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New me, new plans, my first idea for validation

Hello fellow IndieHackers ๐Ÿ‘‹

This is my first post here, really excited to share. Looking for your comments and guidance as I know you got this figured out better than me ๐Ÿš€

๐Ÿ‘จโ€๐Ÿ”ง First a little about me:
For the last 7 years, I've been working full time as a backend developer for big and small companies. Currently working for a small startup here in Finland.
For a long time, I've been planning to try my skills as an indie hacker and the time is now guys!

๐Ÿ“ˆ The plan
As I've been lurking indie hackers, product hunt, and all various indie hacker-related sites for a few years now I have come to the come conclusion that the golden rule for indie hacking is: validate first, code later. So the plan right now is simple: I'm going to validate as many ideas as possible for the upcoming months. Then, if something catches some attention, proceed with that specific idea.

๐Ÿ’ก First idea for validation
So, of course, I cannot publish my first post without presenting you guys with an idea I've had for some time, but just recently decided to take action (read: try to validate it) upon it.

The idea ๐Ÿ’ญ: Live streaming platform, now called Hudle ๐Ÿ”Š. The landing page for validation purposes is here: https://www.hudle.live

This idea actually came from reading indie hackers as I found out many of you do newsletters, videos, coding courses, and much other stuff that would be great content to deliver via live streaming. You have so much knowledge to give, and not just for other indie hackers, but for big companies also as they actually know little about idea validation, finding customers outside of traditional methods, and so on.

But enough with the chitchat, feel free to ask me any questions, and hard criticism is always welcome. ๐Ÿ™‰

Have a nice day!

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    It really shows that you put the most effort into the landing page )) it looks more like a page of an established startup!

    TBH I have mixed feelings because I certainly wouldn't spend 10h on a landing page for each of my 150 ideas (that is, if I had that many), on the other hand, if I started building a landing page myself I would probably spend a week, and it still would be much uglier. Did you use any stock components/illustrations/layouts?

    Regarding validation, do you have any idea how many registered users you need before moving forward? Or how many time you want to spend before moving to the next idea?

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      Hello and thanks for the comment!

      I agree that I don't want to spend 10 hours every time I decide to do a landing page just to validate an idea. Being a backend developer I'm not used to doing visual stuff so that definitely slows me down. I'd also like my upcoming landing pages to be more simple.

      For the hudle landing page, I took a landing page template I found and edited it. Most time went into fitting the layout with copywriting I think.

      To answer your question about validation and when to move forward; to be truly honest, I actually have no idea what the "tipping point" is. I've just started and all this is new to me. I think for now I have to just go by a gut feeling.

      I'll be posting more on the subject later when I have some more insight on it!

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    Hey interesting post! One thing I was wondering is what are your thoughts about competing with twitch? As far as I understand you're basically planning to offer the same service while twitch has an advantage of already having a lot of potential viewers for streamers on their site.

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      Hello that is true to some extent. Twitch, as far as I know of, is currently charging stream subscribers a recurring monthly fee with a 50% platform fee. Then there are "bits", which a viewer can buy and that come in as something like 1 cent per bit for the streamer.

      But yes, anything other than how the payments work these kinds of platforms are direct competitors to each other. My opinion on this is that you should not be afraid of competition and when it comes to live-streaming I think there is room for other platforms besides Twitch too.

      So the TL;DR version is: yes, there is a lot of competition, not just with Twitch, but I think the industry is so big it can provide a piece of the pie for multiple platforms.

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        Sounds good! You're probably right on this. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and all the best for your project!

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    LOL, the landing looks like my previous landing for Plainee

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      Hehe nice! That's the thing with free illustrations.. they save time but many others have used the same :P Btw nice idea and I really love your current page for Plainee!

      How's it going overall with that project?

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        Was developing it for more than 3 months with care and craftsmanship in mind.
        The result - No product market fit. Nobody needs it (except me). All new features were put on pause for obvious reason.
        Searching for new ideas.
        Lessons learned:

        • Never come with a possible solution to a possible problem for some possible customers. Go and ask them directly if they have this problem.
        • TailwindCSS seems to be a good CSS framework, very flexible and versatile
        • Never spend too much time with a logo
        • If you decided to make a landing page - make the best landing page you have seen in your life and describe very clear what problem are you fixing and show visually how you fix it
        1. 1

          Wow that's a bummer, but hey at least now you have reflected and learned things.

          That's really great input there, can I ask a few questions:

          • How did to come to the conclusion that there is no product market fit?
          • In what different ways did you try validating the idea?

          And now that what happened, happened, how would you ask directly about your potential new customers if they got a problem with something or not? Cold emails? Social media messages? Phone calls?

          I think this is very important knowledge to have, as you seem to have progressed one or two iterations further than me already

          Thanks again @nyku

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            • "How did to come to the conclusion that there is no product market fit?"
              I posted here few times - 1 comment, HN - 1 comment, Reddit - nothing, DM reddit users - nothing.
              I also submitted to Betalist but I'll have to wait 1 month.
              From comments - the project looks nice but - people seems to not have problems with meetings productivity, so they would not use my tool even for free :)

            • "In what different ways did you try validating the idea?"
              My main mistake was - if I would "scratch my own itch" and make a solution for my own problem - I (probably) will be able to find likeminded people that have this problem and will try to fix the problem for them too.
              Huge mistake. 3 months of working at nights - thrown in the trash.

            My last move that I can do to to validate the idea - total landing page remake (to make it look less childish and cheap) + paid ads.

            If this will not bring any users - RIP.

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              Thanks for the comprehensive reply, this is really really valuable information for any starting boostrapper like me. I hope someone else notices and reads this!

              I'm starting to think were actually right on the same path, I've done most of the things you listed with similar result. One thing I'm missing now is the direct messages, I'll have to try that first.

              Btw followed you, it would be nice to share experiences more later on as I find these really valuable like I said.

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                Thank you!
                I guess the right next thing for both of us is bringing our landing pages to the next level. I guess we can inspire from products listed on Producthunt or Betalist or just pick some ideas from websites we like and then add some unique paid illustrations and images so it looks attractive and them maybe go paid ads and see how may sign ins we got :)

                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSaIOCHbuYw

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