How can this community support new indie hackers?
I'm putting together some ideas and plans for the new year, can you come and inspire me? 🙏
At this point and for this discussion, I'm specifically interested in what things we could do to support new people entering the indie hacking world and how we can specifically do this via our community efforts.
- What do you think new indie hackers need (or want)?
- What kind of things could we do with (mostly) the existing resources we have?
- How can we help more indie hackers succeed?
Looking forward to hearing some ideas!
You might consider going head-to-head with Product Hunt and officially "launching" IH businesses on IH.
These announcements inevitably already happen here and there, and you already ask for the first update on each product.
It might be as easy as setting up a new group with all first-time product updates, and letting us upvote those, and ask questions, give feedback...etc.
Something I think I've seen around, is list of the indiehacker tools people could use.
I think a new IndieHacker would really benefit from a Getting Started/Resources guide:
i.e. lists of popular tools from indiehacker, popular podcasts, posts, etc.
I’ve built this exactly: https://thedailystartup.club
It’s the MVP right now of just featuring one tool/resource per day.
Meta: my approach has been a very low-code Indie Hack. It’s built on Airtable, Zapier, Mailchimp, and Formstatic with a static site built in CodeSandbox and hosted on Netlify.
Pretty neat - a list of only indie tools (with their makers also) is what i was thinking.
I haven’t exclusively featured indie-made resources. That’s an interesting idea 🤔
Perhaps I’ll tag features as made by Indie Hackers.
That would let me recognize our community while still making a wider set of resources available...
That’s a good way to do it. Definitely something I’d use when looking for a product and wanting to support an indie maker :)
I second all of this feedback. This is exactly what I was about to post.
Yes, I second this.
Maybe a separate thread where all the "No-Code" marketing advertisements can go,
But I for one come here to get insights and help. <-That is where the gold is.
I posted in Meta about a "post-mortem" section. I think learning from others' mistakes, big or small, would help Indie Hackers not repeat those same mistakes.
Similarly, I suggest a "database" (html table) of tools used, up/down votes for tools, and the ability to comment on why other Indie Hackers do or do not use the tool. Tagging tools would also make that database easy to search/filter. Things like "landing page" or "project management".
Maybe priority to be given in that database to tools developed by Indie Hackers to encourage supporting each other within the community?
Another indie hacker tool (can't remember which, maybe Product Hunt or MakerLog) has a setting for "send a harassing email if you don't update the project status". That might be an option for products users add on IH.
Finally, I wonder if there's any opportunity for group buying or economies of scale for Indie Hackers? Specifically, I'm thinking bulk purchases of ad space but that might apply to laptops, server space, hosting, and other things.
Hope that helps, I'm happy to be a beta tester or provide feedback on ideas/features if needed.
I agree that post-mortems are insightful and would be a great addition (imo one part that agile got right are retrospectives).
However I disagree about "send a harassing email if you don't update the project status". After trying YC's startup school, this was my least favorite feature; contrary to their hypothesis that peer-pressure helps you launch faster, and I totally understand the logic but those emails often came with major feelings of guilt and reminded me of the common manager training "don't kick an employee when they're down". The mental fortitude part of early product experimentation is often overlooked.
Post-mortems would be well received; sometimes venting is a great way to flush a bad week away and start the next one with a clear mind.
Good points. I think I should have been clear that I was spit balling. I'm on the fence if harassing emails would be helpful/appreciated for me. In all honesty, I see very few notification type emails because I filter them all out.
Speaking of post-mortems: https://twitter.com/FuckupNightsTO
I don't necessarily agree with the name and lack of proffessionalism but it seems there is an appetite.
I'm pretty sure the name and lack of professionalism is what attracts people to those events. I attended one of those events and it was very educational.
A canonical list of the best case studies, knowledge-building articles, etc. might be nice. That sort of thing is hard to Google for when folks don't yet know what the range of available options are.
Of course, if it gets popular its open to abuse and being gamed by self-promoters etc, and would lose credibility if it only pointed to insider resources, but I'm sure it can be done well if nobody has a financial interest in the readership.
How about "accountability buddy" mini groups for people to start projects at the same time?
There was a community phenomenon a few years ago around the whole P90X / beachbody fitness trend. Specifically, people would announce themselves starting the program and a small collection of folks would join their cohort to also participate in the exercises (as well as sharing motivational messages, their own tips/lessons/progress, etc).
Since "loneliness" is a common complaint in the indiehacker world, ideas like these might help push people through feelings of burned out. Would be happy to brainstorm / elaborate if anyone else agrees?
Hey, I've been working on something like this for a while- motimate.org - it's currently on hold while I finish another project but I hope to get back to it soon! Would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on the topic.
love the name motimate! What kind of thoughts are you looking for?
So my basic idea is that anyone will be able to create an accountability group for any goal, then others can join (up to limit of say, 6). They have a newsfeed where they can share tips, advice, milestones reached, and future milestones with deadlines. They get some kind of karma points for each milestone reached.
I would love to hear what you think of that basic feature list, and if there are any others you'd like to see.
One question is what to do if people stop being active in the group. At some point they would need to be removed. And also whether anyone can join a group if there's space, or whether they need to be accepted first.
Hm so the features you listed are okay because it's what people already do on indiehackers, product hunt, facebook groups, subreddits, etc. Does reading tips/advice/milestones push you to make progress on motimate?
I've seen two ways to passively push people: leaderboard (earning points for launching landing page, getting user, deploying feature, people's vote on most impressive progress; creating scorecard for metrics that show real progress for people to intrinsically want to outcompete a peer at similar stage of startup, which feels more fair than product hunt's arbitrary upvote/discovery process), and reward (every founders likes free marketing; IH has nice reward system by giving recognition and inviting people to interview, maybe you can figure out other clever ways to drive new users to trial their prototypes).
When you come home late after working all day on your other project, what would actually push you to close netflix and throw 30 minutes at motimate? Your answer might give you a better feature list 💪
Thanks for the suggestions, I am already thinking about how to add them in.
Ironically I personally don't really have an issue with motivation, I spend most evenings working on projects, much to my wife's disappointment!
We often think that everyone online understands how to navigate an online forum, but I was just talking to someone yesterday who I had suggested IH to, and they felt overwhelmed with how much was here.
Just like an app walks new users through an onboarding flow (think squarespace, intercom, etc.), I think it would be powerful to do something similar for new IH members.
Time is the most important resource for all the busy folks here... :) So anything that speeds up execution will be very valuable.
The most important resource that IH provides is knowledge of the crowd. Some ideas to make the best use of this...