I often see indie hackers get stuck, either on a day to day basis, or generally coming up with ideas for a business or product.
I thought it would be useful to have a discussion around this.
For me, I've mostly stolen ideas, don't we all?
- I love communities, so I go searching how other communities function. What they talk about, how they engage. IH is a great example of this. However, I also look for gaps in where communities could exist.
- Every website I visit, I question their business model and I have a nosey about to see how they do things. I also ask myself if the things they do would apply to my business.
- I don't really pay attention to my competition, rather I seek other places to borrow ideas from to help us stand out more
- I often browse websites that sell websites/businesses (like Flippa or 1kProjects) and apply my curiosity to how they make money (or not).
- blog posts and newsletters - I pay attention to what people write about and how they are doing it. Often it can help inspire me in my own marketing/writing efforts.
How or where do you find inspiration?
#ask-ih
I usually start with a problem I am having, or something I am trying to do that can't be easily done. Usually it's a recurring thought, I try to screen out ideas that pop up, though I might take some notes or voice notes. When it's come back to me a few times over a week or two, sometimes months, it comes on my radar.
Then I dig into it a little and see if there are solutions I haven't known about before. If still looks good, I will ask some peers and pop a survey out to some folks on FB and get some quick feedback. Then I make a decision if my assumptions are still good enough to move on!
Communities are a great way. To get inspired I usually go on Dribbble.
Day to day: there's no way but forward.
Product:
IH is basically my church. Side note: it would be nice to talk to more founders .. maybe in a conference call of sorts, but informal and relaxed, successful and struggling founders. I can never make the office hours chat :(
Note on the side note: There have been some online events like this Worldwide meetup I'll ponder some ideas, what did you have in mind?
I like workflows, so I have a whole process for that:
Every week I go on social media (IH, reddit...) and trend websites (Medium trends, google trends) and I look what people are speaking about. I contribute as well (like now). I do around 3 to 4 pomodoros per week (1H15) depending on my task prioritized for the week.
I write every idea I can have / see into a mindmap (which is part of my "idea generation system", I wrote about it on my blog. See "A real life example of an idea system".
I write pain points which create debates or "big" discussions. I look at the number of upvotes as well to see if the subject is interesting for a lot of people. I have another "pain point" mindmap where I put the URL of the discussion, the number of upvotes and some notes.
I try to listen to people and note problems / pain points in real life.
I'm interested in a lot of things so, sometimes, I try to link some knowledge from a specific domain to another one, to create original (or totally stupid) ideas.
The big advantage to use mindmaps is: you can link things to each other. It works very well for me. Of course it's very quickly a mess but I don't hesitate to delete / re-organise things.
More and more these ideas and pain points create big "balls" of ideas all linked together. I create often a project (problems with possible solution) out of it and I prioritize it. I might never do anything with it, but it's there.
I really enjoy the whole process a lot! That's the most important to me.
you might want to check the projects at https://projectilo.com/ for some inspiration, we are a community of makers
Awesome question!
If by inspiration, you mean "inspiration for a product" then I do the following...