If you knew success comes in 5, 10, 20 years – how would you approach indie hacking differently?

When I started off my journey out of college (14 years back) I was all in a rush. That really did not help me in hindsight. But I was coming out of a really poor family financial state so I guess there was an urge. It later grew into peer-pressure and things only went worse.

If I knew this would be a long journey, perhaps I would learn how to think long term and enjoy the drive. But I am here now, and I am loving the long ride.

I think most ppl think if they work SO hard they can get to the "finish line" faster (I'm guilty of this too). and instead of enjoying the process, they live miserably on the promise their future self will be happy when they reach their goal.

My current view is I should find the balance between moving fast enough and enjoying the ride.

1. Don't work too much and enjoy the process like @czue
2. Don't neglect family & friends like @dmitryprdude
3. I don't say no to other good opportunities but, I'd still have a small-scale side project

And pivoting and differentiating is almost always required I think. One must be lucky to have it all perfectly fitting from the first iteration.

I know it's going to take a long time.

That's why I'm speeding up the journey.

Begin to compound efforts and growth each day, week, month, year. Play the long game :)

I would would have started earlier.

I'm really interested in this as a concept.

I formulated a theory of "longevity" in my days in the music industry. Like many industries, there are hundreds of variables that dictate success. One of them being luck (right place, right time etc). Obviously there's lots of stuff that you can do to improve your chances of success.

But for me, a lot of it boils down to: "If you're good enough, and stick around for long enough, you improve your chances of 'success' (however you define that) to a point where they approach 100%. The key is to maximise every opportunity, and to not to suffer sunk-cost fallacy, and hang around on a sinking ship longer than you need to".

For me, I've committed my life to entrepreneurship, knowing that it is financially unstable, knowing that it's a bit of a gamble. I could become financially independent next month (if everything goes 100% perfectly), or in 20 years. Or maybe never.

But that's a risk I'm willing to take in order to live an exciting, fulfilling, diverse life.

I'm now 3-ish years into the journey, so totally a different scale than Jack and Paul, but when I started MentorCruise, I was very set on it becoming my main source of income within a year or two.

If you remember, I made it to about $500 MRR during that time, not exactly a living wage.

The benefit that a lot of VC-funded startups have is that they can burn cash, reach scale, not charge for it and figure out the money part later. If you'd know that you're going to be in this for 5-10 years working full-time or on contracts anyways, I think IndieHackers could do the same thing.

It's a bit counter-intuitive to our usual approach, but I'd see a lot of benefits in it. During the early days, I fought an uphill battle. I needed to convince people to pay for something that I didn't even have fully figured out yet. I needed to build network effects while also making money, and I was scared to do experiments because I could've lost my meager MRR.

Instead, I could have focused to just reach scale and get more people to come to MC for mentorship, before experimenting with different monetization techniques that could have ended to be more lucrative (B2B, sponsorships, ISAs, events, courses).

I think the gist that your MVP needs to have a Stripe terminal, subscriptions and create MRR from the start is a short-term mindset. I'd take 10x the users over $400 in MRR any day today.

I am a huge believer of "taking tiny steps". If all possible, I will start by building small things for smaller ideas. Once I get small success, then I aim for higher goals. On the other hand, if I start by a grand idea that takes me like more than 2 years, I don't think I can keep up the motivation for that long without seeing obvious results. Also, most ideas likely fail, sure, some people say you can make adjustment, but what if the whole direction is wrong? If you spend years on a idea that is deadly wrong...

I’d like to think I’m getting a little better at this. One thing I have changed is I quite setting bs deadlines for myself. Most of the time these deadlines weren’t backed by anything just my impatience to get the work done. Ultimately it led to mediocre output from me, and being demoralized when I didn’t get something done as expected.

There are amny storys out there, that sound like "over night success cost me 10 years, 12 years, 15,20 ... "

It seems as if this is the price you need to pay for eventual success. As if you tell life what you want and life tells you, ok pal, here are the conditions. It will cost you nerves, energy, money, and about 15 years of time. Are you ok with that? No negotiations possible. Take it or leave it!

I think it's the only way to make it to a palce where I can help the others. It's not about my success really. It's about hopw to get to the next level. And the jouney to there is just what it takes to get there