What’s New: Founders are losing faith in the “building in public”
(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)
Here's what you'll find in this issue:
- Building in public on X is oversaturated. Or is it? Indie hackers weigh in on whether it's still worth the time and effort.
- Tech investor Naval Ravikant is famous for avoiding public appearances. But he showed up at the Network State conference with million-dollar insights.
- $50K MRR with an image editor. Rik Schennink launched in a crowded market, and completely ignored the competition.
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Is building in public still worth it? 🤔
Indie hackers are beginning to lose faith in the "build in public" approach.
In fact, a blog post with the bold title "No One Builds in Public" just went viral on Hacker News. The post, written by a former software engineer at Google who's a new indie hacker, dove into the disconnect people feel about building in public.
And it clearly touched a nerve.
Here are some of takeaways from the article, as well as opinions from the Indie Hackers community.
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Naval Ravikant's insights on wealth creation from Network State Conference 2024 🪄
One of the surprising guest speakers at last week's Network State Conference was Naval Ravikant.
If you've been out of the loop, the Network State Conference featured tech luminaries of all stripes — including indie hackers like Pieter Levels and life hackers like Bryan Johnson — who shared their thoughts on how to use technology to build online communities and, like, private "technocapitalist" islands or something.
The talk by Naval Ravikant was uniquely special because he's a well-known and often-quoted tech entrepreneur with a policy of limiting public appearances and podcast episodes.
We watched the entire interview with Naval and picked out a few quotes that indie hackers should apply to find profitable business ideas and even write better X posts.
In the news 📰
🎁 TikTok's call for brands to feature in its 2024 holiday gift guide.
💻 BoldDesk: The best Zendesk alternative for customer support. Save up to 50%! #ad
💬 Getting buy-in for customer stories.
✅ The truth behind AI checkers: A cautionary tale.
🔎 Marketers use YouTube as an awareness driver.
🖼️ Can a bot critique art?
Building a $50K MRR business in a crowded market 💰
Rik Schennink built Pintura, a JavaScript image editor, in an very crowded market, and completely ignored the competition.
His launch tweet generated 300K impressions, and he's now at $50K MRR.
Giving stuff away for free was a game changer for growth.
Courtland's tweet pick 🐦
🤣 —@csallen
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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Stephen Flanders, Darko Gjorgjievski, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing
