The Bootstrapped Founder

As an indie hacker, you can learn a lot from the comments on hacker news, but probably not in the

way you expect. Welcome to the Bootstrapped Founder. My name is Arvid Kahl, and I talk about bootstrapping,

entrepreneurship, and building in public. Today, I'll look at one particular conversation around

a very successful and highly talented indie hacker and what we can learn about the myths and biases

of the software developer world. Let me quickly thank the sponsor of this episode, Acquire.com.

More on that later. Now, let's take a trip to hacker news. Tony Dinh, that's the person I'm

talking about, a well-known indie hacker, recently shared an article about his indie hacking journey

that reached the top of hacker news. It was an interesting conversation. Let's just say that.

As usual, some people reacted quite negatively to an indie hacker sharing their story. And there was

one common criticism there. That was that all these small projects or these pet rock projects

aren't valuable. There was a pretty strong sentiment in the audience of mostly salaried

software engineers there that small niche solutions aren't what developers should aspire to build.

There's more to this than just a blatantly obvious envy and jealousy for someone who is

building something on their own terms. As Tony has been, a lot of people would like that but can't,

so they lash out. But this phrase, pet rock project, is really meant to diminish the value

of a simple project, of something that has niche appeal and is a little bit quirky, maybe a little

bit simplistic or confined. But I believe it's perfectly fine for indie hackers to build these

particular tools. I think it's okay to create a product without a technological edge or build

something that isn't highly disruptive. You don't have to build the next unicorn to have a meaningful

entrepreneurial life. And I think that is in fact the core problem with many developers. And my past

self is included here. We've been conditioned to think that our true potential as developers,

as software engineers, lies in building parts of these massive software products with equally

massive aspirations. We want to work at fan companies or build the next Uber or work on the

next big thing. We've been sold a dream here. And that's the dream that our value as developers

is tightly bound to the scale of the economic output of our code. The bigger, the better.

The better the code, the more important we are as developers. And anything that doesn't aspire

to be that next big thing is quickly called a pet rock project. The founder who escaped the

unicorn-seeking mind prison? Well, they get called a sham and a failure. And to protect

our self worth, we shame those who don't do as we are conditioned to do. The thing that we have

become identified with. We are the people who built these big things. We are elite. We are great at

what we do. And the better we are at coding, the more important we are as people. And honestly,

as an ex-elitist developer myself, I just really understand how big of a part of our identity that

can be. It took me years to unlearn this. And it hurts to see others so violently aggress against

an indie hacker sharing their story. I can't say this didn't trigger me, as you can probably tell

when I saw those comments to Tony's blog post. It just felt so insulting to the journey that I had

seen Tony to be on for years now. He's a real person, done real, real cool stuff, and seeing

him shut down and just yell that wasn't fun. And Tony didn't build anything disruptive, but he sure

built something useful. He built a great screenshot tool that I use every day, a spectacular Twitter

analytics tool that I use every day, and the wrapper for generative AI. Nothing extremely unique or new,

but all very useful for those who need such tools. And that's what makes Tony enough money to live

the life he wants. Like, how could we not like this? How could anybody not like this? But

apparently some people on Hacker News have a problem with this. And I think this living the life that

he wants to live, that's my favorite interpretation of the indie, in indie hacking. Building a life

that doesn't require the approval or permission of others here or on Hacker News. Indie hackers are

perfectly fine developing a different product, a different version of an existing product that's

more convenient or more useful for a specific audience. That's okay. It's not a quantum leap,

but it's a move worth taking. And that's the indie hacker way. Finding something valuable to a small

but significant group of potential customers. You're not disrupting an entire industry.

You're changing how certain people do certain things. And that's perfectly fine. And that also

makes this approach more widely usable. No indie hacker is trying to fully dominate a market. That's

unicorn thinking, right? Indie hackers don't need billion-dollar businesses to be successful. Making

a few thousand dollars a month is already a big success for most people. And anything beyond that

is a stellar accomplishment. Most indie hackers want to build something good, something useful,

alongside other good and useful products. Offering an alternative rather than replacing

competitors. The indie hacker community is one that allows both for competition and cooperation.

Case in point? Well, look at Peter Levils and Danny Postma. They have several competing products,

yet they talk to each other about their work all the time. On Twitter, in DMs,

they openly talk about their businesses in public. They're fully aware that potential copycats are

watching. But there's enough space for multiple solutions. And that mindset makes all the

difference. If you think of everything as a zero-sum game, as you kind of have to in enterprise

market domination land, it's very easy to react negatively to indie hackers' success.

But let's maybe ignore those dismissive comments and keep building our small and additive products.

Let's create niche businesses that don't reach for the stars, but are in reach for solopreneurs

who just want to help a select group of people that they really care about.

Staying away from this unicorn mindset is a secondary and I think equally powerful form of

interpreting the indie in indie hacking. So let's embrace independent thought, creating our own

dreams and making an impact in our own way. And that's it for today. Let me talk a bit about our

sponsor here at this point, acquire.com. Imagine this, you're an independent founder who's built

an independent SaaS product, you acquire customers, and now all of this is generating independently,

consistent monthly recurring revenue. The problem is though, you're not growing for whatever reason.

You may lack focus or skill or just like interest and you kind of feel stuck. So what should you do?

The story that we all would like to hear is that you buckle down and reignite the fire within

yourself. You got past yourself, you work on the business instead of in the business. You built

this audience you always wanted to build. You start marketing the thing you hate and you go out of your

comfort zone, do things you didn't want to do, but now you do them and six months down the road,

you've tripled your revenue. Wouldn't it be great? Well, reality is not that simple. This situation

is different for every founder who's facing this crossroad. And too often this story ends up being

one of inaction and stagnation until the business becomes less valuable or at its worst completely

worthless. So if you already find yourself here or you think your story is likely headed down a similar

road, I can offer you the third option here really. That's selling your business on acquire.com or at

least considering it. You can capitalize on the value of your time right now. That's a pretty smart

move to make. Acquire.com that's free to list and they've helped hundreds of founders already. So you

can go to try.acquire.com/arvid and see for yourself if this is the right option for you.

You don't have to sell, but it's good to know that you can. Thank you for listening to the

Bootstrapped Founder today. You can find me on Twitter @arvidkahl. You can find my books and my Twitter

course there too. And if you want to support me in this show, which I would really appreciate,

please subscribe to my YouTube channel, get the podcast and the player of choice,

and leave a rating and a review by going to ratethispodcast.com/founder. Any of these

things will help the show and I will appreciate them. So thank you very much for listening.

Have a wonderful day and bye bye.