Don't build your product
David here, I'm part-time fullstack dev, and part-time entrepreneur. I created two products so far.
If any developer here want to start the Indie Hackers journey, my 2 pennies are : don't build your product.
There are too much things to think about, and too much to things to do. You have to think about user flow, UI design, acquisition - to name a few. Oh I didn't mention the most important part - sales.
You cannot invest each part of the business with all the required care. This would lead very quick to a burn-out.
Either abandon or delegate each attempt. LinkedIn acquisition attempts failed? Then quit. A new LinkedIn acquisition attempt finally works? Then delegate or automate. Don't spend your time on LinkedIn, because, again, there are too much things to do.
That's also true for development tasks. We have an obvious bias of perceiving the developer job as the most important job, just because we are developer.
Everything requires great expertise, great time and great energy. You can't be a top designer, you can't be SEO expert, and, IHMO, you probably can't be a good enough developer to build everything from scratch yourself.
Even if you do, you will burn your precious weekly time & energy budget very quickly.
It's true that you need a product, but I find it equally true that building the product is only one brick of a giant wall.
So what are the options?
- buy an existing product at microacquire
- fork an excellent open-source project and modify it
- pick a template starter (like laravel spark in the PHP world)
- classic but true : try with a no-code or low-code tool
It's hard to admit, but don't build it yourself, at least, not from scratch.
Good luck to all,
