Confession: I was a tinkerer
I've been on IH since 2017, but haven't posted for a while. I used to post a lot about every "startup" I created, but none had the kind of traction I was hoping for and usually after a few months of wasting money on servers, I killed them. I think it was part experimentation, part wanting to learn new skills (which only benefited my employer and maybe my salary) and part habit. I tended to create an app, get an email list, launch on Product Hunt and wait for all the users and money to roll in and I did this over and over and over again. I was caught in this negative loop and anytime I felt like I wasn't getting the traction I wanted, I got excited about something else and started something new.
I came to this realization last year when I left GitLab, during a short meeting I had with a career coach. I really wanted some outside perspective to help me figure out what was next. When I introduced who I was, I told her all the things I'd launched in the past and she said, "Oh, you're a tinkerer!", in a totally light-hearted way. She didn't realize it, but that simple statement changed everything. I couldn't be more grateful for someone giving me a totally unbiased perspective of who I was.
In my mind, a tinkerer is someone who likes to experiment and never really follows through. Like taking apart a watch, putting it back together, then finding the next thing to take apart and put back together. You never really get anywhere, you just learn how to take shit apart and put it back together. Tinkerer's like to learn new skills to enhance their knowledge but they never really build anything meaningful long-term. At that very moment I realized I had to change because part of me DID want to build something meaningful and I knew I couldn't be a "tinkerer" if I wanted to do that. Building a startup takes time, sometimes a decade, and in a short 30 minute intro session, I realized who I'd been for the last 7 years. All this time, I never gave my projects a chance, I never saw them through. I got discouraged when I didn't become facebook and moved on. Frankly, I felt embarrassed.
Whether it's the "build fast, break things" mentality, or communities like IH where it's fun to post about your launches, but less so about your learnings, or people like Peter Levels who launches hundreds of products to have only a few hit... I got in this idea > build > launch negative loop and I never came out. After this realization, I knew I never wanted to do that again and that anything I built, I would see through and actually give them a chance.
If I had any advice for people trying to create a startup in their spare time, I would tell them to see it through. Don't give up so soon, give yourself a few years. Some projects make sense to give up sooner than later (like when we built a plugin for Sketch, who is dying or already dead), but let things marinate a bit, and if anything, just pivot. Ask yourself the question, "If I could do anything for the rest of my life and money didn't matter, what would it be?". Your next project should be part of that answer.
If you're interested in learning what my "permanent" startup is, you can check it out here and read the story on how I came up with the concept: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/distro-mfg.
Happy to have more discussion or answer questions or provide advice. Thanks for reading!
Similar boat, my comfort zone is coding, so I tend to stay there, building indefinitely instead of getting feedback from others. As a developer, I also tend to over-automate everything. I often try to build out a solution without fully understanding the problem, that means asking others in the same niche how they perceive the problem rather than just focusing on how I perceive it.
It’s so easy to hit a wall and get caught in a loop. Thanks for sharing!
I can relate to this big time! For me it's always about the technological challenge to find out how something works on the inside. To see if I can build something which I don't know how to do at this moment in time. If I do find a viable technological solution I lose interest. That's also the point where I need to start talking to customers. Which is out of my comfort zone. Result: another dead side project.
Since I really want to build something useful, how about we bundle forces? We create a tiny (closed if you like) community of tinkerers and dreamers that want to build something. So we keep each other accountable and help each other to stick to the original idea. Anybody in for this?
Sorry but I don’t have time for a new project 😉
I love the idea of a permanent startup. I believe we all start as tinkerers until we flip the switch and shift gears. Some people are able to do it on their own, yet others are pushed into it by life events. Tinkering is important, ultimately it is the building blocks in the foundation of a strong building.
Absolutely. Tinkering is how I learned to code as a designer, the drive to not only design what I was building, but to eventually build the whole thing. It was always my portfolio, side projects helped me get high paying jobs as a designer. It definitely ups your skill set but eventually you’re just in a hamster wheel.
This is often happen to developer as we tend to like doing coding and not selling. The main reason for this is selling and marketing have no real time outcome.
If we code we know what went well and how amazing of a job we have done. Marketing in the other hand is harder to track how good your work is.
This lead to us developer being "busywork". We keep doing coding and whenever we start facing difficulty in our product, it is easier for us to make new stuff rather than pushing the marketing etc.
Essentially making stuff become our comfort zone and we tend to stay in our comfort zone.
That's why when we are being busy it is important to check are we just procrastinating and avoiding the real work ? Here some article about how to check and what is busywork : Why being busy is waste of time
Great points, but selling and marketing does have outcomes: customers. Which allows us to keep working and building, but on the same project, not something new. As founders we have to do everything if we really want to build something meaningful, or figure out how to partner with someone to do the stuff we suck at. Thanks for sharing!
I see you, friend! And MAN do I resemble that remark. 👆👆
I’m recently trying again. Time will tell if I’ve shaken the tinkerer habit. Good luck to you and thank you for putting a little vulnerability out there!!
I appreciate that. Glad it resonates, just hoping I can share some perspective like she did with me!
really nice post.
I love tinkering as well, I noticed that. Currently writing a platform that allows to launch SaaS within days (change frontend text, some backend functions, done, fail? -> next). Your post puts things in perspective thanks
Glad you found it useful! Thanks for sharing.
I made this same realization a while back. I have been focusing on one startup for a while now, but I still have projects to tinker with. However, even for them I prefer to take them more seriously than I used to and try to nurture them. I don’t think it needs to be just one, but having a manageable number of products is key. I also find it helps to share technologies.
Some people can do it, some people can’t. And I get it, it’s a numbers game in the end, but people should let conviction guide them and focus on one project, the one they’d be happy to do forever. At that point the only way to fail is to quit.
I guess I am a tinkerer as well, it does get really hard when things are not going in my way, but I think the hardest part is to know when to stop and try something new. Since the other side of the coin is randomness and luck in the nature of business, how do I know if I am in the wrong market if I don't try something different?
Very true and for me, that’s what kept pulling me away from my last project, thinking my newer idea had greater potential or the market was bigger. But that was part of that negative loop, where the new thing was always the shiny new car but if I just took care of the one I had, it eventually becomes a classic.
Frequently I find myself in a trap of looking for a "silver bullet". "It must be easy", "it must be fun". "If it's not fun, I haven't found the right tools/the right system". There's truth to that mindset, as if it's not fun, you won't stick for the long term. But, on the other hand, there are times where you just need to push through for it to become fun later on. Balance is important.
Love that. Thanks for sharing!
This is such an interesting read, when put in that perspective i guess i am an thinkerer. Since i am not a techie, i keep evaluating idea form business perspective and most of the time it ends up on my "to be evaluated list" and forgotten
Nothing is ever big enough, nothing ever has enough potential. We always want to think bigger, but sometimes that prevents us from doing anything at all.