Identifying real vs. charlatan founders
Several days ago, I saw a (now deleted) post on Indie Hackers named "Twitter has a honesty problem". It talked about founders creating tweets/threads on making millions and the lessons they've learned from it.
The only problem: There was little evidence those founders made any money.
This post seems to have struct a chord here and got a lot of upvotes.
All of this made me think: In this day and age, where anyone could tell they're making $$$$ vs those who don't, how do you distinguish the truth-tellers vs. the charlatans? The implications can be quite large: for those who lie and spit out their "lessons", people who accept those lessons at face value could ultimately suffer.
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I commented on that post, can't exactly remember tho. :(
I think we have a honesty problem. We are paying more attention to $$$. A person making $10K/month is not going to give us the blueprint. There is no blueprint. Listening to them is nothing better than reading a self-help book.
Work hard, wake up at 5am, get cold showers... It would be so naive to expect them to share their secrets while all of them are crying about copycats.
If anyone happen to reach $10K by following someone on twitter, LMK. :)
As an unpopular opinion, it's possible to learn more by studying charlatans instead of listening.
The rule of thumb is: if they're selling a course after allegedly making millions, you're being scammed.
There's also "I've grown my startup to $100k through my community and I can show you how" - my guy by joining that community you are the product. Classic MLM schemes, but as always there are a lot of people falling for these.
I love seeing how someone has two 7-figure exits - but when you hit their Twitter account, they're trying to get $50 for their microwave and toaster oven bundle.
hahaha! I thought I am alone who notices that stuff! 🤣
Bootstraped founders with verified revenue on Indie Hackers :) The problem: Most of them don't tweet (or write) much.
Another idea: Read founder interviews.
If there's someone who actively tweets/publishes things on business, they usually have an agenda (trying to sell you something, promote their product, etc.)
I think Indie Hackers needs a revamp of their Verified Stripe Revenue system. The line chart is just to vulnerable information to be sharing once your business gets to a certain size.
Erm,… elephant in the room, but this site also has it’s fair share of these posts. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but they are not verified either (Stripe plugin, etc).
My eyes now glaze over when I see a new one. Some may be genuine, but most just read as ‘look at me look at me’ and teach us nothing.
Dig deep (if you have time and can be bothered) and you find the person clearly has zero experience and it is fairly obvious their claim is rubbish.
And if you’re not sure, wait a little time for the inevitable ‘now buy my course on how you can also make £10k MRR with just 5 minutes effort per week’. The course follows the big claim as sure as night follows day.
What I noticed is if you follow the people who make these claim, there is some truth to it but it's not what they'll say when they're selling their course. Off the top of my head, SaaSWiz on twitter comes to mind. He does have multiple SaaS systems earning respectable revenue tho the secret to this was that he teamed up with "Cold Email Wizard" who already had a massive following of people willing to drop lots of money in the hopes of generating income of their own.
Most of his stuff is very generic and not very helpful but every now and then he'll tell people to team up with someone bigger than them. And that one tidbit is how he actually managed it, he teamed up with someone who had the audience and uses that and then managed to build an audience via a Twitter ghostwriter.
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There are literally entire youtube channels that are now businesses of people faking it and then selling courses and what not which in turn made them actual millions.
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My take:
I give founders the benefit of doubt.
Why care even if they're lying?
Why can't I just assume they're telling the truth, and use that as motivation/inspiration?
What good is assuming or ascertaining that they're lying going to do for me?
I also find it to be a terrible mindset to have.
What's the point of conspiracy theories like this?
If someone needs to sell you the secret to riches, they aren't rich....
Oooooor, they're rich selling bullshit.
Unless you have a real compelling reason to follow these kinds of people. Just stay away, people that are working hard and really doing sometimes don't have the time to brag. Unfortunately there is no real way to verify their claims.
I guess if I had a native talent for money-making I would focus on money-making. But there are people skilled and legit who like to share and teach others. By teaching, they elevate their game. Anyway, it is not smart to take any advice at face value, we have to use critical thinking. Advice is like an idea, worthless without validating and acting on it.
twitter is adding support for 3rd party apps. maybe someone should make a stripe revenue verifier plugin similar to what we have here on IH
The thing with Stripe Verified Revenue, it seems possible to collect all kind of payments under same account.
Boardengine & Altafino & Omnited and the list goes on.
Unrelated to given examples, if I want to scam through verified stripe revenue. I may collect my rents via Stripe. It would cost me 2.9% on fees. Or I can pump the numbers by subscribing to my own products, still costing me 2.9% on fees. Scammers always find their ways.
Funny thing is I tracked one to a popular acquisition marketplace and let the founder know about the situation. Answer was simple "we are not responsible to verify their numbers."
I think you can intuitively find out such people. As Humans, we're wired to look for signals.
For instance if you find a person only giving out advice and has no track record to back that up, it might strike your suspicion.
Also we remember people when they share a mistake or things which went wrong while building their business. This cannot be faked and hence these founders build an authentic brand for themselves
💯
The biggest secret to being successful is knowing that there are no secrets.
That way you can focus on the actual things that get you closer to where you want to be; hard work, perseverance and learning from your mistakes.
I've bought my fair share of courses and even the good ones are usually selling you information you already know, comprised of common sense and logic (outside of learning a tangible skill). But because it's packaged up neatly and tied with a bow it feels more valuable.
But it will always sell because we love a system or a formula, something easy to follow and digestible. It's why the diet industry is worth 2 billion a year (UK).
Hey, I actually created a group here in IH for a similar purpose. It's called Not a shovel business and for people who DON'T build for other indie hackers. (Twitter growth tools, courses, saas boilerplates for indie hackers, etc.)
Feel free to check and join. Once we kick off, I have many ideas to turn it into a place for real work done type of group.
https://www.indiehackers.com/group/not-a-shovel-business
Nowadays, it is very easy to call oneself a CEO/Co-founder...
The new Nigerian Prince.
It isn't all about making money...
The ones who know what charlatan means are spending too much time reading and not enough time building 😂 just kidding
Just like it’s important to get your news from a variety of sources, it’s important to get your advice from a variety of sources. And use common sense.
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