What is the first step in becoming an indie-founder as a programmer?
Hi indie-hackers, after finding this forum I've been dreaming about starting my own online business one day. I've had many ideas but I have trouble knowing where to start. I thought I'd first start by posting here.
I have 3 years of experience developing in mostly Python.
Do you founders start off by going straight for solving the big ideas you have, or start by completing small projects to gain experience? Also, how do you know what the right problems to solve are?
#ask-ih
The short answer - pick an idea and start building it.
The longer answer - Size of idea doesn't really matter to me, either way your solution should be small in scope to start. Make a list of ideas, pick one that you like the most and start building a simple prototyped solution. Keep it small in scope so you can get some feedback before you spend months developing something. As you are building validate the idea. You'll learn a ton along the way. Your first idea might take off, it might not. Just make sure you are incrementally learning as you go.
How do you know what the right problems to solve are? This is different for everyone, depending on their desires. For me it's the ones that people will pay money for.
To emphasize the just get started mentality, I don't even remember what my first idea was anymore and it was probably shit, but I wouldn't have learned all that I have if I hadn't started with that first idea.
Start small. Smallest you can. For purely psychological reasons. By starting small and solving a single problem well, you'll both nail it better and be able to launch earlier, get your first users / customers sooner. Success motivates!
It really depends a lot on the person. If you don't have any idea that really pulls at you more than the others, I'd try a lot of small experiments. It's a way to make sure you get things over the finish line and shipped, it's a way to learn quickly and it's usually a good way of building an audience.
Focus on a user problem instead of the technological solution.
Small (coding) projects will almost never give you the experience that would really help that much in turning software into a business. Since I've started working on Stowbots it's been eye-opening to realize how much of running a software business is not writing code but instead learning about customers and marketing. You can figure out which problems are "right" to solve by identifying and validating a market need. "Market validation" is the google keyword here. I recommend the Mom Test + potential user surveys.
https://www.slideshare.net/xamde/summary-of-the-mom-test
I would check out @robwalling's stairstep approach to bootstrapping.
It's important early on the think about what kind of business you want to build. Since you're here on Indie Hackers, I bet Company of One by Paul Jarvis would be helpful as you think about your ambitions.
My biggest mistake as an engineer was to start building something.
Do you have a problem? Do you know of someone who has a problem?
If you have the problem, build a tool to solve that problem and tell people about it.
If someone else has a problem, talk to them, make sure you actually understand their problem, then solve it for them and ask them to pay.
Do that enough times and you are on your way. But just start.
"Build an audience
Validate an idea or see if it’s already validated for you
—- see if you can get anyone to pay for it without having anything in place ——
Build a product that delivers some value
Pitch product to your audience
Get feedback, make incremental improvements
Keep communication open and continue talking to customers, keep making their life easier.
Learn a million ways to grow your product. There is so much info out there and here on just about everything you want to know."
Not my words but this is the best process for successful projects :p