I Spent 6 Months Building for Indie Hackers. My First Real Customer Taught Me I Was Wrong.
I launched my project management tool in May.
It had every feature indie hackers said they wanted: simple pricing, lifetime deals, dark mode, API access, and Notion-like blocks.
I got 23 upvotes on Product Hunt. Made $227 in the first month from other builders. Felt like I was onto something.
Then I talked to my first customer outside the indie sphere. She was a small marketing agency owner.
Within 5 minutes, she asked: "Where's the client portal? How do I white-label this? Can my clients comment without creating accounts?"
I had built none of those things.
I'd spent six months in indie hacker communities asking what features people wanted. Everyone said "Keep it simple! Don't bloat it!" So I built a tool that indie hackers loved to compliment but never actually paid for long-term.
The agency owner? She needed something that solved her actual pain: client communication chaos.
Not another "beautiful, minimal" tool.
I stopped posting feature polls on Twitter. Started booking 15-minute calls with people who fit my target customer profile but had never heard of indie hacking.
Real retention jumped from 12% to 41% in two months. MRR went from $347 to $2,100. Not huge numbers, but actual customers with real problems, not other founders window shopping.
The uncomfortable truth I learned: The indie hacker community is amazing for support and learning.
But it's a terrible place to validate most products. We are not representative of normal users. We want different things. We tolerate different friction.
My agency customer doesn't care about my tech stack. She doesn't want to "build in public" with me.
She just wants her clients to stop emailing her 47 times a day with feedback scattered across Gmail, Slack, and text messages.
When was the last time you talked to a potential customer who isn't an indie hacker or founder?
I'd love to hear your experiences. Have you caught yourself doing this? Or did you avoid this trap from the start? What helped you stay focused on real customer problems?
This hit hard — and it’s such an important reminder. 💯
It’s so easy to get lost building for other builders instead of real users.
I’m going through something similar right now while working on CraftName (check it in my profile) — an AI tool that helps founders come up with startup names and instantly check domain availability.
When I started, I was asking feedback mostly from other indie hackers.
Everyone loved the concept, but the real insights only came once I talked to actual founders trying to launch fast and struggling with naming under pressure.
Your story nails it — validation inside the bubble ≠ validation in the market.
Appreciate you sharing this so honestly. 👏
This is such an important lesson you've captured here. The trap of building for builders is so easy to fall into because the feedback feels good and comes quickly. Your story about the agency owner needing client portals instead of dark mode really crystallizes how different real user needs can be from founder preferences.
You’re absolutely right: it’s all too easy to keep building things that feel exciting as a founder (hi dark mode 😊) but don’t align with actual user needs.
Your agency-owner story really hits home. It reminds me of how the Teamcamp “Client Portal”( https://www.teamcamp.app/product/client-portal) feature was born, instead of just adding another cosmetic UI tweak, we focused on giving clients real value: secure access, live project updates, file sharing, invoice tracking and activity visibility.
When you flip the lens from “what I want to build” to “what the client actually needs to get done”, you often end up in very different territory and that’s where meaningful traction comes from.
i feel your pain, but in my opinion you will need to get feedback from the niche you are targeting, i did not try posting here but i am in the process to do so, but i think i will selected what i need.
Totally agree! getting feedback from your exact niche changes everything. Broad feedback can be helpful early on, but the real clarity comes when you test with the users who actually face the problem you’re solving. Curious to hear how your next round of feedback goes once you post!
This is such a valuable lesson you've shared here. It's easy to get caught in the echo chamber of building for other builders. Your pivot to talking directly with real users outside the indie bubble paid off clearly—going from 12% to 41% retention is huge! Thanks for the honest reflection.
This hit home. It’s easy to build for people like us and forget that real customers think totally differently. Curious ,did you change your marketing strategy after that realization, or mostly the product direction?
This is painfully relatable. I launched a QA audit service for lean teams — modular reports, backend logic checks, founder-friendly pricing. Got compliments, a few upvotes, even some early traction.
But my first real customer wasn’t a fellow builder. She was running a SaaS with a messy admin panel and said:
“Can you help me stop losing users because of silent backend bugs?”
She didn’t care about my audit layout or tech stack. She wanted trust, reliability, and fewer support tickets.
That’s when I realized: Indie Hackers are amazing for support and feedback — but not always for validation. We love clean tools, clever features, and building in public. But most customers just want their pain solved.
Now I spend less time polling Twitter and more time talking to founders who aren’t in the indie bubble. Retention jumped. Real MRR followed. And I stopped chasing applause.
Thanks for sharing this — it’s a powerful reminder to build for pain, not praise.
Hits hard because it's true, other indie hackers saying “nice build!” doesn’t mean real customers actually need it.
And yeah, most people outside this bubble don’t care about dark mode or lifetime deals. They just want their problem to go away.
Your story is a good reminder to stop guessing in our own heads and start talking to people who might actually pay.Thanks for keeping it real and sharing this.