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12 Comments

Are you bundling or unbundling?

For a long time it felt like the right thing to niche down and do one thing really well, now I'm seeing the trend and to be bundling up offerings as a business whilst unbundling on the niche that you are serving.

The goal here being to serve the niche really well with everything (or most of the things) that your customers need.

Personally, I'm sick to death of trying to think about how to glue various services together.

(What) are you bundling or unbundling?

h/t to @emmetgibney for the image 😇

  1. 2

    When it comes to reading I needed: a Read it later app, an RSS feed reader, my mailbox for newsletters, twitter threads bookmarks, ... it was adding friction to reading (where should I read?)
    So I'm building PocketFunnel.co to bundle all these tools together and have one single list.

  2. 2

    The right approach is to see what works for your business. Seeing a massive trend of bundling in productivity apps. No one wants a niche productivity app any more.

    1. 1

      If that is your experience I'd argue that the niche is probably not small enough :)
      People, universally, want to improve their productivity. Until the point where everyone has an individual software, supporting them with their very own needs.

      Then of course there is cost-value-ratio, but that's another story...

  3. 2

    i'm actually doing both, but, sequentially.

    unbundling a larger opportunity to eventually build a platform that will (re)bundle some of the larger industry pieces... eventually.

    it's a pendulum, not a destination.

  4. 2

    Surely indie hackers don't have an advantage when it comes to bundling.

    Just way too much on one's plate.

  5. 1

    I'm currently working on unbundling live chat integration. Have the chat run directly over email. This means there is no additional tool to learn + your not paying for all the extras provided by hubspot etc.

  6. 1

    I'm bundling, but only because my audience has feedback like...

    Personally, I'm sick to death of trying to think about how to glue various services together.

    It really all depends on your audience and the existing products that serve them versus a general rule or trend to follow.

  7. 1

    Love this concept!

  8. 1

    Ditto is unbundling Upwork -- removing the marketplace aspect, but keeping some elements of the project management and payment process (milestones, escrow functionality) -- and then doing it better (IMHO) and charging 10x less.

  9. 1

    We're unbundling from what a typical website platform offers, but bundling what such a platform would consider plugins/integrations.

    I'm really not sure bundling is a useful distinction on its own. Ultimately, every business begins by niching-down, then grows by either niching-up, bundling, or pivoting.

  10. 1

    I'm not sure if Yemi is really unbundling. "niching down" for sure - I think. Meaning I'm building a blogging platform for people with a specific skill-set.

    I may be bundling in the sense my free tier provides an indie hacker product (Plausible Analytics) as a feature of your blog; and my paid tier provides yet another indie hacker product (Mugshot Bot) as a feature for rich article link-sharing 🤷‍♂️

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