Building my own startup, freelancing on the side to cover bills - looking for advice
Hi everyone š
I want to share my situation honestly and ask for some advice.
Iām a developer working on my own startup idea. I like building real products, thinking in MVP scope, and shipping things fast. That part I enjoy a lot.
At the same time, I still need to be realistic about money. The job market is tough right now, and I canāt just ignore finances while working on my own product.
Because of that, I decided to freelance on the side, but in a more productized way, not hourly work.
What I want to focus on:
- helping non-technical founders or small teams
- building or upgrading SaaS MVPs
- fixed scope, fixed price
- short timelines (around 10ā14 days)
- web apps only (Next.js frontend, .NET or Node backend)
Iām not trying to build a big agency. I just want a small setup that:
- brings some steady money
- keeps me close to real startup problems
- and still leaves time for my own startup
What Iām struggling with right now is finding the first clients, not building the product.
So I wanted to ask:
- Where would you look today for your first MVP clients?
- What worked for you early on?
- Is Indie Hackers a good place for this, or should I focus somewhere else?
Happy to learn from your experience, and also help where I can.
Thanks a lot š
E moj Milane, ja bi ti bolje savjetovao da imaÅ” full-time posao a ovaj startup da radiÅ” sa strane. Velika je vjerojatnost da startup neÄe uspjet, to je jednostavno tako. Bolje da imaÅ” sigurne prihode novca pa da možeÅ” normalno živjet, a ovo startup sa strane lagano raditi.
Velika je vjerojatnost da ÄeÅ” za par mjeseci odustati ili naÄi neÅ”to novo ili bolje
A Å”to se tiÄe klijenata. To moraÅ” tražiti tamo gdje se tvoji klijenti okupljaju. Koliko sam skužio ti želiÅ” pomoÄi drugim ljudima koji pokreÄu startup? Ovdje ih ima hrpa, Reddit isto, ovdje možda https://thehiveindex.com
I feel like you want to solve real problems for people and it's cool that you are thinking about solving problems first. If you check my profile you'd see an opensource tool I built that uses AI to analyze real pain points of users based on stackexchange data. You can compare your features and and ideas with the validated saas idea and the metrics/sources that were used to validate them.
below is an example of a validated saas idea with indepth analysis;
https://roipad.com/product_trends/trends/idea-detail.php?id=288&slug=navigating-ethical-dilemmas-in-leadership-and-policy-disagreement
Hi there, your post resonates because I also enjoy creating products but basically hate per-hour work. As far as I can see, the process of getting your first clients is very straightforward: you post and comment on Reddit, and they come. I'm now working part-time as an AI trainer (still hate it lol). You can find this type of work here https://aitrainer.jobs
Good luck with finding clients!
No they won't! Reddit itself is anti-promotional. Getting leads ain't that simple mate.