Please remember: Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, Makerlog, etc. are echo chambers
Hello everyone,
I am reading The Mom Test as was suggested by Sergio from Makerlog and many other people. The book is harsh sometimes, but it is better to know for sure than invest just because people say "Oh you are doing awesome".
With that in mind, I wanted to share this gentle reminder that all of us here in networks like Product Hunt, Indie Hackers, Makerlog, YC Startup School, Pioneer, etc. are Founders. We want to cheer each other up, encourage each other. We get excited to see a new product. We Founders are inherently biased. If we were not so bullish about finding "great problems to tackle" we would not be here.
That set of characteristics that make us Founders also make us poor judge of another Founder's product as a Consumer. Consumers are harsh and they DO NOT CARE about our journey as a Founder. Read the first 3 years of any Founder's journey and you will know that this is the only truth. I have read countless stories on Indie Hackers and the message is really loud and clear.
Unless of course if you are selling to Founders on these networks. Even then, upvotes are not equal to real problem validation. We want each other to succeed but please do not take that support as a sign that we relate to your define problem statement.
So please keep inspiring and cheering each other, we all need the support. But at the same time keep in mind that you need to go to the real customer, talk to them, find their problems. And till we get real revenue, we have only a hypothesis (maybe an MVP) but not a Business.
Cheers from dwata
I mostly agree. I always try to give real feedback on here, but it's difficult to go in-depth without potentially being very insulting.
I also feel like as much as I enjoy IH, it's important to step away so I can think more independently. I should write a blog post on this...
I was thinking the same thing this morning. The people that check product hunt everyday are makers and developers, not the businesses with problems that need solutions. It's up to us to call those businesses and sell them the solutions they need. PH and indiehackers are great resources, up until the point people are using them to delay the hard part of actually selling their product
I am glad that @volkandkaya pressed me to think, "Do I want a hobby or a business". As a Hobbyist I do not need to know if someone will buy my product. As a Business owner, I really need to know that first, before everything else.
Any platform with comments and voting system could potentially be an echo chamber.
That's one of the reasons when I created my problem validation platform (https://needgap.com), I decided not to display the votes, except to the owner of the problem/comment for validation.
Another reason for that was not to discourage someone from posting a problem however small it could be due to down votes from echo chambers. Identifying a 'problem' is much harder than getting what we think is a 'startup idea'.
Other implementations to restrict echo chamber in the platform includes,
• Voting powers only after making a useful comment.
• Giving downvotes cost karma.
• Other algorithmic implementations to detect/prevent abuse of votes.
I'm not telling that these are the solution for an echo chamber, but so it seems to be step in the right direction.
That's a good idea! I know one of the hardest parts is getting product validation. Is there a way for the post author to give "kudos" to people that are being critical, yet fair. This might encourage people to be honest in the comments since there is an expectation between the author and repliers that it is okay to be critical.
Apart from upvoting? I think the best way to do that is to tell them directly in the reply.
More important is, I think to let the post/comment author know why they were down voted; because downvotes without providing a reason is just useless for everyone.
Yes I agree that there are better UX mechanisms to make it echo chamber less prominent. Vote counts are surely one.
I think downvote is aggressive but at the same time what if you could encourage the user to post a criticism instead of the downvote?
Also, simply cheering like "I like the idea, go for it", does not add value.
True, downvotes help in constructive criticism hence I have it in my platform but made it very hard to downvote someone, to encourage use only in extreme cases and by those who have proven to use the power vested in them carefully similar to 'flag' (although flag also exists, mainly for spam).
This by itself is a hard problem, I think a solution would platform specific e.g. In my case once the language of problems & startup ideas could be formulated, I could implement features which can differentiate constructive criticism from those which aren't.
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It is totally OK to no agree, and I just shared my point of view. The only real thing we all founders have to answer after spending say a couple years on these communities is "Are we there yet?".
Yes these places feel like great engagement and I, being a solo founder, totally depend on them for mental support. But I need to be sure I am not here thinking I am doing good with all the conversation and not making revenue with my product to actually pay my salary?
We all have limited time, attention. I want to make sure I actually start paying myself the $50K ARR to start that I hear about from other founders.