What are you biggest challenges in building your startup / indie hacking?
Is it funding?
Is it implementation?
Is it ideation?
Is it something else?
Can you tell me what it is and why exactly you think you have this challenge / problem?
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It was always growth.
But working for our current company we learned about SEO but also doing the things that don't scale.
We actually used Surfkey.io (current side project) to grow itself to the first 350 users in a few weeks just by joining relevant convos on Reddit.
Interesting! Is there a blueprint you used on Reddit or some sort of tactic you can share?
The key aspect is to blend in, be another redditor. It's a very harsh platform when it comes to self-promotion.
Both from side of the users but also rules and moderators. People will call you out if you just shamelessly plug your stuff.
But as long as you genuinely get involved, provide value and give actual advice to people and only then plug your link where it makes sense, you will be fine. And grow!
this is great advice. Sometimes moderators can be a real pain. I've run into similar problems on Reddit where we genuinely believe our product would help, but it gets seen as spam.
Yep, it's all about finding the grey area. But some subreddits are hopeless.
r/startups is just impossible while r/sideproject or r/saas is friendly.
oh nice. Gonna check out r/saas now
Marketing - No matter how good your product is.... It will be Epic fail, if you dont know how to put it in front of people.
What are your biggest challenges in marketing? Finding the right channels? Making it work? Getting users to sign up?
What did you try and why is it such a challenge?
It would definitely be sales & marketing + SEO; getting the right leads and converting them.
But I will figure it out definitely. It's been 3.5 weeks since I launched my startup on Product Hunt (slingshotdesign.co).
Till now, I have reached around $850 in MRR. I just introduced an affiliate program too (check our website to know more 👆). Any tips or feedback is really appreciated!
Nice, congrats. Really curious about your results regarding the affiliate program.
Thanks! Planning to do a PH launch soon for our new plan of Webflow Design + Development. Would also emphasise our affiliate program, which should give good results. Will keep posting here to keep everyone updated.
Our biggest was funding.
We scrapped together $65k and fortunately had one team member who went from being a musician to coder full time for us.
Were weeks away from launching but have found it hard to get people on a wait-list for the app/platform.
Latter seems like a validation challenge. How did you know you are building something that people want, when you got started?
Good question!
There's multiple platforms out there with similar features but have expanded on ours as well as cut back, like not allowing X rated content.
We got extra validation through interviews, research and taking it to investors who could see it's potential.
With no marketing money we're doing our best.
Just a quick feedback to your comment "have found it hard to get people on a wait-list". I am assuming your company is this one? https://liveandsigned.com/
Can't see if you got more than the landing page linked, but if this one is the only one, I find it really hard to understand what you are doing - basically impossible as there is no description whatsoever. Maybe, if you fill the landing page with some contents, conversions will increase.
Thanks for having a look and your feedback. Really appreciated.
Yep I agree and have mentioned it to our team that we need more info on the home page and not after clicking on the sign up button.
The last thing we want is to scare people off and commit to something that isn't clear.
Thanks again.
Always distribution and retention - if you can't get distribution you'll start to question implementation, ideation, market...and then you won't know what's working and what's not.
Did you find ways to solve it or improve distribution tactics? What have you tried out and can you share what did and didn't work?
The first paying customer!
Haha, totally understandable. Did you solve it? Or are you still working on that?
Still a work in progress - we are looking for beta testers so pre-rev. But we will get there!
creating an audience
Are you in the field of building audience based business ("influencer" account on Twitter / Instagram or so)? Or do you mean getting traction / users / customers?
subscribers for the newsletter :D rippedrich.com
Haha, you just got a new one. Looking forward for the first edition.
Pretty much capacity!
That's probably a comfortable challenge if it is meant that you have a lot of demand that you don't have the capacity to satisfy. Or do you mean that it's hard to bring up the capacity needed for your business / side hustle because of other commitments (full time job or so)?