Hi folks, I am Leon Wei, a full-time indie hacker.
August marked the first month that one of my side projects sqlpad was fully automated and required my 0 attention.
Let me know if anything I can help you with. Leon
Wow! What was the journey like to get to full automation? I'm interested in two points:
For the forums, how long have they been going and how many members? Curious what the "critical mass" was for your forums to become a way for users to support eachother.
What is the "Reddit Lead" you set up for attribution? Can you talk more about this?
Thanks, @diligentnotes
#1. Took about a few months to have some 'power' users join the forum to share their expertise; once the forum has some knowledgable experts, made my lift much easier;
#2. Regarding startup growth (just my 2 cents), it's a matter of
a. new user acquisitions,
b. customer retention
Since this particular side project sqlpad.io is for interview preparation, we actually do not want to retain our customers, we want them to find a job and leave.
So it became purely a: acquiring new customers, and I've built a backend (same as segue.co) to watch a few subreddits; if a user asks questions that I can answer or my product aim to solve, I will chime in and organically mention my product or an article that I wrote to drive traffic to my website.
After I figured out the infrastructure, hired a VA to replace me.
@LEONWEI I'm curious to know if you only commented on Reddit or also took a more of a proactive approach and started new discussions.
Congrats BTW:)