Anyone else struggling with wanting to build and launch a product?

Ooooh yeah. The key is realising that your personal motivation for building is not sufficient - it's about finding the right problem to solve at the right time.

Ever since I started doing development full-time over a year ago I've been itching to build something. But just because I wanted to build something and make more money didn't mean I was ready to.

What has changed in that I've now partnered with a non-technical cofounder and focused on a single idea? Experience, partnership, and going to the market first.

I've been honing both my coding skill + knowledge of different platforms by freelancing in automation development. Each project helped me understand what my clients wanted from a sales perspective, but also gave me hands-on workings with the systems people were using.

Paul Graham says "If you're at the leading edge of a field that's
changing fast, when you have a hunch that something is worth doing,
you're more likely to be right. "

You need to be actively in a field or personally experiencing a problem before you really can know what to solve and how.

Next, my eventual co-founder was initially my client. We have worked together for months on projects, developing a close relationship. It was actually an off-the-cuff remark from me that we should work together that prompted his response to say "yes!".

Part of me was slightly hesitant because my should I split equity when I could do this all by myself. But I realised (perhaps like you are at the moment) that 50% of something is a hell of a lot better than 100% of nothing. Having that other person to bounce ideas off, off-load work, and just share in everything has really been invaluable to me.

Finally, when it came to figuring out WHAT to build we were full of ideas. But we finally settled on a initially solving a problem that has huge demand from the market. A feature sorely missing from a major platform that we could solve with an app. We've just started spreading the word and have had instant positive feedback from the market.

This isn't to say we'll be successful. But it is how I've overcome that paralysis you're talking about.

Cooperation,

There's a lot covered above but my 2 cents might be —

When you're in a slump, see if you can make a small change. See if you can get one step closer to launch by making a list of things that need to be in place and chip away at it. See what you're most excited by right now and hack at it. I don't see working on multiple things necessarily as a bad thing. A slump can be course-corrected 😁

huge problem! Too many ideas, each takes lots of execution, and therefore you start/stop all of them. It's a case of too many options, but also no end user yet.

I found that it was easier to be the technical partner for someone who had the idea/funding in place and execute that, ie part of a team, or to first find a customer and try to solve their problem. I find I have no motivation working on stuff and wondering if anyone will use it.

So, try this - find a community you like and get someone who has a problem you could fix. Use that as the base. Or if you have an idea, build it out as an MVP that consists of little more than signing up to a landing page/twitter feed and see if anyone responds. If you cannot get any responses it might be worth moving on to the next idea till you get a little traction at least.

I have been struggling for years. I think I've finally cleared the hurdle last week and am focusing on one project (something I've wanted to build for a long time and kept going back to). The difference for me has been just getting something that I can use into production and not trying to bake-in all of the features that I want or architecting all of the systems that I think I'll need. I haven't launched it and the product is not compelling yet but I've been super productive adding incremental updates to it and I like my chances. Good luck, I hope you find the idea that clicks for you.

I've been struggling with this for years. This year was the first time I got something small finished.

I’ve struggled with this in the past too. For some people it’s procrastination and others it’s a fear of failure. It’s easier and less pressure to move onto a new project than focus, stay disciplined and see the current one all the way through. I would try to determine your root cause and try mentally focusing on solving that.

I made a course all about this (featured on indie hackers Twitter today!)

Check it out and let me know if you would like a discount code for being an IH friend :)

https://www.craftsmancreative.co/courses/make-something