I just want to share my recent personal experience.
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.
weitendorf · 4h ago
I didn't understand the indiehacker community/product mindset until I discovered the indiehacker "influencers" / lifestyle vloggers / etc. that might be the only ones actually turning a profit on all of this.
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
andai · 4h ago
That's hilarious. The post reminded me of Marc Lou, who's launched like 30 SaaS, and from what I gathered by far his most profitable one is the one that helps you launch your own SaaS...
warrenm · 3h ago
It's the "envelope stuffing" 'business' of the 80s informercials updated
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
alchemyzach · 4h ago
That guy is sooo shady. Just something really insincere and sinister about his whole shtick. Unfortunately lots of young, eager devs dont know to avoid these characters yet
fxtentacle · 2h ago
I find it pretty fascinating that these "asia backpacking entrepreneur" types are in general so stuck with the "fake it, perception is everything" mindset, that they build products such as:
"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.
bwb · 4h ago
Its the old story of who makes money in the gold rush, the person selling equipment and eggs.
svnt · 4h ago
The thing about MLM schemes (or I guess MLH schemes in this case) is that the pyramid at the bottom is flat and small, and this example illustrates that intuitively more immediately than Avon. Are you interested in being a follower of a follower of an indiehacker? No? Then as a follower of an indiehacker you have no market.
jacquesm · 4h ago
Something very similar applies to VC investing. Sure, some founders get rich. But founder returns averaged across all founders are horrible. The VCs however... they are like those influencers. They'll tell you exactly how you should maximize for their return, just in case you strike it big. They're not going to tell you how to minimize your risks, unless that happens to align with their increased returns.
spacemadness · 4h ago
Kind of like all the investment and finance influencers. If they’re so good at it why do they need to spend all that time trying to be an influencer? They should be rich already. They even beg for likes and subscribes so they’re obviously not doing it as a hobby. It’s simply because they’re trying to get rich selling advice to gullible people.
weitendorf · 4h ago
Personally I find indiehackers unique amongst get rich quick schemes because it's very transparently a community of people trying to get rich quick by building small apps for other people trying to get rich quick building small apps. It's not necessarily that the influencers are deceiving anybody (I think some do), they really do build apps like that too, some of which are genuinely successful. They're not selling advice.
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.
spacemadness · 4h ago
Most influencers also don’t sell courses, although some definitely do. They try to ramp up eyeball time any way they can. It’s more about starting a mini-community in their favor which is where I see the parallel. You’re right though, it’s more fragmented it seems in the indiehackers community and a bit more ponzi.
9cb14c1ec0 · 4h ago
> influencers sell a lifestyle
Oh, you mean that thing called the internet?
satvikpendem · 4h ago
> You are putting too much effort in your product, your focus should be on finding the right market fit for your idea
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.
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.
satvikpendem · 41m ago
When you built your app, whom did you build it for? Presumably you built it for a specific customer segment in mind, so did you try searching for them on Google or elsewhere?
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.
> But why would you give this generic advice without even looking at the thing?
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.
nzach · 4h ago
> Is there a website, documentation, any kind of presentation of your product?
> 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.
No comments yet
BoumTAC · 5h ago
you should not ask indie hackers for advice and you should not hang out with them.
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).
fxtentacle · 5h ago
"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."
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.
TrevorFSmith · 4h ago
I don't know why people gave you that advice but it's pretty easy to tell when a designer hasn't spent enough (or any!) time defining their target market and then spending time with those people to listen instead of force fitting a technology.
Without that up front work we're all just rolling the dice.
That said, building stuff is fun by itself so it doesn't always need to be about money and growth. Just know it's a hobby.
LVB · 5h ago
Yes, and it is very tiresome advice to see continually, especially when given to newcomers whose first instinct is to build a solid, useful app or service, and they're being steered away from that. The number of times I've read that one should put up landing pages, spend time socializing them, and only if there are enough signups to actually build something is rather depressing.
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.
satvikpendem · 4h ago
You have a hobby (of making apps), not an actual business. The sibling comment is right, those are two different skills that optimize for different things. Which is fine, everyone has hobbies, but understand that the "game" they're playing is making money, which requires acquiring customers, which requires marketing.
fxtentacle · 5h ago
"I can confidently say that taking the time to build what I feel are good apps, well-crafted, has provided immense satisfaction"
... 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.
p0nce · 5h ago
Well that meant your users do not hang in IndieHackers
ninetyninenine · 5h ago
Then the problem here isn’t there advice but what is it you need to do to get them to try it? Or where do you need to look to get them to try it?
karel-3d · 6h ago
I see one of the products and I already hate the OP. Thanks
Hm not sure if you are a legit commenter or if this is just rage marketing ;)
karel-3d · 6h ago
He doesn't even own it anymore and, according to the recent reviews of the service (by marketers), it basically stopped working since he sold it (and when I google there are many more like it that works better, this seems to be using 2024 LLMs). So I am not selling it at all.
I just really hate the idea.
libraryatnight · 4h ago
I hate it too, but I hate it even more knowing it broke after he sold it. Not even bringing any integrity to the evil. lol
yellow_lead · 4h ago
It's crazy how AI folks are re-inventing literal Internet spam
spacemadness · 4h ago
This is commonly how people choose to use the “greatest breakthrough in the history of computer science” as it was stated in another thread. Great work humanity.
n4r9 · 5h ago
I've looked at several and they're mostly aimed at helping to market software. It feels kind of meta. Perhaps this is a particularly tough niche?
weitendorf · 5h ago
This is one of the interesting things I’ve noticed about the indiehacker community and software ecosystem, it’s mostly software built for and marketed to other indiehackers.
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.
fxtentacle · 5h ago
I also dislike the product. But I find it refreshing to see that selling LLM slop for marketing is, apparently, not a viable business.
jasonthorsness · 4h ago
this is one of the ones he successfully sold, for apparently the biggest amount in fact
hahn-kev · 5h ago
Are YOU reply guy?
forgotmypw17 · 6h ago
>Did you find success by focusing on one project and giving it time, or by making lots of new bets?
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.
rorylaitila · 6h ago
Let's call this shotgun capitalism. It's all the rage over at indie X.
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.
fxtentacle · 5h ago
The problem is that feedback is difficult to get without customers. Plus in many cases, the feedback of what people intend to do is not really helpful at predicting what they will do.
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.
rorylaitila · 5h ago
Yeah I agree there. The challenge is the order of the test drive. The ideal validation goes like this in my mind: 1) Will anyone buy it at all? 2) Will they buy it greater than its costs to produce at reasonable margin? 3) Are there enough assessible marketing channels at that margin? 4) Is the overall size of the business viable for my goals?
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.
TimPC · 6h ago
A product with $6000 in revenue selling for only $12,500 seems crazy to me. Why were you so eager to get rid of it?
fxtentacle · 5h ago
Most likely, they booked some advertisements to push revenue but didn't honestly account for the ad expenses. I've seen that way too many times with Indie products that they brag about large revenue numbers and "forget" to mention that profit margins are negative. I remember once hearing about a start-up that resold baby diapers at a loss. Obviously, they were easily able to scale up customers and revenue ...
beAbU · 2h ago
It's the whole "we're selling $1 bills for 50c, but we're not worried, we'll make up for it by scaling up."
Arainach · 5h ago
Revenue isn't profit.
tonyedgecombe · 4h ago
I think such small businesses are really hard to sell. It may be the purchaser just wanted the domain.
LargeWu · 7h ago
Is making ~8 products a year for 5 years perceived as a viable way to be successful?
tiffanyh · 6h ago
A lot of people want to replicate Pieter Levels success
In that list, "startupretreats" jumped out at me because surfoffice.com has been doing well for at least 10 years by now... So maybe he also lost some opportunities by giving up too early.
apples_oranges · 6h ago
I guess it's go wide or go deep
nikolayasdf123 · 6h ago
> Did you find success by focusing on one project and giving it time, or by making lots of new bets?
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).
Invictus0 · 7h ago
The indie hacker community builds worthless, visionless widgets and then fails to market them. Could you imagine Steve jobs talking about building 37 products in 5 years?
Instead, talk to a customer. Build something that solves just one person's problem really well. Grow from there.
ozim · 2h ago
Steve Jobs comparison is not great. You don’t have to be Jobs or have grand vision to make decent product that will make you money.
„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.
askafriend · 5h ago
Exactly this.
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.
poulpy123 · 5h ago
From what I perceive of his personality through the media, I totally believe that a 24 years old Steve Jobs in 2025 would do that.
satvikpendem · 4h ago
Jobs was a perfectionist and would not have done that, given what I read from Isaacson's biography.
BizarroLand · 3h ago
He would have started a group of people and got them to each do that, and then connected with the winners of the hundreds or thousands of attempts and then taken credit for it.
Invictus0 · 3h ago
Jobs literally did get a group of people together and did not do that. He built a company where all the products contributed to the vision of personal computing; either personal computers or personal computer accessories.
askafriend · 23m ago
The thing people seem to forget about Jobs is that he really was that good, that obsessive/dedicated and that visionary. It's that simple.
His process resulted in some of the most transformative products humanity has ever known.
danjl · 5h ago
Or a dozen. Or, better, a few dozen. Read "The Mom Test" to learn how to get useful information from your face to face discussions.
fxtentacle · 5h ago
But how do you find that first customer who's willing to pay for a solution?
In a way, that's the same problem as getting a job, which seems to be harsh for recent college graduates.
ambicapter · 5h ago
It's complicated, but you have to talk to real human beings in your surroundings and learn about their lives.
fxtentacle · 5h ago
Please elaborate. I think I can talk to people pretty well. But I've yet to hear anyone accidentally mentioning a valid business opportunity.
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 · 4h ago
You learn where your customers hang out, and then you hang out there and authentically become part of the social group. You spend weeks/months/years learning what they like, their workflows, and their problems. Or, better, you've already spent years working with your customers so you have some experience in these matters. Then you spend more time setting up face-to-face discussions, at conferences, online, or wherever they hang out, *not* trying to shill, but honestly and authentically trying to learn what they need.
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.
oc1 · 6h ago
I suspect the 2020's indie hacker community is now a byproduct of the "get rich" enshittification of social media and their role models are tiktok and instagram influencers who teach you how to "build" because with ai no tech skills needed anymore.
hshshshshsh · 4h ago
Do you think Steve Jobs give a shit about what customers thought?
jasonthorsness · 5h ago
I've wondered about low-sum acquisitions commonly celebrated on indiehackers/build in public... I thought they were often likely scammers in some way, like using domains with traffic for then nefarious purposes? But maybe not, maybe this is just a way to avoid the dozens of $0 projects on OP's list, and the buyers sincerely want to grow. Navigated to a few OP sold and they still seem to be what they were.
bob1029 · 3h ago
37 is one of those numbers that keeps popping up in certain places. Whenever I see it in a headline, I go in feeling like I'm about to be bullshitted by the author.
The growing product is something that bolts in the worst of current internet (affiliation links). Hopefully it will fail too
moondowner · 6h ago
Affiliate links have been here for three decades; (AutoWeb.com doing it since 1995)
olyjohn · 6h ago
That doesn't mean anything. It's still a huge reason for all the junk and bullshit that's ruined the internet.
1vuio0pswjnm7 · 1h ago
"After launching 37 different products over the last few years, I've had one go viral and almost all the others struggle to get any traction at all."
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.
danjl · 4h ago
The biggest problem I have, is that, even though I know from experience that I should talk to customers to understand their problems and build a solution that provides them value, and spend time talking to them to understand the value proposition, how to communicate it, and how it fits into their workflow, I don't enjoy those bits, and I prefer to just code things I want to build. I prefer to willfully delude myself into thinking that the thing I want to build is something other people will want to pay for. Oh, wait, and I prefer not to charge people and not to sell ads. So there's that too. Am I doing this right?
larrik · 3h ago
Probably if not you are trying to build a business.
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).
farceSpherule · 6h ago
Everyone is trying to "copy" Pieter Levels "success" which as of now is "brand effect."
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.
satvikpendem · 4h ago
I agree with half your comment while disagreeing with the other half. Yes, it is very true that he now has a brand and can get users much more easily, and that trying to replicate his success is very survivorship bias heavy. However, if he hadn't been solving problems for people, he wouldn't have made the money he has in the first place, because no one would be buying his products (I, for example, bought NomadList a long time ago and met many people from it due to their Slack channels). And see my other comment about "garbage" code, it does not matter if they're making money, Levels is by his own proclamation not a software engineer, he uses code as a tool.
jf22 · 5h ago
How are you defining garbage?
satvikpendem · 4h ago
Probably because Levels says he codes each product in a single PHP file. But then again, there's a reason he's successful and the parent is not (at least to that same level, pun intended). Technologists think code is an end unto itself while true entrepreneurs that it's just a means to an end, and that the end itself is money (otherwise, why are you running a business? If you don't make money, it's simply a hobby).
alchemyzach · 4h ago
"You failed because you had the wrong dream." - Diego Delgado
deadbabe · 5h ago
Looking over his list of products, it is clear the author is the quintessential late stage capitalist.
alchemyzach · 4h ago
"I cranked out 37 unoriginal, shitty products that have countless existing competitors and zero moat... and none of them made me rich :( "
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.
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
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.
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.
Oh, you mean that thing called the internet?
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...
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.
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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).
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.
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.
https://replyguy.com/
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.
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.
https://x.com/levelsio
https://x.com/levelsio/status/1457315274466594817
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).
Instead, talk to a customer. Build something that solves just one person's problem really well. Grow from there.
„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.
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.
His process resulted in some of the most transformative products humanity has ever known.
In a way, that's the same problem as getting a job, which seems to be harsh for recent college graduates.
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.