Advice so good you should ignore it

As indie hackers, we tend to ignore a lot of traditional startup advice. We break the rules and, in the process, we make our own rules. But it's good to question those too.

So let's question some assumptions. Here's the advice that successful indie hackers are ignoring. 👇

Protect your secret sauce

👤 Arvid Kahl of The Bootstrapped Founder:

"Protect your secret sauce"

People often say to stay secretive and protect every single piece of what makes you and your business unique. In a world of relationship-based consumption (as evidenced by the growing founder-led businesses and their successful connection-first marketing efforts), some "secrets" are worth sharing. They give others a unique path toward building trust with you and your business.

A peek behind the curtain humanizes a business, and that's a big advantage.

Get a cofounder

👤 Tony Dinh of TypingMind:

Common business advice I've read is to have a cofounder. I ignore it because I'm a difficult person to collaborate with, and I like to work alone.

Target big markets

👤 Kyle Nolan ofProjectionLab:

"Focus on the big markets."

ProjectionLab started as a niche tool to serve my own needs. Granular, DIY financial planning tools like this may not have the kind of mass appeal that traditional businesses often look for. But for an indie dev? Targeting a smaller niche can be great.

👤 Arjun Jain of pre.dev:

"Find the biggest market and go after that."

Almost all great businesses started off catering to a niche audience with a niche product offering and grew from there.

Riches are in the niches

👤 Dustin Stout of Magai:

I voraciously ignore the advice that "riches are in the niches."

While I don't deny the power of creating something that is created specifically for a small, well-defined demographic, I could never bring myself or my ideas to fit into one specific niche.

Now, I've definitely created marketing campaigns and landing pages aimed at specific target audiences, but when it comes to building a product, I have never been able to come up with a product that is limited to a single niche.

Spend half your time marketing

👤 Jay Tan of Zylvie:

"Divide your time 50/50 between product and marketing."

Hey, how about I diagnose what my business needs most urgently now, then decide how to apportion my time?

You shouldn't go out there and "do marketing" when your existing users are complaining about bugs and missing critical features. And you shouldn't tinker around with the product when the top of your funnel is all crickets.

Offer things for free

👤 Sébastien Night of OneTake.ai:

In the startup/indie world, there is a huge belief that the fastest way to get started is to offer the product for free to get feedback, and iterate until you feel confident you can charge.

I think that's a convenient excuse to be scared of charging for your value, and a recipe for failure.

We started with 2 people pre-paying for our software, 3 months before the MVP was open. It's not hard to sell two people on a dream solution to their current problems. It's definitely not harder than getting, say, 20 random people to "give it a try for free", but those two paying customers will give you just as much, probably more, relevant quality feedback than the 20 tire kickers. And they give you money!

So I think "freemium" is a late-stage strategy (we're just experimenting with it); not a getting-started strategy. When you're getting started, you need cash. And you need feedback from people who have said, with their credit card, that solving this problem matters to them.

That's why for more than a year, I ignored everybody who complained that we didn't have a free trial.

Pre-validate your idea

👤 Jay Tan of Zylvie:

"You need to validate your idea first before you build it."

People will say all kinds of stuff to be nice, supportive, polite, etc., no matter how you interview them. It's at no cost to them. There's no accountability. It just takes them three seconds to say it. But it will take you the next three months to build it.

Conversely, just because someone says they won't pay for your product or they don't react favorably doesn't mean it's a crappy idea with no market.

At the end of the day, you still have to fall back on your business acumen (a fancy term for "educated guesswork"), there's no customer development technique that can help you to assess market opportunities and guarantee that someone will buy when you build and finally launch that thing.

Scale infinitely

👤 JT of No Code Founders:

"Go big or go home."

Rather, stay small and stay home.

You need a hockey stick

👤 Alexander Isora of Unicorn Platform:

"Grow exponentially or die”.

I've been growing linearly since the first day. Zero problems with that.

Talk to your customers

👤 Alexander Isora of Unicorn Platform:

“Talk to your customers.”

Waste of time. I already know what they want because I’m one of them. I eat my own dog food by using my website builder every day.

Hustle, hustle, hustle

👤 Kevin McArdle of Big Band:

"Founders have to put their business above everything else and 'sacrifice' to make it successful."

I think that's bullshit. Life (our families, our health, our happiness) is way more important than any work we could ever do, whether you are a brain surgeon, the leader of a country, or a SaaS founder.

There have been a lot of times when I felt like I was killing myself for my work. I would get burnt out and have to go through cycles of unproductivity, both mentally and physically, to recover.

I realized two things that helped me make the change:

1. As much as I felt like I was "hustling" I wasn't really doing the right thing, which is being the best version of myself every day to do what was most important that day.
2. If I want to run a business long-term, I need to find a sustainable way to do so. And what I was doing was not sustainable.

Don't require a card

👤 Jay Tan of Zylvie:

"Don't ask for credit cards up front, it's a dark pattern."

That's a cowardly, lose-win way of doing business. If you know you're offering real value, charge them up front. You give them a free trial, they give up their credit card info.

They must show goodwill when you show goodwill. It's a business, not charity.

Grow slowly

👤 Mike Strives of Upvoty:

"Grow slowly."

In its essence, I think that's good. It's definitely a marathon. But don't mistake it for slowly rolling out and building the business. In practice, it's almost always better to sprint. To move fast and learn fast.

We ship features quite early just to see how our users react. This makes sure we are not spending too much time, money, and energy on features that turn out to be bad decisions. We just ship, monitor, and then decide.

Your idea must be groundbreaking

👤 Kevin McArdle of Big Band:

"If you aren't out to "change the world" your idea isn't ambitious enough."

TOTAL bullshit. Most ideas DO NOT change the world, so I hate that this is some standard that someone decided to set for startups. Jobs, Gates, Ford, Eddison, Bell... the list is not that long of people/businesses who ACTUALLY changed the world, so let's chill out on that.

Most indie hackers probably have some simple goals in mind. Financial independence, personal independence, and doing something that makes them happy. That's it! If your business idea can achieve those things, that is a good idea.

Stick to your vision

👤 Tim Bennetto of Pallyy:

People say you shouldn't listen to every customer in the early days. They say to stick to your vision.

In the early days, I listened to almost every single feature request and 99% of the time, I built it. Listening to those early users helped me gain direction and build a platform that's actually useful.

If I had stuck to my vision, it would have been out of business quickly.

VC financing = success

👤 Tim Schumacher of Saas.Group:

I ignore the constant advice of people who sniff at indie SaaS projects, only looking at the glossy VC-financed names and thinking that fame = success.

Do one thing well

👤 Andrew Pierno of XO Capital:

I personally ignore the "do one thing" type of advice.

I do multiple things, but if you go further down the stack, everyone is (mostly) doing just one thing.

Make an MVP

👤 Alexander Isora of Unicorn Platform:

“Make an ugly MVP.”

My MVP was a fully working product which passively brought me over $4K in sales.

Run lifetime deals

👤 Marie Martens of Tally:

"Raise money" and "run lifetime deals".

Exit interviews should not be required

👤 Jay Tan of Zylvie:

"Only send the exit interviews after they cancel, not before, otherwise it's a dark pattern."

Churn feedback is of PARAMOUNT importance. It's the #1 form of feedback that you should care about. Feedback from paying customers is important, but as long as they're continuing to pay you month after month, you can ignore their complaints to a degree.

But you'd better zero in on churn feedback, because whatever they're unhappy about, it was significant enough for them to cancel and stop using your product.

I never let my customers go so easily when they're trying to cancel, I make them fill up a form before canceling. Most users don't mind as much as you would think -- it's mostly in the heads of the founders.

Over-analyze before you start

👤 Pichou of Naker:

"You should do a SWOT Analysis."

Spend your time on projections

👤 Iron Brands of Simple Analytics:

I think a lot of the conventional startup wisdom is okay to ignore. You don't need funding, a pitch deck, a revenue projection, or a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) to build a sustainable business that provides a great living and a lot of freedom.

Find a problem worth fixing. Build a fix. Start small; be flexible. Strategy and roadmap will form along the way.

CAC/LTV > 1

👤 Alexander Isora of Unicorn Platform:

“CAC/LTV > 1”

WTF is CAC and how is it calculated? Still have zero idea.

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Advice about advice: Be like Goldilocks

Ignore everything

👤 Alexander Isora of Unicorn Platform:

I ignore every piece of advice that I've been told by so-called experts.

This doesn’t mean I’m special or the advice is useless. My case just proves that anything is possible. Things that work for others may not work for you and vice versa.

Ignore nothing

👤 Daniel Peris of Pickaso:

Every person, every business, and every situation is different. The best advice is often to ignore advice.

👤 Steven Goh of Proxycurl:

I actually don’t think I ignore any advice. Rather, I try to understand the context behind the advice.

Find the advice that fits just right

👤 Arvid Kahl of The Bootstrapped Founder:

Almost every piece of advice is worth ignoring. And that includes my own. We're so desperate for quick solutions and guaranteed how-to success formulas that we dive into following advice way too quickly.

I have learned to always look at advice through the lens of "who is saying this, what's the context of their experience, and why are they sharing it here with me?" If it makes sense for my unique circumstances, I follow it. And since it often doesn't fit, I ignore most advice.

👤 Daniel Ch of SignHouse:

Advice is like clothing you try on in the changing room. A lot of it could look wonderful, but not on you. So what do you do with it? You just put it aside.

So don’t listen to any advice. But listen to all advice! Hear it. Decide to follow none. Whatever comes out later from under the surface is the advice that will probably fit you.

👤 Kevin McArdle of Big Band:

Almost all of the advice you read online is based on one person's experience and is therefore biased and colored by their experience. There is little to no chance that it is relevant to me at any given time.

So I don't like reading general advice. I like hearing peoples' stories about what they have done, particularly how they struggle with things, and I try to apply their learnings to my own situation.

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