Clips from tech people on X. Useful motivation to throw at anyone wanting to build anything, even if it’s an index.html.
“What are you spending 10,000 hours on?”
“No matter what, you’re not paying enough attention to users.”
“Do anything, and produce some new information”.
“The minute I shipped it, I knew it was wrong, and I immediately knew what to do next, and I would’ve only had that idea of going through the execise to build it.”
Amazon only sold books. Now it sells everything and more. Start with a nimble niche at first.
Take a moment of observation, innovate.
Less meetings, more action.
Just make things.
Identify your stances and stand up for them in the biz.
One feature.
Democratic information.
Democratic information.
Big data.
Steve Woz
Steve Jobs
Ship even dumb ideas
“But I can build this easily”. Ok, but you didn’t? You can also grow your own food but you buy that, you can also make your own clothes but you buy them, you can even make your own films but you pay for Netflix and Amazon Prime.
People buy simple services because they don’t have to scarifice their time. Good news! There’s a free market and willing buyers. If it’s a valuable and trustworthy good or service and people are happy, then it’s working.
It doesn’t matter how fancy your algorithm is, how long you studied for, how much money you put into it, if it isn’t valueable to your customers and they don’t care, no one will buy it.
50-60 million actual developers out of 8 billion people
GitHub’s 2023 Report: GitHub reported having 100 million users on their platform, but this includes many non-developers like project managers and designers. The number of active developers is closer to the 50-60 million range.
Roughly 0.6% to 0.75% of the global population are developers. This number includes a wide range of developers, from professional software engineers to hobbyists and part-time coders. A tiny percentage.
Corporate software engineers
A smart engineer may fall into their own trap of building an app as if they were working in their corporate job with five other engineers, HR, PR, product managers, directors, sales directors; They over-engineer and optimise features that weren’t needed. Avoid this, ship already.
If you use a index.php and provide value to someone, that’s ok, that’s fine!
What’s the problem?
Building is easy. Children with AI can build now. The bar for building has been lowered drastically.
But showing up every day for your product, good or service? That is where you will find your hardship.
This is what isn’t appreciated or seen by the salty goblins on X. They may recongize it, but they don’t have any respect for the developer who shows up every day and cooks.
I’ve learned a lot from smart engineers, so let me be clear to you, I’m exclusively referring to the salty goblins on X who complain about the people trying, and they’re trying even without the five year degree they have, instead they learned things on the internet and showed up to work on it.
You have to realise, it’s not just the tech stack and app you’ve built. Does it provide some value to someone, yes or no?
You have to be good at everything. Programming, APIs, tech stack, sales, marketing, automation, distribution, healthchecks, great customer service, taxes, etc. You have to do everything.
All of these really add up. You have to code yourself, you have to do devops, maintaince, and all the business and marketing, all of it. That’s how rebel bootstrap developers win. They’ve got a baby they are nurturing 24/7.
This isn’t your JIRA todo list, this is real life.
Ship fast
Customer Service
Ask them for feedback, what do they want and go build it. Are people even buying, if not, why? Adapt and see if they validate it (by buying it). If not, why? Continue until you figure out what the value is exactly they’re after.
You are working all the roles at once, and the most important is customer service. Deliver value and communicate clearly to your customers.
You have to become sensational at customer service and gathering feedback.
Sell and get hate
Don’t make everything free or you will starve. Charge money for the time and value you create.
If a user wants it for free, you can tell them to go and take the 3 months to build it by themselves. They can sacrifice their time and energy (that they’ll never get back too).
Never be afraid to sell your thing if it solves a need and provides value to a target audience.
MAKE PEOPLE AWARE, GO SELL, THEY GET THE THING, YOU GET MONEY FOR YOUR WORK, EVERYONE IS HAPPY, GO GO GO.
Money goals
The goal of any indie hacker is to make your first $1 online.
The next goal is to reach ramen profitability (you live off of ramen once expenses are covered).
After this, it’s scaling past $1,000, and after that $10,000 MRR.
Quotes to get you started
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt
“I’ve been all over the world and I’ve never seen a statue of a critic.” ― Leonard Bernstein.
Good points for indie hackers.
Focus on your customers, not your competition.
Failure is only permanent if you don’t try again.
Always ask, and always try.