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any good resources, motivation for starters?

Hi Indie hackers,

I am new here and have been reading the posts and listening to the radio alot and finally started developing my first saas product.

I am starting to develop my first product its not 100% unique so I will try to find some USPs.

Are there any good resources, motivation for starters?

  1. I started frontend development in Reactjs
  2. Backend will in Nodejs and AWS serverless
  3. Database i will use DynamoDB for now.

I got a tip yesterday that i should release a MVP, and not keep waiting...please end up waiting forever and get into other things and the project is left mid way.

Any advise suggestions, links would be highly appreciated guys.

Thanks :))

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    1. Build an audience
    2. Validate an idea or see if it’s already validated for you
      —- see if you can get anyone to pay for it without having anything in place ——
    3. Build a product that delivers some value
    4. Pitch product to your audience
    5. Get feedback, make incremental improvements
    6. Keep communication open and continue talking to customers, keep making their life easier.
    7. Learn a million ways to grow your product. There is so much info out there and here on just about everything you want to know.

    Good luck! 🚀

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      All in there, added to my stickies :D

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      Loved it.

      I have started development already and now started to differentiate my product from competitors and asking people how and why would they use my product ( if they would)

      Also trying to quickly build a landing page right now.

      Thanks Mate @Unity

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    Have you sold any products or services to customers in the past? Saas is an amazing revenue generator but is generally recognized as the hardest type of business for sales. If you are a brand new founder, it’s usually recommended to develop your skills by selling a couple single payment products first (ie: wordpress plugins, site widgets, etc). Google “stair stepping by Rob Walling”.
    Either way I would recommend limiting the scope of your mvp as much as possible and releasing to see if people connect with it.

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      I have never sold anything.. i am like a 21 year old and I have sold myself to clients lol- to offer my design and development services. Been doing this freelancing/ remote work from 7 years now.

      That's it:)

      I really need to learn selling @Gobey any good tutorials on internet or like a step by step guide?

      What are you building mate?

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        I’d say selling yourself as a freelancer is extremely relevant experience! I’ve been a contractor at agencies doing proof of concept apps for very big name tech clients.

        My last foray into indie hacking was much too technically complicated to prove quickly and not fun to dev so I gave up. This time I have it narrowed down to a few ideas focusing on the quickest marketable product. I figure going through the whole process on a micro product may lead to less revenue but a ton of learning.

        I just finished the “Start small, stay small” audiobook also from Rob Walling, which was a great 101 to bootstrap startups.

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          Thats great! Is there any place where we could chat? skype/discord/linkedIn/facebook?

          Please share :)

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    @Youtube: The video of startupfood are insane, I'm french so I appreciate the content of their french videos but they have a ton of video in english that can help and motivate you.

    What they recommend now is to sell products => learn from users what they really want => build the product they want (MVP) => enhance it.

    This way, you won't lose 6 months building a MVP and get exhausted by the end without the faith to market it. Start by market a product, build it if it works. As known : "Fake it until you make it".

    May the force be with you :p

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      Okay I started building a product already, I will release a landing page in a day or two- Just started designing it.

      I Love the last line you said - "Fake it until you make it". I think I will start by putting a landing page and create a MVP in like 3 weeks ( along with university and other job)

      What are you building buddy?

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        MVP's are pretty risky as most people understand "minimum" before "viable" but if your mvp is good enough and you find people interested in, there's no way to fail ^^

        My last project is networkup.io, a free entrepreneur networking platform :D Took me 2 months to build it but this can be modified to work in many different project (looking for game partners, sport partners, and many more) so this is never gonna be a loss :D

        If you wanna post your project once you have a website, do not hesitate, I will appreciate a lot ^^

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          Awesome!! Networkup.io seems professional. How have you put the revenue model?

          Also, are you working on more projects right now?

          I will post that. My coming soon page is half-way mate- just started working yesterday.

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            I dont have revenue model at this moment, I'm still testing the product idea so I dont want to spend energy building useless solution :P

            I've applied to adsense as It's pretty easy to use but getting money is not a rush for me.

            I'm currently thinking about a project to encourage bio local food, trade instead of buy, reduce gas and eventually make the planet more green :P But just at stage -1 :D

            GL on your project :D Keep me updated ^^

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    I agree with all the advice about focusing on your MVP, releasing it and listening very carefully to customer feedback. But since I am a solo founder with a strong technical bias and 25+ years of experience, I'll offer some tech advice, as well: do not make life difficult for yourself. I do not know what your reasons were for picking DynamoDB, but that is not an easy data store to work with, and there are many pitfalls on the way. I'd start with simpler technology, especially on the database front. Pick a document database with transactions, that will make your life much, much easier.

    As for nodejs, I would not base anything on it, but if you are really proficient in JavaScript, then I guess it can be made to somewhat work.

    AWS "serverless" (I hate that word, it's a misnomer) also makes your life unnecessarily difficult.

    I'd suggest not worrying about "scaling". Lots of discussions about "does it scale" on HN from people who don't have to run a business. I started my SaaS on a single physical server and believe me, a single modern computer goes a really long way unless you do something silly.

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