The one piece of advice I would give myself is to only start projects that have competition.
If I could go back 12 months, the one piece of advice I would give myself is to only start projects that have competition already.
I spent most of 2021 building projects that were new ideas with little to no competition. The ideas sounded cool but all of them failed.
The turning point for me was when I listened to an IndieHackers podcast episode where the guest was making good profits from a form builder they built.
A FORM BUILDER! In 2021...
This was one of those moments where I had to pause the podcast to take in what I just heard.
At that moment I realized I had a gross misunderstanding and ignorance of the value of building something with competition.
In 2021, there was room for another form builder.
An established market makes things way easier. But what would you tell your 2021 self on how to market your solution?
Had to deal with custom forms for a client last year related to taking note of customers in the context of covid. And to my surprise there is no silver bullet that worked for them out of the box.
I would say team up with a good marketer. I'm not a marketing expert but I work with fantastic marketers. It's great to not have to think about marketing and only think about building.
So what you're talking about is a niche solution - a form builder for X. The issue with niche products is always, is the market size big enough?
Thanks Michael for the quick feedback and I am (most likely as some others here) lack marketing skills. Or let's say I didn't take it too serious in the past, because building stuff is more fun.
But there are some good inspirations on here on IH. Just read the post from Malte: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/a-simple-and-efficient-way-to-find-your-first-users-5e7cc19273 which I will definitely give a try.