Make Indie Hacking less Indie (http://1kmake.com)
I've been indie hacking for 18 months. There are a lot of aspects of the lifestyle I find more appealing than my previous 9-5. Freedom, variety of projects, wearing lots of hats, earning potential are a few. Yet over the last year and a half I've come to realize that something important is missing: relationships with people. Freelancing/Entrepreneurship is such a lonely road. Most of my days are spent staring at my computer in coffee shops by myself. I learn new things, encounter new problems, solve those problems, start projects, finish projects, get excited, get frustrated by myself.
The internet has made this lifestyle possible. A single person has a huge number of online resources (Github issues, blog posts, stackoverflow) and can learn to be very resourceful. Cloud computing services allow applications to be developed and deployed much faster and cheaper. A single person can now accomplish and earn so much by themselves. Yet, I still think there is something deeply satisfying with connecting with others and working together on a personal level; having people around you that get to know you, help you, laugh with you, push you, and celebrate with you.
I think sites like IndieHackers take a step in the right direction and bring like-minded people together. But they rarely get to a personal level. If you're like me you've spent god knows how much time on sites like this, but how many friends have you actually made? How many people really know what you're going through and would give up a couple hours out of their day to help you if you needed it? How many people would share a project with you?
I'd like to build a community of 100 or so generous, talented, independent developers who would like to work together. A community of people that bring each other projects, team up, go out of there way to help one another and get to know each other on a personal level. Most importantly, I'd like it to be fun. We can figure out what that means: hackathons, tech talks, meetups, games, who knows. The point is I'd like to build something that makes independent hacking not have to be so independent.
Check out http://1kmake.com for some more details on what I'm thinking.
What do you think?
I have a 9-to-5, still, so I get a lot of social interaction in my day. Nonetheless, I think about the points in your post often. Sure, it’s nice to talk to work people about work, but when it comes to my project (which will one day be my 9-to-5), it’s still a lonely place to dwell. I often long for a legit, indie, bootstrapper community that is more than simply a place to ask questions or swap tips with a rotating cast of random faces.
Yes! That was the whole idea. I want a squad of talented developers that I can get to know, work with, and get help from. I'd like it to be a step further than just educational and inspirational.
Hey Austin, you'd be welcome to come check us out at the next meetup later this month: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/indie-hacker-worldwide-x-blockstack-andrey-azimov-tickets-65038481850
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Watched the vid. Interesting idea. I definitely see what you're saying with the isolation. I have felt that for sure. I guess I'm wondering how would putting us in Slack really make this different. I think one of the things that makes a team get to know each other and less isolating is having a common goal to work towards and together on. With this we still wouldn't have that since we all have our own projects.
Also definitely check this out, seems like a new competitor:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403870
Yeah, we have known about them for awhile. They have a bit of an advantage now that they have gone through YC.
Sorry if my connection was garbage, here's my response:
https://www.loom.com/share/1b0daa629f5a4cd5b4910bc075e1ee1d
Austin, thanks for making this video! I haven't seen Loom before. Definitely a cool way to make personalized videos.
Thanks for the feedback on CoffeePass. Some of the things you mentioned were definitely helpful: The react-grow library and thoughts on login. Some things we just haven't done yet since we didn't see them as being a top priority: The default React Native launch screen, changing the apple developer account. Stripe actually had some downtime today. I think thats probably why you saw the Stripe errors.
I definitely see what you're saying. If there could be a community that did videos and feedback like that in a more personal way. I think it would have to be a smaller community where people could get to know each other better. Everyone would also have to be willing to bring value to the table and that would take some time. Seems like this could work better with a smaller group. 25 people maybe at the max.
Also, awesome that you use React-native. Its great!
Yes, React-Native is huge for me. I used to develop iOS apps in Swift. When I discovered RN, I jumped on it. Now I can build cross-platform apps quicker than I could just in Swift/iOS. In my latest RN projects, I have rarely needed to actually write native code (the library itself provides a lot and there are thousands of npm packages). It's also nice that when you are building mobile apps it keeps your web app skills strong :)
I like the idea of smaller groups. People don't have time and cognitive bandwidth to form personal relationships with 100 other developers (obviously not 1000) and keep up with their projects. I actually like 25 (similar to class sizes we had in school growing up).
25 is small enough you could REALLY get to know everyone over time and what they are working on. I think developing personal connections is what could set this apart from sites like this and HN.
25 is big enough (if the people possess a variety of skills) to get help on specific problems, team up on projects, etc.
Imagine there were 25 other smart, developers that knew you and understood the context around where you are with CoffeePass and what decisions/obstacles you are facing. You could jump on a zoom call pretty much any night with a couple of them and get amazing feedback. In the process, you would come to learn what the others are good at and what their experiences/projects are. This would help you help them. I think the most important qualities of the people in these groups would need to be smart and generous.
Sorry for long post. Just trying to pull some thoughts together.
I agree about people in the group needing to be smart and generous. I saw you had an application for it. Thats a pretty cool idea. Like what if there were almost different positions like a company that people had to apply for to join the group. So then you can set up the group where people have different skill sets and are set up in a way where they can help each other better in their areas. Almost like a team at a company.
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Hey Tony, first off thanks for the support. This is a brand new idea of mine and it's great to get other's perspectives.
Second off, nice work on Streak! The landing page is super clean and it was easy for me to understand what it is.
I have a couple questions:
Is this product meant to be supplemental or a team's main project management tool? Right now it seems like a checklist with streaks. I personally use Trello for a lot of my project management and I like that I can categorize tasks into lists (i.e. backlog, active, completed, tested, etc). Is this something I would use in addition to Trello or as a replacement for Trello?
The goal seems to be to increase productivity of the team by motivating individuals with fun streaks. My question is: Is productivity really tied to doing one task per day? Is it even tied to the number of tasks you do or when you do them?
I'll give you an example that has happened many times to me while working on projects or businesses:
I spend 60+ hours working on feature X. I have all sorts of subtasks around X and write tons of code. It might take me 14 days and every day I did 10 tasks. My streak would be huge! However, when we finally launch X, only 10% of users use/want it and after a couple weeks of trying to iterate it, we cut it. If you measure productivity with getting lots of tasks done, I was very productive. If you measure productivity as business results / time spent, I was basically not productive at all.
Thoughts?
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Here is just an idea. This might exist, but it would be valuable for me personally.
I would pay for a service that is very smart. It integrates with my GitHub, PM tool, Google Drive, Slack, etc. and it is able to analyze my productivity. It tells me how many commits, how many lines of code I wrote, how many tasks I checked off, what my task streak is, estimations of how much time I spent on different apps, how my partners/coworkers are also performing. It would be a sophisticated tool but it analyzes workplace performance. It would probably need to be configurable because different people care about different things.
Just throwing this out there.
Thanks Tony, that clears things up a bit.
I do love the idea of streaks. I love the freaking green charts in GitHub lol. However, I'm wondering if having an entire other site to go to is what people would want. You say seeing other people being productive is motivating - I definitely get that. If I see my partner getting shit done, the competitive spirit in me is like "I need to be doing stuff too".
Don't other project management tools allow you to see other people getting stuff done? I haven't used Asana and have only used Trello in a collaborative setting a couple times, but I would imagine a lot of other pm tools allow you to see what others are working on?
For me personally - I could see the value in a tool that analyzes my productivity in Trello/Asana/PM tools and then gives me reports in Slack. Those reports could include streaks, leaderboards, etc.
My whole worry (and I'm just one person) is that the primary value you mention of seeing other people doing stuff is already possible with current PM tools people are using and that streaks don't add enough to warrant an entirely separate tool. If you could somehow analyze and integrate into tools already used like Slack, I (and maybe others like me) would probably use this.
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