From developer to entrepreneur: Learning to build an indie startup
I learnt to code when I was really young. I started making websites at 13. But without realizing it, the regular life caught me and for 2 years I got sucked into normal jobs. I wasn’t happy.
Then I made the decision to quit my job and built an iOS app with my partner Marie. Unfortunately it failed. But it didn’t stop us. A few months ago, we decided to fully commit ourselves to the Indie Hacker lifestyle. So far we’ve made three apps: threader.app, ipman.io and pingman.io, and we’ve made about $800 in revenue.
We’re started a blog where we talk about our journey and would love any advice/support from fellow IH’s.
Wishing you both the best of luck
Thanks Grills!
That's awesome. Love how simple your apps are. Shows how you don't need this super amazing idea to just get started.
Thanks! Our first app was too complicated so now we know how important this is to make something simple. This way you don’t lose more users than you get new ones.
I'm in the same position. I've been developing software very young and recently started my service.
Have you got any advice? How much money did you spend on your product?
Hey Azhan, my advice is: Find 4 or 5 people you can talk to about your products, who are honest with you and that you can help in return. Our main charges are domain names (about $30 each), a Pro instance at Heroku ($25/month) when an API is needed otherwise we buy the domain name at OVH which include a free web host.
Is this a timed challenge, do you have a set number of products to ship in a specific period, or is it a more open-ended experiment?
We’re not looking to launch a specific number of products but trying to make a living from them. So I guess we’ll stop when we’ll earn enough money from them.
Great story! Love it!
Thanks Harry!
A little advice on your blog's design - work a little on the typography for readability, it hurts my eyes at the moment. Just make the para font a little smaller(1.4em currently, 1em looks good and is much more readable) and lighter. Great stuff otherwise.
Hi axonotes, thanks for your feedback!
What device do you use to read the blog post? Do you use dark mode usually? I made some changes.
I'm on my desktop. The problem isn't dark mode, just very large paragraph font.