From Persistence to Payoff: How ProductHunt Brought an Unexpected Client
Hi Indie Hackers! 👋
My name is Nikolai, and I am a full-time Lead iOS Engineer at Hypori.
A Little About Me
I've been an iOS Engineer for over 8 years, constantly learning and enhancing my knowledge and skills, which has significantly improved my performance.
At my day job, we occasionally have performance reviews. My manager compiles a list of developers with their performance scores, which include various data points like the number of completed stories and their timeliness. Before this, I never compared myself to my peers; I just focused on doing my job. But when my manager showed me the spreadsheet, I was at the top of the list. While my peers had scores around 50 points, I had 148 points!
My exceptional performance led to my promotion from Senior Engineer to Lead role after just six months of working there. However, I started thinking: my performance is three times that of my teammates, but my salary isn’t three times higher. Around this time, I stumbled upon DesignJoy, which inspired me to launch my own productized iOS dev agency.
Launching SwiftAppLab
Without procrastination, in December 2023, I started building my landing page in Webflow and launched my iOS dev agency, SwiftAppLab, on Product Hunt! I was so excited and thought a wave of clients would pour in. But I got zero clients from the initial Product Hunt launch.
In the next six months, I tried a few things:
- Cold emails via Instantly
- Facebook ads
- LinkedIn posts and networking
All these efforts took a lot of my valuable time and some money but brought ZERO clients again!
I started feeling disappointed over time. But the thought that I had no choice but to move forward motivated me. Another consideration that drives me is having six children. This is a huge life driver for me!
The Breakthrough
Then, in mid-June, one morning, I looked at my phone and saw an email from Breeew that my first client had bought the MVP Launch plan!
Wow... I was so excited and could not believe this happened.
I reached out to the client, and we started discussing the MVP details. When I asked how they found SwiftAppLab, they replied that they had bookmarked SwiftAppLab's website six months ago during my Product Hunt launch. I was amazed; I didn't expect to get clients from something I had done a while ago and forgotten about.
The Moral of the Story
Never think that those small steps you take now are useless; they may pay off later when you least expect them. As Jigoro Kano said, "If there is effort, there is always accomplishment!"
Thank you for reading my journey, and I hope it inspires you to keep pushing forward, no matter how tough it gets.
