Taking a minimalistic approach to indie businesses
I signed up to pinboard.in (a bookmarking tool) many years ago. It was my solution after delicious left a hole in my heart.
I'm showing my age here a bit 🥴 but for years I've always kept my eye out for a better bookmarking tool and I haven't found one. I always go back to pinboard. It's simple, has a bookmarklet, and just does the job. And it's super cheap compared to most other solutions these days. I don't even pay, I bought a lifetime account which was stupidly cheap.
I can even explore other people's tags which I love for stumbling upon fairly random resources.
There are no fancy landing pages, it's all pretty functional and probably has barely changed in years. I also don't get any irrelevant or annoying marketing from them. Zero. Nada.
Bad way to approach a business, maybe. Could he have made more money? Probably. But it's also a nice reminder that life is not all about the money. If you follow his journey you can see he got 'distracted' with politics for a while. Having a business that basically ran itself was most likely what enabled him to do other things.
Maciej, the founder, is also perhaps one of the earliest people who has long been openly sharing his numbers.
I often think of Pinboard as the ideal business to run. Something that focuses on just delivering value and don't get weighed down with many marketing, sales, and new features.
I feel like RoamResearch is on a similar wavelength, but their product is much more complex and they have raised VC.
What other businesses run like this?
one of the best. thanks for sharing this again!
Love this example. Thanks Rosie.
Thanks for sharing Rosie. I think Basecamp does this too. Just the product and nothing else.
Thanks for sharing this Rosie. I have a similar goal for my own markfolder.com - it tackles one very focused problem (bookmarking tweets). However, I don't know (yet) if this is something people would pay for. But I am close to launching a premium version so I'll find out!
Charging for a bookmark manager right upfront is bold of pinboard. But I guess there're always people like you who're on the hunt for the absolute best option.
Well, I'm happy for the guy. Thanks for the share!
I'd say it is bold nowadays but back in the day, there weren't any real options to compete which were popular and did the job as well as pinboard.
Also, while I generally agree with the core message of Rosie's post, it goes to show that entering a new market early or establishing it in the first place, holds incredible long-term value for an indie business.
And it can focus on its core customer value instead of bloating itself with less useful features.
Great share Rosie, thank you!
Good point. The historical context is easy to miss. Getting onto the early wave of products lets us survive for a long time.