From the top. I'm going around in circles and could use some advice.
Hi all!
I'm a developer and I like building things. Over the years I've built a heap of MVPs for various ideas, but it's only recently that I've started trying to get into marketing seriously. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm going to ramble a bit here so bear with me.
A couple of these MVPs have found a small amount of paid commercial use, so logically they'd be the first place to start. So far I've made money off a network screen sharing tool, an audio loopback scraper, a countdown timetable display, and a horrible pong clone (ironically the best earner - http://www.pnoggame.com/ ).
None of these are the traditional SaaS and almost all of them live on the desktop. None of these seem like things that would scale to a large market, but given a project that has been validated with sales, they should be the first things to explore, right? I have other ideas and MVPs that feel more important, but which haven't actually proven themselves. Not sure whether they're a waste of effort.
Is the modest amount of success these projects have had a complete red herring? Screen sharing and digital signage seem like extremely crowded markets, and the other two that I've monetized seem like they wouldn't scale.
Many initial ideas don't seem obviously scaleable. It's only in hindishht that we see the potential. For example, making a BASIC interpreter or DIY computer kits in the 70s, running an online book store in the 90s, or a Myspace clone for Harvard students are not obvious ways to gain massive success but all of these things have turned into multibillion dollar businesses. Now of course, we are indie hackers, and we don't need to worry about that. But the point stands: it is not always obvious what the potential of your current product is when cast in a different light, or seen 10 years in the future. If you have people using it, then there's something there. Additionaly, the major advantage of an indie hacker is your ability to quickly change things in response to externalities(the famous "pivot"). So regardless of how unscalable your initial idea seems, if you take advantage of your ability as an indie hacker to dramatically transform your product in response to the market, it probably will turn into something else entirely, which may be very scaleable.
Disclaimer: I have not built a profitable business myself, so take my two cents with a grain of salt.
Hi Yoshiki! Rare to see a startup type from Japan -- I hear it's a pretty rough environment for starting small businesses. Super impressive that you're pushing through that :D
It's not unreasonable to suggest that it's worth exploring ideas to see where they go. I think you do need to carefully set up a feedback loop from customers and users instead of just iterating on your own ideas. But yeah, there's no way to know which way something will lead.
Hi Lewis,
I work remotely and am not really starting a business here. But with that said it's not that rough of an environment. The domestic Japanese market here is very mobile and app friendly, I've found people don't have as much app-fatigue here as in the US, and are quite willing to try new things out. The few VCs I've interacted with seem to be much more willing to talk to you with just a cold intro compared to the valley, since there's a lack of entrepreneurs in general. I've heard B2B sales here can be very lucrative as well. The crazy high density of people and real-estate in Tokyo and other unique properties of the nation also offer different opportunities for starting and marketing businesses than you can get in the states. Tourism is also very active right now and there's plenty of startups and businesses targeting it. These are some of the few advantages of starting a business in Japan right now, and patio11 on twitter has many more.
And yeah the feedback loop is critical. I am still working on getting that going myself, but have found a lot of good guidance in Getting Real by Basecamp on how to get that set up. Good luck on your journey and I hope to see more news of your progress here!
Thanks Yoshiki! I'll be sure to keep up to date :)
Good luck with your own venture!
Part of the answer to this question is going to depend on the products that you are thinking about building and how confident you are in their ability to garner a return vs your live products.
However, getting that first customer is often one of the largest hurdles, and it's almost always easier to expand existing products to solve adjacent problems.
I would advise talking to the customers of your existing products and figuring out a.) why they use your product, and b.) what other problems they have.
What up Lewis! That pong game is extremely (a) difficult (b) frustrating & (c) fun. Nice work. Kudos on putting things out into the world.
I don't know anything about selling/marketing games but can speak to building & selling SaaS.
Hopefully, one of these late-night thoughts will help:
What are your goals? I'm assuming your goals are beyond building something and selling it for $... because you crushed that goal 💪. Figure out what your purpose/goal is before going down this long, difficult road.
You probably know in your gut whether these tools are worth putting more risk in to or not. This may be hard for some to grasp but it's actually not hard to build something, get users, and drive some paying customers. What's hard is finding product-market fit. (AKA: Build a solution for a problem that exists within a healthy market that can be sold in a repeated fashion.) Some people waste years working on the wrong product that has "just enough sales" to keep developing that next feature. Unless you have a strong gut feeling about one of these existing things, it sounds like these won't be the winners.
Don't let crowded markets deter you. They are crowded because they are healthy enough to support a lot of businesses. Sometimes those are the best places to find a need for innovation.
Stop building things and then asking why a thing isn't selling. Start asking people/businesses what they need and then start building. If those people don't buy the thing you built them, then ask THEM why and adjust. We won't be much help.
If you feel like selling/marketing is not your thing, find a co-founder. I am a non-technical founder and could never imagine building an indie startup without my technical co-founder.
Don't let some random dude on a forum tell you what to do. Trust your gut but work hard to prove it right or wrong with data, sales, or feedback.
Thanks for the reply Baird!