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What I find interesting with Indie Hackers is that it covers a wide range a personal/business situations. It goes from real lifestyle business, to beer-money-ma

What I find interesting with Indie Hackers is that it covers a wide range a personal/business situations. It goes from real lifestyle business, to beer-money-making side-projects. I feel that there is a world of difference between a side-project that is free, to one where you ask customers for their credit cards. Of all professional experiences, I have never learnt as much as I did taking a side-project idea from idea to MVP, then to beta users, then to paying customers, scaling server issues, and marketing strategies. It's not so much about the money, than the fact that you learn so much on so many dimensions. Sincere thanks + shameless plug, the interview about Smooz was fun, a good self-reflection exercise, and a good source of traffic too (https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/smooz https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/smooz)

tixocloud 9y ago
Thanks for sharing your story as it resonates deeply with me, especially the family life part of things. The idea is also pretty good as well. I'm also curious about your direct sales efforts and what happened there that made it not so successful? I have my assumptions but I'd love to hear your side of things.
- donmatito 9y ago
  Well, direct sales is a bit difficult because my core target is "Agencies that use Slack, of which clients use Slack". So I need to convince a layer of users (let say 10% conversion) and they have to convince another layer (10% again) => 1% conversion rate. What worked was publishing some articles on Medium and optimizing a bit for SEO, so that the handful of people who actually has the problem, can find me. The Slack app Directory helped quite a bit at first, but I should take better advantage of it now that they have add features. But really, the main growth factor is : almost no churn. People are super satisfied. So even if I don't spend much time finding customers, the very low growth keeps adding up...
  - tixocloud 9y ago
    Yeah, that's an interesting core target and quite pleasantly surprised that agencies themselves are using Slack. I would've guessed that the clients themselves would be the ones who would use Slack and then maybe you can work with agencies on setting Slack up for them like a concierge service of some sort.
    - donmatito 9y ago
      Not a bad idea! thanks. However it starts to be a bit too involved for a side project :-D
      - tixocloud 9y ago
        You're welcome. Yes, it's going to take more of your time unfortunately :( Hopefully, it'll grow to be self-sustaining? :P
        donmatito 9y ago
        It IS self sustaining, thanks to very low churn and very low but steady growth thanks to some content marketing and presence in directories. I'm sure spending more time on sales would increase the revenue, but not sure if that'd be enough to offset the cost of time spent
mrisoli 9y ago
Exactly! What I love about IH is that it doesn't define success as 6+ figures revenue streams, many of them are in early stages or making <$1k/month and are people happy with what they are building even if it is not their main job yet. Which is good to divert from the nonsensical thinking that only unicorn status/IPOs/acquisition equate to success often spoken in the startup world.
- donmatito 9y ago
  Me too :-) Lots of people around me were dismissive of the early days of Smooz, that it would never be a "real business". My big goal is 1000€ / months. Not a billion-dollar company : just a life step I'd be really proud of

tixocloud 9y ago

Thanks for sharing your story as it resonates deeply with me, especially the family life part of things. The idea is also pretty good as well. I'm also curious about your direct sales efforts and what happened there that made it not so successful? I have my assumptions but I'd love to hear your side of things.

donmatito 9y ago
Well, direct sales is a bit difficult because my core target is "Agencies that use Slack, of which clients use Slack". So I need to convince a layer of users (let say 10% conversion) and they have to convince another layer (10% again) => 1% conversion rate. What worked was publishing some articles on Medium and optimizing a bit for SEO, so that the handful of people who actually has the problem, can find me. The Slack app Directory helped quite a bit at first, but I should take better advantage of it now that they have add features. But really, the main growth factor is : almost no churn. People are super satisfied. So even if I don't spend much time finding customers, the very low growth keeps adding up...
- tixocloud 9y ago
  Yeah, that's an interesting core target and quite pleasantly surprised that agencies themselves are using Slack. I would've guessed that the clients themselves would be the ones who would use Slack and then maybe you can work with agencies on setting Slack up for them like a concierge service of some sort.
  - donmatito 9y ago
    Not a bad idea! thanks. However it starts to be a bit too involved for a side project :-D
    - tixocloud 9y ago
      You're welcome. Yes, it's going to take more of your time unfortunately :( Hopefully, it'll grow to be self-sustaining? :P
      - donmatito 9y ago
        It IS self sustaining, thanks to very low churn and very low but steady growth thanks to some content marketing and presence in directories. I'm sure spending more time on sales would increase the revenue, but not sure if that'd be enough to offset the cost of time spent

mrisoli 9y ago

Exactly! What I love about IH is that it doesn't define success as 6+ figures revenue streams, many of them are in early stages or making <$1k/month and are people happy with what they are building even if it is not their main job yet. Which is good to divert from the nonsensical thinking that only unicorn status/IPOs/acquisition equate to success often spoken in the startup world.

donmatito 9y ago
Me too :-) Lots of people around me were dismissive of the early days of Smooz, that it would never be a "real business". My big goal is 1000€ / months. Not a billion-dollar company : just a life step I'd be really proud of