Why is everyone around better than me?
Every where I look, being on Twitter, IH, Reddit, etc... I only see success stories.
Anonying titles like:
How I reached 100K MRR, My side project just got aquired for 1M or the worst of them all: I just reached 50K followers on Twitter
I have been bootstrapping my own projects for 7 months now I am not even making 100MRR!!
Am I the only one?
Funny enough, I have a podcast where I narrate my entrepreneurial journey and most of my listeners like it because it is relatable!!
How can I be relatable if all I see are success stories?
Survival Bias
Think about it. There are millions of entrepreneurs in the world but can you actually name 20?
Probably not...
Bootstrappers only start popping up in our radar when they have achieved something extraordinary, being at a significantly big amount of followers, users, likes, etc... Only then the algorithms start picking them up and people start speaking about them.
This leaves out most of people because most of us have not yet achieved something extraordinary.... It does not mean, though that we don't exist!!
This survival bias can be really dangerous for indie makers because it discourages from building our projects and it requires huge will power to keep building when it seems that you are the only one not succeeding.
The good news is that you are not alone! Most of us are actually going through the same struggle and I would love to invite you to join the WBE Twitter space today at 16:30 UTC to meet other wannabe Entrepreneurs and to share your projects, victories and frustrations....
See you there!
Short answer - time.
Your Indiehackers account is 10 months old. Your Twitter account was started in 2021. Most who are successful have been doing it for 5+ (even 10+) years.
Keep at it, keep improving, keep delivering value. Success comes to those who don't stop.
Also, comparing yourself to others is a great way to stay unhappy. Stick to iterating on yourself and comparing who you are now to who you were a year ago. If you're moving forward you're on the right track. If nothing has changed in a year then you need to make something better or switch things up.
Couldn't agree more. It takes time to build a business, whether in SaaS or e-commerce.
For the sake of curiosity, though, how long do you think a person should continue pursuing a business before it's time to pack it up? Is it as simple of profit < cost?
I'm not suggesting people quit their business after a year, or any specific time frame either. There is a lot of discussion in the indie space about what needs to get done to pursue a business, but I'm always interested to hear about when it is time to get out of one too.
It depends. If your goal is to make money, you should probably start making some money quickly. If your goal is to find work that you want to do the rest of your life, then you probably shouldn't stop.
I worked a job for 7 years as an engineer. For the last 4 years of that job - I spent the first two learning web development, marketing, sales, design, etc. and the second two years building Closet Tools. Closet Tools was my 4th attempt at creating a business.
Only after two years did Closet Tools surpass my engineering income, so that's when I left my job.
This is going to sound insane, but I've found it takes 3 years to validate a business. Before that, failure and success look more similar than most people can tell apart.
Ideas need time to evolve.
This sounds right.
I’ve been at it for about a year now and am just starting to gain traction.
Nice to know not to be expecting hoards of cash this early on :)
Congrats on the traction!
I see those early stages as a test of resolve. If you aren't interested enough to carry an idea through that early darkness, probably best to find out sooner than later. And I've definitely lost a bunch of "great ideas" to that phase.
I know but in a world where everything moves so fast, it is hard to have patience...
To have patience you must not look at the goal but enjoy the process. Enjoy the small milestones that you achieve and celebrate them. Post every small success and be happy about it. You are ahead of many believe it or not. Some indiehackers havent even started anything.
Here, here!
live the moment!! true!
You're not the only one who thinks this. This is why the ones who do have patience will prosper even more.
1 reason why it looks like everyone is successful:
Would you click on a blog post with the title: "How I made $400 in 8 years!", probably not! If people were honest and wrote a blog post at every stage of their product, they would not look so successful, and you wouldn't click on the blog post! Be yourself and don't compare yourself with others!
Btw, I am also a newbie to all the things that entrepreneurs have to go through. Because of that, I decided to write each week about what I did, how it went, and what I learned. I try to be completely open and honest! (here on IndieHackers)
That's a super cool approach. I am doing the same with my podcast
The culture of building in public teaches us wrong thing - how to brag gracefully. We take the numbers for granted but who checked them. Even if the numbers are real, what were the initial conditions, were there any unfair advantages at the start? Huge follower base from a past product, for example? How many products failed in the past? Too many factors.
All these success stories just grow anxiety instead of encourage. And if some content causes me to doubt myself, I just unfollow.
My personal formula is to try to enjoy the process and lower expectations for results but it's not easy and takes discipline.
I don't think adopting such a mindset is healthy or helpful.
"People are doing better, so they must be lying."
Better to attribute others' successes to competence than luck or deception.
That's a good piece of advice and I overall agree about having more positive mindset and think better about people.
Could not agree more. The problem is that success sells so people always try to frame the picture to look better than it is...
Yes, unfortunately.
Because you are comparing yourself with them.
True ...
I have been building SaaS products for a while now and still have zero paying customers. People who sign up for Twayobiz drop off after filling out their account information. I can't really tell exactly who filled it out and who didn't as the database is a mess but I do know that a good bit of the members have.
I have been having lots of problems onboarding customers for too long now and Hotjar hasn't really helped me find the drop-off point in this case, not to say Hotjar isn't a good software product as I've used it for years.
You have a good-looking product but it is important have good visibility and really understand why people are dropping off. I signed up to the platform and after signing in with google nothing happened, only after reloading, I was actually forwarded to the main dashboard. The onboarding was a bit to long and I was missing a skip button. I am not really looking to upload a file but I would expect to have a dropbox or google drive looking UI. Basically, a way to create folders first and just drag and drop my documents.
If I were you I would just find a target customer and ask them to share the screen with you while they are using the product for the first time.
If you are working remotely and would like to have the support of other entrepreneurs take a look into our WBE space
Hope it helps! cheers
Hi, I was doing some research and I happened to come across this
What if I did a preview of the file-sharing page while they're creating it?
You see these form builders like Surveymonkey, Jotform, Mightyforms, and Typeform offering alternatives that offer companies to add their brand colors and company logo. Some make you upgrade to do it while others don't, but thats decides the point. I've been trying to take that same approach but with file sharing and storage.
You see Dropbox doesn't offer color customization, nor does Box, OneDrive, or Google Drive. So I'm trying to take that to my advantage.
And about the redirect, I've had problems with it myself too a few times, but I didn't think much of it as it only happened once or twice.
Thank you. That's something we all need to hear from time to time.
No problem! glad it helped
they're not better than you. they are just better at bullshitting and showing off how amazing they would like us to think they are.
I don't blame them because I would be probably doing the same... Success sells but it does not mean that the majority is reaching their goals
success sells. but bull**** you can smell a mile away very quickly becomes a turn-off.
But yeah, maybe we'd all do it anyway 😊
I have been thinking the same. I joked with a few friends that 2021 seems to be the "year of the grifter". I can only assume that its increasing because its now "trendy" to quit your job and build a product.
Thank you for the post. I really needed to hear this.
I Have been feeling this for a while. I hate opening twitter nowadays because all I see is people making millions in a few months from their side projects and here I am struggling to increase my MRR for the past 2 months.
Is the survivor bias. Most of us are struggling. One day you will be the one popping up on someone else radar and they will be annoyed by your success XD
Feel free to shoot me a DM on Twitter if you need to chat!
Good read! From time to time I have that feeling as well...
We all do... But we just don't know about each other! XD
true
It has worked for me differently. I came here 4 years ago to be mostly inspired and to work at it everyday. I bounced ideas off of indie founders early on, built the app then was away from this forum for quite a while.
I definitely could've grown my project more had it not been for other commitments and grew it to about 1k MRR. Still neat ;)
Yes, all of the above, like your podcast, is oh so relatable Tiago! 🤗
Thank you, Minal. I am glad you like my podcast!! :)
Comparing yourself against others is counter productive. You are seeing only their success, and you actually fall for survivor bias.
You need to focus on yourself and make sure you are progressing, by comparing against old versions of yourself. Are you moving in the right direction? Congrats, you're doing fine.
The quote that keeps me going is "You you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl. But by all means, keep moving forward".
Different people have different outcomes from the same things. There's not only skill involved (thus being better), it's also due to circumstances and luck. Think that if somebody is better than you in one aspect, they sacrificed in other aspect where you didn't to get there (be it family time, social life, etc).
I am a fan of the No Zero Days mindset: https://www.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/1q96b5/comment/cdah4af/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 (tldr: focus on small daily wins that push you forward instead of big rare wins. It will compound and you will see the results over years of constant improvement).
very wise words!! It's important to just keep moving forward! But the problem for me is that when crawling is not fast enough to reach my goals...
Fast enough compared to what? My hunch is that you compare your speed with the perceived speed of others. But you don't know their full background and all the little details of their lives to be confident you make a valid comparison.
As long as you keep moving toward your goals, you'll eventually reach them (or get close enough to be satisfied)
I know it needs time, but why the thing like this keep poping up in my head lol
As you can see by the number of responses here your are not alone :)
Start comparing yourself to yourself from 5 years before and you will realize how good you are now :)
True...
One other thing to mention is that 99 times out of 100, someone that is successful now has failed in the past. So most likely you're noticing people that have already failed for years and years and have finally started making seeing some success.
We're all at different places in our entrepreneurial journey. Keep your chin up, keep grinding, and you'll probably find you make it to "success" sooner than you'd think 👍