7 ms·

2023: Focusing on a single product pays off

232 points by rozenmd 3y ago

baz00 3y ago
I've run a few businesses over the years and the return of investment of self sufficiency is barely worth it in the long run. It's very difficult to replicate the benefits of working for an SME (forget big tech) which it comes to security. You never have to worry about MRR because it's static and only increases. Also some advice on hyper-optimising for cheap hardware. Don't. Buy something with a warranty from a respectable company. Or buy two of everything else. Downtime will cost you customers. I say that having spent most of those years running off cranky ex corporate thinkpads. They will let you down and you will need an exit plan. At this point I'd rather just buy an off the shelf MacBook config I can walk into the local Apple store and just buy another one if I break it or lose it. No waiting 4-5 days for another ebay thinkpad to turn up and hope it works ok. I run off a base model 14" M1 MacBook Pro now.
- WJW 3y ago
  His business seems to run on AWS Lambda, which is about as far away from running on cheap (unreliable) hardware as possible? The laptop he mentions is just for working.
  - baz00 3y ago
    That's the cheap hardware I'm talking about. What is in your hands is the most important thing of all because without it you can't serve your customers or increase ROI.
    - jokethrowaway 3y ago
      I can walk into a shop and have a device I can be productive in 1-2 hours. I don't think it's a huge deal, just keep your secrets backed up in multiple ways you can retrieve
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      > That's the cheap hardware I'm talking about. What is in your hands is the most important thing of all because without it you can't serve your customers or increase ROI. Yeah, but ... what is in my hands can be replaced in a matter of hours: just go out and get a new laptop at the nearest place! It's even easier than that, because I primarily use Linux, there are times, in 2023, that I used a Core2 Duo with 2GB of RAM for days at a time on a particular project. That's about 10m to pull the old laptop out of the cupboard, due `git pull`, and carry on working.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    I think the parent is also speaking about working, not servers. The downtime he speaks of is developer downtime. He isn't implying he served from used Thinkpads before, or that he serves off of MacBooks now.
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago
  >I've run a few businesses over the years and the return of investment of self sufficiency is barely worth it in the long run. Most people aren't looking at it from the perspective of making a killing. They just want to get away from having a boss. For whatever reason they don't fit the corporate mould. Running their own show represents freedom. http://reactionwheel.net/2019/01/schumpeter-on-strategy.html http://reactionwheel.net/2019/01/schumpeter-on-strategy.html
  - baz00 3y ago
    Whoever is paying you is your boss. There is no escape, only a change in the illusion. If you're a sole trader, it's your customers. If you're a corporate wage slave, it's your line manager. If you're a startup it's whoever gave you capital. Even if you're CxO it's the other board members and investors.
    - uh_uh 3y ago
      The difference is that some bosses are more easy to say no to than others.
      - WJW 3y ago
        The real ease of saying no to bosses of any kind comes from financial security, no matter its origin. There are certainly plenty of small business owners who are struggling enough that they can barely afford to so "no" to any customer/ Conversely, there are plenty of employees who manage to tell their line manager "no" just fine. Whether you can afford to do so does not depends on the type of boss but on the ease with which you can bear the repercussions of doing so.
        uh_uh 3y ago
        In a typical employment scenario, your line manager can cut off 100% of your revenue. In an ideal SaaS scenario, your customer can cut off a tiny percentage of your revenue.
- rozenmd 3y ago
  Cheers for the advice - not aiming for hyper-optimising for cheap hardware, it was just something I built out of personal interest.
- uxcolumbo 3y ago
  Thinkpads are not cheap hardware. If you’ve got a MacBook Pro budget you can buy 2 prev gen Thinkpads. Have the 2nd as a backup. I have a 7 year old Thinkpad as a backup and it’s great, more than good enough to last while main laptop is fixed or replaced. Was even able to upgrade RAM and storage vs everything is soldered on the mainboard like it’s on MacBooks. Or buy latest gen thinkpad with 3 year warranty and optional on-site repair. Really depends on what your needs are.
mryall 3y ago
> Focus is about saying “no”. Always loved this advice from Steve Jobs, but it can be hard to put into practice in a startup. From my own experience, I’ve found there is a strong temptation (and also external advice) to try many different things in trying to get traction.
- rimeice 3y ago
  Love warren buffett’s quote on this topic. "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything." But totally agree it’s v difficult to decide what to say no to especially if you’re still honing PMF at a startup.
  - ramraj07 3y ago
    This is kinda misleading though. If you say no to everything then you literally won’t do anything. That can’t make you money unless you’re a trust fund kid. So obviously you have to say yes to some thing (s). The true essence of the message is that you have to say no to most things but still say yes to that one thing. Good luck with that!
    - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
      There is a big difference between when you are starting out and once you are established. If you have any kind of success then there will be an endless queue of people knocking on your door with "opportunities". You soon learn that most of them are worthless and the sensible thing is to default to rejecting them.
    - ojosilva 3y ago
      Well the quote says "...to almost everything" not "everything, period". From my experience meeting highly successful people, or whatever that means, meant deducing most of your interactions should have a straight no from you right away after listening attently, many times no eye contact is made (to make it more objectively perhaps). Then that "no" can be a blunt, almost out of place surprising no at the start "I don't like/see it", "not interested", "can't do that" etc. Which should quickly lead the conversation into solving your objections. Think of it as a figure of speech or a Socratic rhetoric. Once your petty or founded objections are resolved your "real no" may materialize as non-rhetoric. Remember, if you are the one saying yes or no it means you have some, if not all, leverage in that interaction. Like I said, I've seen this from extremely rich, old money, people with whom I've interacted, so it's anecdotal and take it with a punch of salt. It's easier said than done anyway.
quickthrower2 3y ago
I kind of think it is worth smashing out a few quick ideas to “get it out your system”, and the process of being in motion makes you spot more opportunities. Thus you may be “selling shovels” - your customers are software devs etc. Since the problems you face building are the problems you aim to solve. This is something you can’t get at your day job unless it is a true startup, est. 2023 because they are probably doing things the old way and a very peculiar way to boot :-). The work problem is usually solved by convincing the team to do something less dumb :-) rather than another SaaS sub.
thewizardofaus 3y ago
As much as I enjoy linux.. it's just a real pain to use daily for work. Hackintosh a T480 and it's the best of both worlds.
- jokethrowaway 3y ago
  KDE is mature enough to be useable and has tons of extra features I miss when I'm on Mac. I try to setup a system with i3 or sway every once and then but then I always end up back on KDE eventually. I do miss good window tiling though!
- MaKey 3y ago
  Can you elaborate? I've been using Linux for work for 4 years and I'm an Azure consultant.
- discordance 3y ago
  I've played with a bunch of hackintosh setups and these days just stick with M1 Macbook Airs. They are incredibly capable and silent machines.
- OJFord 3y ago
  You found it a pain maybe, there are plenty of us that find it less of a pain than macOS (or, [shudders], Windows). I hear about plenty of grief using macOS from people who do use it and like it (and simultaneously love to talk about what a pain Linux supposedly is).
  - kbrannigan 3y ago
    What is so shuddery about windows? I run windows + WSL as my main for years, and it's just as stable as my mac.
    - OJFord 3y ago
      I was thinking of 'pure' Windows (including cygwin, mingw, gitpython etc. things I vaguely recall) - though I have struggled with and given up installing and using WSL in the past after I thought perhaps it would be fine with that. Basically my main annoyances with macOS are window management & the way settings/preferences work and are stored. Windows is just worse in that sense to me I suppose.
konschubert 3y ago
I’ve had multiple side projects over the years, and every time I got a little bit further with them towards a commercial success. My latest project is the one I’ve been working on the longest. It’s been almost 4 years now I think, and within the past year, I’ve started getting traction commercially. (But the first paying customer was after two years or so.) I guess what I’m saying is that it’s okay to abandon ideas when you feel like they don’t work. Your gut feeling may be right. You learn something from it, you move on and eventually you hopefully find something that sticks. It’s almost like love.
- konschubert 3y ago
  Also, if you want to avoid wasting your time, you have to do everything to find paying customers as fast as possible. It’s embarrassing to go out with a product that you know isn’t perfect, but if you are meeting a need in the market, people are willing to pay even for an imperfect product. And it’s much easier to improve a product that has a market, then to find a market for a perfect product that has none.
codeptualize 3y ago
The build many “startups” quickly hype gives me strong get rich quick vibes. It works for the influencers because their audience is big enough, but for everyone else it’s very unlikely to work and they will just pay for the courses and boilerplates the influencers are shilling. Most things that create significant sustained value will take a lot of time. It’s sad to read the blog posts of people spending so much time building crappy products no one will ever use, and still trying to sell you on their latest idea. It’s sad that this is what indie hacking has become.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
  Tell me about it. I've been plucking away at an online business since 2004. It makes just barely enough money that I'm not quite willing to shut it down but not enough to get excited about or quit my regular job. Hate it.
  - MaKey 3y ago
    What about selling it on Acquire?
    - collaborative 3y ago
      Would you sell thousands of your man hours for 10,000 dollars?
      - jddj 3y ago
        If the result of those thousands of hours is worth <= 10000 by some valuation method which makes sense to me. More nuanced answer: I have a project that I've been plugging away at for years now. It may never pay for itself if I value my time at the same rate that I charge it out to others, but in that time it's improved the quality and speed of my other outputs significantly. In that regard it's probably already paid for itself, but I wouldn't sell it because it continues to be valuable to me both in that regard and as a creative outlet. If it were a throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks saas I'd have no problem selling it for a reasonable valuation of future earnings.
jokethrowaway 3y ago
I think both ways work. Focusing on a single product failed for me, focusing on many small bets worked. Many small business ideas which can be built quickly are really hard to scale beyond a certain point so having many is the only way to build reasonable income. These small bets also need to require low effort to build and support (eg. think b2c with advertising income or a product with little support costs). Of course if you can scale up a single business, good for you, you can focus all your energies there and provide a great service.
- ao98 3y ago
  I agree both ways work! I'm curious what about the many small bets worked in your case. It would be great to have a framework for "when to focus" and "when to diversify".
brcmthrowaway 3y ago
Thought this was the dude making the remote control hardware.. very similar
_the_inflator 3y ago
Congratulations and good luck for 2024! > Turns out they got fed up with their existing service, remembered my pitch, and checked out what I built since. Marketing and selling pay off. The sad part is, you never know when.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gcgbcfy 3y ago
[flagged]
zubairq 3y ago
I keep hacking away on Yazz for over 10 years now.... even if there is zero payoff I keep hacking... and that is what hackers do... we are not doing for the money... https://github.com/yazz/yazz https://github.com/yazz/yazz
- purplerabbit 3y ago
  If the purpose of life is any broader than “construct a beautiful fantasy world” then such an approach is a mistake
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- wowmaxdavid 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - RobRivera 3y ago
    I took a look at your resume; I'm going to quote Robin Williams' character from Good Will Hunting 'you're just a kid'
- hnisoss 3y ago
  Impressive project!
  - zubairq 3y ago
    Thanks..
MyFirstSass 3y ago
Ironic but where do people discuss niches/undersaturated markets/trends/rushes these days? I've always felt it was a part of the HN spirit with lots of threads, but it's completely died down, maybe because of the economy? I'm well aware it's luck and lottery, but it's a hobby for many of us anyway, finding a market for our tinkering. Even Indiehackers seems saturated with a lot of the spam and very little profitable. Like this gibberish wix template making 100k a month on the frontpage https://www.indiehackers.com/product/gibble-ai https://www.indiehackers.com/product/gibble-ai. Is the discussion IRL only now, or are we just in a downturn?
- LikeAnElephant 3y ago
  IMO many viable niches are not being discussed online at all. I’ve recently stumbled on an exciting niche that’s showing a lot of traction. The customers know very well how to use technology but the notion of joining forums / discussing their frustrations anywhere online just doesn’t seem to be something they consider doing. It’s all word of mouth. My “luck” completely shifted when I stopped trying to find these users online and instead physically walked into a shop and started asking for opinions. All that to say: I’m coming to feel that niches can more easily be found offline, even for SaaS type businesses. Just walk up and ask a business owner what they find annoying!
  - MyFirstSass 3y ago
    Thanks, this is kind of on the path i'm also on. A lot of entrepreneurial types are very much running around in the same circles jumping on the same trends and seeing life from the same perspective. I remember being part of an incubator where there were 4 coffee distribution companies at the same time, pretty funny. Many others were doing online services for other tech people like some ouroboros. At the same time designers and hacker types are often a bit introverted and isolate themselves with their work. This creates a very deep disconnect between "the vast majority of people" that aren't very vocal online about problems, even more so the huge elderly demographic, but even zoomers are not tech savvy these days. So there should really be lots of opportunities out there if you don't focus on the tiny hot niches or techy spheres that so many people here target paradoxically. Ie. combining "techy, nerdy or design skills" while forcing yourself out there is honestly a potential superpower - the other way around is not feasible for most, ie. the sales type learning tech that takes years and years to learn. Off course you can also always team up.
MattRix 3y ago
FYI your OnlineOrNot site seems to have some typos which are probably scaring away some customers. > Monitoring thats simple, effective, and lets you sleep a bit better at night. > Check as often as every 30 seconds, and catch the issues take your website down for less than a minute.
- rozenmd 3y ago
  Good catch, thanks
tamarlikesdata 3y ago
Just read that human memory isn't as reliable as a git commit, and it's all about 'read-and-update' rather than 'write-once'. Makes me think twice about how I 'commit' things to memory and rely on 'aha moments' for debugging code. Maybe stepping away from the screen is the best git push for the brain!
bluedino 3y ago
Focusing on more than one thing is easily the best way to get nothing done. Certification: Cisco, Red Hat, AWS, Azure. Pick one and finish it. Then do more. Having basic certifications in all of them sounds like a good idea, but employers don't seem to care. Keep going with whichever one you pick. Programming languages: don't spend a month on every language you can find, or every framework you can find. It's great to know more than just one language or framework but it's more important to actually make interesting shit in whichever one you pick.
- fullstackchris 3y ago
  I'm gonna be that guy and say cerfications are not very helpful if you are building your own SaaS. This is coming from me, a guy who has a few profitable SaaS and has never done a single certification course. Learning by doing, "just in time" learning, and looking up stuff you need in docs / youtube videos when you get stuck seems to work fine. However, I can definitely agree with the comments on tools / frameworks though. Don't focus on the "newest thing", just work with what you know you are fastest with.
  - bluedino 3y ago
    I just meant in general personal development - you definitely don't need any certifications to start a SaaS
swingingFlyFish 3y ago
It's important to learn to pivot as well. I've had a website that only really started getting any traction once I built a facebook group around it. Being unable to monetize on facebook left a bad taste in my mouth, with a little bit of anger as well. Why shouldn't I be able to profit off a near 1M member group I spent years building? So I've pivoted again. I've watched what works within the group, what the members want, and my current focus is implementing a completely new platform OFF facebook that allows me to provide the same features but without Facebook's limitations. Focus on a single product or feature yes, to start, but don't give up too early on your dreams.
XCSme 3y ago
I worked 11 years on https://www.uxwizz.com https://www.uxwizz.com, I still struggle earning enough from it to sustain myself.

232 points by rozenmd 3y ago

I've run a few businesses over the years and the return of investment of self sufficiency is barely worth it in the long run. It's very difficult to replicate the benefits of working for an SME (forget big tech) which it comes to security. You never have to worry about MRR because it's static and only increases. Also some advice on hyper-optimising for cheap hardware. Don't. Buy something with a warranty from a respectable company. Or buy two of everything else. Downtime will cost you customers. I say that having spent most of those years running off cranky ex corporate thinkpads. They will let you down and you will need an exit plan. At this point I'd rather just buy an off the shelf MacBook config I can walk into the local Apple store and just buy another one if I break it or lose it. No waiting 4-5 days for another ebay thinkpad to turn up and hope it works ok. I run off a base model 14" M1 MacBook Pro now.

WJW 3y ago
His business seems to run on AWS Lambda, which is about as far away from running on cheap (unreliable) hardware as possible? The laptop he mentions is just for working.
- baz00 3y ago
  That's the cheap hardware I'm talking about. What is in your hands is the most important thing of all because without it you can't serve your customers or increase ROI.
  - jokethrowaway 3y ago
    I can walk into a shop and have a device I can be productive in 1-2 hours. I don't think it's a huge deal, just keep your secrets backed up in multiple ways you can retrieve
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > That's the cheap hardware I'm talking about. What is in your hands is the most important thing of all because without it you can't serve your customers or increase ROI. Yeah, but ... what is in my hands can be replaced in a matter of hours: just go out and get a new laptop at the nearest place! It's even easier than that, because I primarily use Linux, there are times, in 2023, that I used a Core2 Duo with 2GB of RAM for days at a time on a particular project. That's about 10m to pull the old laptop out of the cupboard, due `git pull`, and carry on working.
- coldtea 3y ago
  I think the parent is also speaking about working, not servers. The downtime he speaks of is developer downtime. He isn't implying he served from used Thinkpads before, or that he serves off of MacBooks now.
tonyedgecombe 3y ago
>I've run a few businesses over the years and the return of investment of self sufficiency is barely worth it in the long run. Most people aren't looking at it from the perspective of making a killing. They just want to get away from having a boss. For whatever reason they don't fit the corporate mould. Running their own show represents freedom. http://reactionwheel.net/2019/01/schumpeter-on-strategy.html http://reactionwheel.net/2019/01/schumpeter-on-strategy.html
- baz00 3y ago
  Whoever is paying you is your boss. There is no escape, only a change in the illusion. If you're a sole trader, it's your customers. If you're a corporate wage slave, it's your line manager. If you're a startup it's whoever gave you capital. Even if you're CxO it's the other board members and investors.
  - uh_uh 3y ago
    The difference is that some bosses are more easy to say no to than others.
    - WJW 3y ago
      The real ease of saying no to bosses of any kind comes from financial security, no matter its origin. There are certainly plenty of small business owners who are struggling enough that they can barely afford to so "no" to any customer/ Conversely, there are plenty of employees who manage to tell their line manager "no" just fine. Whether you can afford to do so does not depends on the type of boss but on the ease with which you can bear the repercussions of doing so.
      - uh_uh 3y ago
        In a typical employment scenario, your line manager can cut off 100% of your revenue. In an ideal SaaS scenario, your customer can cut off a tiny percentage of your revenue.
rozenmd 3y ago
Cheers for the advice - not aiming for hyper-optimising for cheap hardware, it was just something I built out of personal interest.
uxcolumbo 3y ago
Thinkpads are not cheap hardware. If you’ve got a MacBook Pro budget you can buy 2 prev gen Thinkpads. Have the 2nd as a backup. I have a 7 year old Thinkpad as a backup and it’s great, more than good enough to last while main laptop is fixed or replaced. Was even able to upgrade RAM and storage vs everything is soldered on the mainboard like it’s on MacBooks. Or buy latest gen thinkpad with 3 year warranty and optional on-site repair. Really depends on what your needs are.

mryall 3y ago

> Focus is about saying “no”. Always loved this advice from Steve Jobs, but it can be hard to put into practice in a startup. From my own experience, I’ve found there is a strong temptation (and also external advice) to try many different things in trying to get traction.

rimeice 3y ago
Love warren buffett’s quote on this topic. "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything." But totally agree it’s v difficult to decide what to say no to especially if you’re still honing PMF at a startup.
- ramraj07 3y ago
  This is kinda misleading though. If you say no to everything then you literally won’t do anything. That can’t make you money unless you’re a trust fund kid. So obviously you have to say yes to some thing (s). The true essence of the message is that you have to say no to most things but still say yes to that one thing. Good luck with that!
  - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
    There is a big difference between when you are starting out and once you are established. If you have any kind of success then there will be an endless queue of people knocking on your door with "opportunities". You soon learn that most of them are worthless and the sensible thing is to default to rejecting them.
  - ojosilva 3y ago
    Well the quote says "...to almost everything" not "everything, period". From my experience meeting highly successful people, or whatever that means, meant deducing most of your interactions should have a straight no from you right away after listening attently, many times no eye contact is made (to make it more objectively perhaps). Then that "no" can be a blunt, almost out of place surprising no at the start "I don't like/see it", "not interested", "can't do that" etc. Which should quickly lead the conversation into solving your objections. Think of it as a figure of speech or a Socratic rhetoric. Once your petty or founded objections are resolved your "real no" may materialize as non-rhetoric. Remember, if you are the one saying yes or no it means you have some, if not all, leverage in that interaction. Like I said, I've seen this from extremely rich, old money, people with whom I've interacted, so it's anecdotal and take it with a punch of salt. It's easier said than done anyway.

quickthrower2 3y ago

I kind of think it is worth smashing out a few quick ideas to “get it out your system”, and the process of being in motion makes you spot more opportunities. Thus you may be “selling shovels” - your customers are software devs etc. Since the problems you face building are the problems you aim to solve. This is something you can’t get at your day job unless it is a true startup, est. 2023 because they are probably doing things the old way and a very peculiar way to boot :-). The work problem is usually solved by convincing the team to do something less dumb :-) rather than another SaaS sub.

thewizardofaus 3y ago

As much as I enjoy linux.. it's just a real pain to use daily for work. Hackintosh a T480 and it's the best of both worlds.

jokethrowaway 3y ago
KDE is mature enough to be useable and has tons of extra features I miss when I'm on Mac. I try to setup a system with i3 or sway every once and then but then I always end up back on KDE eventually. I do miss good window tiling though!
MaKey 3y ago
Can you elaborate? I've been using Linux for work for 4 years and I'm an Azure consultant.
discordance 3y ago
I've played with a bunch of hackintosh setups and these days just stick with M1 Macbook Airs. They are incredibly capable and silent machines.
OJFord 3y ago
You found it a pain maybe, there are plenty of us that find it less of a pain than macOS (or, [shudders], Windows). I hear about plenty of grief using macOS from people who do use it and like it (and simultaneously love to talk about what a pain Linux supposedly is).
- kbrannigan 3y ago
  What is so shuddery about windows? I run windows + WSL as my main for years, and it's just as stable as my mac.
  - OJFord 3y ago
    I was thinking of 'pure' Windows (including cygwin, mingw, gitpython etc. things I vaguely recall) - though I have struggled with and given up installing and using WSL in the past after I thought perhaps it would be fine with that. Basically my main annoyances with macOS are window management & the way settings/preferences work and are stored. Windows is just worse in that sense to me I suppose.

konschubert 3y ago

I’ve had multiple side projects over the years, and every time I got a little bit further with them towards a commercial success. My latest project is the one I’ve been working on the longest. It’s been almost 4 years now I think, and within the past year, I’ve started getting traction commercially. (But the first paying customer was after two years or so.) I guess what I’m saying is that it’s okay to abandon ideas when you feel like they don’t work. Your gut feeling may be right. You learn something from it, you move on and eventually you hopefully find something that sticks. It’s almost like love.

konschubert 3y ago
Also, if you want to avoid wasting your time, you have to do everything to find paying customers as fast as possible. It’s embarrassing to go out with a product that you know isn’t perfect, but if you are meeting a need in the market, people are willing to pay even for an imperfect product. And it’s much easier to improve a product that has a market, then to find a market for a perfect product that has none.

codeptualize 3y ago

The build many “startups” quickly hype gives me strong get rich quick vibes. It works for the influencers because their audience is big enough, but for everyone else it’s very unlikely to work and they will just pay for the courses and boilerplates the influencers are shilling. Most things that create significant sustained value will take a lot of time. It’s sad to read the blog posts of people spending so much time building crappy products no one will ever use, and still trying to sell you on their latest idea. It’s sad that this is what indie hacking has become.

8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
Tell me about it. I've been plucking away at an online business since 2004. It makes just barely enough money that I'm not quite willing to shut it down but not enough to get excited about or quit my regular job. Hate it.
- MaKey 3y ago
  What about selling it on Acquire?
  - collaborative 3y ago
    Would you sell thousands of your man hours for 10,000 dollars?
    - jddj 3y ago
      If the result of those thousands of hours is worth <= 10000 by some valuation method which makes sense to me. More nuanced answer: I have a project that I've been plugging away at for years now. It may never pay for itself if I value my time at the same rate that I charge it out to others, but in that time it's improved the quality and speed of my other outputs significantly. In that regard it's probably already paid for itself, but I wouldn't sell it because it continues to be valuable to me both in that regard and as a creative outlet. If it were a throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks saas I'd have no problem selling it for a reasonable valuation of future earnings.

jokethrowaway 3y ago

I think both ways work. Focusing on a single product failed for me, focusing on many small bets worked. Many small business ideas which can be built quickly are really hard to scale beyond a certain point so having many is the only way to build reasonable income. These small bets also need to require low effort to build and support (eg. think b2c with advertising income or a product with little support costs). Of course if you can scale up a single business, good for you, you can focus all your energies there and provide a great service.

ao98 3y ago
I agree both ways work! I'm curious what about the many small bets worked in your case. It would be great to have a framework for "when to focus" and "when to diversify".

brcmthrowaway 3y ago

Thought this was the dude making the remote control hardware.. very similar

_the_inflator 3y ago

Congratulations and good luck for 2024! > Turns out they got fed up with their existing service, remembered my pitch, and checked out what I built since. Marketing and selling pay off. The sad part is, you never know when.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gcgbcfy 3y ago

[flagged]

zubairq 3y ago

I keep hacking away on Yazz for over 10 years now.... even if there is zero payoff I keep hacking... and that is what hackers do... we are not doing for the money... https://github.com/yazz/yazz https://github.com/yazz/yazz

purplerabbit 3y ago
If the purpose of life is any broader than “construct a beautiful fantasy world” then such an approach is a mistake
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
wowmaxdavid 3y ago
[flagged]
- RobRivera 3y ago
  I took a look at your resume; I'm going to quote Robin Williams' character from Good Will Hunting 'you're just a kid'
hnisoss 3y ago
Impressive project!
- zubairq 3y ago
  Thanks..

MyFirstSass 3y ago

Ironic but where do people discuss niches/undersaturated markets/trends/rushes these days? I've always felt it was a part of the HN spirit with lots of threads, but it's completely died down, maybe because of the economy? I'm well aware it's luck and lottery, but it's a hobby for many of us anyway, finding a market for our tinkering. Even Indiehackers seems saturated with a lot of the spam and very little profitable. Like this gibberish wix template making 100k a month on the frontpage https://www.indiehackers.com/product/gibble-ai https://www.indiehackers.com/product/gibble-ai. Is the discussion IRL only now, or are we just in a downturn?

LikeAnElephant 3y ago
IMO many viable niches are not being discussed online at all. I’ve recently stumbled on an exciting niche that’s showing a lot of traction. The customers know very well how to use technology but the notion of joining forums / discussing their frustrations anywhere online just doesn’t seem to be something they consider doing. It’s all word of mouth. My “luck” completely shifted when I stopped trying to find these users online and instead physically walked into a shop and started asking for opinions. All that to say: I’m coming to feel that niches can more easily be found offline, even for SaaS type businesses. Just walk up and ask a business owner what they find annoying!
- MyFirstSass 3y ago
  Thanks, this is kind of on the path i'm also on. A lot of entrepreneurial types are very much running around in the same circles jumping on the same trends and seeing life from the same perspective. I remember being part of an incubator where there were 4 coffee distribution companies at the same time, pretty funny. Many others were doing online services for other tech people like some ouroboros. At the same time designers and hacker types are often a bit introverted and isolate themselves with their work. This creates a very deep disconnect between "the vast majority of people" that aren't very vocal online about problems, even more so the huge elderly demographic, but even zoomers are not tech savvy these days. So there should really be lots of opportunities out there if you don't focus on the tiny hot niches or techy spheres that so many people here target paradoxically. Ie. combining "techy, nerdy or design skills" while forcing yourself out there is honestly a potential superpower - the other way around is not feasible for most, ie. the sales type learning tech that takes years and years to learn. Off course you can also always team up.

MattRix 3y ago

FYI your OnlineOrNot site seems to have some typos which are probably scaring away some customers. > Monitoring thats simple, effective, and lets you sleep a bit better at night. > Check as often as every 30 seconds, and catch the issues take your website down for less than a minute.

rozenmd 3y ago
Good catch, thanks

tamarlikesdata 3y ago

Just read that human memory isn't as reliable as a git commit, and it's all about 'read-and-update' rather than 'write-once'. Makes me think twice about how I 'commit' things to memory and rely on 'aha moments' for debugging code. Maybe stepping away from the screen is the best git push for the brain!

bluedino 3y ago

Focusing on more than one thing is easily the best way to get nothing done. Certification: Cisco, Red Hat, AWS, Azure. Pick one and finish it. Then do more. Having basic certifications in all of them sounds like a good idea, but employers don't seem to care. Keep going with whichever one you pick. Programming languages: don't spend a month on every language you can find, or every framework you can find. It's great to know more than just one language or framework but it's more important to actually make interesting shit in whichever one you pick.

fullstackchris 3y ago
I'm gonna be that guy and say cerfications are not very helpful if you are building your own SaaS. This is coming from me, a guy who has a few profitable SaaS and has never done a single certification course. Learning by doing, "just in time" learning, and looking up stuff you need in docs / youtube videos when you get stuck seems to work fine. However, I can definitely agree with the comments on tools / frameworks though. Don't focus on the "newest thing", just work with what you know you are fastest with.
- bluedino 3y ago
  I just meant in general personal development - you definitely don't need any certifications to start a SaaS

swingingFlyFish 3y ago

It's important to learn to pivot as well. I've had a website that only really started getting any traction once I built a facebook group around it. Being unable to monetize on facebook left a bad taste in my mouth, with a little bit of anger as well. Why shouldn't I be able to profit off a near 1M member group I spent years building? So I've pivoted again. I've watched what works within the group, what the members want, and my current focus is implementing a completely new platform OFF facebook that allows me to provide the same features but without Facebook's limitations. Focus on a single product or feature yes, to start, but don't give up too early on your dreams.

XCSme 3y ago

I worked 11 years on https://www.uxwizz.com https://www.uxwizz.com, I still struggle earning enough from it to sustain myself.