From Job Loss to First Paying Customer: My Journey as an Indie Hacker in Just One Week.
As an aspiring indie hacker, I always knew that starting my own business was a risk, but I never anticipated that my journey would begin with a job loss. When it happened, I saw it as an opportunity to finally pursue my dream and take a chance on myself.
Here's how I went from a Job loss to my first paying customer just with free tools.
Idea:
When I was building my side project, I see a lot of founders, Indiehackers are struggling with marketing and they got some success with directories. But, not all of them used it correctly. One day, in a Twitter comment I see a lot of people asking for directories and marketplaces to promote their startups. That's how I got the idea of creating a database of premium directories to launch, promote and sell software products.
Why I built it?
At the beginning of this month, I lost my job at an early-stage startup. At that time I got no money to build my main project (https://www.stackai.co/) and also no money to run a life. So I decided to build a mini-project to fund my main project and also to get some money for living until I get another job. That's why I built it and launched it on product hunt today.
How did I build it with NO money?
I spent $0 on this, even if I want to I cannot.
This is my tech stack:
Database - Airtable free trial (You'll get $10 credits if you invite someone to airtable, I invited 2 of my friends and paid for an upgrade)
Dashboard - Built the user guide, How-to's on Google sheet (It was simple and efficient)
Design - Canva (Pitch decks, Images, GIF)
Landing page - Asked a programming friend to build me a landing page and I'll help him with marketing his product.
Github - free version
Supabase - free version
Domain - I didn't even have money to buy a new domain, so connected this one on a sub-domain with my previous side project.
Payment - Lemon squeezy (Incredible support team)
Results so far?
- 90 Upvotes
- 35 comments
- 1 paying customer
If you find this content helpful, Please support my product hunt launch here
Link: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/directoryhq
Make me get into the Top 5, I'll share my marketing strategy in a detailed post.
Thank you, everyone!!
