Project: https://deploysolo.com/
HN Post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39816827
After months of early mornings alongside my full time job, I finally completed my project DeploySolo. I'm pleased to report acquiring 6 sales in 24H at $50, and am excited to capitalize on the product market founder fit I've found.
Even more valuable and less tangible than money, I received positive direct feedback from those who joined the discord community, saying they are pleased with the purchase and excited to learn from the code. That's the part that felt the best.
I'd like to share some lessons I've learned with this community of indie hackers, because its one of the first places I went to get inspired on my entrepreneurial journey. Feel free to ask questions.
It can be extremely hard to think of products or services worth investing your time into building. From what I've found, patience is the most important aspect. I've been caught in the trap of trying to create a service business that didn't excite me, just to make money as quick as possible. I got burnt out almost immediately.
What I've found is that a great way to find a problem worth solving is to experience the problem yourself, and then solve it. If you feel discomfort thinking about a problem, then that's an opportunity for you to hop in and alleviate that discomfort. Its pretty likely others feel that discomfort too, and will pay to have it removed.
The discomfort I found was trying to build web apps with Golang. If you want to add user authentication, the /r/Golang communities average answer is "do it yourself" or "use a dedicated auth microservice".
Then I found Pocketbase. Pocketbase solves many problems such as authentication, Database, File Storage, and Admin interface out of the box.
But if you want to create a whole web app (especially without front end frameworks), there aren't many complete reference implementations.
I simply solved this problem, by creating an example but complete SaaS boilerplate that demonstrates how to use this modern software to succeed as an indie hacker, without getting overwhelmed by complexity.
It wasn't until I learned patience to not anxiously rush towards the easiest way to make money. With patience, you can calmly observe an information stream through Twitter or whatever your information diet is, and wait until you see something that speaks to you, before you invest the time in.
I felt this discomfort myself, and that was my best compass to indicate that others felt it as well.
Some other thoughts:
Very helpful content
Great work! It's not easy to successfully manage a side project while having a full-time job. How did you handle the workload of the side project? Did you utilize any tools?
I've found it to be easiest to wake up a few hours earlier and tackle your most important personal project task immediately after waking up.
Immediately after waking up, your brain is in a primed state to slide into deep work, which is important for coding. Its also easier because the world hasn't woken up yet, and there's no external distractions.
As for tools. this whole thing probably wouldn't have happened if not for using GPT-4 many hours every day. When faced with any question you're not sure about, you can just ask GPT-4, and it will give you a reasonably good answer.
Congrats Anderson!
Great Anderson!
Was the Hackerpost and the Discord the only ways you drew traffic?
Yes so far. I like to build an MVP ASAP and post it on social media to do a bit of market validation before moving onto more serious steps. I've done this a few times.
But now, looking to create useful content through blogs/videos. I like the idea of organic content.
That's a great Matt! I've also found Hacker News very useful on my way, especially with the huge traffic I got from it. Thanks for sharing those insights!
Did you find discord community helpful for gathering user feedback?
Definitely. Everyone has a discord, and its easy to join. Just talking informally as peers (rather than simply customers) who are interested in your MVP is probably the most valuable thing ever in the beginning.
"How To Get Rich Without Getting Lucky" is a great book! Thanks for sharing! Congrats Anderson!
I enjoyed your post. A guy on Twitter, @marc_louvion, created a similar product called "ShipFast" which is a NextJS boilerplate template. It appears to be very profitable. You may want to follow him on Twitter and sign up for his weekly newsletter to get more tips on how he built his product. Best of luck to you!
Oh yes, he largely inspired this idea. Although I don't like working with many managed services which each have their own monthly payment, and I also avoid front end frameworks as a personal preference.
I was going to create some SaaS apps anyway with this Pocketbase architecture, but Marc convinced me that it would be worth shipping the boilerplate too.
First of all: Congratulations for your persistence!!!
Myself, as a mobile app developer the features you started with are essential.
Primarily, I likes the reactive DB approach. Is it PostgreSQL behind?
I started recently my journey as "indie hacker" (full lowercase :) ) and I start experimenting with different product ideas.
Reflecting on your product, what I miss often is at start are these features. I don't want to build a fully finished product, but an MVP. This is perfect for that!
Usually, what I look for is:
PB just uses SQLite in WAL mode, which is more than enough for small to medium apps. Looks like this would work great for you!
Thank you @mannders0n for your advice!