This Is Why 90% Of Indie Hackers Fail

Post updated from original for clarity

Every founder, whether they are an indiehacker or have funding, is looking for the same thing when they start:

Breakthrough growth.

That aha moment when growth starts coming effortlessly, where customers and revenue flood into your business.

It’s what every founder looks for because it means you’ve now got a viable business on your hands.

We’ve all been given the same story about how to achieve this: build a great product that fits what the market wants - aka find product-market fit.

But trying to find product-market fit is the reason why 9 out of 10 startups fail.

Here's why.

Why Looking For Product-Market Fit Is A Mistake

Because it makes founders believe that their product is the reason why they don't have the breakthrough growth that they are looking for yet.

So, they get stuck in an endless loop of improving their product and trying to sell the improved version to potential customers.

Eventually, they either run out of time or money and are forced to shut down. Or they give up thinking that there is no market need.

What they never realize is that they were focusing on the wrong thing.

The Product Is Never The Problem. The Message Is.

The process of finding product-market fit looks like this:

1. Build a product

2. Sell the product to potential customers

3. Improve the product based on feedback

4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 until...

5. Breakthrough growth is found

But, most startups get stuck at step four.

Stuck in a never-ending loop of trying to improve their product and sell the new & improved version to potential customers.

They might eventually pivot to a new product or problem but the same cycle repeats until eventually, one of two things happens:

a) Either they run out of money and are forced to shut down

b) Or, they think there is no market need and voluntarily shut down

Why does this happen?

They would say that it was because their product wasn't good enough, that they never found product-market fit.

But that's wrong.

The Message Is The Problem

The product is not the reason 90% of startups can't find breakthrough growth and end up failing.

It’s the fact that the process of trying to find product-market fit requires them to focus their marketing & sales messages on selling their product (step 2).

Why does this stop the vast majority of startups from finding the breakthrough growth that they are looking for?

Because selling only one's product in one's marketing and sales messages is a very inefficient growth strategy.

We only have to look at a company like Apple for proof of this. Despite great products & a fanatical customer base, selling only its products in its marketing campaigns led it to the brink of bankruptcy in 1997.

So What's The Solution?

To copy what companies like Bullet Journal, YNAB, CrossFit, HubSpot, Salesforce, and others used to create breakthrough growth when they were startups.

They didn't sell just their products. They promoted a specific type of belief, a BLUNT belief, as well.

For brevity's sake, we'll go through exactly what those beliefs are in a future post.