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They've also featured Nathan Barry, who is neither indie nor a hacker. He's a popular blogger/author who used his considerable profits from that career to hire
by xiaoma 9y ago
They've also featured Nathan Barry, who is neither indie nor a hacker. He's a popular blogger/author who used his considerable profits from that career to hire a team to build ConvertKit for him.
I'm not actually sure what Indie Hacker's idea of an idie hacker is.
- bdavisx 9y agoMeh, if their advice is useful to an 'indie hacker', then why not have it?
- xiaoma 9y agoBecause it dilutes the focus of the site! There are all kinds of people who give "useful advice" that could, in theory, help an indie hacker, but are actually aimed at a general audience. In the extreme case, consider diet and beauty tips, relationship advice or stock investing strategies. Yes, those things are useful to many if not most indie hackers but they're also easily found on more general sites and can easily crowd out more focused content.
- csallen 9y agoI agree with your general point, but both Jeff Atwood and Nathan Barry are far from crossing any reasonably-drawn line.
- xiaoma 9y agoJust my own personal feedback here: I've really enjoyed the site, but the Nathan Barry interview decreased my interest in the site a bit. It's because, for me personally, the thing that makes IH special is the stories of people who didn't have degrees from elite schools, family wealth or VC funding and still successfully built something sufficient to cover their living expenses or even start hiring employees. Stories about people who do a lot with a little are a blueprint that can be applied by people of just about any background. Stories of parlaying medium-sized fortunes into large ones are most useful to people who already have medium-sized fortunes. To be clear, I don't dislike interviews with founders of large companies. I sometimes watch them on youtube and have read books about many of the largest tech companies. It's just more useful for me to learn about how people went from 0 to 60 rather than from 60 to 200. IH is still my favorite place on the internet for that, which is why I care about how well it serves that role. You'd have to dilute it quite a bit before it fell behind the next best alternative, though.
- csallen 9y agoThanks for the feedback. What I might end up doing in the long-term (still in the brainstorming phases) is increase the number of interviews across the board. That means more big company interviews and more small company interviews. Then At the same time, I'll work on making it a bit easier to focus on exactly the stories you care about.