Warning About "$10K MRR After 1 Month" Posts
This isn't a post to debate the reality or truthfulness of these kinds of posts.
I'm going to take them at face value and say that the people posting them are being truthful with their numbers.
The problem with them is that they are based on a business model that is fundamentally unsound.
And that business model is called "jumping on a shiny new technology and hoping to make as much money as possible before the business falls apart".
In this case it's AI.
Yes, there are some indiehackers who can make good money by doing this.
Most will fail but some can.
The problem with those that can make some good money with it and then post about it (10K MRR in 1 month!) is that their AI solution is only able to generate that money because the competitive landscape hasn't caught up with them.
There is little to nothing that differentiate their solutions from every other solution that is already in the market or has yet to enter it.
Sooner rather than later their revenue is going to get eaten up by better funded (or better executed) competitors and the business will collapse.
Oh but who cares, they made X in 12 months
That's a valid point, but if you want to build something that you can live off, then this is a terrible approach to have.
The only thing these founders have learned is how to jump upon a shiny opportunity before everybody else and leverage it for short-term gain.
Of course there is nothing wrong with this but I don't believe most indiehackers want to spend their lives jumping from one short-term money making scheme to another.
If you want to build a business that can support you for a very long-time, you need to focus on building in established markets with a differentiated product.
I agree with the premise of this in the context of starting a solo business, and how most of the posts you see likely are going to be swallowed by the Amazons of the world within a few months. Yes, PhotoAI will probably be swallowed by Adobe, and so will similar examples when zooming out several years.
However I want to make sure the conclusion isn't to say "ignore AI, it's just a hype train". AI has fundamentally changed how we can extract information out of the internet in a way superior to Google search. Everyone now has an expert of every field at their fingertips. In 2022, we lived in an age where knowledge is power. In 2023, everyone has been granted democratized access to the collective knowledge of the world without devoting years to a craft.
Because of this, things are going to fundamentally change. Yes, the big corporations will find the cash cows and factory farm the shit out of them.
However in the areas of business that the Adobes and Amazons aren't interested in (I believe SMB clients), a solopreneur can basically operate as an expert in marketing, research, engineering, etc.
This is just my hypothesis, no one really knows what will happen in the future. However based on the reasoning in my head and what I've been observing since ChatGPT came out, I've been investing my energy into finding solutions to leverage AI and cater to the SMBs that aren't on the radar of huge corporations, but were previously difficult to provide value to because most people are engineers, marketers, designers, but not all of them. Now we can be.
Oh we're definitely in the midst of a seismic shift in the world that's for sure.
I'm interested to hear what you mean by the idea that a solopreneur can operate as an expert in marketing, research etc.?
What I've seen so far with AI advice is that it's very generic. What's more there is a big difference between knowing what to do and actually being able to execute it in real-time.
Silly example off the top of my head but because it's on the news right now - Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Most people have seen a rear-naked choke in a movie/in an MMA fight at some point. The mechanics of actually doing it are very easy to explain and understand. AI can tell you exactly what to do. But actually pulling it off against a resisting opponent is very difficult - that requires actual experience in the subject that AI simply cannot give you.
I love that BJJ is so popular among tech people these days, its so random but hey that's awesome.
You're right that no amount of information is a substitute for skin in the game. In fact, too much information can paralyze us from doing anything. Still, let's say we want to learn BJJ. We still need to research a gym, find out what gear to get for day 1, and other things we might want to prepare for.
Previously, this looked like going to Google, finding an online forum of people, buying a book, watching a few YouTube videos. I conservatively estimate this takes around an hour? Now, go to GPT-4 and ask those same questions. You can get more concise and direct answers without sifting through a bunch of bullshit. If you're a disciplined and goal-oriented person who tries to minimize research and maximize doing things in the world, it's all seemingly great. It's always been this way, Socrates openly criticized books for similar reasons we criticize AI, but personally I think books have given us opportunity to advance quite a bit.
I had a goal to create an app, and I asked GPT-4 to do a preliminary market analysis for me which was hugely useful. I saved the key insights into my notes and I had a much better idea of the business landscape within 20 minutes. The previous alternative would be pay thousands for professional to do it, or try my luck as a programmer with no business experience googling around.
I guess the conclusion is that there's no substitute for doing the work. But if you need information to do that work, that information is more readily accessible. Sorry for the wall of text.