Share the "why" behind your project!

They main "why" is because I want to try being an Indie Hacker with a side project! :)

When I was learning SQL years ago, my biggest impediment was that I didn't have data to play with or problems to solve. When I mentor colleagues who are new to SQL now, I see the same problem. PracticeSQL.com was developed as a playground that can be used to practice real-world challenges, using a live (sandboxed) SQL editor environment and realistic data, with immediate feedback, all from your browser.

The premise is that the best way to learn something is guided practice- we'll provide the environment, data, and problems to solve; you come with a desire to learn!

I'm building Kuote.co because sending quotes to clients is a pain, I want the emails to look great, I want to be able to refer back and reuse old quotes and I want to know if the client has seen the quote or not. :)

As an avid podcast listener I was frustrated with missing great episodes that others were listening too. Also @mijustin kept bugging me to build it 😀

https://www.indiehackers.com/product/pod-hunt

I recently started working on a new project, Upread: https://upread.co

For a long time, I would hear people say "build a product that solves a problem", but could never quite identify a problem that I needed to solve myself. In the last year, I created 5 projects, but as some would say, "they were all vitamins, not an aspirin".

While I was waiting for the right idea to hit me, I decided to start a blog in the meantime. The blog did much better than I thought, to the point where I needed to start considering what I would do with it and whether I should monetize. That's when I realized, there were so few tools out there for publishers.

• If I wanted to get feedback from my audience, a Google form was the best alternative, but there was nothing native.
• If I wanted to start monetizing, the easiest alternative was slapping low-quality display ads all over my site, which I didn't want to do.
• If I wanted to create a promote page to send to potential advertisers, I would have to create it custom myself.

All of these things add up to make it quite difficult for independent bloggers to build and still, many of the solutions are not really targeted at customization or made for publishers. So that's when I decided to start working on Upread. It's a WIP currently, but I hope to have a working MVP in the next month. I'm especially excited about this project as it solves my own problem, so I'll be Upread's first user. Eventually, I'd love for it to be a simple and easy "toolbox" for all independent online publishers.

Working at a digital agency, I mostly build MVPs. I would much rather spend time on post-launch stuff like analytics, marketing, and optimization. Having a fun side hustle in an interesting space keeps me from getting too miserable at the day job. Long term, it's about financial freedom. If I can create enough value through buying/building/growing small side projects, I might eventually get to the point where the day job is no longer necessary.

I started Archbee because I was frustrated as a software development consultant, seeing 99% of the companies I work with have insufficient or 0 documentation, and a very bad knowledge sharing strategy between coworkers.

A few months ago, my co-founder and I had a bunch of ideas we wanted to try out and validate. But getting to an MVP would take weeks for each, even though 80% of the code we were writing was basically the same from project to project (spin up DB, write SQL to create the right tables, front it with an Auth API, etc.).

We decided that the current way of doing things sucks, and it should fundamentally be easier to start building SaaS businesses, whether you can code or not. There are frameworks out there, but for someone new to the cloud infrastructure space, deploying/managing those resources can be a time-consuming hell.

That's when we started working on Midtype, a backend for SaaS apps that can be implemented with or without code (Webflow!) and should be scalable way beyond something like Firebase or an outsourced dev job. The goal is to not have to worry about backend for years, not just weeks.

My "why" is because I wanted to do high intensity interval training a certain way and video workouts never change. I've created what I wanted now, but will work on the app to be a better experience for myself and other people that want a crazy workout.

I've got a very simple problem I want to solve: I want to get updates on news content that matters, but on my own terms.

I dislike feed readers. They're Yet Another App To Install, and are weak in the areas of searching and categorisation. So I built a tool to get updates sent to your inbox in (relative) real time instead. It makes sense for me, as the Inbox is already a place of work and has industrial strength tools for organisation.

But on a personal level? I just love the idea of building something useful for myself and sharing it with the world. Releasing a simple product that executes well on a pain point is something I've always been wanting to do. I've spent the last month polishing up my MVP that I'd previously used for a long time so hopefully I can get it out there soon!

Ugh, don't get me started. I get really philosophical when I am being asked "Why?".

Here you can imagine the critical side of me is talking with the IndieHacker side of me:

Day 1

critical: Why?

indie: Because I want to create an app that helps people track what's truly important to them: goals, habits, and mindsets.

critical: Why?

indie: Because the only way people can experience true happiness is when they are doing what they love and feel they are creating value.

critical: Why?

indie: Because we all have limited time and we live in a society and we'd like to be accepted and contribute.

critical: Why?

indie: Because we all have survival instincts and being useful increases our chance of survival.

Day 2

critical: Why?

indie: Because I want to create an app that help people save time

critical: Why?

indie: Because time is the most scarce resource in our lives.

critical: Why?

indie: Because our life equals to how much time we're alive.

critical: Why do you care?

indie: Because human potential is amazing and we can make the world better if each of us gets more done in our lifetime.

critical: Why do you care?

indie: Because I'd like to live in a better world.

critical: Why?

indie: Because I have survival instincts and living in a better world increases my chance of survival.

🤣

So People can use the internet in a safe, secure and simple way. Privasim, where privacy is simplified for you.

After a year spent travelling with family, I wanted to print the book of our blog. I didn't like the existing services (look like a printed webpage) so I made my own (looks like a book). As a hacker, of course I prefer to spend 100 hours building an automated book layout-er than spend 10 hours dragging and dropping stuff around in a word processor. In the end I was so pleased with it that I built a website around it and bingo: https://PixxiBook.com - you can read a wordier version of this on our About page.

I'm building a website to source custom products easier than Alibaba. I found that Alibaba and similar systems need too much work to find a good supplier. You need to message suppliers, wait for a response, ask for a sample, wait for response, then send a payment, wait etc. It just seems like such a daunting cycle.

I'm not so happy with my answer to this question, but it's the truth, so here it is.

I met a girl and moved to Vegas to be with her. My first year here, I was self-studying computer science (self-taught web developer). Then I wanted to spend some time freelancing to bring some money in, and then I planned on starting a startup a bit down the line. But my web dev skills got rusty, so I wanted a web-based side project to do before I start freelancing.

When I moved to Vegas I of course got into poker. There's this app called Flopzilla that you're supposed to download. I wanted to, but it only works on Windows, and I have a Mac. So when I needed a project, I decided to build my own version.

I never meant for it to be a business. I just kept working on it, and working on it, and working on it. "Only another month or so." Eventually, I did decide that it'll be a business, and then it became Premium Poker Tools.

Building Yoodonate.com because I want to be able to give money to charities/non-profits easily without carrying cash. I also want an easy way to report all my charitable donations at the end of the tax year so I get an accurate tax refund.

My 'why' is because it's easier than ever to start a business, but growing one is harder than ever. With it being cheap and quick to set up a website, standing out from the crowd and being found is becoming more and more difficult.

That's where Centori comes in, we want to make seo and content marketing simple and turn ordinary folks into marketing heroes.

I am building https://polished.app because I want to become a better writer. Having an audience online makes it way easier to get feedback on ideas and products. Being good at writing makes it easier to build an audience.

There are a lot of writing tools out there. I couldn't find any that were the whole package and helped with each stage of writing - ideation, writing, editing, and publishing. Polished is configurable. Every user will able to create a setup that enables them to work through the stages of writing.

I test and analyze a lot of REST API every day. Very often I have to archive them as form of memory and documentation. I wanted something of very clean and light ( I don't use a lot of features proposed by tools on the market) and something that is comfortable with my way of work.

That's how Resting (https://www.indiehackers.com/product/resting) was born

I want to do something I enjoy doing - listening to business podcasts and sharing my notes with people in my newsletter https://podboxer.com.

At a deeper level, I want control of my time to spend it with my family or however I choose - not be at the mercy of a corporate master.

https://aShop.co is my attempt to create "heroku for e-commerce" platform -- simple, but powerful.

It felt ridiculous how complicated it is to build a well converting store, so I just niched down to amazon sellers to test my ideas. :)

I always loved to make business or career introductions between cool people, and scan my network to see what I can learn, who should I talk to when trying to solve some challenge...

But I hate social media and messaging platforms for this; they don't work.

I'm building Mesa (https://www.getmesa.co/) because want to build (and use!) the missing tool for digital entrepreneurs to find clients, talent, jobs, ideas, etc. via the smartest people they know.

About five years ago, I was doing a fair amount of freelance work on the side, and I needed to send invoices to my clients. I wanted an invoicing service a little more robust and stylish than a stack of Excel files; but not too much more than that. It was just for side hustle freelance gigs. I didn’t need an accounting infrastructure.

But everything I found was a big, overblown, complicated production. I didn’t like all the bookkeeping overhead required to output these stupid little invoices. So, over the course of a week, I built my own, just for me.

I used it happily for about four years... at which point I was thoroughly frustrated with freelance gigs... and then decided to stop spending my time building other people’s dreams, and use that time to build my own.

https://www.sendthatinvoice.com

I have ADHD. I have too many ideas. I am unorganized. I lose said ideas. Made a website to store those said ideas. I stop losing said ideas. https://ideavault.dev

Project:
deprocrastination.co - An extension that turns your browser into a productive environment in a fun way

Why:

1. Because online distraction is one of the main causes of procrastination.
2. Because we can combine game mechanics and site blocking in a powerful behavior change mix.

https://trackmylift.app

Why? Every other gym workout tracker app / software is bloats and has unnecessary functionality and takes away from the main point of the product; tracking your workouts, recording them, scheduling them, and viewing/editing them. I'm creating the most simplistic yet powerful workout tracker.

Release date: 31st August

I am working on https://www.plankarma.com/ because I wanted my remote team to be in one place so I can see who is working, who is sleeping and who is on lunch break.

I know that there are great tools available but I want simple and minimal UI tool where I can see all team activity like if any new coder gets stuck somewhere in bug and need help but not report to seniors :) as they shy.

Two whys:

1. Went to personal experience of severe frustration
2. Noticed I wasn't alone who noticed the problem

Got lucky enough to team up with like-minded people. And I had nothing to lose.

To finally have folders for your Twitter Bookmarks 😎

👉 https://buzzchronicles.com/

Awesome Rosie!

I have 2 "whys" behind the Sales for Founders course.

Firstly, the selfish one: I wanted to learn how to run an online course really well (for some future projects)

Secondly, the more important "why": Ever since I joined the IH community it has been so, so painful to see founders making exactly the same mistakes I made myself years ago. And I wanted to give back in a more scalable way than commenting and answering emails.

So I picked the most common, painful mistake founders make that I know how to solve well (doing sales, finding their first customers) and decided to turn it into a course.