Have you ever done, or thought about doing the 12 Startups in 12 Months challenge?
Hey guys! (And Pieter) I am planning on doing a 12 startups in 12 months challenge.
This isn’t because I’m a Pieter Levels fan-boy, I want attention or I’m jumping on the “me too” band wagon. It’s because I want deadlines to ship to.
I began my journey into tech at the start of COVID and have loved it so far. I have tinkered with a few projects in the background but rarely got past the design phase, some early building or user interviews.
The reasons are exactly as Pieter lists on his blog - 1) I get distracted my my new shiny ideas and 2) I’m shit scared of launching them in case they suck and I look like an idiot!
- Have many of you tried this challenge?
- Thought about trying it?
- Do you ship regularly?
- Do you wish you shipped more?
- Would this challenge help?
- Would you like to join me?!
I have looked online and the most formal thing I can find is six devs doing the challenge together as a cohort. Besides that there’s a few folk who have shared their experience on their blogs.
I plan to start this mid-May as I have work and family commitments I have to attend to first but then I’ll be shipping a product a month for a year.
Any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated.
Rich 🙏🏻
(I know there is a group dedicated to this on IH but I'm after more general feedback from the community as a whole 🙂)
Every developer doing this challenge should team up with a marketing or sales person.
Also, the goal isn’t to build 12 businesses. It’s to keep going until you find that one business that pops. Then stop and work on that.
Amen.
First I'm hearing about it, and hopefully the last - it sounds like an expert way to burn a year AND burn out.
A month isn't a reasonable time to build and launch anything of value, unless you're planning on selling pet rocks. Hell, even the pet rock guy probably spent more than a month setting things up.
You ever find yourself wondering why someone would try crack? That's the same feeling I have when I read about building 12 "start-ups" in 12 months.
FYI - Not even Pieter actually built 12 "start-ups" in 12 months, I think he only managed to build 8 products or so in that period because some products were getting traction.
I don't particularly like that approach, which is mostly marketing-driven, but if you managed to do it, good for you.
I prefer betting on up to 3 -4 curated ideas that you can build in 2-4 months each. Any relatively complex product would take more than 2 months to build as a solo-builder.
Maybe instead of 12 startups in 12 months, it can be 3 startups in 3 months.
And that’s fine. I’ve noticed a few people who have done it have the same experience. Of course if something takes off in the process of the challenge then that is a win. For me it’s about creating momentum and shipping. Thanks for your feedback 👍🏼
Amazing. I will start doing this myself next month - currently working on finalizing my first project. Unfortunately, I won't be able to answer the first 4 questions as this is the first time I am doing this challenge. I think this challenge will help a lot, will help you focus and ensure that you are not wasting time building a product that people will not like. I think one of the biggest advantages of doing this is you will learn more about growth marketing something that I am particularly excited about. Looking forward to hearing more about this project from you. Let's connect.
AWESOME!! I’ll shoot you an email or Twitter DM 😃
I tried it too, launching products using nocode every month. Stopped at 8 because I learned enough about shipping, overcame shipping shyness and I realised I wanted to learn coding for real because after all that shipping my product ambitions outgrew the nocode tech stack available then! Caught the maker bug for sure.
The monthly timebox and cadance is great for overcoming distraction as you mentioned. The worry about looking like an idiot - what I discovered is nobody really cares. If it sucked, the most is you'll get ignored.
I think there's a tendency to hunker down in build mode on your pre-determined idea list month after month and turn blind to potential opportunities that emerge as a result of the products. Having a zoom in zoom out approach would be helpful.
Awesome feedback Jason! Thanks for taking the time to reply 🙏🏼
I think it can be interesting. I was thinking before of doing something similar. Not 12 in 12 because that's way too much, but perhaps 4 or 6 in a year might work for me.
What I'm doing is building several things that all have synergies with communities, such as Discord Servers. This way, we build deep, a silo. Lots of cross-selling opportunities and shared stuff by API.
That’s a nice idea! 👏🏼
What are you trying to achieve with this?
Is this a pedagogical exercise? Are you trying to improve your skills? Is this just a hobby for you and you want to try to push yourself to the next level? Are you trying to make a legitimate business?
The answer to those questions determine if this would be a good idea or not. If you want to learn some new stuff or improve your skills making 12 products in 12 months could be an interesting and useful activity.
Notice I use the word product instead of startup. Startups take forever and require an unholy amount of time and effort, or at least that has been my experience. Even the word product might be too much. Maybe you should go for the term "apps" or "experiments" instead.
If this is a hobby for you and you do it because its interesting and fun, 12 apps in 12 months would probably be the hacker/developer's equivalent of a runner training for and running a marathon. It that's the case go for it!
However, if you want to make a legitimate business you should go for 1 product in 24 months. Find a market need, talk to customers, fill the need, and build on that over time. Get it into the hands of users so they can give you feedback. Improve on that feedback. And don't try to build a bunch of different things. Build only the most important stuff. That's something I have struggled with. I often get distracted by interesting but non-important things and I end up wasting a lot of time and effort.
That's my 2 cents. Whatever you decide, best of luck to you!
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.
The world is divided on the use of the word startup, I know. In this instance it’s more just a name for the project. Given this is Indie Hackers I didn’t expect to find many actual startup founders. At least in the Silicon Valley sense of the word anyway as the very definition of inside hacking wouldn’t fit well.
As for my goals, I want to maximise my efforts and ship multiple MVP’s to see how they land with potential users then develop further the ones that work. It’s both a learning experience for me as well as building a sustainable business to replace my income as an employee.
If you haven’t already, have a look at https://levels.io/12-startups-12-months/ for the intent behind the concept.
Rich 🤓
Actually, there's loads of experienced start-up founders, here.
I want to be very clear: launching several MVPs and developing the ones that work further only sounds like a winning strategy to people who have never launched a successful product or company. This can not and will not produce a viable concept.
I cannot tell you how many people built their great idea with passion and focus only to find out after that nobody was interested. People will tell you that they are interested, but try and get those people to give you money to be your first customer. Watch their enthusiasm dry up.
Instead, you can save yourself all of this pain by finding a problem that people are excited to pay money to have solved. The best way to do this is to talk to a lot of people and ask them what their problems are. Then ask them if they would pay to get a solution. And if they say yes, offer them a 75% discount on their first year if they pay you right now.
Watch this; thank me later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2F-2-I2-5k
I strongly agree. If you actually want to start a viable business, instead of building 12 things that you think people might need and hope that something sticks, find out the few things that people actually need and that you can build.
If it’s “just” an exercise to build and ship things fast, go for it. But don’t expect it to lead to a viable business except through pure luck.
You'd literally have better odds in Vegas.
I’ve been thinking about it lately. Currently I am working on a small user management system to power my future ideas, I don’t want to pay for a service or rebuild user management / auth every time I have to work on a new idea that requires it.
This system alone is my first product out of the 12 I plan to build.
Awesome! That sounds like an interesting idea, I’d love to hear more about it.
If you’re serious, I’d be interested in aligning with others who are interested in the challenge starting next month?
I have plans of doing it. One of the major goal for building vadelabs.com, has been that I personally should be able to ship products much faster. So as soon as it is ready for use, I will be coming up with plans to launch 12 startups in 12 months. I think maximum anyone has done and be successful is the founder of nomad list. He ended up doing 7 startups in 12 months. https://levels.io/12-startups-12-months/
Awesome! Love it!! 🔥
"It’s because I want deadlines to ship to."
If that's the case you don't need someone else's marketing strategy. Set your own deadline, release your product. My answers on those 6 questions not going to be helpful. Unless your first product going to be a paid cohort and you'll try to convert commentators into paying customers.