TL;DR: I'd like to schedule times to talk with Indie Hackers who are genuinely interested in meeting other indie hackers, and figuring out more about why
In my personal life I found that actually knowing people on a deeper level than just following them, or seeing them on social media has tremendous value. There's things you get out of knowing someone you just don't get from following them on Twitter e.g. Insight to see how someone ticks, getting their opinion on what your doing, brainstorming with them, honestly the list is pretty much endless (depending on you relationship with them).
So I've been working on a product to help people meet each other easily. I was doing some feedback / interviews for my product when someone made it apparent to me that my product was "vague". Vague in the sense that it wasn't clearly speaking to who it's intended users are and what value they can get from it.
I now know that the audience I want to target are people like myself (Indie Hacker types), but I'm not 100% what the use case / value prop is entirely. So that's what I'm trying to figure out.
who you are: An Indie Hacker who's genuinely interested in meeting other Indie Hackers (think video/audio call). For what reason? I'm not totally sure yet, but at this point anything goes!
So here's what I'm asking for: I'd like to talk to you for 15-30 minutes, and figure out why your interested in meeting other Indie Hackers or in what ways you'd be interested in connecting with them. Here's my calendly. It's a 30 min block, but if you only have 15mins to talk, just tell me that at the start and we can do 15min.
Also, if you don't have that kind of time I totally get it, and any kind of data is better than no data in my eyes. So leaving a comment on these questions works as well.
I met plenty of people on Indie Hackers and talked to them through Zoom. I connected with each of them by exchanging ideas in very long IH threads where we at some point decided that it would be more effective to just hop onto a call. Sometimes that call was a one-time thing. Sometimes it turned into regular calls, in one case even weekly ones.
I once tried Lunchclub and the match was horrible. I never tried any similar platform again.
There is also https://indieworldwide.co/founders-club and for a long time they showed how many more users would have to sign up until the membership fee would be increased. That number didn't change for months. You can find out more about its growth here: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/worldwide
I guess that this is because people who are really passionate about connecting with other IHs will find ways to do so without a specialized platform. They'll also be able to better pre-filter the people they want to talk to. If people aren't serious, they wouldn't need such a platform anyway.
There was also this thread: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/lunchclub-for-x-693ef37690
That said, the MicroConf Masterminds program got quite a lot of hype. It promised something more lasting, though, more than a 1:1 speed dating thing.
@jasraj also started a mastermind program that you could check out.
Hey thanks for telling me your experience, and about these other products! I've taken a look at all the links you gave, and they've given me a bit more to think about.
Yeah I think it's true that people who are really passionate about connecting with other IHs will find ways to do it. That being said I don't think that excludes them from using special platforms.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
Scheduled a call:)
BTW I have a nice idea reading your post that would be nice for Indie Hackers to add...
I see many people who create threads like these,
If there would be a page in Indie Hackers for people to post their Calendly link or other service and have a quick summary about them and the people they would like to talk to, it would be way more accessible to meet people here, you just go to this page find like-minded people who are open to talk, 2 clicks and you can talk to each other.
Anyway just an idea, I might create an XL sheet for people to post the details mentioned above and validate this idea:) Whenever someone doesn't want to be listed anymore, they just send a message and will be removed.
Possible objections - people wouldn't want to share their schedule link just like that, lack of trust, etc..
So I guess it would need to be more like Tinder where people match each other to avoid abusing the idea
Potential headline: Have a 30-min call with like-minded tech founders in 2-clicks
After validating people actually want this, I would pitch the idea to Indie Hackers and build it for free to build a strong connection. After I build it for free I would get this idea to different networking settings and make millions but I think there is already a similar solution here so anyway...
Do it or I will:)
Awesome! I'm excited to talk to you!
I've actually built a v0 of what I wanted. It's called openpotatos.us. I've been more focused lately on figuring out "why" people want to meet. ๐ I feel like I've built a product, and am working backwards to the market/problem in a way.
Nice! Exactly what I imagined! As it looks like, the product isn't fully built which is exactly what you need right now, the simplest MVP people can use to validate your idea, awesome!
you have a few UI bugs though:)
Yeah there's def. bugs ๐. I'm currently working on getting feedback on the site from some people. I'm much more worried about figuring out a good way to connect people.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.