99% of Indie Hackers have ideas, 1% will take action
99% of IndieHackers have ideas.
Less than 1% will take action on those ideas.
Why don't you do it today?
- Simple MVP with no-code tools
- Go to your customers and give them the link
- Listen to some of them
- Iterate fast and often from here
Trending on Indie Hackers
Fear not the indie hacker who takes action on 10,000 ideas. Fear the indie hacker who takes 10,000 actions on one idea.
If Bruce Lee was an Indie Hacker lol.
This should be the next Indie Hacker productivity app: action counter towards a single goal. BOOM! there's an idea for all the "i can't think of an idea' folk out there!
Awesome advice and…yeah I am trying to build something in that direction…
https://missioncontrol.me
Stop planning, start doing, be honest to yourself and check in regularly with yourself to see if you are really taking action.
P.S. I am looking for a partner to improve the app and take it to the next level. Send me a message ([email protected])
Completely agree. It's too easy to be distracted and be action faking.
That's why I created DoneFlow (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.doneflow.habittrackerapp) -- a habit tracking app that gives you insight into how well you're doing. I use it myself and it's one of the best ways I've kept myself accountable
That looks really helpful! I started using Habit List, but I'll have toi check this out. Thanks for sharing!
I like this a lot
Love having Ben Tossell thoughts on IH.
Time for me to resurface👋
So you like his... "ideas"?! 😅
Funny thing, I just got to IH to post an idea to the validation group. Although, I do take action!
Currently redeploying my product (for re-launch)!
Haha. Yes. I do. He's been there, done it.
Well said. I’ve been trying to change my mindset lately to not care so much about crafting a perfect idea and more the execution of the idea and actual building with frequent iterations.
No one with a successful business started it on their first shot. There's a graveyard of mini (and mega) products built in the build-up to the final thing.
Don't put that burden on yourself. It matters about the reps, like regularly going to the gym (unfortunately).
hope it works out for you!
my big question is where to find the customers? :)
facebook, reddit, twitter, instagram, tiktok
the more public you are at what you're building, sometimes customers come to you! like they did for me
Agreed with @bentossell, the more we are Public, along the journey! More we get Customers. And Twitter is a great place for this.
Like consider a founder who shares his complete journey, daily updates, mistakes, about the product from the very beginning, and interact with people on regular basis, the more people will Trust him, and more likely to be a customer for the product, than a founder who just launch and update to all about it on all platform connections.
In the sense, you can get customers from socials, but regular marketing is the key. Just keep an eye on your target customers. 😃
As a developer, I can empathize with this. I have at least 3 full code ready apps that have not seen the light :D
I'll have full enthusiasm when I think about some Ideas, I dive right in with coding, thinking this is going to make me some money. As I near completion of MVP, I lack the motivation to go forward.
Maybe the motivation is wrong, or my heart is not in the right place.
The conclusion I've drawn for myself is, I'm not ready for business yet :) I might be best building small fun tools for time being and see where that takes me.
And I'm proud that I launched statsph.com today
Action is what separates dreamers from winners.
Agreed. Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything.
Fortunately, I belong to the 1%.
nice work!
Great title. Make every one think to act.
Thanks
What is the latest thing you are working on sir?
makerpad.co :)
been working on my own app for 1.5 years 7 days a week LMAO. out two weeks ago. 6 monthly subscribers :p
This post says so much using so few words. Let's go!
I had an idea. I started by creating Discord community. One month later Discord is like: No! And they kicked me out. So yeah, you can try but it's like 99% that you will fail for one reason or another
My ego holds me. But we'll soon have a match and I'll beat him up
For me, finding an idea that I like and would still be interested in couple is the hard part. At the moment, I really don’t have any idea.
I couldn't agree less! For people who struggle with this: I really recommend the books "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries and "Hacking Growth" by Sean Ellis, these two authors are legends!
I have the opposite problem. I love building projects, and I'm good at creating MVPs, I just don't have the idea for a project worth making.
Just look at your own life, is there anything that bothers you? Can you implement a solution for this? Can you find people that have the same problem? Many times people don't even knew something was a problem until you gave them a solution.
Just do it!
I think that a big problem is that people do not know where and how to start. There are many wannabe entrepreneurs that join our WBE Space with the intent to bootstrap a project. Surrounded themselves with other like-minded people normally helps to give the right motivation to start
I kinda just think they're made up excuses.
If you cannot find out where or how to start in this day and age, you're most likely procrastinating. Potentially because it's a scary path to go down.
You can build with no-code tools, you can get ideas from any community. You could literally build something and include a payment link in less than an hour.
Unfortunately I'm in the 1% with no ideas and ready to take that 99% action.
time to flip it!
I totally agree to your point but on the other hand this point either cannot be neglected that we should not only learn from our mistakes but also from others who tried to do similar stuff as we are heading towards.
So finally I came to a conclusion that starting things is important for making it feel easy to our subconscious so we should start asap due to this reason and then after taking over that fear we can move by the second argument of learning through someone's mistakes.
you're right.
could be!
Heck, most of the time you don't even need an MVP you just need a mock-up/diagram, some confidence, and a few lead gen capabilities to hit your first 6 figures.
Focus on the building once you've nailed your customer down.
yeah or even send someone a stripe payment link and an email
doesn’t one become an indiehacker when they take the action? therefore 100% of indiehackers take action
I think there are a lot of IHers on here that are still in the "i have an idea but i need to learn to code" or even "How do i come up with a good idea" phase, and sadly a lot never take the first step to build the idea.
What's your answer to "How do i come up with a good idea"
Market research, ok how? A "poll" on Indie Hackers?
Or just build and test? How to test before building?
TLDR: Maybe you're trying too hard to think of a "brilliant instantly successful, easy to build" idea. Build simple things that solve your own problem before you poll anyone.
Personally?
I just have ideas. I see something in my daily life I think I could improve for myself and I write it down to build it.
No poll. No market research.
I'm pretty average so if I face the problem other people probably are too.
For indiehackers with a problem of "how do i come up with ideas", maybe listen to Pieter Levels or @csallen talk about how they came up with theirs. Or read through ALL the IH Interviews or listen to ALL the IH podcasts. You'll learn that 90% of entrepreneurs had a problem in their life and built a solution for themselves. When it solved their problem they put it out to the public and slowly found others who needed this solution too.
That being said, stop trying to find the One Idea to Rule Them All. You won't. Build every idea you have, no matter how insignificant you think it is. Then build another and another.
This is a numbers game: build more projects because 95% of projects you do build will fail. You need to burn through those to find the one or two that will succeed.
I keep a running list of potential projects and my ideas on how to monetize. They're not all great, but I have identified ways to potentially monetize and I have recorded the ideas because they were at some point a problem I ran into and could not or did not find a solution for that fit my needs.
Again to anyone who is having trouble "coming up with an idea", I'd argue you are trying too hard to "find a billion dollar idea that will be immediately successful and easy to build". Stop this. Build small things to solve your own problems. Listen to @csallen interview 200+ founders and read the 500+ interviews on IH. Listen to podcasts that actually interview @csallen and Pieter Levels about their journeys. You'll learn a lot and you might just come up with an idea or two in the process.
Good luck.
nldr, not long, definitely read. This is encouraging and thank you for that.
Just you wait. I'll fill my Product showcase.
I have a blended list of ideas that solve challenges that I have personally faced and others that I think might be useful or that are simply just interesting or cool.
I indeed build tools every once in a while that help me with tasks and such. I recently wrapped up a tool I built for my mom. Will be just deploying some ideas that I think is useful and keep going through my list.
Always knew that a project/product/business has to start small. I agree it's def worth it to just build and solve something small and if it gets bigger, then great.
My current change of mindset is to just put myself out there, except I'm still "anonymous". But at least not holding back on sharing ideas and once deploying, sharing what I've deployed.
That sounds great! Get your projects in the public view. Build in public! Try executing a "12 projects in 12 months" challenge. Don't focus on profit, focus on failing fast, failing often, and traction.
Share your projects here and any other community that might find them useful. Put them up on Product Hunt, tweet about them.
Don't have an audience? So what! Start building one today by sharing every step you take along your journey. You don't need to start with a giant audience, start sharing your journey with 1 person, every day, consistently. The audience will grow. You will be putting more projects out. Something will gain traction - pivot to focusing on the one(s) that gain momentum and double down on those to try to get to profit.
Good luck!
PS Here is a small list of ideas I've made public, but are still in my queue as I build Eurotripr.com. (Except for ZeroToCentury, but I moved on from that one temporarily): https://solomakerlife.com/startups/ The content for each description on the site isn't fleshed out, but those are a small sample of the ideas I keep in my queue.
this.
A lot of groups are formed that include the wannabe-versions too...
Great advice sir I want to know how to come up with genuine problems?
Zero to Sold is a good read.
Found more than one match for this, is it the one by Peter Thiel or another author?
This one is written by @arvidkahl
If you have obstacles in your day to day that can be fixed or made better/easier for you, that's a genuine problem and potential idea.
"Man i suck at time management but all these time management tools don't work for me" <- problem
Finding a system that DOES work for you <- idea
Just a dumb example but one a lot of us have or have encountered
follow your interests, talk about things. ideas come when you're bored or building.
I defintiely agree with this comment.
What are you interested in? Video games, travel, poker, chess, anything? Pick a hobby and build a tool to help you have more fun in that hobby. Find someone else who finds the thing useful. Run with it until it is profitable or a failure. Move on to a new tool. Rinse repeat.
Ideas are the easy part. Consistently showing up to make your idea a profitable reality is the hard part.
Yeah probably fair, I think I implement less than 1 in my 100 ideas
I implement most but the same % success as launching one 😂
This comment was deleted 4 years ago.