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What recent wins have you experienced?

A lot of IH posts focus on mistakes founders have made, or challenges we face.

And that's great. It's awesome to have a community where we can share advice and get support.

But - especially for the solo-founders out there - it's important to share our successes too!

So why not give yourself a (well-deserved) pat on the back and inspire others with a recent win you experienced?

#ask-ih

  1. 9

    Recent success was https://thekanyestory.com . Got retweeted by Jack from Twitter, Naval, and @wesbos all folk I respect deeply. Ended up with 500 email subscribers and 1000 new twitter followers.

    Whilst writing the story, I questioned whether it was a mistake to spend so much time on it, when I could have probably wrote 15 blogs in that time and grown an audience that way. But I felt like the story had a chance of "going viral" and that I should roll the dice, on the hope I get lucky. Essentially, placing a bet you lose 80% of the time, but it's worth it, because when you win, you win big.

    Wins should be celebrated, but I also try to not pay too much attention to them. Not cause I'm a Buddhist monk, just because if I get high when things go well, then by definition I'm going to get low when they don't.

    For example, in an alternative universe, my process could be the same, the story could be just as good, but I just don't get as lucky, and no one reads it.

    1. 1

      Just read The Kanye Story, and my god... Mad respect, Harry. Awesome writing style for one (subscribed; was laughing out loud reading the content), and a lot of guts to just put yourself out there. I read so often about going out there early, testing, talking, failing, but I find it a difficult thing. I have a lot to learn in this regards, so it is incredibly inspiring to see somebody just run with things and take risks.

      You've got a fan.

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        thanks a lot. genuinely a lovely message read. you learn by doing.

        what are you working on yourself?

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          Hi Harry,

          Anytime. It's always great to have examples to strive for, so stories like that are really helpful and inspiring.

          I have myself been working on a project for nearly one-and-a-half year that I just cannot seem to get of the ground. The product itself is exactly how I want it but I just can't get it to take off. Have been working to take it into a new direction the past few months and am relaunching it on PH somewhere these days.

          If you are interested in checking it out, would love to hear your thoughts on it. I have created a platform for online learners to help them find the best course or tutorial: aggregated and ranked over 80.000 courses from the biggest platforms on the web lile Coursera, Udacity, and Udemy, and present them with the most important course characteristics that can also be used to filter on.

          https://courseroot.com/

          I have decided to donate 50% (currently still at 15% but will be 50% from May onwards) of the profits I'll make to a good cause that helps people that have been less fortunate, that do not have the same access to education for whatever reason (no drinking water, no resources, etc). I wanted to do something more with it, and thought it would be amazing if we can distribute some of the opportunity that we have in terms of growth and development with those that have been less fortunate.

          The upcoming days I will just be focusing on trying to get support and feedback, and will launch the new version on Product Hunt next week hopefully, hoping it can catalyze something.

          Anyway, talking about myself a lot. I checked out your marketing website. I love the clean design. Is this what you are fully focused on now? And is it going well?

          All the best,

          Valentijn

          1. 1

            First impressions is very nice design. Just at work atm, will get back to you properly later this evening.

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              Hi Harry,

              Just wanted to share on PH launch page as well. Just went live. 🙌 Would love to get your support there: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/courseroot-share

            2. 1

              Absolutely, no hurry. Thanks for taking the time 🙏 and good to hear the overall design is appreciated (only took 6 massive iterations haha)

    2. 1

      Yeah I saw this - super awesome story and a beautifully designed page!

      Congrats!

      just because if I get high when things go well, then by definition I'm going to get low when they don't.

      That's more expectations than wins though, no?

      I think it's great to temper your expectations, but once you've already had a win, I think it's more than healthy to take a moment to enjoy the success.

      After all, why work towards it at all otherwise?

      1. 1

        Yeah, I see what your saying.

        Most of the time there is a linear relationship between "effort" and "reward" and in that case, definitely kick back and enjoy every second :)

        I think my case, is quite unique in that luck played such a key role. I did my best writing and promoting, but the success of the story rests in the lap of the Gods.

        And, I don't want to attach my own self worth to whether Jack Dorsey tweets about it or not.

        But, yeah I think "going viral" is one of the unique cases, where it's worth being a little more cautious.

  2. 4

    This week I sent an email to my beta users to introduce paid plans for https://plausible.io. It's been in free beta for three months, and now I'm putting a price tag on the product.

    I was pretty nervous sending it out, but the response has been really positive. Looks like a good amount of beta users will upgrade over the next month and I can start bringing in some non-zero revenue!

    1. 1

      I'll register this weekend to give it a try. I really like your landing page.

      1. 1

        Thanks! Let me know how it goes :)

    2. 1

      I think a post with the whole experience would be super useful to other IHs. How you came up with the price, how you structured your email, user responses, etc

      1. 1

        uuh, that would be a great topic to write about. Thanks for the suggestion!

  3. 4

    Happy to go first...

    This week, I launched the Sales for Founders podcast ...

    An interview series for (technical) founders who are fed up of building products nobody wants to buy...

    Each week, I talk to an awesome founder/salesperson and we deliver practical, actionable insights on how to sell, find your first paying customers and grow a successful business.

    @danimancini, @rosiesherry, @csallen, @channingallen, @Harlem, @alchemist - what was your biggest win this week?

    1. 3

      Will have a listen of the podcast too! :)

    2. 3

      Congrats on the podcast @louisswiss . Will have a listen this eve

    3. 2

      Can't wait to give this a listen!

  4. 3

    I just passed 100 users (4 paid) on https://frequently!!

  5. 3

    I started doing strength training with my teen son. We're keeping each other accountable to show up and do the work.

    Also, now that we have a nanny, every Thursday my husband and I have a date night. We haven't had this in years, so appreciating that!

    On the work front for IH - I've been getting my head down organising AMAs and Office Hours, it's another thing off of @csallen's plate.

    I've also made a start on a local (Brighton, UK) IH meetup group - https://www.meetup.com/Brighton-Indie-Hackers/

    1. 1

      Very cool. Love the Office Hours. Would be great if you could do them earlier on in the day, so EU can watch :)

    2. 1

      Awesome!

      It's great to see how your wins aren't just business related.

      I struggle to define myself/my wins by things outside of startups/work, and I bet a lot of other people here do too...

  6. 2

    I've been building https://harvy.app into an iOS app recently. I submitted it to Apple for review this past Sunday as I heard that can be a pain but it's been approved! I found a couple bugs since then so it isn't "live" yet, but that is a huge step in the right direction for me. Whenver I showed potential users the site the next question they would ask was "can I download it on my phone?" Soon!

    1. 1

      iOS Approval can be such a PITA. So I know how good that feels :) Congrats man

  7. 2

    The growth goal set for the end of the year was reached this month (8 months earlier than anticipated last year) which is an amazing win for us.

    1. 1

      That's insane!! Nice work

  8. 2

    This is a small win to me but I finally managed to sit down one on one with a potential customer after several cold emails. Because of the chicken and egg problem, I wanted to host his company's profile for free but it was reassuring that he mentioned that he's fully supportive whether or not it's free or paid.

  9. 2

    Ugh. My Achilles' heel. Recognizing the wins. (Grinning) I suck at this, but will give it a shot!

    My win was a sucker punch to the gut delivered by @csallen. He commented on someone else's retro, but his message shook up my world, too.

    I don't know where the shake up will take me. But I appreciate being shook. Anytime one's paradigm is nudged is a win in my book!

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      This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

      1. 2

        He basically said to stop thinking small, if you're gonna sink your time into something, make it worth your time. Also pointed out that businesses spend more money, faster, than consumers tend to.

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          Look at you just totally stealing my thunder. You're lucky we're buds.

          1. 1

            It rocked my brain too :)

  10. 1

    As of today, I am celebrating the first month of Satistime's launch https://www.satistime.com/ :) I have been focusing on organic growth and feel really happy with the number of trial sign-ups! I am curious to see how many of them will convert to paying customers and hoping to share it with you next time :)

  11. 1

    I got my first paying customer for https://pydist.com on Friday! At the lowest tier, but hey, I'll take it!

    I've been struggling to reach potential users for the past couple months. PyDist is a private package hosting service for Python, and as luck would have it the lead maintainer of Python's public package index, PyPI, recently wrote a blog post about why PyPI wouldn't offer the services I do. I reached out to him, he liked the product, and tweeted about it!

  12. 1

    I got an unrequested shoutout in the first couple minutes of my favorite tech podcast!

  13. 1

    This is the case in Japan. I have launched the minimum product which let people introduce their followers on Twitter. We have been successfully registering 8000 users in 2days and generating 4000 contents. Recently, another application has been successful as well.

    The first one is expanded on Twitter, the latter is expanded on tech blog sites in Japan.

    While doing it, I have realized that the most important for the first customers is to find the community they likely to use it for. In other words, I believe it's better to build the product which users of the service you usually use want to use more.

  14. 1

    This week, I got my first user for https://sheet.chat, my side project to connect spreadsheets to Slack.
    Not yet a real active user, not yet a customer, but that's a beginning :)
    Next step: working on onboarding + marketing.

  15. 1

    I've been doing some consulting so I've been a bit busy with other stuff, but I just shipped the first half of the updates I've been working on for my website. I now have a press kit (https://danger.world/press), a blog (https://danger.world/blog) and an RSS feed (https://danger.world/rss.xml) available.

    1. 1

      That's awesome! I actually worked on an Indie RPGMMO called Danger Lands a bunch of years ago. Good luck :)

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