“Timing” as a factor for success

You have to be careful with advice like this, because every example he cites is a billion dollar company or higher. These are very unusual companies, and the advice that applies to them often doesn't work well for people who are simply trying to make $100k, $200k, or even $500k/year from their businesses.

The things that indie hackers should most watch out for, the things that are most likely to kill our businesses, are:

1. never getting started
2. failure to keep pushing for 2+ years
3. not finding enough paying customers

In other words, the most important factors at this scale are motivation, execution, and your business model. That's why it's important to have a community of founders you can turn to for inspiration and support, to have a regular working schedule and a product you actually care about, and to learn some solid business fundamentals.

Of course, a lot of the learning you do is "on the job." You're probably not going to be great at selling your product at first, for example, but if you keep pushing for 2 years you'll get better. If you quit early or never get started, then you won't.

So my advice is not to worry about timing. In fact, don't build anything whose ultimate success is predicated on the whims of society. Solve a straightforward problem that you know people are already paying to have solved.

I agree with him, though I think it's a bit misleading to call it "timing", which connotes factors that are outside of our locus of control, like luck.

Toward the end of the video he breaks down what he means by timing:

"The best way to really assess timing is to really look whether consumers are really ready for what you have to offer them, and to be really honest about it, and not be in denial about any results that you see."

In other words, build a product that solves actual problems (not theoretical problems) that people have today (not in five years), and be prepared to scrap your project and try again if these same people don't validate it by paying you money.

This is the advice you'll find in just about every interview and in many forum threads here on indiehackers.com.

Instead of, say, trying to create a cool, new piece of tech and hoping to get it funded and worked on by an elite team with a fancy, well-thought-out business model, aspiring founders would do well to start with the basics.

What is the current state of affairs in the real world today? What problems are people running into? What problems are they likely to start running into real soon?

Here's an example. I hear voice imitation software is at our doorstep, and it'll likely cause a lot of pain for politicians and other public figures whose careers depend on avoiding scandals. How much would they pay for some form of voice authentication software which verifies things they've actually said? The answer is: who knows? So create a quick landing page announcing that you've got this product in the works and allow people to sign up for a mailing list to get updated on your progress. If you get a lot of signups, consider your product idea validated, and think about how (or if) you can even build it. Otherwise, can the project and move on to the next one.

Call it timing if you want. I call it solving real problems in the real world.

Timing is important. Develop your sense of timing through experience: the better you are at parsing information, the less overwhelmed you will be by it & therefore capable of exercising mindfulness to timing.

As Juvenile says, "Slow motion for me"

c.f. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3594132/

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