It did limit the complexity of products, which could be good or bad, but the products were pipelined, so having one employee designing them in ~300 man-hours per design, spread out over six months or so, was totally doable. This included the whole gambit, from conceiving the design to component selection, schematic, layout, design for manufacturing, test fixtures and procedures to documentation and ad copy.
I do feel like it's quicker with hardware than software, because hardware follows something like the theoretical "waterfall" method that software has never used, so everything is clearly documented. For example, I pulled up the cheapest transistor from a common supplier, and it has five pages of documentation plus an index: https://www.formosams.com/upload/product/Mosfets/FMSBSS138-Q...
Everything is always easy to look up, with consistent formatting from every supplier, and you're never dealing with APIs that don't do what you'd expect them to do. You also don't need to continuously fix older releases, because they worked when you shipped them. On top of that, if a component is commonly used, it'll stick around for a lifetime, even as newer products come out, so you don't need to update your product unless it's worth the cost savings.
Mostly focusing on one project at a time on most days, but running several projects in parallel, and cross-pollinating the knowledge I gain from one to the others.
>Has "slow growth" ever paid off for you?
My arguably most successful project (in terms of impact and popularity) went “almost nowhere” for the first 2-3 years. But I wasn’t really trying to make it go anywhere, it was just for the enjoyment of me and my friends.
>If you had to start over, would you pick patience or a high volume of launches?
Both. Be patient, let projects grow slowly, and grow multiple projects at a time while you wait.
It used to be that one had a unique interest, profession or capability. This uniqueness causes them to see a gap in the market that could be filled by a new business. They work on filling out that gap, going as far as the customers and their capabilities will take them.
But that's too limiting. Because their interests and their customers might not lead to infinite growth! So instead you need to burn your life looking for that ONE business that will take off.
So shoot at everything. Burn your business, burn your time, burn your customers (this I detest the most), burn your intellect. Maybe get a shot at joining some club that no one cares about, except the other shooters.
The correct path is neither a shotgun blast on all available ideas, or a march to the death on your pet idea. It's a coherent expansion of effort based on feedback, capabilities, risk and likely return. Otherwise known as being in business.
I'll go with an example from my past: We built a SaaS for freelance photographers to organize and distribute their images. People loved it. We listened for feedback and people loved the new features. But churn was always a bit too high to make this a truly great business. We asked for feedback and got various reasons, none of which turned out to be correct. Most of our churn was photographers getting frustrated with the freelancer life and either signing up for an agency or changing jobs. That's how I learned the hard way that you cannot succeed in a bad market. But from the outside, it wasn't obvious that this market segment would be bad. You need to "test drive" the market with a product to learn if it can sustain a business or not. And that's what many of those indie builders are trying to do: feel out an acceptable market.
What the indie builders are often doing is starting backwards. Starting with something that should ostensibly be a large market (4) or seemingly timely. Then they find that the marketing channels are hard (3) so they work on that. Then they lower their margin or increase marketing spend (2) hoping that fixes conversions. Then maybe they learn that no one actually wants their product at all (1).
It definitely is not easy, especially novel ideas. Existing markets you can largely skip #1 and #2 as proven.
What people say and what they do are very loosely coupled. The only really good validation of a product idea is people giving you $.
lots of new bets are technically impossible. unless you doing something super trivial, you will hit roadblocks that require effort and time (e.g. Apple App Store reviews are notoriously slow and can take a month for a single new app).
I just really hate the idea.
At one level it makes complete sense to build software that solves problems you understand, and then market it to the people with the same set of problems. That’s what the “well known” indie hackers did. But if the ecosystem is all just people trying to hack something together quickly and sell it to other people hacking things together quickly it seems questionable that there is any real value there unless you are one of the few influencers with guaranteed distribution.
'circle jerk' would be a less polite way to put it.
heavy sigh
Having this as a success story you brag about is sociopathic.
"Critically, he did not understand margin. At the end of December when things were getting truly desperate, he said to me “Phil, just bring me a forecast that shows how much we need to sell to break even.” He did not understand, after three years of negative margin, that increased sales resulted in increased losses."
from Ecomom Post Mortem by Philip Prentiss
The guy started his thing over a decade ago and people look at it now and think they can replicate it.
The stuff the guy codes is garbage and what he does is far from solving any problems.
And, I do not believe his revenue numbers. At all. But people on the Internet see some shit posted, believe it, and then compare themselves to it.
Gleaning anything from his "1 in a million success" is falling prey to survivorship bias.
The end is also to create something useful for your customers. Hopefully.
I write my software with Haskell, NixOS, comprehensive testing, static analysis, linting, a great deal of care, etc.
If I had written everything in one big PHP file however, the difference to a paying customer would be exactly nil.
Only thing 1 file can't do is allow concurrent work if bad version control is used. If patches are tight with good patch theory, 1 file is fine again.
Modern programming languages have namespaces, catch type bugs, all of it works quite well with 1 file. Recent OAuth Cloudflare 1 file library (coded a bit with AI) is a breath of fresh air, 2600 lines of data types and behavior in one place.
- Nomadlist solved a problem, especially back then: a social network for digital nomads. Nothing wrong with it.
- Remoteok is a job board, but niched down, which is completely ok
- photoai / interiorai: it pains me that an AI slop generator is obviously a viable business model, but apparently many people are willing to pay for this
The rest is indeed brand effect. That shitty flight simulator wouldn't have gotten any traction if it wasn't for being part of "a community".
But, and this is the most important thing I like about Pieter: he doesn't sell shovels in a gold rush. His products solve problems for quite different groups of people and X isn't necessarily the primary marketing platform for his stuff.
There are others in the indie hacker scene that are way more shady, because they make their money from products that sell that lifestyle first and foremost.
Recently I've finally decided to try creating something new that people would find useful hoping that some day I would be able to turn a profit from that. So I vibe coded a pretty bare-bones (but fully functional) version of my idea and started to talk about it in several platforms, including IndieHackers.
And the main "advice" I've got after talking with a few people was "You are putting too much effort in your product, your focus should be on finding the right market fit for your idea". And after reading the logs in my server I found out nobody bothered to actually try what I built(and no, you don't need to create an account to use), which is fine. But why would you give this generic advice without even looking at the thing?
So, after a brief encounter with this community(people that are trying to build products) I can see how one could be tricked into the idea that success mainly comes from a good idea and not a good execution.
I get that many people are in this space only to make money and that finding the "magic idea" is probably a good advice if you don't care about what you will build and you need to make money fast. But I think we should also encourage people to build interesting things, even if it's not clear how one could make money from these ideas.
These folks are obviously playing a different game than I'm used to. But in my ~30 years at it, I can confidently say that taking the time to build what I feel are good apps, well-crafted, has provided immense satisfaction (I can at least look at a collection of apps, not landing pages), and has always developed or honed my skills, which has opened many doors. The marketing-first approach just sounds painful for someone who, like me, wants to be building things.
... but has it provided more revenue that what it would have cost for someone to hire you to build this at an acceptable hourly rate? Because if not, you're comparing your hobby against their business in the sense that you can accept less profitable results which wouldn't work for them.
Yes, but it is also rather depressing to spend a lot of effort building something that nobody wants. Especially if you are trying to make a living at it.
I don't think many programmers need that advice ;) Looking at the open source community, there's already plenty of people that freely share their ideas and implementations ... (only to be ripped off by cloud service providers later).
And, sadly, the market for cool gadgets or 3D-printable trinkets is even more brutal. There will be 10 clones in stock on Amazon before you get your first batch through customs. My advice would be that nowadays, you should start your product journey with planning what your moat is going to be and how you're going to defend it. Or if you skip that, accept that your moat is only going to last a few months, which seems to be what the article's author was going with.
If you build a product for marketers, you should hang out with them and ask them for advices, not indie hackers who know nothing about marketing.
If you build a product for bakers, you should hang out with them to understand what they need, not with indie hackers who have never baked anything in their lives.
That sounds logical, but for certain types of products, it is not.
There is no point in talking with indie hackers. It's only useful if you need knowledge about coding skills, which is rarely the case (especially now with AI).
Is there a website, documentation, any kind of presentation of your product? In that case, depending on your idea, this might be already enough for people to evaluate it. Certain categories are so overpopulated, people don't need to see the actual product any more; some description, maybe a screenshot, that's enough. The other side is, people are also so feed up with seeing the same stuff for the gazillions time again and again, they simply can't even bother with it any more.
> I can see how one could be tricked into the idea that success mainly comes from a good idea and not a good execution.
The idea drives your marketing, which brings you customers. The execution is what holds them and animates them to give you money. But if your marketing sucks, you won't get customers easily, so it's important to have a good balance, unless you plan to polish your product for a decade, until serious money shows up.
I do have a fully functional MVP available on the internet (https://leetprompt.io)
> The other side is, people are also so feed up with seeing the same stuff for the gazillions time again and again, they simply can't even bother with it any more.
That is a fair point, but if you can't even bother why would you give any advice then?
> it's important to have a good balance
That's why I went out of my way to try my hand at marketing something for the first time, but the only kind of advice I've got is a little bit depressing.
The influencers sell a lifestyle of throwing a million darts at the board with simple apps and building tiny businesses off the handful that get a lot of interest or seem to resonate with users. And the apps they build that do well are mostly small tools for other indiehackers to use to build/host/augment their apps. So they not only have the distribution and marketing aspects solved already, but they've actually created the demand for their own products by selling what they do as a viable (and easy/glamorous) path to success.
The other indiehackers are mostly in it to be like their favorite influencers, so they copy them by making small tools for other indiehackers and trying the million darts strategy. But it just gets lost in a sea of other indiehackers with no audience or distribution, all trying to sell the same kinds of products to each other. It just seems like a really bad community to sell to: very cost conscious, building competing products, familiar with all your marketing/fake-it-til-you-make it strategies. If at first you don't succeed, watch more youtube videos and throw more darts!
I don't think "market pull" is a terrible strategy and I'm sure for some it's just a fun way to write software but I worry that it's mostly a hybrid get-rich-quick scheme, parasocial thing for the small number of influencers at the top that wastes a huge amount of time. Personally I don't like the idea of baiting people with fake landing pages and think it's actively harmful for so many people to only build simple apps with immediate traction. It's just poisoning the well and making small-scale software low-trust, trying to get rich quick off other people trying to get rich quick
Same with the self-help world. Big, life-defining subjects hijacked for quick dopamine hits.
Or the "how to make a course" 'courses' of the 2010s
Or the "how to make a blog" 'blogs' of the 2000s
As they say, what's new is old again
"Create Stunning Travel Photos at Popular Destinations Without Leaving Home. Our AI model crafts your perfect travel photos."
which is the featured example client on https://codefa.st - the vibe coding course by aforementioned Marc Lou.
[*] Also known as "tool hire" and has been around since the dawn of mankind
The guy's extremely sketchy and is selling a non existent pipe dream to people who are easily swayed by "how to make money online" nonsense.
Oh, you mean that thing called the internet?
So it's like, on one hand it's not like "I'm a genius trader, buy my course for $3k and you will be too" because the people at the top actually, (mostly) demonstrably do the thing they claim is possible. And it's not like an MLM because there is not really any pyramid scheme dynamics involved. But on the other hand it's a market that only exists on the buyside because enough people believe it exists on the sellside to build for it, thus generating demand on the buyside.
I am very skeptical as well and I think there is a lot of truth to "those who can do, those who can't teach" adage. It's one thing if you are in "who can't" group because you are older/retired/done with it after many years. It's another if it's a guy in his 20's or 30's selling courses. Those in my experience are almost always just snake oil salesmen.
Interesting, what are some examples?
We've built a white-labeled version of our resume software to tackle specific keywords, communities, and now general organisations
This would be an exact example
I don't think this is true at all. How many such influencers are there, really, a dozen? I'd guess there are a million people making everything from absolute bank, down to pocket money. Most of them are probably not even aware that these influencers exists.
How is this not excellent advice? There are lots of stories of founders building first (sometimes for years, even), then finding out that there is no market for it (as it seems you have done). The people evaluating your product might have even just read your post and concluded that there's no market, a tarpit idea [0], from their own experiences.
I am assuming this [1] is your product, from looking at your profile and searching the name on IH. The comments are exactly as I've stated, and they apparently have visited your website too, so maybe your logs are not accurate, or they have an adblocker on.
> Hey, I checked out your website—looks great! Just wanted to share some honest feedback. I think you should hold off on going too deep into development right now. Instead, treat this as your MVP and focus first on getting real customers.
> This is a common trap many founders (myself included) fall into—building out the full product before validating if there's a real market fit. Get users, collect feedback, and then iterate. That’s the fastest and most efficient path forward.
If all you are doing is making apps, you have a hobby, but it is not guaranteed that you will have a business from it, so understand what it is you are optimizing for as the two require different actions to succeed.
[0] https://mikekarnj.com/posts/tarpit-ideas
[1] https://www.indiehackers.com/post/why-build-this-iCFJ3kI9WLa...
I do understand that in order to create something popular you need to create something good but you also need to properly communicate what you do. And proper communication is as hard as creating something good. So, I do know you need to "find an audience", and that is why I've posted it in a few places.
Having said all that, reading these comments made me feel somewhat demoralized because the advice wasn't really actionable. As a noob in this space I went in expecting to get some advice along the lines of: "your idea is bad", "the website design needs to improve", "your app keeps crashing", "there is no way to make money from this", etc... But all I've got was this generic "find users" advice.
"Find users" isn't intrinsically bad advice, but the way it was delivered felt really bad. How do I find users? Should I post about it in some platform? Maybe I should write a blog post about it? Running ads is a viable approach? Given what I have, what communities should I try to engage?
> so understand what it is you are optimizing for as the two require different actions to succeed
But I don't want to create a business right now. I just want to create something that people find interesting. I already know how to build things for myself, now I want a different challenge. But right now I feel stuck because I've built something, nobody seems to care and I don't really know how to improve my situation.
Or did you build it for no one? That is why you're struggling to get users, because if you actually had built it for a specific persona, then you'd know exactly where to find them. You're not actually doing anything different to the author of the OP, just building something and hoping people will come [0], which is one of the worst lies founders tell themselves.
> But I don't want to create a business right now
That's fine, you don't have to make money from your products, but my point fundamentally doesn't change, either you're building for yourself, in which case it's a hobby, or you're building for someone else, in which case you need to know who these people are before you build. Sounds like you fell into the exact same trap the person on IH warned you about, so if you don't want to feel demoralized in the future, you need to change your mindset, from building to understanding users' issues.
[0] https://samuelmullen.com/articles/startup-fallacies-if-you-b...
You should probably try to clarify this, address them more directly and make it clear that you're trying to gain them as users of your project - if you want to pursue this path at all, of course.
Also, remember that no one owes you to try out your project. It's perfectly fine for many people to just not care about the problem you're trying to solve, even if to you it seems like a very important idea. Personally, I'm not vibe coding or using Ai much at all, so I would have no interest in trying out your product, even though it is free. This is not me being rude in any way: I'm just not your target audience. Perhaps the people on Indie Hackers are also not, though likely for other reasons. Or perhaps your pitch just wasn't attractive or clear enough.
The trouble with influencers, is that they have ready-made consumer audiences.
Everyone else should be looking at things that create inarguable value. If I'm charging $XX per hour and this thing saves me multiple hours per X time period, then it sells itself. Even if the thing isn't saving me money (costs as much as the time saved) - it still may be worth it because maybe faster delivery and less drudgery is worth the outlay. And it would probably cost more to hire someone to do that anyway.
So, I agree with the dude who told you to find users first. But maybe the advice should have been "find pain points that you can solve." Say you figure out a service that could save lawyers loads of time. Then rather than say "try out my app" you could say something like "let me join on as a free contributor for a while so that I can work with you to improve X process." Once you have proven it works and you get the buy-in, then sales should come easier. But I don't see how you can discover / develop these things without being embedded in X field.
That is a polite way to say that your idea or your execution (so far) is bad.
Honestly most communities on the internet feel like that. That's one of the reasons why people migrated to discord servers.
(This very comment of mine is generic af too and has as little insight as an LLM predicting how a random HN users would comment here.)
Anyway, unless you made a tool for other devs (an IDE etc.), there is very little reason to ask what other devs think about your product. They're not your target audience. In the best case they're random people, in the worse case they're your competitors.
I agree. As long as you make it explicit in your encouragement that they should do this as a hobby with no expectation of income.
If their goal is to work on an interesting problem then discussing marketing is irrelevant.
If however their goal is to get paid, then the nature of the code is irrelevant. If you want to get paid then marketing (finding a customer base, discussing their pain, solving that need at a price they can afford etc) is more important.
Unfortunately in a lot of postings this context is not made clear. So the replier has to assume one or other context. Equally Unfortunately they often don't post which context they assumed.
Incidentally marketing might be the most important part of commercial success, but it is not the only important part. It is the most difficult part though so it makes sense to start there. Execution still matters, good execution makes sales easier. But the best execution ever does not mean anything if marketing is missing.
You do need to validate product market fit but you also need a minimal viable product. I think most people lost the meaning of what viable means.
Today's super-simple big market idea: We got my elderly mother a flip phone and it's too hard to use. I'm going to describe what would be ideal for her now, and by all means DON'T think up additional features to "make it better". She needs a phone that when opened/activated it give a list of people (contacts) which she can scroll through and pick one to call. It should call directly, not change screen or show some other shit. Just call the highlighted name and call. Maybe it could switch to a "calling" screen with just the one name until the call is over. That's it. No other functionality so she can "get lost" or confused.
Maybe this is an android app? I'm not sure if you can override the main UI to the extent this wants to be. I'll gladly get her a cheap Android phone and pay $5 for an app that turns it into this usable device for elderly people. Yes, five dollars. No adds, no user monetization, no enshitification.
Can anyone deliver this? I think there's a large market for it and it should be a one weekend job.
BTW, however you load/add contacts should be a sort of hard to find function maybe for someone else to do. Not something you can accidently "get into".
There are a million things like this just waiting for someone to create. But talking to developers for ideas is a dead end.
You're essentially asking for a heavily customized phone OS, this is not like adding a bootstrap theme - and you're willing to pay FIVE DOLLARS?
>> But talking to developers for ideas is a dead end.
Maybe for product ideas but perhaps you should find one to critique your "weekend project" idea
No. I'm asking for a "dialer only" phone OS. It can take the form of an always-on-top dialer app over a standard OS. That's it.
1. Comments are the internet aren't written for you, they are written for the author of the comment.
2. The assertion is sound, even if not particularly useful. Your logs exclaim that you don't have market fit, just as said. What more can be said? If finding market fit was a well defined formula, everyone would do it. This is the magic that, for better or worse, you have to figure out on your own.
in your situation, if you would have good idea which solves real problem, you would see at least some people come to your site/app and try it, but looks like your idea is not that good, or you failed to contact your audience.
He'll either randomly hit on something that's actually useful, or leave the low-effort software sector, or get a regular job writing low-effort software at one of the big conglomerates that already bribes the government to make their products mandatory.
But! That's just one reason to code anything, and you are probably "doing this" well enough for the other reasons (education, experience, job hunting, and the best one: fun).
Imagine if these "products" were subject to the laws of product liability in the United States like real products sold there.
Why do software developers call websites or apps "products". Why not just call them "websites", "apps" or just "software".
For example,
"After creating 37 different websites and apps over the last few years, I've had one go viral and almost all the others struggle to get any traction at all."
Is "products" more descriptive. Is it some sort of signalling. Do developers want there software to be treated like tangible products.
what we see instead is a myriad of half-backed, useless, un-maintained, poorly-executed, poorly-operated, poorly-designed solutions to non-existent problems, like shooting a gun into the sky and hoping it will land on a target.
Software products are products and they come with liability. Maybe many bullshit apps can't cause any harm and don't really matter, but most evident is software in the medical space. Also, if you step outside of the US, software products in the EU must comply with the GDPR. If you fail to comply, you are held liable.
1st one didn't sell
2nd one sold for 000s
3rd one sold for 000000s
4th one ?
so really went the other way, quality over quantity
A reality check to counteract all the startup boosterism.
I burned myself out trying to make something of my own.
I guess we have different understandings of what a product is.
I guess all those ideas that never made $1 were because of the "If you build it, they will come" marketing approach.
I am not discouraging building tools, I do that myself but most of these could be done while having a full time job and learning on the side.
One viral product ReplyGuy would have sold for in the $300,000-$500,000 range (my guess) is equivalent to 4 years of salary of a senior developer.
But the level of experience he has now cannot be achieved while having a full-time job and learning on the side.
For me personally I gave up on SaaS a couple of years ago and shifted my focus elsewhere. I ended up building a site in a niche I've always loved, and it ended up making me love that hobby even more, and now I have a place to share knowledge on it, with the bonus being it puts a small amount of cash in my pocket (not at all job quitting kind of money, but that wasn't the goal).
It just sounds like it relies on scraping reddit/twitter/some basic google/brave search api shenanigans...
Seriously, all the posts on replyguy.com seems to particularly target reddit and I am pretty sure that they might be scraping since eating reddit's api cost might be hard.
The autogenerate reply feature might be really easy to build (I think)
I mean, I don't condone scraping since it might be a little grey area but apify has reddit scraping too with the ability to search for keyword.
I mean, they are also raking as in as much if not more dollars per month than replyguy.com while being an api..
Now, we don't know if they are scraping or using api but I have assumed that they are scraping and so I may be wrong, I usually am but I am kinda impressed by how reddit scraping can lead to 6 figures.
- Stop diluting your attention.
- Iterate, iterate, iterate.
- Stick around for long enough so people have a chance to know you exist.
I don't mean to criticize how capitalism can turn sour, but the startup system can easily turns into some sort of pyramid scheme or snake oil, where some actors benefit, like online advertisers.
Startuping feels like it comes from a libertarian, Reaganian beliefs of how capitalism works.
If you're looking to make a living off of it, the training argument only works if you then go on to used the trained skills though.
In this instance, if the numbers provided are to be believed they made bank.
i'm seeing a six figure sale on a five figure investment, among others.
Though i suspect, like is usually it, that the provided cost numbers are much higher in reality when factoring in time and opportunity cost etc.
Invictus0•1d ago
Instead, talk to a customer. Build something that solves just one person's problem really well. Grow from there.
oc1•1d ago
askafriend•1d ago
It's inherent in the process and way of thinking. It's a dangerous path to pursue for entrepreneurs. How can the results be anything but disposable and frivolous when the process treats them as such.
fxtentacle•1d ago
In a way, that's the same problem as getting a job, which seems to be harsh for recent college graduates.
ambicapter•1d ago
fxtentacle•1d ago
How do you pre-filter which event to go to and who to talk to?
How do you introduce the topic of potential business ideas?
How do you confirm that they would actually pay for it if you would build it?
Also, has this ever worked for you?
danjl•1d ago
It may take dozens or hundreds of attempts, and then you find a small group, maybe a half dozen or so, that are early adopters, willing to live with your experiments and provide feedback. Work with them to hone the value proposition, and learn how to communicate it effectively. Tweak or pivot the product to fit their needs, often for many more months.
There is no simple solution that involves making a few social media posts, or paying for advertisements, or spamming people with email. Everything that actually works takes lots of personal time and energy.
Karrot_Kream•15h ago
In my experience if you spend a really long time trying to identify a problem to solve, you end up burning too much time on a problem that may not work. The Indiehackers approach is like the opposite of that where you shotgun low-effort attempts at ideas until you find one that sticks. I think most folks trying to build a business want something in the middle though. Use your experience and your knowledge to winnow the market of potential opportunities and to offer you an advantage (with your expertise) then iterate by creating different products until one of those products gets traction.
When I worked at a tech company that eventually became one of the Big Tech Unicorns of the last rush, we had plenty of products that completely bombed, much to the sadness of the folks that worked on them.
danjl•5h ago
Karrot_Kream•3h ago
danjl•1d ago
dfex•16h ago
Spoiler alert - you can't always do it sitting at home in your office chair.
poulpy123•1d ago
satvikpendem•1d ago
BizarroLand•1d ago
Invictus0•1d ago
askafriend•23h ago
His process resulted in some of the most transformative products humanity has ever known.
disgruntledphd2•9h ago
hshshshshsh•1d ago
ozim•1d ago
„indie hacker community builds worthless, visionless widgets „ - I totally agree with this sentence. Those 37 „products” feel like huge waste of time even ones he sold.
comechao•17h ago
People see viral products and early hackers who spent years building their reputation, and think that's not too hard, and maybe you need to try as many as possible... Nope, you need to build a business too! Low-hanging fruit saas can be built so fast nowadays that knowing how to build software is not a huge advantage. We know that building businesses takes time and a huge effort. Most businesses will not be Lovable like.