Hello Indiehackers,
I've been a member here for some time now watching people acheiving their goals. Its been interesting and inspiring to see how people have been able to fulfill their ideas into actual products.
My main reason for joining Indiehackers was on the hope that at some point by reading enough about other peoples experiences I may be able to take this step myself. As a software developer I've always wanted to build my own web app. At some point start my own company with it and then of course become a millionaire ;) I've had a few good ideas but was blocked from taking action by the following feelings:
1.Afraid of taking time to implement something which doesnt turn out very good
2.Not being very great at UI and UX. Sometimes I have an idea but when I try to implement it I get tangled up in the UX details
3.Feeling like I don't have enough time
4.Not sure how to get people using the product when I launch it
5. No idea at which stage I should think about pricing and how to implement it. I do want to monetise my app so at least it can cover whatever infrastructural costs there are. The ideal case would be if I could actually make profit from it
6. What legal aspects do I need to think of? This will be a side project and I won't be operating under a company. For example when do I need to think about GDPR and user contact information?
Finally, I took the initiative last month to use the Twilio Hackathon to get me started on one of my ideas. You can see my post about it here https://dev.to/mia01/event-a-task-and-event-management-app-for-family-and-friends-8j7
Basically it is an event and task sharing app. My vision is that it will allow people to manage their events and tasks and share them with their loved ones. Its more for social purposes than management.
I'm determined to see this through because I have really enjoyed working on the idea and feel it would actually be helpful to some people. But although I've managed to achieve a working prototype I'm not sure what the next step should be.
In addition to the points above I now feel blocked by these things as well:
7.I've implemented this as a webapp but this would work better as a mobile app. Unfortunately I'm not a mobile app developer. What should I do in this case? And how do I protect my interests if I partner up with someone?
8.Again the UI is still an issue and I'm not happy with the feel of it
Thats a long list of things holding me back but I'm determined this time to overcome each one of them. I just need some guidance and advice to help me along the way alittle.
Thank you to anyone who responds with any advice.
If you could also perhaps leave some feedback about what you think about my app idea and if its something you'd be interested in using I would be really interested to hear from you.
Hey Mia,
first of all, congratulations on taking the hardest step and getting started. Now you just need to maintain (and later increase) the pace :)
I think something that could help you is to focus on one thing instead of trying to solve everything with a single snap. Defining clear and achievable goals is also helpful. I think you already did something similar when you participated in the hackathon. You had a clear goal and you focused on reaching that.
"Slice" the problems you want to solve, break them into smaller tasks and make sure that completing a task can't take longer than an hour. If it takes more than an hour, that probably should be two tasks.
I think everybody has this feeling but it doesn't matter if something isn't perfect for the first try, learn from it, and make it better next time.
Use templates and themes. Get ideas from other tools or ask for help from someone who is better at this.
I think using the task system I mentioned above will help you with this.
I'm not going to link a specific article on this topic but I think you should make a search for "How to get my first 100 users" and you'll find a bunch of great ideas.
I'm not sure if these articles are going to help you, but maybe a good starting point: https://www.intercom.com/blog/pricing-strategy-business-model/
https://www.intercom.com/blog/picking-your-pricing-model/
Regarding GDPR, you can read a few thoughts here https://www.indiehackers.com/post/gdpr-compliance-when-just-starting-out-6c4359d2d8
And I think it would worth trying to ask this is a separate post. Probably other indie makers were in a similar situation and would like to share what they learned.
Try to learn more about your target audience to validate this idea. Don't ask them if they'd use a mobile app instead of a webapp, but learn how and when they'd use your app. Maybe you are right, and an app would work better. Maybe they'd use it only on desktop. In that case, an app is unnecessary.
Templates :)
Some great tips here https://www.indiehackers.com/post/idea-validation-how-do-you-prioritise-features-f5e5763f07
And here https://www.indiehackers.com/post/as-a-solo-founder-how-do-you-manage-where-to-focus-your-time-83a731a2f2
Start small and keep going. Small steps can take you a long way.
https://twitter.com/sarahcandersen/status/940967297526661120
I have the same struggle with UX. What are the common templates sites that Indie Hackers use?
I think it depends on the product you are building.
When it comes to web apps, Tailwind UI (https://tailwindui.com/) is a really popular and great choice. And you can almost always use a pre-built theme (I used to buy them from Themeforest).
You can also learn a lot from publicly available design systems https://designsystemsrepo.com/design-systems-recent
@feriforgacs thanks so much for taking the time to read my post and answer so thoroughly. I can't tell you how encouraging this is for me. By the way, do you know of a platform where I can put my app idea forward and see if people would actually find it useful? Would Indie Hackers be the right place for this kind of market research?
I think posting your idea to IH as the first step of validation is a great start but you should focus much more on those people who are in your target audience and reach out to them with questions.
If you haven't already, listen to this IH podcast episode to get some really great ideas on how to get started when you want to validate your idea https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/154-rob-fitzpatrick-of-the-mom-test
And keep posting about your progress here. That'll keep you accountable and also you can get some great feedback and ideas on what to do next.