What are your biggest problems being an Indie Hacker?
Right now I'm trying to understand why my product failed. And wanted to know as an Indie Hacker which problems do you find that nobody solved to you yet?
Right now I'm trying to understand why my product failed. And wanted to know as an Indie Hacker which problems do you find that nobody solved to you yet?
There are lots of indie hacker problems that are "unsolved," meaning that whatever solutions exist are imperfect and could be significantly improved upon:
There are hundreds more problems. Just peruse the IH forum and look at the questions people are asking.
However, you have to be careful. Just because people have a problem doesn't mean it's worth solving. Some problems aren't valuable to solve. Where it gets tricky is that some are valuable, but it's still difficult you to capture that value.
For example, arranging for people to meet their cofounders. It's obviously valuable, but people are unlikely to pay you for it, because why would they? Even if they did, it's an incredibly infrequent thing, so your retention wouldn't be great even if you solved the problem well. Investors who own equity in their portfolio companies can probably capture the value of cofounder introductions. Or maybe you could host events and charge admission. But it's hard for me to think of other ways. The business model isn't there. It's a good example of a valuable problem to stay away from.
And then there are the problems that are valuable and where it's easy to capture that value. Those are easy enough to identify: they already have lots of people making lots of money by solving them in some way. For example, there are thousands of businesses that help founders with growth, hiring, product creation, etc. But none of them solve them problem perfectly for everyone, so you have room to bring your own unique solution to the table.
Great advice.
I've been thinking about this a lot recently.
Something I've noticed is that it's becoming ever more useful to think outside of the box and not take the "obvious" route to solving the problem. Mainly because there's a lot of competition when you go down that road.
Especially when it comes to content.
Let's take this example.
That's the "obvious" (or direct) way to solve the problem.
But there are others that might work (better) and allow you to capture more value commensurate to your effort.
For example, you could...
Not saying any of those are good solutions in this case. Cofounder matching really is a problem where it's hard to capture value (I know, I built cofoundme.org a loooong time ago and it was never very successful). But it's a fun thought experiment on how best to capture and create value.
Totally agree. I think a consistent strategy or formula for being able to see these roundabout paths would help a ton of people pick more promising ideas to work on.
Woow, thank you! Thinking outside of our comfort zone it's really difficult when you are living something completely different.
It's really cool to see other's perspectives.
Reaching customers with no money for ads because no customers.
User growth is by far my biggest challenge.
Learning to code for me. I can market and my web app will make money from day one, but I don't know how to build it. Should I pay someone to build it? How much will it cost? It's a very frustrating position to be in lol.
I'm on the other side of that. Writing the code is easy. Figuring out what to build is hard.
Same. It's easier for me to write code. I find it hard to do marketing.
What do you do for work? My advice is to go and work for a small entrepreneurial company somewhere. Expose yourself to new ideas and different business models, then look to model something which is successful, in some small way, initially anyway. I'd kill to be in your shoes.
I'm studying for my Bachelor's and working for a ~30 employee consulting company when I have time. I'll keep my eye out for something to build.
My biggest problem is the marketing and getting users. Not having much of a budget, I can't afford to advertise using Google Ads, Twitter Ads, Facebook Ads etc for too long and getting people to sign up.