Are you doing a 12x12 challenge? You might be doing it wrong.
WHAT IS A "12X12 CHALLENGE"?
Pieter Levels (@levelsio) created the 12x12 challenge when he posted his "12 Startups in 12 Months" blog post (https://levels.io/12-startups-12-months/) in 2014. Since then a lot of indie hackers and wantrepreneurs (myself included) have copied him and had their own go at creating 12 projects within one year. Many of them (myself included) failed epically or lost motivation. But what is? What is this thing that so many indie makers attempt and how did Pieter Levels become so successful at it?
At its core it's nothing more than a shotgun approach to validating a potential business idea. The concept has its roots in Tim Ferris' book, "The 4-hour Work Week", where Ferris discusses validating a business with a fake landing page and a tiny Google ads budget. Pieter Levels ramped it up by deciding to test 12 of his lingering business ideas so he could earn money to help him travel and live a nomad lifestyle.
I think a lot of people that discuss and/or try a 12x12 challenge mistakenly think that the goal is to crank out 12 viable and profitable business in a year. This couldn't be further from the goal. In fact, Pieter Levels has said many times that not only was he trying to just validate an idea, and not only was he trying to just get out the most simple thing he could to validate that idea, but he didn't even finish his 12x12 when he abandoned it to double down on nomadlist.com (https://nomadlist.com/). Also, a lot of people fail to understand that it took Pieter Levels more than 70 attempts to get to where he is today - not 12 - and certainly more than 12 months.
So if a 12x12 Challenge isn't "build 12 profitable startups in 12 months", what is it?
FAIL FAST, FAIL OFTEN - THIS IS A NUMBERS GAME
Where I think most people fail in their 12x12 approach is their belief that each project is supposed to be some epic startup that needs months of building but crammed into 4 weeks. And that they have to complete 12 projects.
The primary point of a 12x12 challenge is to test ideas and see if they gain traction (ie are valid) as quickly as possible. You aren't meant to build out a full functioning final product for the world to use. You should be focusing on building the smallest possible thing that functions just well enough to test a hypothesis (ie Most Viable Product , MVP). You throw this "test" into the wild, show it to some potential users and see if they will use it and if others begin finding it. If you gain traction, you devote more time and focus to this, if not you leave it alone (maybe it will organically grow and you can come back to it) and move on to the next hypothesis/project.
It's a fail fast, fail often game. The chances are that your first idea will NOT be successful. But it COULD be, so you devote your focus on this idea and forget the other 11. That being said, it probably won't be so you continue to train your launching muscle as Pieter Levels describes it - The more you launch, the better you get at it.
Remember, 12x12 is simply a numbers game. It could just as easily be called "shotgun approach to building a startup" or "As many shots as it takes in as much time as it takes" but Pieter Levels thought (correctly) that the blog post "12 startups in 12 months" was catchier and would draw more views. So that's what we have now.
As a numbers game, you have to realize your chance of successfully building a profitable startup that earns you 6-figure income is probably 1 in 100 - for Levels, I think it is 1 in 35. That being said, we don't know which shot will be the golden goose: Will it be shot #1, #45, #100, #1000? The goal of a 12x12 challenge is to get all of our ideas out there so we find that 1 as quickly as possible. Not so we arbitrarily build 12 things to "learn". As we fail, we will learn, but that is not the primary goal - it is a beneficial side effect.
For anyone who hasn't actually watched/listened to Pieter Levels, both here on IH AND all his youtube and other podcast appearances, I would strongly recommend doing so. He gives great advice and insight into why he did the 12x12 and how long it took him to build a successful startup. Spoiler: it wasn't 12 months and it wasn't his 7th project.
Also, I would highly recommend listening to @csallen presentations for Micro Conf or his podcast on YCombinator. He also gives great advice on why trying more projects and failing fast are solid attempts at finding success.
FOCUS AND CONSISTENCY - DON'T DIE
Some indie hackers believe the 12x12 Challenge means you are setting yourself up for failure. And while that is partly accurate: You want to burn through your bad ideas so you can focus on the good ones. You want to maintain focus and consistency throughout this process. This is key. FOCUS IS KING.
Whether you decide to build a single epic project or do your own 12x12 challenge, once you lose focus and burn out it is VERY difficult to get going again and you will beat yourself up for not maintaining that focus and finishing your project in a timely fashion. I have done this several times.
This is the whole point (in my understanding and opinion) of a 12x12 challenge: maintaining focus, remaining consistanr, and most importantly not dying - Indie Hackers never say 'die'.
Going back to my numbers game comment: You don't know which idea is going to be a winner. You don't even know if the sector you're targeting is going to be the one that you should focus on.
Building and putting out as many projects, and therefore testing as many hypotheses, as you can and as quickly as you can, will allow you to confirm whether you are on the right path or not. If you are, double down and try to cycle through multiple projects in the same sector as you can until you find one (or multiple) that gain even more traction.
If you can not gain traction with a project quickly it probably means you are on the wrong track so you need to pivot or move on.
START WITH A SHOTGUN, PIVOT TO A RIFLE
This is why I think Pieter Levels was so successful with his 12x12. He built random stuff he thought he could profit on: a Youtube analytics dashboard, physical Gif flipbooks, money penalty focused goal trackers, and a number of other projects before building an excel spreadsheet of cheap places in the world with good wifi to live. He was all over the place until he gain traction with an excel spreadsheet focusing on warm places to live with good wifi.
This random excel spreadsheet gained a LOAD of traffic and traction. He'd found a winner so he doubled down and built NomadList. Because he realized the Nomad community was a growing and profitable niche, he doubled down even more and built RemoteOk - a remote jobs board. Then he built a mapping tool for nomad travelers, then recently Rebase to help nomads immigrate to Portugal.
There is a pattern here which I think a lot of people miss at first glance: Launch as many things as you can until you find something that people want. If this thing is in a profitable niche build more things this niche community wants.
I suppose you could tweak the 12x12 and target 12 communities to build for, then build projects for each until 1. you find the community that is willing to buy from you and then 2. building the thing(s) they want to buy from you. But either way, I still think the shotgun approach of "build all the things as small as possible and as quickly as possible and move on when they fail" is the best bet for a lot of us who realize success is a numbers game.
Success is fr a numbers game
+1 to all of your points. I love your focus on traction, shotgun analogy, and testing different communities. I would add that "Startups" is probably the word that throws people off. These aren't really startups, but a series of experiments to test traction.
I'm not a fan of the term startup as I feel it mostly describes larger teams and VC funding. The point is exponential growth. For me, 12 Startups in 12 Months is a tool for finding a sustainable small business.
100% on the term "startup". It is a misnomer in this situation. The only reason Pieter Levels used it in his original blog post was that it sounded better than "projects' and he thought (correctly) that it would draw more eyeballs to it.
Sadly now, however, everyone who thinks of a 12x12 Challenge thinks every idea has to be a unicorn startup in its own right. They (incorrectly) think a 'startup' can't possibly be MVP'd and tested in the wild within 4 weeks. They (incorrectly) think a 'startup' can't gain traction in 4 weeks.
Pieter Levels proved this shotgun approach is possible and if he can do it profiably so can many of us.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
Again, I think you, like many others, still fails to see the fundamental point of the 12x12 Challenge. It is NOT to build a successful, profitable Unicorn (or smaller) business in 4 weeks. That is next to impossible. It IS to come up with an idea, build the tiniest useful MVP of that idea, get it in front of potential users, and see if anyone gives a shit about it.
It is only about VALIDATION. You are trying to validate your idea. If you can't get users to care about your idea in 4 weeks, it is likely that they are not going to care about it in 4 years. Might they? Sure. But might you have a better idea that you can make profitable much quicker than 4 years (or whatever timeframe)? Yes. This is the idea you are striving to get to.
Absolutely most (all?) "businesses take way longer than 4 weeks to find their feet, get users, refine the product based on feedback and ultimately, maybe get growth. It can take years." No one - no rational person - is arguing any of this. Those that are, might also have a misunderstanding of the 12x12 Challenge.
Looking at Pieter Levels (as he is the "inventor" of the 12x12 Challenge), even he didn't have wildly profitable success with his projects during his '12 Startups in 12 Months' exercise. But by the time he got to NomadList, he saw his excel spreadsheet was more popular than any of his other projects combined. He knew he'd hit on something 'special'. So instead of continuing on with the 12x12 he made the decision to focus energy on NomadList.
It took him months before he was making any money on it. It took years before he was making 6 figure monthly profit. It was a 10-year "overnight success" that he recognized because he saw how differently it had gained traction than his earlier projects.
Could Pieter have continued working on Tubelytics or Play My Inbox or GifBook or Go F*cking Do IT or any number of his 70+ failed projects? Absolutely. And maybe given the focus and dedication, one of those others could have been just as profitable. But they weren't as good of ideas as NomadList. And Pieter's 12x12 Challenge helped him 1. recognize when he was working on losers, and (more importantly) 2. How to recognize a potential winner.
Remember: without something to compare it to, ALL of our personal ideas seem like profitable winners. I have my own list of 50+ ideas, all of which I confidently think could make me 6-figures per year. So we are tempted to focus all our time and efforts on a doomed loser without ever giving anything else a shot. Even though something else we could build would be more successful. But without the comparison of dropping a loser, we are going to know what a winner looks or feels like and when we should objectively pivot and focus on that winner.
The 12x12Challenge forces us to burn through our ideas and drop the losers to get to a potential winner. As I said in my original post: Your first project might that winner. If it is you'll know immediately because you will validate it in the wild and users will flock to it without much effort. But it might take until attempt 5, or 10 or 50 or 100. And if it does, but you never kill off your first baby, you will struggle more than you have to, you might give up too soon, and you may never know success.
"Don't be afraid to kill your babies" is a quote Pieter Levels uses when talking about building lots of stuff and dropping the duds. If it worked for one guy, it can work for the rest of us.
But, hey, this is just one approach given by a successful Indie Hacker. Maybe your way will work better, and no one here is going to tell you not to use your way. In the end, whatever works for each of us is the path we need to follow.