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I mean, I could have qualified it with "the stuff I hope people pay me for," but eh. And you're kinda wrong; I've been paid for bc, kind of. I've been paid by

I mean, I could have qualified it with "the stuff I hope people pay me for," but eh. And you're kinda wrong; I've been paid for bc, kind of. I've been paid by people adopting it, an obscure alternative to an obscure command-line tool that nobody uses. And yet, my bc is in FreeBSD and Mac OSX. Perhaps the reason I'm confident is because this little thing of mine managed to replace entrenched competitors in a few places. Why can't I do it again?

mtlynch 3y ago
>Perhaps the reason I'm confident is because this little thing of mine managed to replace entrenched competitors in a few places. Why can't I do it again? It's much harder to get people to pay you for a product than it is to convince them to use your product for free. As a fellow founder, I wish you success, but I think you're assuming success based on things that don't really correlate with success from my experience running indie businesses for the last five years. I've fallen into the exact same trap myself, so maybe I can save you some time.[0, 1] Before you have money safely in your bank account from real, paying customers, all the indicators you see are highly noisy. Non-paying users can be a good sign, but they can also lead you astray. You could have 1,000 non-paying open-source users actively engaged with your product, and that does nothing for your business if none of them are willing to pay. You're better off finding 10 users willing to pay $40/month and letting their feedback guide your work. I recommend testing customer's willingness to pay ASAP. If nobody's willing to pay for what you're offering, it's a sign that your product hypothesis was wrong and you need to gather more feedback about what customers want and pivot. [0] https://mtlynch.io/shipping-too-late/ https://mtlynch.io/shipping-too-late/ [1] https://mtlynch.io/keep-growing-never-profit/ https://mtlynch.io/keep-growing-never-profit/
- gavinhoward 3y ago
  Fair enough.

mtlynch 3y ago

>Perhaps the reason I'm confident is because this little thing of mine managed to replace entrenched competitors in a few places. Why can't I do it again? It's much harder to get people to pay you for a product than it is to convince them to use your product for free. As a fellow founder, I wish you success, but I think you're assuming success based on things that don't really correlate with success from my experience running indie businesses for the last five years. I've fallen into the exact same trap myself, so maybe I can save you some time.[0, 1] Before you have money safely in your bank account from real, paying customers, all the indicators you see are highly noisy. Non-paying users can be a good sign, but they can also lead you astray. You could have 1,000 non-paying open-source users actively engaged with your product, and that does nothing for your business if none of them are willing to pay. You're better off finding 10 users willing to pay $40/month and letting their feedback guide your work. I recommend testing customer's willingness to pay ASAP. If nobody's willing to pay for what you're offering, it's a sign that your product hypothesis was wrong and you need to gather more feedback about what customers want and pivot. [0] https://mtlynch.io/shipping-too-late/ https://mtlynch.io/shipping-too-late/ [1] https://mtlynch.io/keep-growing-never-profit/ https://mtlynch.io/keep-growing-never-profit/

gavinhoward 3y ago
Fair enough.