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What interest actually looks and feels like.

It feels like "holy heck, people actually like this!".

It's obvious.

I'm a week in to an experiment launched on IH. I realize now what it feels like to have real interest. Not mediocre interest. Not a 0.05% conversion on Reddit ads. Not a 1% response rate on cold emails. Real interest.

Real interest is people saying:

"m all in bro i love the idea" - @danish
"Would love to join in aswell!" - @jsco
"Great idea!"- @adamg

Now, granted this is not a product yet nor is it anything more than the idea of coming together to build stuff, but, this is an audience, a market.

Problem / Solution

The problem (I think) is that building by yourself is hard. It's lonely. It's demoralizing at times. It's hard to keep going after a long string of failures.

Truthfully, I don't know what the "solution" is yet. I have an idea. I'm running an experiment, but it's still early days. I know personally the past few days of being in this bootcamp myself (for building the bootcamp... meta) has been extremely helpful. I love it.

This was an accident

To get high interest, your message and problem statement has to be close to "correct". Obviously there's no such thing as perfect, but what I got right totally by accident was this:

  • channel. IH is a great "channel" for makers who would consider a bootcamp for makers.

  • message. The message struck a chord with people just like me who felt like building along side other makers would be awesome

  • solution. A low stakes (free) offer to be helpful. No pitch. No company. Just a commitment to putting the groups together and managing a slack channel.

What interest does not feel like

I've had a string of failed indie projects. They all have had mediocre interest. People mildly interested. These projects are like cryptonite. There's just enough there to keep you feeling like you should sink more time into them. Don't do it.

This post is mostly a reminder to myself to kill projects with mediocre interest.

If you're curious about the project I'm talking about above, you can check it out at https://xoxo.vc

Here's the original post:

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/30-day-challenge-zero-to-seeking-a-few-brave-souls-to-join-me-b360d86606

✌️

on July 28, 2020
  1. 4

    As one of the first members (Cohort-1) I can say you're also doing a lot of things right behind the scenes terms of managing the culture, vibe, accountability etc. I'm stoked to be participating. Thanks again for putting this together!

    1. 1

      Thanks @TaylorDye!