🤔 How to find the OPTIMAL niche?

I just browsed my Twitter feed and realized:

Nearly every Indie Hacker with an audience, who builds in public, builds a twitter related tool…

(…or privacy focused analytics 😉).

I think there is a fallacy and a problem here.

The Fallacy

I consider myself an Indie Hacker with a background in software development. After graduating from university, I worked two years at a Company building document management software. But as an employed developer, I rarely had contact to users and didn't learn anything about the market I was working in.

With regard to my recent twitter experience, the terms “Building in public” and “Audience first” are often mentioned.

But which audience should I serve?

For me, this would be: Developers or Indie Hackers (yes, I have hobbies, but these are B2C-Markets which are supposedly harder than B2B-Markets).

I think Developers are a difficult audience to serve when you're an average developer working solo. That leaves Indie Hackers. Hence, I end up building simple analytic- or twitter tools (take it with a grain of salt).

This is obviously an exaggeration. But when everyone around you is advising to build in public and to build an audience first, you may end up building an audience of Indie Hackers. Hence, we crowd our own market and severely limit our opportunities.

The Problem

I am trying, to learn more about the edTech market. As I don't work in a company that uses or sells edTech products, it is hard for me to get access and learn about problems.

In his book The embedded Entrepreneur, Arvid Kahl advises you to embed yourself into a niche to learn about and reach your target audience. I think that is a great idea. Arvid proposes a framework to come up with a list of Audiences ranked by these factors:

• Affinity
• Opportunity
• Appreciation
• and Size

I assume that many of us subconsciously use an approach similar to the framework to come up with ideas. We think within the boundaries of our interests and deem an idea as good when we assume opportunity.

Let's take a look at the top 5 ideas the framework yields for Arvid himself:

1. Bootstrapped Founders (aka Indie Hackers)
2. Non-fiction Authors
3. Software Engineers
4. Heavy Twitter Users
5. Lawyers and Notaries

I think many of us can relate to some of Arvid's items. And that's where I see the problem(s):

• We end up building for similar audiences
• We end up building B2C(ish) Products

That's because we have a big overlap in interests within this community. And we're missing input from people that have actual connection and insights into other industries.

The thing is: Your interest/love/affinity for an audience increases the more you become an expert, within that audience. E.g. I guess Arvid always had an interested in writing. But before he started writing books, Non-fiction Authors probably wouldn't have ended up second on his list.

I also experienced this myself. The project that funds me is an app that helps psychotherapists in training to prepare for their final exam (https://siggi-learn.com). When I started, there was no strong affinity towards psychotherapists in training. But as soon as the app took off, and I got mails with feedback etc. I really started to love the bunch.

It's a chicken and egg problem. You have to break out of your indie bubble.

A Solution

Most Indie Hackers that build a successful SaaS I've heard of, either had:

1. Observed a problem in a previous job,
2. have a spouse/friend that was experiencing a (mostly work related) problem,
3. an audience.

I think that building an audience is the hardest one.

My brother-in-law is a senior sales person of a biggish EdTech-Company. Over Christmas, we talked a lot about the EdTech-Market and I realized how much he can help me.

My gut-feeling is that we have way more developers here than sales or marketing people. But we're not the only ones dreaming of freedom (e.g., my brother-in-law would love to start a company). We're just the only ones with the technical knowledge.

Hence, I think this community would greatly benefit from an influx of (good) sales people and marketers. Because without, it is hard to embed yourself into a B2B-Niche. Any ideas on how to attract them?

I'd love to hear your opinion on this.