508

Post by hsn915 »

skwee357 wrote: post #465

I’m very happy for Tony, it’s a great achievement indeed. Having said that, as an aspiring solopreneur myself, this article misses a very big part. Engineers like to talk about how they build products, but we rarely talk about how to market them. I quit my job 5 months ago, launched my first SaaS 3 months ago, and got zero users. I then started to tweet, write in LinkedIn, and focus on my newsletter. But I barely get…

"I refuse to succeed!"

To each their own, I guess?

Re: My solopreneur story

#509

Post by rpastuszak »

dooraven wrote: post #367
rpastuszak wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, none of those people are whom I’d consider great entrepreneurs.

please name some then

Sure, my ex father in law: he built and ran a private theatre in the middle of the mountains at the Polish-German borders. We’re talking: a deep dark forest, small village, relatively impoverished area, shortly after the economic transformation post 1989.

He built the place in the ruins of a falling apart 16th century barn, had to support his initial work with clown shows, manual labor, then scaled it to the point where the place was regularly frequented by world class jazz performers.

He trained actors, provided work to people in the area. But he never scaled the business to the point where he’d have to compromise his work or relationships with people/fans.

We all play the cards we’re given and he managed to do it so much better than the brain parasites we tend to worship here.

Build a sustainable business that is a net positive contribution to the society, focus on value above growth, and stay true to your beliefs. Then keep it going for three decades. That’s entrepreneurship.

Bear in mind that although he’s a writer/playwright, I’d say that 3/4 of his work was managing the business like any other, juggling marketing, sales, admin.

(Apologies for any typos, writing this from my phone while in a rush)

PS IIRC in its peak the little village had more theatres per capita than Broadway (3 theatres!)

Re: My solopreneur story

#510

Post by redbell »

trungdq88 wrote: post #441
redbell wrote: post #368

“People are rewarded in public for what they practice for years in private. ” — Tony Robbins Whenever I heard about a success story, especially, when the hero is an indie hacker, the above quote hits my brain. I would assume that nobody here would disagree that zero to $45K/mo in 2 years is a jaw-dropping number but once you read the full story with all behind-the-scenes challenges, blood, sweet and tears you quickly…

Thank you the kind words! I did post the link myself but it didn't get a lot of votes like this one.

Oh, you are here Tony.. Welcome back!

I see that you already submitted this story yourself but, unfortunately, didn't get much traction like this one. This is one of the weirdest parts of Hacker News, where a submission may go totally unnoticed but could go viral and even hit #1 after being resubmitted a few hours later.

Post reply on HN