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My solopreneur story

news.tonydinh.com

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Re: My solopreneur story

#511

Post by Existenceblinks »

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…

And these accounts don't care about us at all, they only want to farm us. They don't even engage our replies.

Re: My solopreneur story

#512

Post by Existenceblinks »

system2 wrote: post #469
hubraumhugo wrote: post #161

Business advice is often just someone handing you their winning lottery ticket. It worked perfectly for them but will probably be totally useless and not repeatable for you.

That's a stretch. There is still lots to learn from their journey. I can list at least 5 things to take from Tony's success.

Tbh, this is very repetitive story .. seen 100 times before.

Re: My solopreneur story

#513

Post by Existenceblinks »

umvi wrote: post #120

The hard part here is the spending hours on Twitter each day to "become more influential" and "engage with your audience"

I mute a lot of these accounts that try to farm me as their audience. I used to engage some, they just don't care to reply at all. And they are annoying real fast. Imaging you have 10 posts of garbage a day / influencer

Re: My solopreneur story

#514

Post by nickfromseattle »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #493
nico wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very hard to build a following without a system and without copying content For LinkedIn, ideally you should be posting at least 5 times a week, reposting your best performing content, re-phrasing or straight up copying viral content, and adding as many people to your contacts as possible every day (there’s a weekly limit, and there’s also a 20k total limit, so you also need to figure out what type of contacts y…

I'd rather be unemployed and live off charity kitchen soups than engage in these juvenile games. As a society we need to find a way to stop rewarding slyness and trickery (aka marketing)

>I'd rather be unemployed and live off charity kitchen soups than engage in these juvenile games.

What if you replaced the word marketing with attention?

Would you rather live of soup kitchens than have the attention of your ideal customers?

Re: My solopreneur story

#515

Post by dogibacsi »

danbruc wrote: post #217

90% profit is a market failure, you should not be able to overcharge your customers almost 10x in a working market.

if you talk economics make sure you know what you're talking about.

profit happens when I can give you 10 units of value that costs me 1 unit of value. depending on risk factors, we split the difference. ie: if I give you the tool that does it for you, I get all 9 units because all risk is mine. if I tell you how to do it I get maybe 1 unit because most risk is yours.

what you're referring to is arbitrage. efficient markets kill arbitrage (zero risk profit)

Re: My solopreneur story

#516

Post by danbruc »

kyawzazaw wrote: post #507
danbruc wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If those people had only access to overpriced water, then yes, making this market failure go away would be a worthwhile undertaking with a meaningful positive outcome. But people getting overcharged on a progressbar around their Twitter profile picture, who cares? And who could not live without that or do it manually with Paint at the cost of some additional time?

My original comment was just meant as a general comment that this kind of profit is not supposed to exist. I am not sure if I want to call it unethical but I am really tempted to do. You make yourself a nice life and others do the work.

Re: My solopreneur story

#517

Post by danbruc »

dogibacsi wrote: post #515
danbruc wrote: post #217

90% profit is a market failure, you should not be able to overcharge your customers almost 10x in a working market.

if you talk economics make sure you know what you're talking about. profit happens when I can give you 10 units of value that costs me 1 unit of value. depending on risk factors, we split the difference. ie: if I give you the tool that does it for you, I get all 9 units because all risk is mine. if I tell you how to do it I get maybe 1 unit because most risk is yours. what you're referring to is arbitrage. efficient…

No. Profits should not exist in working markets in equilibrium. If they exist, competitors are supposed to show up to also collect some of the profits eventually driving them to zero. If there are no competitors driving the profits to zero, that is a market failure.

Re: My solopreneur story

#518

Post by mckravchyk »

pHollda wrote: post #488
danbruc wrote: post #217

90% profit is a market failure, you should not be able to overcharge your customers almost 10x in a working market.

yup yup. cc Why don't people realize that 'high software profit margins' are fugazi?( https://buttondown.email/tZero19e/archive/why-dont-people-re... )

I'm not an expert in this but I think that generally price is determined by what the upper limit of what the users are willing to pay and the lower limit of what the vendors are willing to charge. As a new software vendor it only makes sense to look at the price of similar software in your space. And is it really bad - how many would want to be a software vendor otherwise? I'm not saying that some physical products do not come with risk, but the article is mentioning water - what are the chances that a company selling water will have a product market fit problem? What are the chances that the app you have worked on for so long without getting paid for it will not net more than a day job would 2 years after launch?

And Google, Facebook - they are something entirely different, they have a monopoly on their ad machine so they can charge whatever they want - and give something back in R&D in exchange - a company that struggles to keep its lights on can't innovate much (Zero to One is a nice take on this). For the latter, I'm not saying it is good or bad, it has benefits and drawbacks and it's the way it is and it's certainly not limited to virtual products. The Train Monopoly Co in my country has made the tickets practically 2x as expensive in just 1 year and what can I do? They could increase the price even further and I would still be riding with them because there are no other options.

Re: My solopreneur story

#519

Post by Existenceblinks »

mt_ wrote: post #129
didip wrote: post #122

I am surprised people reduced this article as just another pet rock. Dude's journey has some interesting nuggets. He knows how to time box himself and build the smallest MVP that will actually make money. And his journey is not an overnight success either, it took him years to build everything including his social presence. Compare that to a W-2 job where you just have to show up 9am-5pm. HN is showing its overly cri…

He's a good marketeer, I'll give you that. Just this week I've seen one of his tweets being promoted on X and now he's top of hacker news on my feed. Not particularly interested in his tools but congratulations on his way to achieve engagement.

I mute all of these guys who have posted 10 times+ a day. If everyone doing this, there will be lots of garbage.

Re: My solopreneur story

#520

Post by 4gotunameagain »

nickfromseattle wrote: post #514
4gotunameagain wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather be unemployed and live off charity kitchen soups than engage in these juvenile games. As a society we need to find a way to stop rewarding slyness and trickery (aka marketing)

>I'd rather be unemployed and live off charity kitchen soups than engage in these juvenile games. What if you replaced the word marketing with attention? Would you rather live of soup kitchens than have the attention of your ideal customers?

The competition of legal entities for our attention seems to be one of the major reasons of chronic stress and mental illness in the west, so the answer is yes.
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