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4 Comments

I want to ask @csallen

Hello @csallen i want to ask, how much time it took for you to build a website like indie hackers. I am about to start to build a startup as a single person in my team right now.

And yeah like could you give some suggestions to, it would be helpful.

  1. 4

    The real answer is 3.5 years, because that's how long ago I started working on the site. Of course it's been through many iterations since then, and it's gone down quite a few dead-end paths that I had to reverse, and I've taken long breaks, and even when I'm working I'm spending < 10% of my time on code and product design and most of it on other stuff.

    Also, the way the site looks today is now how it looked in the beginning. You should always start small imo. Build something tiny that's independently useful. If (and only if!) that's going well, add another layer on top. In the beginning IH was just a blog and a newsletter. Once I figured out how to grow those, I added a forum. Once the forum was growing, I moved it to the homepage and started adding features to it. Etc.

    1. 1

      Great! thanks for the suggestions, it was really helpful. I will try my best to work on the idea and implement it with small things at first.

  2. 2

    I think he's said before that it took him 3 weeks to build the first version. But there is a pet peeve I have around people sharing how long it took them to build things (especially guests on the IH podcast):

    • One person can say "I built it in 3 weeks" meaning 40 hrs/wk.
    • Another person can say "I build it in 3 weeks" meaning 4 hrs/wk.

    And I often have no clue which scenario is the case.

  3. 1

    I thought you were going to ask if he's @csallen is a twin lol

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