Frameworks for Indie Hacker SaaS Products
Hi Indie Hackers,
When it comes to starting a new SaaS product, I often think too much about which frameworks to use.
After several discussions with some friends who have built revenue-generating startups, the common advice seems to be going with what you know already so that you can build and test the product quickly, since customers don't care what you're using.
With that in mind, I'm curious as to what the Indie Hacker community thinks about this advice. As always, I appreciate your feedback & stories about what you did for your business and SaaS products.
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For building products I know I’ll ship to users, I stick to what I know. However, I love learning. So when I am tinkering and building “toys”, I will often use something new.
This is my answer too, so I didn't vote. If I'm shipping to try to make a product and make money ASAP then stick with what I know. If not, then I'm constantly trying to learn.
Oh, that's a good idea. Tinker with "toy" projects to learn new tools and test out new processes/workflows that could then be adopted for more "serious" projects in the future!
Yep. You need to be able to debug production code quickly.
A new framework may take you a week to figure out an obscure issue that is learnt through experience. Keep that out of money makers.
Tried a few times to go the new tech route and abandoned and rebuilt every time, won't make that mistake again.
Learn and use the greatest tools, not necessarily the latest.
Definitely don't stay stuck in one ecosystem without even understanding the alternatives. Doing that is how you become a 0.1x dev.
Stick with what you know providing it's fit for purpose and isn't going to provide a short-term win at the expense of long-term problems.
For example – say you're comfortable with jQuery, this may enable you to hack together an early prototype but will eventually will become unmanageable nightmare as your application grows.
Learning new tools isn't always a bad thing if it will ultimately make life easier and speed up development in the long-run.
Yeah, I often go into a project considering the technical debt that I'm willing to incur upfront as the cost of quickly testing an MVP.
16 - 0 on votes at time of writing this.
Think the answer is clearer than a US election.
Hahaha, we've got quite the landslide here.
If you're an engineer you're most likely to get derailed in your project by focusing too much on engineering and not enough on product/sales/marketing/etc
Definitely guilty of this! Getting better though by focusing on just shipping and getting feedback as soon as possible.
I've gone through both routes, and I wouldn't again use a framework I don't know (unless I'm not able to validate without it, which I think is very rare).
Remember that your customers don't care about your tech stack. They only care about their problems.
Thanks for sharing your experience, @farez!
By "validate" do you mean its ability to help you build a viable MVP?
Yes, I've been going with what I know for the past few months, and I've been much more productive than in the past. I used to wasted too much time trying to learn the new shiny frameworks instead of building the MVP.
Hi @pcheung. By "validate" I mean proving that people want and will pay for what I'm building. Yes, usually that's an MVP.
Glad to see you're making good progress using what you already know :)
Ah, got it. Thank you again for sharing your experience, @farez!
You're very welcome!