April was my first full month after quitting my job & going nomad with $0 MRR.

Hey, Drew from Flowful here.

At the end of March, I decided to quit my job as a software engineer in a London startup to go all in on indie hacking. I also went nomad at the same time, to try and fill as many stereotypes as possible.

In this post I figured I’d outline my thoughts going into it and where I am at now, both with the product I’m building and mentally. Hopefully this helps someone debating taking the plunge.

Quitting

Most people advise 3 years of runway, and to have some traction (preferably MRR) on your project before you quit. I had neither of those things. Instead, I have 2 years of runway which maintains my current lifestyle, and a project I am passionate about.

The main reason I have for quitting was the sheer desire to be back in a growth mindset again. Working on my own projects for some reason gives me huge motivation not only to learn how to build products, but also the world around me. It sounds strange (although if I am ever going to find people who feel the same way, it would be here) but when working a job, I can’t seem to stop it from consuming me. Even with work which doesn’t inspire me, I find myself living on a single track, each day becoming less and less likely to find out why something works the way it does, or what causes something to happen. It’s like all my curiosity is funnelled out and replaced by.. work.

So why didn’t I build my project in the evenings and weekends? Well, I did, for other projects which didn’t work out. I wouldn’t say that’s the reason they didn’t work, but I wanted to shake up the variables. Put myself into a new state of mind that may or may not effect the success of my endeavors.

So perhaps not the smartest or safest of moves. Feel free to call me young and nieve in the comments. You’re probably right. One thing I do know is that I am privileged to be able to even make this decision.

Mental space

So perhaps my financials and logic are not as sound as others would recommend, but I know for sure that just in this month, I am getting considerably more enjoyment out of the world again.

I felt confident before, and feel no less confident now, even after a month of fairly lackluster project progress (but ask me again in month 23 when I still have $0MRR). I still have no paying users, but I am okay with this as I have a small number of active free users and some clear next steps.

My ideas are certainly flowing much more freely now and it feels great to be so invested into something which I myself own and make the decisions for.

Maybe I’m still on a freedom high. I’ll check-in again next month.

My choice of project(s)

Flowful is certainly a passion project. It is not your typical ‘find a hard user need and solve it’ type product. I am again opening myself up to being called naieve about how the real world works here.

But I am going into building it with 2 things on my mind:

I love building it
I don’t have to keep building it if it doesn’t work

I’m not limiting myself to x startups in x months, but I’m not close minded enough to work on Flowful for the full 2 years of runway without traction either. I have given myself 3 months to guage if I can make this work, and if not, I’ll move on. It’s very true what people say about putting yourself in different situations to spawn ideas - there are multiple I have had in this month that I could look to validate and persue.

Maybe this is a place where I will fall down. I hear all too often of people falling in to the trap of building something no-one wants, or adding features but never shipping. All I can do is try and stick to the given 3 months. Flowful is currently operating pre-launch, but in open beta. I’ve been directly reaching out to people to solicit feedback and listen to user needs. So the ball is definitely rolling, but I need to be careful not to sit in this same position for too long.

If I could have done anything differently with this project so far, it’s to have spoken with users sooner.

Nomading

Hot topic. This past 6 weeks for me has been spent in Thailand, and yes, alot of the logic you hear about nomading certainly checks out. Getting more ideas from being in different scenarios, meeting like minded (and opposite minded) people, and living a much cheaper lifestyle that that of a big first world city are all big benefits.

It’s clearly not for everyone, but if you are on the fence about considering it, then try it. You likely don’t have much to lose. I can’t talk like an expert on this topic after just 6 weeks, but I guess I would say (and looking back over what I have written so far, I would also say it’s the theme of the post..) just give it a go. You don’t know until you try.

My personal experience has felt liberating. The only downside in my eyes has been the relative lack of meeting people on a similar IH path. Nomading has now hit the mainstream, and lots of nomads just hold regular western 9-5 jobs on a different time zone. Not a bad thing of course, but I did have visions of a bunch of IHers all hacking in a coworking space till late at night.

Building in public

I’m trying it. Haven’t got the hang of it. Seems like 90% of people doing it are bots spouting the same advice to one another and praising people for their ‘value’.

I’ll keep tweeting when I make something cool or learn something that should have been obvious to me. But man the theadbois on twitter are pretty unbearable.

Overcoming Fear

This past month, many situations have forced my hand in ways which I feel are changing me for the better.

If I don’t overcome the fear of sharing my product, I won’t make any progress.

If I don’t introduce myself to that person at the coworking space, I won’t talk to anyone today.

If I spend to much time worrying about everything that could go wrong, then nothing will go right.

Perhaps you could look at this as an irresponsible financial decision. But I’m growing again, and it feels good.

Hopefully this post is useful to people in whichever way they choose to read it. It could be that you think I’m too blaise and this confirms you don’t want to quit yet. Maybe this gives you inspiration to commit (although do not take this as financial advice). I’ve wrote it almost as a personal log to look back on myself at some point in the future, and it's ended up more like a blog post lol so thanks for sticking with it

Would be cool to hear some thoughts on my decision and logic, or if someone else has already done this then I'd love to hear how it went for you.

If you want to keep up with what I’m doing and are interested in music/code and generative stuff then you can follow me on twitter, like I said, I’m sort of building in public.