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7 Comments

Shipped my product, installed it at a customer with $20/month subscription

First some background here, I am a full time software engineer in a extremely fast growing startup. I always wanted to build something of my own make and people's life better. My previous two attempts to build a startup failed terribly due to several reasons(I will have a blog post for that separately). So as the cliche goes, one day I was having my dinner at a restaurant owned by my friend. His restaurant is small and cannot accumulate more than 10 people. So he had a long list of people waiting outside his restaurant door. He asked me If I could help him with crowd management using software, that's how Apex was born. Turns out there are lot of SMB's which have similar problem. This is the only solution out there which does realtime crowd management. It was pretty difficult to work on my idea while having a full time software engineering job. I also
got married to a beautiful woman recently who has been very supportive to all my endeavors. After around 4-5 months of hard work and pivoting few times I was able to ship the product. I don't have a landing page, I have not done any marketing as of now. I focussed on solving one customers problem and solve it really well. I will start working on marketing and open up several sales channel. There are few things which kept me going on this project, I will list a few
****1) The reason why I am doing what I am doing ., "THE WHY FACTOR". This is my biggest motivator to what I did and what i will do in the future.
2) A well rounded support from my wife and timely feedbacks from her were critical.
3) Talking to my first customer once in a while and getting useful feedback.
4) and most importantly checking Indie hackers to find inspiration from fellow hackers.

Nothing is impossible if you make up you mind to make it possible.

on May 29, 2019
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    Congrats, I'm on a similar boat, launched a daycare management platform last week, well only my daughter's daycare but that counts :-), they are not paying yet, I gave them the first 3 months free as I build it.

    I'm trying to talk to them as much as I can so I can make sure that I build something they need not something I THINK they need.

    All the best!

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      Yes, that's a very good approach. Have your first customers involved in your prodcut design (involved as in feedback for your MVP , your beta version etc). It is super important to in terms of your product evolution. Keep hustling.

  2. 1

    Congrats on building the product & also getting your first customer. :)

    This is the only solution out there which does realtime crowd management.
    I am not quite sure about this statement. There are quite a few out there. Maybe the way you are doing is different.
    Nevertheless, great job. Keep at it. :)

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      Thanks!, sorry if I sounded a bit arrogant. But from my market study (which is not quite extensive as the MBA grads out there) I have 2 big competitors who do not have realtime status update. There might be others whom I could have overlooked .

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        Not at all arrogant! :)

  3. 1

    Great post! thanks for sharing. You've done really well to ship the product, that's the most important thing.

    1. 1

      Thanks! I feel much relieved after my first deployment.