Everything I’ve learned from building and selling two companies

Just 18 years old, Dhravya Shah is already a twice-exited founder and multiple-time hackathon winner.

I was fortunate to catch up with him to get his advice for aspiring indie hackers: 

1. Time Management

For myself, I use the five-minute rule, which means if it's something that you can finish in the next five minutes, do it right now. If it's something that might take a lot of time and you're like, getting bored and you're burnt out, still do it right now for just five minutes. 

This has really helped me because it’s always the start that's the most difficult. If you can just get started, often you’ll find yourself able to get in the zone.

2. The Hackathon To Idea Pipeline

I come up with all my ideas pretty naturally. Usually I just notice a problem in my regular life that I’m able to build a project to fix.

But, besides that, a lot of my ideas come from hackathons, because they force you to think of an idea immediately. LMFAO.tech, Disco.pics, and Supermemory were all built in hackathons, so it’s been pretty successful for me. 

3. Track Your Metrics

One thing that I wish I started doing earlier is collecting the proper user metrics. It’s really helpful to know exactly what button people are clicking, traffic, and retention. 

The three keys for any app to grow are:

1. Virality. There should be a marketing funnel in some form.

2. Retention. What keeps people coming to the app?

3. K-factor. Ideally, each user should bring in four or five additional users.

If I had done a better job tracking my metrics early on, I could’ve grown way faster.

4. Share Your Story

I have seen way too many indie hackers on Twitter trashing other projects. Sure, this might bring you some attention and Elon bucks, but it won’t bring actual users to your app.

The real way to get a lot of users is to actually share your story and show that you are a real person, not just a marketer. If you just tell your story in a natural way, you’ll eventually get to the right audience.

There really is no secret to growing on social media. You have to just post authentically and enthusiastically. 

5. What To Expect From Product Hunt

The Product Hunt launch itself probably won't bring you a lot of new users, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.

You’ll often get a lot of traction on social media just by posting about it, so that’s automatically boosting your marketing. You’ll also get really good, actionable feedback from the 50-100 people on Product Hunt who are constantly looking for cool new products. 

Personally, this makes launching on Product Hunt still worth it.

6. Use The Free Trial

I am a big free trial guy. Most of my apps are positioned free to start and I only try to convert people after I get to 10,000 active users.

The reason for this is that if you try to convert people too early, your feedback funnel will really dry up. And if that happens, your product is basically stuck.

So, at 10,000 users I can convert 5% of them, and that’s still big enough to make a decent amount of money and continue getting really good feedback. 

7. The Power Of Open Source

It doesn’t matter how good you think your idea is, if you want it to be more than an idea you’ll need people to care about it and trust that you and your project are legitimate. 

So I do open source first to build that trust. For example, Supermemory is an app where you bring all your data in and then have an AI interact with it. Open source makes people a lot more comfortable here because they can actually see the code before they import their data.

Open source is also great for community building. I’ve built a ton of projects over the last couple of years, so now whenever I launch a new project I know that it will have 6,000 users the next day, no matter what. 

Finally, open source also helps in business. That’s because it 1) provides a free security audit, which is amazing and 2) makes enterprise sales much easier because they can check out the code themselves and self-host the app. 

8. Selling To Developers

First, you have to be your own user. If you yourself are sold, then you don't need to think of anything else except increasing your K-factor.

Eventually it will become a network effect because developers usually try to hop on the next big new thing.

9. Make Something You Want

Indie hacking is all about making something that you want, telling your story, and being enthusiastic about what you do. if you just do these three things, a lot of people will care about what you're building. 

And if you can get 10 people to care about it, then you’ll have a really good chance of success.