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Miguel Piedrafita
Miguel Piedrafita

Posted on • Originally published at miguelpiedrafita.com on

Indie maker or teenpreneur?

After all this crazy stuff I've been doing lately (like launching two Chrome extensions in less than an hour), I feel like I've finally found a "digital spaaace" that represents me: the maker spaaace.

This clashes with my existing personal branding (a.k.a. the image you project to the internet, your personal "brand") of a teenpreneur that I established when I launched my first big product earlier this year. So, what's the difference?

For me, a teenpreneur is a teenager who has gone the enterprise-y way, who brands his products as big companies and writes "we" in the FAQ, while a maker exposes himself, doesn't wait for things to be ultra polished to launch them and uses emoji on landing pages.

And what do I wanna be? Well, I'm a human, I'm a teenager doing crazy things on the internet. Yeah, I'm guilty of building in a cave for months, for hiding behind a "we" and trying to be CEO of a one-person company. But not anymore!

Starting today, my website reads "I'm a 16-year-old who loves to make stuff" instead of "I'm a 16-year-old developer & teenpreneur", and I'm loving it!

Top comments (2)

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jalendport profile image
Jalen Davenport

Your dev.to bio tho 🤔

Haha, in all reality tho... as a fellow teenager and also someone (for the most part) running their own shop, I’ve also gone back and forth on if it should be “we” or “me”. The thing about my situation is I work under an agency name already, so I find that it’s harder to be personal (i.e. use “me” on the site) since it’s not a personal brand per-say. Atm, I’ve gone super “personal” with the landing page I have setup till I find time to finish my new site; but in the past I have used “we” on the site. Curious to know your thoughts on a situation like mine where someone is already branded under an agency name...

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m1guelpf profile image
Miguel Piedrafita

I'd probably leave the shop under a brand name, then add a text to the landing explaining who you are and maybe some kind of "made by a x-year-old" or something on the footer.

People are normally more inclined to help individuals, especially teenagers, than big brands, so you may even see some positive numbers if you do this.

Would be interesting to A/B test it and report the results... :thinking: