From AR/VR to dropshipping: two side projects affected by timing and politics
After @bentossell's story, today we're going to showcase @tobyallen's story. He has founded many projects throughout his career, but there are two that gave him lots of valuable lessons.
We're talking about RealityHunt and "I Voted Remain".
How did RealityHunt start?
Looking for a way to reproduce Product Hunt for the AR and VR space.
The idea was to create a platform to discover different tools and apps in this space. He built it with a full code solution that cloned Product Hunt.
How did it start growing?
Reaching out to users. Those users had to add different types of projects and resources to the website and build-out that community space. It was a challenge because the user management and upvoting system weren't done properly.
How did he realize it wasn’t going in the right direction?
Lack of growth and a low number of visits.
Bad timing was also key. He still thinks the problem is present today.
The community in the space of AR/VR was lower than what's needed to create a community like Product Hunt.
Some numbers about revenue and expenses:
Didn’t achieve any revenue and he invested around 1,000/2,000€ into that project, mostly to build the platform. He’ll come back to it because he thinks the idea is fine but the execution was poor.
What would he do differently?
🍂Build it using no-code tools like Webflow & Integromat
🍂Build the list of people that are interested in the project to validate the hypothesis first.
🍂Build a landing page stating that he's going to build this and if you're interested sign-up. When you hit a certain KPI, which could be 100 users or 50 signups, that becomes the trigger to fully build it.
Talking about “I Voted Remain”, how did it start?
He started selling a T-shirt that said "I had voted Remain", but didn't want to have any stock.
Built it with Shopify but found it too $$$. He tried PrestaShop and was way too complicated. Customizing it was such a time suck.
How did it start growing?
Advertising on AdWords and Facebook Ads. There was a huge challenge because advertising was seen as political. It was a nightmare.
How did he realize it wasn’t going in the right direction?
The driving KPI was sales. As Brexit became more and more prominent, the will of someone buying a T-shirt saying "I had voted Remain" was slowing down quite fast.
What made him shut it down?
A low number of sales and lots of roadblocks in terms of advertising for politics. You had to pay a lot in terms of CPC and CPM.
Some numbers about revenue and expenses:
Sold 10 T-shirts for 20£. In terms of profit, he made about 70£. Not worth the amount of effort it was needed in terms of marketing. The advertising costs would massively outweigh any benefit that you would make out of that project.
What would he do differently?
🍂Won't do a dropshipping business in anything political. Keep going niche because it means you have a more defined audience.
🍂Go a lot heavier on marketing, in terms of building out a community by email and automating a lot of processes.
Advice for fellow indie hackers?
🍂Build processes that simplify your way of working. When he has a new project, he just clicks on one button, and a Notion template for that project is set up. Toby has all his finance structure, key development links, and everything already prepared.
🍂Build a simple landing page and test out your idea on paper before you commit to building it. That will save a lot of time.
🍂Don't be afraid to get feedback. Talk to users and figure out what they want instead of what you have in your head. It's about what the customer wants.
Favorite startup resources?
🍂Twitter. Not for the platform itself, but for the community built around. Once you curate your feed, you'll get a lot of value.
🍂Slack groups. If you are going to push or test an idea, these audiences will reply because they're passionate already.
🍂Get as many books as you can through Audible. It works for him, but some people need to have physical books, other people will just watch videos. Find whatever you need to learn, and then double down on that.
🍂Syntax FM is really good for web development.
🍂The Indie Hackers podcast and @csallen are top-notch.
🍂A good way of finding information that you need at that moment is to use Spotify and type in into the podcast section: "Webflow", "dropshipping", "getting acquired", "hiring people", or "finding a co-founder". You'll end up with a ton of episodes of different podcasts that will be centered on that topic. The moment you tap, you'll be able to jump from one podcast to another and the learning will accelerate fast.
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