DEV Community: ruudniew

From zero to product. How did you do it?

ruudniew — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 15:49:58 +0000

In theory, product ideas aren’t hard to get. But the practical process of creating something out of nothing is hard to imagine until you actually do it.

I decided to apply my theoretical Indie Hacker knowledge, by starting a SaaS product from scratch. And I created the video below of the process

How did you go from zero to product?

From nothing to idea

To go from nothing to an idea, I usually write every problem and idea I encounter in the wild down in my (physical!) notebook. It’s important to not leave out any ideas that are ridiculous or impossible to build. We can use our healthy dose of realism later.

Researching an idea

This is the part where I use Google and community websites (like Reddit) to find out more about potential target customers, to see which solutions are out there and how an Indie Hacker like me could improve on the existing solutions. So many ideas can go straight to the bin after a simple Google search - and that’s a good thing!

One thing to ask yourself with this information: what if my idea actually works? Would I enjoy serving this audience? Would I happily get out of bed to get to work on this idea for multiple years? Not everyone needs to be certain about this. Some people are really good at doing things they’re not excited about. But I know I need this excitement to keep going.

Competition helps you succeed

I still believe in that mantra. You can look at what works for the competition, and place yourself in the market. It’ll save you countless hours of experimentation and a ton of time. And unless you’re venture backed and you can buy yourself some time to figure it out, this is a huge advantage. And in this time and age, it’s probably an even bigger advantage than being a first-mover.

SEO

It might be early, but it’s a good idea to get an idea of the search engine competition for relevant keywords. If competition for keywords is high, then you know that you can’t rely on traffic coming from search engines for the initial months. With low competition, you might be able to use high quality content to rank well in your niche.

I rarely let go of an idea just because of high competition for keywords though. There almost always are keywords that you can use.

Sell before you build

I’ve worked on products before that after building didn’t get any sign ups. It’s absolutely soul-crushing and something I don’t want to experience again.

And there’s only one way to be sure that you’ll get sign ups after you build, and that’s by having customers sign up for your actual product, before it’s even built.

To convince people to start using Maeven, I designed the homepage in Figma. This forced me to think of benefits and features before I will actually build them. And those that sign up are actually interested in those benefits and features.

What’s next?

Next I’ll experiment, iterate and improve the homepage. I can drive traffic to the page and see what message resonates with my target audience. Driving traffic can cost some money, but it’s the only way to make data driven decisions. At the same time I try to talk to (potential) users, so I’m not experimenting at random. Whatever happens, I’ll let you all know here and in a future video!

How did you go from zero to product? What has worked well for you?

Unique ideas vs existing ideas: competition helps you succeed!

ruudniew — Tue, 17 May 2022 18:57:51 +0000

Back when I started Indie Hacking, I used to look for unique (app) ideas that didn’t exist yet. Every now and then I would get this crazy app idea that I thought would be a guaranteed success. I would get overly excited, buy a domain name and start hacking away. But every single time, my excitement disappeared like snow in the sun, the moment I found out that even a single competitor was doing something similar.

I now think this was a mistake. A mistake I made way too many times. Obviously there are advantages to being the first in your field, but it’s not as great as it’s made out to be.

What about you? Would you rather work on a unique idea or an existing idea?

The story in under 60 seconds

Unique ideas are great

The upside of being the first to launch an idea is that you’ll become an authority in your field more easily. With the endless scalability that comes with modern technology, you can grow your company to millions in revenue before there’s even any competition.

So why is it a mistake to look for a unique idea to work on as an Indie Hacker?

You’re unlikely to find a truly unique idea. There’s nothing new under the sun, and there’s almost always someone that thought of the exact same thing as you did
If you manage to find a unique idea, it’s unlikely there’s a big market for it yet. You’ll have to educate your audience on why your idea should matter to them
Though it’s possible to go viral, it’s difficult to keep the public’s attention and to benefit from it long term. When was the last time you were active on Clubhouse?
Maintaining your first mover advantage is near-impossible in a fast moving tech market
Validating a unique idea takes a long time, and Indie Hackers don’t generally have a massive runway to work with

Existing ideas with competitors are easier to build

because the idea is already validated by your competition. You can basically skip a few steps that normally take a lot of time, money and effort. Existing products with proven markets open up a whole new world of opportunities for Indie Hackers:

Geographical opportunities
Bundling or unbundling
Moving upmarket or downmarket
Improving on existing products' features or pricing
Which opportunities did I miss? Let me know!

When working on an existing product idea you might work towards a smaller piece of the pie, but at least you know there is a pie to be had!

Originally published on Ruudniew.com

Idea or execution? What is more important?

ruudniew — Mon, 09 May 2022 12:46:19 +0000

“Ideas are worthless, execution is everything” is a quote I’ve heard multiple times over the last few years. And up until recently I used to agree completely. Anyone can have a great idea, but only those great at executing on these ideas will eventually make profitable companies out of them. It only makes sense, right?

That was until I read this Twitter thread on how founders with a supportive network and a great drive can run into “false positives”. This happens when a founders’ execution is so on point that they can make relatively okay businesses out of any idea. Even if it’s a bad one. In these cases business growth is severely limited, because there’s only so much you can do to compensate for a bad idea.

Let me know in the comments what you think is more important, a good idea or proper execution? How do you deal with the fact that you need luck to have a successful idea?

The whole story in 60 seconds

Since you all were so nice about my first YouTube short last week, I made a new short about this topic:

Execution is trainable

One reason to love the “execution is everything” part of the quote is that you can train your execution. You can train your execution by building your product and just by doing in general. Whether it’s design, programming or marketing, you’ll get better at these skills over time.

Good ideas need luck

Good ideas you can’t really train for. Sometimes an idea has the best team behind it, allows for a great business model and secures enough funding, and still it fails because of timing. Even if you assume there isn’t any luck involved in the other factors (there definitely is), you still need luck to get the timing right. That means you basically need the stars to align for your idea to work out well.

Solution: train your execution on small ideas

So given that execution is trainable and that you need the odds to be in your favor for a successful idea, it makes sense to train your execution by working on smaller ideas.

If it doesn’t take more than a few weeks to create an MVP and a landing page for your idea, you minimize the odds of spending a huge amount of time and effort on something that doesn’t work.

At the same time, if you try out many small ideas, you drastically increase the odds of one of these ideas working out well. Once you notice one of your ideas taking off, you can allocate more time and resources to grow it further. This is not just a risk-free way to maximize your odds of success, it’s also a great way to train your execution.

What’s next

I'm thinking of making a 10-15 min YouTube video where I work on a small idea like this from scratch. Let me know if you’d watch a video like that!

Originally published on Ruudniew.com

What is an indie hacker?

ruudniew — Mon, 02 May 2022 10:51:11 +0000

Since I started my journey as an Indie Hacker, my friends have been asking me: “what exactly is an indie hacker?”. Though I’ve referred to myself as an indie hacker for over a year now, the question was surprisingly hard to answer.

The definition by Courtland Allen is easy enough; an Indie Hacker is someone who aims to generate income independently. But does an independent plumber generally identify as an Indie Hacker? I somehow doubt it.

Here are 8 questions and answers to further explore what an indie hacker actually is. Let me know in the comments if I missed something!

[Bonus] can you explain in under a minute?

I tried! Here you go (please be kind, it’s my first YouTube video):

[1] What do indie hackers do?

They try to create a business online. This could mean anything from selling onions online to creating a SaaS, PaaS or even a community

[2] So do you have to be a software engineer, designer, marketer, digital creator or community manager to be considered an indie hacker then?

No and yes.

No, because despite the fact that these professions describe about 90%* of the indie hackers’ jobs, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be successful outside of these industries. Actually, applying indie hacking principles to different industries is probably a great idea.

At the same time, yes, because building and selling (digital) products will involve a little bit of all 5 disciplines, and after some time you’ll have experience in all of them.

*not an actual statistic, it just feels this way sometimes

[3] Wait, do indie hackers have jobs?

Yes, it’s entirely possible and even recommended to start making side projects next to your day job. Being limited in time means that you’ll have to get creative to validate your idea, before you quit the job that is actually sustaining your family

[4] Can indie hackers generate enough income to make a living?

They can! But the harsh truth is that building an online business from scratch is incredibly hard and besides talent and hard work, you need some luck to develop a profitable company. Only a fraction of the indie side projects make enough to become ramen profitable. But once you manage to build an online business that scales, it’s possible to make literal millions even as an indie hacker.

[5] I’ve heard of unicorn companies before. Is the ultimate indie business a VC-funded unicorn?

Unicorns are companies with a value of over 1 billion dollars. To reach valuations as high as these, founders can take venture capital money to rapidly grow their businesses. Often this is done in the form of seed funding and after that series A, B and C funding. This does come at a cost though. There will be constant pressure to keep growing the revenue, impact and internal team of the company. Sometimes it’s said that when you take outside money, the business valuation becomes your product. And when infinite growth is your goal, you might have to make decisions that hurt your customers.

At the other end of the spectrum you have bootstrapped companies. Business founders that choose to not take any outside money, have to generate revenue and profit to sustain themselves. The downside of bootstrapping is that you can’t pump as much money around as when you’re VC-funded, which can limit your growth. But the upside is that you keep your independence and there’s less pressure to grow indefinitely to increase company value. This is often seen as a more sustainable business model for customers.

It’s also possible to start out bootstrapped and then later take VC money to support your growth. One well-known example of this is Veed.io.

[6] Is the goal to become rich?

I believe that making money online is only a means to an end. Most founders I know are in this because they want to live a more free life. For one person a free life means to become financially independent, but for the other it means to have a calendar that is meeting-free. This is also reflected in the choices they make regarding funding and hiring. If you want to have a life devoid of zoom meetings, hiring a team probably isn’t something you should be doing.

Another goal indie hackers may have is to generate impact. In this case, generating income is not even the primary goal of these founders. Sometimes saving the world is more important than that.

[7] Do I need a cofounder?

The indie journey is hard and it can be lonely at times. Having a cofounder to talk to can make a huge difference, and it will improve your product. I’ve worked with amazing founders in the past, for example with Mingyi. He made it enjoyable to work on the product even in times that it wasn’t easy.

And hard times will always be there, because founding a company is difficult and relationships can suffer when money is on the line. So if you decide to team up with someone, do yourself a favour and make sure that it’s a 100% match between you and your cofounder(s).

Even if you decide to go solo, you don’t need to do it all alone. There are amazing communities out there to connect with like minded people. Like Weekend Club!

[8] Are there any other noteworthy differences between indie hackers and classical business founders?

What I personally like about indie hackers is the emphasis on starting small. The classical mistake is to build a product for years and only then to start selling to users. Most IH founders understand the urgency of getting early users and ship their products before it’s polished. At least in theory.

Another thing I like is that indie hackers understand the value of having a good (business) idea, but generally are very open to sharing them. Maybe it’s because there are a lot of software engineers for whom transparency is naturally more important because of the open source community. Or maybe it’s humility in knowing that no idea is truly unique and that your success rarely depends on (the absence of) copycats. In any case, I’m glad to be part of such an open and honest community like this!

Originally published on Ruudniew.com

3 lies I told myself that lead to the failure of Likewise.li

ruudniew — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 17:53:38 +0000

Have you ever watched Hotel Hell? It’s a TV series starring Gordon Ramsay, who is traveling around the USA, visiting hotels that are poorly managed and in desperate need of his help. I enjoy watching it now and then, especially while having dinner. Somehow watching hotel owners being told the truth by Ramsay is oddly entertaining and even soothing. One thing I never really understood is how deep in denial some owners are about the state of their hotel.

Recently I had another episode on, in the background, while having dinner. I was about to stuff my mouth with Dutch fries, when Gordon asks: “who is the most important person around this hotel?”. The staff collectively answers: “The owner! The owner is the most important person around here”. At that point Ramsay loses his temper in typical fashion: “NO! The fucking guests are the most important people around here!”.

Though it was directed at the owner and his staff, it felt like he was talking directly to me. Much like the hotel owner was in denial about the state of his hotel, I’ve been in denial about the state of Likewise, the note taking app I've been working on. Reason for not catching my mistakes earlier is that I repeatedly told myself these 3 lies:

1. I’m serving an audience with my product

I did have an audience in mind while building Likewise. The problem was that I didn’t start with solving a problem for my target audience, but that I started building my product first and only then looked for an audience to market it to. The usual questions like “what is your target group?” didn’t really make me understand that I was lying to myself, because I could answer them quite well.

It was only after reading the 100th tweet about this topic by Arvid Kahl that I started to question if I actually got the order correct. Then Gordon Ramsay yelling through my TV-speakers that a business is about the customer, instead of the product and its owner, finally opened my eyes to this glaring mistake that I was making.

2. I’m building a product that solves a problem

Likewise was supposed to be a note taking app, focused on visualizing notes. The idea was to enable people to take notes and to turn them into graph overviews, to make maps, and build other visualizations. Basically I wanted to make a digital detective board, and I couldn’t find an app that does exactly that. I thought to myself: this is a problem that needs to be solved. And I was going to fix it myself.

So why didn’t Likewise solve any problem? The answer is that the problem I was solving wasn’t specific enough. With Likewise, I was tried to nail too many things: note taking, e-learning, data visualization, collaboration, digital whiteboards and much more. Trying to “bundle” all these things, only resulted in the tool falling spectacularly short in all categories

3. Competition only means that there is a market for my idea

No idea is truly unique, so you’re highly likely to run into competition. If there’s no competition, it probably means that there is no market for it, or that there’s an issue that you didn’t foresee. These are the things I kept telling to convince myself that all the competition in the note taking space was a good thing. I didn’t really think of the following:

You need to have a very compelling reason for people to switch note taking apps. Once you have a bunch of notes, whiteboards, small databases and tables, it’s a pain to switch
Too much competition is a thing...
... especially when you are competing with all of them, because your tool is too generic and not specific at all.

What’s next?

I will “park” the idea for Likewise for now, and focus on a different idea. This time I will try to actually solve a specific problem for an audience, and spend more on validation and market research, before I dive in and build a SaaS. You can follow my journey here on Twitter.

Cover illustration by Storyset

Embracing risk and uncertainty: how I became an Indie Hacker

ruudniew — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 17:46:40 +0000

A bit more than a week ago I finally quit my full time developer job to become an Indie Hacker. Finally, because life had led me to the point where trading the security of a well-paid developer job for the uncertainty of bootstrapping my own business was the only logical choice to make. Let me explain why.

Security

Even though I wanted to become independent for a longer time already, I didn't actually take the step and do it before. The reason can be summarized in one word: security.

Security (as opposed to uncertainty) is one of the highest goals one can achieve. At least, that's what I was taught. The engraving of this idea already started very early. In primary school, all I wanted to do was play football (soccer), but the teachers were quick to tell me: "focus on school now, so you can eventually go to high school, where everything will be different and amazing." Apart from discovering computers and the internet, high school was oddly similar to primary school: "focus on learning now, and secure an entry into a great university".

At that point I started to wonder if life was nothing but an endless cycle of working towards more security.

After some years, I actually managed to get into a university to study law. Excited for my life to be awesome and secure forever, I went to my first lecture. You can guess the advice I got there: "focus on your studies now, so you can secure yourself a fantastic job as a lawyer later". At that point I started to wonder if life was nothing but an endless cycle of working towards more security.

The cost of security

During my studies, I taught myself programming as a hobby and side-hustle. I absolutely loved it! Despite spending most of my time learning web development, I didn't seriously consider switching to a technical study. Reason being that finishing my law degree was a more secure option than starting over. I didn't take the freedom and opportunity that being a software developer could give me, just to get the security of a law degree.

When you choose security over uncertainty, you trade in your freedom and opportunity

Which brings me to the cost of security: when you choose security over uncertainty, you trade in your freedom and opportunity. Where freedom is what you give up now and opportunity is future potential. Sometimes that's a good trade to make, but it all depends on the balance between security and uncertainty.

The balance looks a bit like this:

After my studies I finally became a software developer. A few years went by and eventually I ended up with the full time development job I had until a bit more than a week ago.

Balancing security and uncertainty

Back to becoming an Indie Hacker, and how it is only logical to choose the uncertainty of bootstrapping a business over a stable, well-paid, developer job.

While I had my dayjob, I got some ideas for products that I could make, but no time and energy to actually start making them. I had to make a choice: become independent, or stay at my full time job. This time I decided to try and find the balance between freedom and opportunity on the one side and security on the other side.

The stability and security of a full time job don't weigh against the opportunity and freedom of becoming an Indie Hacker

I was lucky to have the following securities:

about a year of savings
a stable freelance gig for 1 day per week
health insurance (living in the EU has its perks)

That means that the coming 12 months, my basic needs are probably going to be met. The opportunity and freedom I get by bootstrapping my own business are immense, and very desirable to me. Even if I somehow fail, I would see this year as an invaluable experience. I conclude that at this point in my life, the stability and security of a full time job don't weigh against the opportunity and freedom of becoming an Indie Hacker.

This is the key to balancing security and uncertainty for me: once your basic needs are secure, it's only logical to take risks, if doing so gives freedom and opportunity.

Uncharted territory

That doesn't mean that I am not scared to take this step. However, when I wake up in the morning I feel excited to work on something I enjoy the most. Come to think of it, I think that the uncertainty actually adds to my excitement. That's the thing, some humans are just made to sail out in uncharted territory. To these people, uncertainty is preferred over security, and a great motivator.

You can follow my journey into uncharted territory on Twitter. I build in public and share my wins and losses on the way.