Where and how did you come up with the idea of your startup?
I am far from a shopaholic, but recently I realised that I spend too many hours on online shopping in order to buy ordinary casual clothes.
So, I decided to create a smart shopping assistant which helps to buy branded clothes cheaply and save time.
Share your stories .Where and how did you come up with the idea of your startup?
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I started my productized service/agency by first doing it as a freelancer.
I realized that in the European (funded) startup scene, there was a lot of need for video content but very few providers that can help Saas companies get started with it or in-house people that are willing to be on camera.
I was working at that time as a freelancer for one of these European Saas companies helping them turn their articles into videos.
Their videos ofter outperformed the articles in Google and also did really well on YouTube. I knew that written SEO is getting competitive and more companies want to get into video production.
So I started videodeck.co.
Since then I learned that the US market is just as underserved and there are surprisingly few companies that do what we do at a competitive price point.
I've validated the idea on ProductHunt and within my own network and it grew pretty organically.
I've actually posted some updates here on IndieHackers: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/8k-mrr-in-3-months-after-launch-the-power-of-productized-services-021d0b8c83
Oh my god, this landing page. Seriously one of the best I've seen in quite a while. Whoever manages the visual aspect of the business has a seriously good eye.
Concept is great as well. I've been using Synthesia.io in my day job, and have come to the conclusion that AI powered video is not quite as ready for external use as I want it to be.
Haha, thank you so much!
We are planning a redesign, though. We love the aesthetic, but people have confused us with one of the AI video makers or as a software product somehow.
Oh nice, we think tools like Synthesia have a lot of merit for some use cases. But if you plan on creating something that you plan on using for a few years, maybe on your homepage, or when someone signs up, I'd recommend you get a video created by a human. :)
Maybe I'm just biased, haha.
I met this product on product hunt and even added it to my bookmarks to study. This is really great idea!
How many clients do you have already?
and how do you build marketing?
Thank you!
Well most of the marketing was ProductHunt and our own network. We've tried other platforms but with little success.
Hi @miroshdi and everyone 👋
After years of building cloud-based SaaS systems, with realtime APIs, complicated security permissions, and multiple separate database backends, in 2015 my brother and I started conceptualising and planning a new database platform for building and scaling applications more quickly, while still allowing for the storage and querying of data in a structured yet flexible manner. The result was SurrealDB - https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealdb.
Taking inspiration from a range of databases including MySQL, OrientDB, CouchDB, InfluxDB, DynamoDB, MongoDB, RethinkDB, CockroachDB, Neo4j, and Firebase, development began on SurrealDB in 2016 with the intention of creating a scalable cloud graph database, built using Golang.
We wanted to build a database that we didn’t have to manage, that handled schema-less or schema-full data patterns, that could operate like a relational database (but without the JOINs), that could compete with the best document databases (but with a nicer more powerful query language), and that enabled us to build real-time applications effortlessly. Finally we wanted to build applications directly against our database, right from Chrome, Edge, or Safari. No more complicated APIs, no more complicated backends, no more complicated (and often error prone) security permissions. A database that allowed us to focus on our apps, not our infrastructure.
In 2021 the decision was made to open source SurrealDB, making it available to other developers and organisations in a private beta. Having learnt a great deal about building a future-ready database, the decision was made to re-build using Rust, in order to enforce data-sharing guarantees.
We have just launched our scalable cloud graph database SurrealDB in public open beta (completely free to use), completely bootstrapped.
We would love you all to check it out and welcome any feedback!
Thank you for sharing !
it was very interesting to read it.
I've sent your product to our development team, let's see what they say =)
how are you going to build marketing?
Thank you very much @miroshdi! Just looking for initial developer traction from GitHub, Indie Hackers and a few other platforms at the moment. We haven’t yet posted on Reddit, Hacker News and Product Hunt, but we plan to in due course. Thanks for sending the product to your development team! 😊
Really open to any tips and suggestions regarding the marketing if you have any!
I came up with the idea by watching how Product Hunt engaged their users via Twitter. They would often ask them for recommendations or their thoughts and then the comments would lead to engagement and tagging other folks on Twitter. A lightbulb went off saying "hey, it would be cool to embed this on a website to help foster community".
So I built Zigpoll (https://www.zigpoll.com) with that idea in mind. After getting some actual customers though, almost no one used it as intended. Customers instead used it to get structured data directly from their customers right at certain points in their funnel (add to cart, post purchase, first visit, etc...). So I leaned into this use-case instead and built a Shopify app to make it a no-code process. The product is now growing nicely since it has product-market fit.
Imo the TLDR moral is: just start on something that you think is a good idea but don't be afraid to adjust it after VIGOROUSLY observing your users. Also it helps if the product you build is a little bit pliable (ex. allow for your user's data entries to be open-ended with WYSIWYG inputs). People are amazing at finding tools that fit their use-case, even if it wasn't what you originally intended.
A great story and an interesting and useful product! thank you for sharing! I wish you success in your development!
I built https://deepertalk.co because I often ran out of a conversation topic and in many cases I had to google to find an interesting topic to talk.
I dont really have a plan to monetize yet, any suggestion would be much appreciated!
sounds good! it would be great if you could choose topics for conversation, and the platform would generate questions
yeah that is the plan so thank you for giving an upvote to that particular feature!
It's all about "it can be better" and curiosity.
As a developer, I wondered if there's a good open-source project for building sign-in and identity. I've found some, but they are not "exactly what I want". Then I started investigating the industry, shockingly seeing the Okta-Auth0 acquisition with $6.5B. At that moment, I realized the market cap was so big, and I could do something.
So I decided to start with the open-source idea, and my developer friends were also interested since they remembered their painful and repeating experience of building sign-in. Self-help advice often encourages people to dream big, and our idea went bigger, too 😁. Now, we want to build not just a customizable sign-in UI but also an identity solution.
Please DO. NOT. STOP.
I wish you success! you will succeed!
Thank you. Same to you! :-)
Scratched my own itch and made this weird niches (not idea) generator cause I learned that is not about ideas, but people https://nichegenerator.xyz/
A lot of thinking
Lots of speaking with potential customers
Many conversations with mentors and potential investors
Speaking with other entrepreneurs
Seeking problems and solutions
I started purchasing smart devices, thermostats, lights, outlets, etc. and because I'm cheap I was buying products on sale that may or may not connect on the same app. I ended up with a dozen apps to control different aspects of my house. After talking with a few other people I realized that it was not an isolated issue of me just being cheap. Many people I knew were buying devices and just adding another app to their phone and everyone of them complained about it. I brought up Alexa, Homekit, and google and 90% of the people I surveyed all said they didn't want to use voice control as they felt it was too invasive.
So I came up with Fiks. Simply put, it's the universal remote to your smart life. After creating the basic app for everyone to use for free, I have started working on the next phase which will come out later this year. Overall idea is to simplify the smart home market control.
Fiks
In the shower :) Like everyone else
My parents own a restaurant, and I am sure you know how difficult it is to hire people at any rate to do jobs like this so I decided that the restaurant industry was a massive untapped market for robotics growth. I have 99% of the hardware in place and 95% of the code, I just need a technical co-founder to help get that last 6%
what problem are you solving?
Eliminating repetitive tasks in restaurants, not enough employees.
i got denied a visa to budapest...because i didnt include a 'cover letter'. essentially one sentence saying im coming ot budapest for a 7 day holiday. This wasn't required on the official gov website, and this wasnt pointed out in the interview either.
so im currently building tripvisa.io to help iinternational students in the uk to get tourist visa. not fully launched yet but should be cool.
wow! this is a really useful product.
be sure to publish your product on PH
just seeing this thanks, will launch this sometime next week
so at this particular time, does this product only work for UK users only?? or is it also open to users whom are at other parts of the world.
currently only for UK international students
Will get in touch, would be good to discuss your product
This is interesting, may assist the hospitality industry. have you thought about how you can expand from this & deploy other products adjacent to the hospitality industry?
I started with "It would be so cool to build that". I talked to some people who said it was a great idea. But guess what ? The market tought it was nice but wasn't ready for it.
I had to reframe my mindset this second time and start by just listening to peoples problem. I chose a segment I am very passionate about and I just listen to what is painful for them in their daily job.
Seems easier, but it's the hardest thing I did so far. Learning to listen without directly jumping into "Build mode".
If you are also a "product lover" who struggle to "fall in love with the problem" first. I highly recommend 2 books who changed my mind and aldready avoided me to create 3 bad products : "The Mom Test" and " Lean Product Playbook".
I absolutely agree that everyone should read these books!
I made https://nureply.com when I couldn't scale my cold emails and then decided to make it a product so others can benefit.
It was consuming so much time to do the personalization and I have found a way to automate it!
sounds good! how do you bypass the spam system?
Emails or scraping?
e-mails
I and my team has been using Notion for the past couple of years and we really are a fan of the product. Now recently we needed an eCommerce store to sell some of our merchandise. Even though there are many options like WordPress, and Shopify to get the job done, We really wanted to use a tool that we already use (like Notion/Spreadsheet) as making the team comfortable with a new tool is expensive and e-commerce is not our primary business!
So started building NotionCommerce(https://notioncommerce.com) so teams like us can build & manage their online store right from Notion!
smooth finish
What do you need help with?, now that you've built the ecommerce product?
wow, nice mvp! do.not.stop!
Same problem day in and day out at various companies - we have documentation that lives everywhere but never where I need it in the flow of work. Arrchiver is being built to enable others to find documents that live everywhere right in slack so they can share, read, or otherwise use the documents in the flow of work.
Says on your profile page you're a non-technical founder.
How has your journey been in trying to navigate the landscape of trying to build something but not necessarily having the skills yet the tenacity & perseverance are what keeps you going
Are there any no-code platforms you can recommend for non-technical founders out there ?
The journey is slow but informative. You're spot on that it requires tenacity and perseverance - I look at it as the opportunity to build out my knowledge, skills, and vocab in one of the weakest areas of my knowledge. And reminding myself to be kind when it doesn't work on the first try.
The longest part so far is that there is a whole lot of "I don't know what I don't know" which creates a very interesting feedback loop of wikipedia pages and information overload. I am spending a whole lot of time reading right now.
I'm currently using Bubble.io for app build which has come with its own learning curve but, for the most part, has been relatively easy to use. Based on price, it's a great starting point for me.
Always great to hear.
As a startup founder, have you identified these challenges & can you definitely say that these are problems that other founders also face?
Or are these problems that may only exist for the type of problem that you're looking to solve?
Also sent this message via email
Capital fixes a great deal of problems - $10k could probably get me a really good MVP if need be. But, that opens up a whole host of other problems that I'm not yet ready to manage.
Market Validation/Do Others Have This Problem: I haven't done a ton of validation yet. I'm still vetting and validating the idea. But, yes, preliminary conversations indicate there is a need and that I've identified a problem.
A few of the big reasons for not taking capital right now
The challenges I face are not unique. Founders face the challenge of when and how to raise capital all the time. I'm simply omitting the question right now by bootstrapping. And most certainly the problems that I'm running into as a non-technical developer are problems faced by other non-tech founders.
[aside: I am actually taking a huge step away from low-code, no-code as there were some hurdles from a data security standpoint that become more trouble than it was worth. I will be building on a standard full-stack moving forward. I am going to go through the process of learning full-stack dev to create and deploy MVP]
TLDR: I have identified a problem that I believe I can solve. Capital can solve the problem yes, but that opens different problems that I don't want to deal with. Transitioning from no-code to full stack.
Failing with another idea for the same sector, gathering a lot of feedback, and seeing there was a great bigger opportunity with this new one. Pivoting to Uphint was a challenging but great go-to.
At what point did you realize that you needed to pivot? How would you define failure? is it getting the first initial users to pay for the product but not knowing how to continue growing and as a result the startup plateaus or is it when no particular client will pay for the product you've made?
If it's the former, i think there's always an opportunity to salvage something. the 2nd breakthrough tends to be in an adjacent market, 'The blindspot'.
what does your product do? what problem does it solve?
People spend long hours documenting any process. Copying, pasting, and writing each step of every single workflow. This could take 3-4 hours per process. Also, you can't avoid it because it's crucial to build your own knowledge base (internally and for customers as well). With Uphint you could document any workflow in seconds. It's automatically generated. So you start documenting anything 90% faster.
Can we participate in the testing sessions when you're trying out your product live with potential users?
How did it go with your first session in Uphint? I'd love to hear any thoughts. We could do a demo for you, of course, let's talk: [email protected]
sounds good! I would test this
Great to hear! Let me know anything ❤️ I'd love to hear your thoughts!
I like to read a lot of books and articles regarding the world of startups and indie hacking, as a great way to grow as a founder, so I'm starting to build Hexis, a community powered platform to recommend and discover such material
share the link of the product, don't be shy! it's really interesting!
Thanks for the interest! I didn't share the link because I haven't published the landing page yet, I'm juggling the project with my job and college, and I'm only starting to code it, but I'll share a link to the Notion page that I show everyone who wants to know more about it. It's still pretty barebones, but taking shape.
click here to check out the project planning
the journey is just beginning! believe me, this will be your most exciting journey! Good luck!
tell as many people about your product as possible!
Thanks for the support! I'm really excited about it so I expect it to be sometinhg I'm proud of.
Carlos, do you mind recommending some books that you've read & found to be really tactical with respect to being a founder, startups and VC's. Have you thought about building the platform that is specific to the stages that the startups are in. For example - if the startup founder finds himself in No Man's land & is in a Series B - In Health tech, perhaps he/she can view material that is specific to where their company is. Or maybe instead of material, there's 'real time' audio chats that the founder can opt into where he/she can engage with experienced investors/board members/who can give counsel. First 10 sessions or 20 sessions are free, afterwards they need to pay like a retainer to access the right advisors.
more two cents.
Hey, best books I can recommend are "This is marketing" and "Tribes" by Seth Goden, and "Make", by Pieter Levels. I'm right now reading one called "Content marketing strategies" by Clara Ávila and it's a very good read.
As for your recommendation, they are great, thank you for the ideas. I'll add them to the brainstorming sessions 😊
I was the best shape of my life when I took a tumble that left me with a back injury. Starting from square one plus having an injury gave me insight into the challenges that so many people have when it comes to the fitness world.
My husband and I decided to create EasyWellness (www.easywellness.app), a 4-in1 app that helps users build foundational healthy habits that they keep up by rewarding progress at the users' own pace. EasyWellness makes health and fitness about the long term, not instant results.
i checked out the platform - i like the design. it gives me a sense of calmness, like meditation esc. another thing that also occurred was that maybe you can have alternative exercising practitioners on the platform - people that teach meditation. Perhaps the focus may have been on allowing customers to use the app for things like regular exercises where they build muscle, however it did feel like a platform where i could choose what part of the body i wanted to work on. for example if i wanted to prioritize my mental health - then there can be exercises & regiments around that & maybe even recommend foods that could stabilize my mental state & also my heart rate or blood pressure. basically a platform that isn't just prioritizing my muscles - but also my well-being in total - not just recommending foods that will help build muscle, but also food that isn't going to cause high blood pressure or fatigue in the long run.
that's my own 2 cents.
Thank you so much for checking out the app and taking time to give some feedback! I am taking note of your comments. We offer the breathing exercises because mental and physical health are connected especially in terms of being motivated to do self care and make lifestyle changes. This give me some food for thought!
Happy it was well received. Would like to stay in touch, possibly help build community, Primarily interested in helping your company raise money for when the time comes as that is the focus of my startup, How can we keep in touch?
sounds really good! how many users do you have? How do you attract them?
I got inspired by my own experience of searching for a remote job. I spent a lot of time applying and interviewing for companies without knowing if the salary is in my desired range.
So I decided to make https://remotefriendly.com/.
It showcases remote jobs that list a salary range. It's my first public side project and was well received on HN and Reddit. It's in the MAP stage right now :)
You probably tried this, but how about charging the company a fee when they match with a suitable employee? the fee could be on the backend, meaning that the job search & also the hiring process is done on the platform itself so there's no need for the company to do the paperwork externally (off the platform) , where they would probably create more paperwork. simply keep it in your cloud. They could also ay you for maintaining the records in an orderly manner - monthly fee
let me know what you think about the above - i can suggest other ideas around how to monetize. The ideal thing would be to monetize without churn or as little churn as possible.
I was making a product about remote vacancies. We had more than 10k users, but we couldn't make money on it. How are you going to make money ?
Great idea, Di! In my case, I started working on GEXPR because I was often stuck in decision-making as I often felt the need to get advice from someone who is just a few steps ahead! People don't always respond to DMs and there's only so much a video or a blog can tell you. Felt it's better to be able to call someone for a quick chat and even pay them a fee.
i checked out your platform, was curious about your verification process of your advisors. You may mean well by wanting to 'opensource' the product to everyone so they can sign up & gain massive growth, but that might be a mistake. Not everyone is an expert - which means not just anyone can sign up to give 'expert advice'. I believe you will need to have a QUALITY CONTROL mechanism, somehow vet the person who wants to sign up as an advisor.
Have you thought about building the platform that is specific to the stages that the startups are in. For example - if the startup founder finds himself in No Man's land & is in a Series B - In Health tech, perhaps he/she can view material that is specific to where their company is. Or maybe instead of material, there's 'real time' audio chats that the founder can opt into where he/she can engage with experienced investors/board members/who can give counsel. First 10 sessions or 20 sessions are free, afterwards they need to pay like a retainer to access the right advisors.
more two cents.
Hmm, I wonder what kind of product it will be. I would use it!
what stage are you at now?
That's great to hear - we have a prototype in place with experts from various fields whom you can connect with for a quick call. https://gexpr.com/search
wow! I really like it! But I see the risk - I pay money, but I don't know what the result will be. Are there any guarantees that the call was successful? you can give 5 minutes for free. And if a user wants to continue the dialogue, he/she is already paying money.
Thank you so much, means a lot! That's a great point and we are definitely working on those developments in the product pipeline - instilling trust is indeed a huge factor.
I looked at my book shelf and saw a lot of self-help books that I never took any action on.
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/actionable-book-club
cool! upvoted
Idea was seeded by Thanos from Avengers where he snapped his fingers to erase humans, what if there is something like that to clear my desktop - the closer to snapping his fingers is 1-click 😄
https://bit.ly/3HzIE7y
ha-ha, cool comparison =)
to be honest, it's hard to understand what your product does. It would be great if there was voice acting on the video
Thanks for the feedback, I am in an environment where I can't use audio at all.
I will see other ways how I could improve it.
Curious, with what you have seen what did you understand? (It helps me to better understand )
to be honest, not much. I really tried to understand, but I couldn't. Although I have mac os, and maybe I have such a pain, but I didn't understand the solution.
I've been heavily investing in languages self-learning for the last 8 years and for all that time I'd been missing an app which let me:
And I made one.
advertise your product! don't be shy!
Haha, if you ask.
I need some functionality for my online store, so I built it and released it to other stores in the same e-commerce category as mine.
cool! and what does your feature do?
I'd rather not go into too much detail at the moment, but it was a form of a specialised upsell app :)
Amazing.
How did I come up with the idea for Howuku? Pivot.
Like many Indiehackers, I am a web dev and have always wanted to build something of my own, and create value that can benefit others.
Howuku started out as just a simple Feedback Widget project like many of you already been building, I spent just about a couple of days and build out the prototype and started marketing it.
The early days: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/howu/feedback-icon-reanimated--LXFD1c0FVaEcMvTT5hA
However, I am not happy about it as it doesn't spark joy and is not impactful, and anyone can just create a feedback tool in a day, and there are already a dozen of them, so I slowly pivoted it and expanded into an all-in-one web optimization tool.
AB testing, Heatmap, and session recordings are something that I am deeply fascinated about coming from the UI/UX industry, and passionate about web development, it is a perfect match for me to work on my own UI/UX tool that I would enjoy using myself.
That is how I come up with the idea, just by starting with something very simple and pivoting it into something else.
sounds good! I like to read this. I agree that big stories are created from something small..
For me it always comes from the environment I'm working in. One of my projects, where I sell residential and mobile proxies, came from a shortage of proxies I've faced when working on SERP scraping script.
I agree that most often ideas come from your pain in something. But if you go deeper, then someone has already solved this problem. And the question arises, will I be able to offer a better solution?!.
a couple years ago I was developing a project with proxies and I understand what problems you are talking about.
Great idea!
To save time I am buying the same clothes in multiples. Not the best solution.
why?
In case of searching for ordinary casual clothes, it is necessary to keep in mind quality, brand, the right size and color, and of course a good price. So you have to browse from site to site, apply the same filters everywhere, scroll a lot of duplicative items, compare different tabs, and finally identify that chosen item could not be delivered to your country.
Our solution solves it.
-Best discounts and the largest assortment in one place
-Clothes and shoes delivered from all over the world
-Smart search of the best price for each product
-You will be aware of all available hot offers for necessary products
I left my job and was feeling really alone and then to fix that I started the wbe space
Community? Great. Love it!
I believe that they are the future!
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shane can you walk us through the process of building organic growth & how did you arrive at making the decision to cut the solution out of the bigger product so yiu could realize a better business with bigger margins?
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so where are you now with on your product journey?
Would like to connect & better understanding what you're building.
Seems it's it the saas space, i am also building a project in that sector
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