Why we are building 12 products in 12 months
Hey everyone 👋
At the start of the year, my Co-Founder, @glazy and I set ourselves the very ambitious goal of building 12 products in 12 months. Thus far in our Indie Hacking journey, we don’t have a good track record when it comes to building and releasing products - so what do we aim to achieve by now doing the 12-in-12 challenge?
For the past few years we've attempted to build several products, but we never took any of them to market...
We are both software engineers, we enjoy working on greenfield projects, and so when we started building products for ourselves, our tendencies to build something “right” and “to scale”, took over. We kept yo-yo’ing between ideas, deliberated endlessly on the tech stack, and spent many hours considering library choices and design patterns. But about 3 weeks into a build, typically, the honeymoon phase is over and our overly ambitious product idea, faded into the abyss. We'd rarely get to the point where we had a marketing site up and, until a few weeks ago, hadn’t spent more than a couple of hours discussing marketing strategies at all.
The thing is, we knew that we were doing it wrong. Our products were too ambitions, MVPs were too big and we'd convince ourselves that a market existed without validation, and never considered pivoting when we didn't believe in a product anymore.
This year we are doing it differently...
We want to go to market while we are still in the honeymoon phase of a project. The idea is to fail/learn fast, retrospectively look back at what worked and what we can improve on. The 1 month timeframe helps us to keep the MVP truly minimal; we don't have time to bikeshed over engineering approaches, and it generally helps us to remain focussed on what's really important.
So, how's it going so far?
In December we released https://inabunch.link. We've learned so much from this project and we're already applying what we've learned in our latest project and seeing great results. Earlier this week we launched early access for https://feedstat.app and we're confident that we'll get the MVP out in the next couple of weeks.
To close this off, I just want to state that we have no hard rules on the timeframe. We're not going to drop a project that's generating valuable leads or showing promise after a month. Just because we're aiming to build a new product every month, doesn’t mean we will - it's just a guideline.
If you’re also on the 12-in-12 journey, or just want to share your thoughts, leave a comment on this post. I'll be posting continued updates about my experience at https://twitter.com/ferdipret. My Co-Founder (Luke) will be sharing his experiences at https://twitter.com/@glzy_
I used to tell what I was going to do and that cause me a dopamine drop that stopped me to continue working on the project… now I tell just what I ve already done. Simple but it works :)
Btw I am following both of you on twitter… keep going guys! You rock!
This 100%! I noticed this shift too ... it's so powerful!
"Don't tell people what you're going to do - show them what you've already done." is an incredible practice.
Thanks for the follow! I can definitely relate to that, seeing actual results, no matter how insignificant they may seem, can be very motivating. Keep on hacking!
Building is easy, selling is hard😁
Totally agree
Out of curiosity, which stack you gonna be using for those products? Are you gonna change it from product to product or stick with the same technology?
EDIT—
Can’t delete the comment but saw your explanation about remix.run. Thanks :))
Cool!
Would be great if you could share more details about your development stack.
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Hi, I really like your UI! Did that come with remix stack or did you build that yourself? Also I followed you on twitter to follow along!
👍
I believe the whole idea of building many projects and bringing them to market is to get out of analysis paralysis. We engineers are prone to get into the details and obsess about getting it “right”.
All the best to you on starting this journey.
However do keep in mind your end goal. Whenever you see a project getting adopted widely and has a real demand - drop everything else and focus on packing more value into the product.
Absolutely, thanks for the kind words!
I was a 12-in-12 fan, and I was able to build two products (TinySnap and EarlyBird) in a month each. I found that building something was cool, but the most difficult part for me was marketing them.
I could have built 12 products in 12 months, but I couldn't focus on any of the products and keep bringing growth to them. I felt distracted a lot and started to regret my decision to keep building.
I believe that if I had spent the same time and energy on building and marketing one product that had validated the PMF, I would have been more successful than I am now. This might not be true for everyone, but for me, I decided to get out of 12-in-12 and focus on EarlyBird.
Interesting feedback. I don't think you should feel guilty for not completing the 12-in-12, I think everyone has their own reason for participating and for us, it's to remain focus and deliver something before they "honeymoon phase" of a new project disappears. If we have a project that is showing promise and we feel like we need to spend more time on that project, we're not going to let the 12-in-12 prevent us from doing that. Like I said in the closing statement, it's not a rule - it's a guide.
Goodluck with EarlyBird!
Wow, it sounds like you and your co-founder are really pushing yourselves to new heights with the 12-in-12 challenge! It's great to see that you've already made progress with the release of https://inabunch.link and https://feedstat.app. By the way, do you have any advice for other entrepreneurs who are trying to build and release products quickly? 😄
Thanks for the kind words.
In terms of building fast, we have spent a lot of time working on a stack that enables this. We use a custom remix-stack template, you can read more about remix stacks here https://remix.run/docs/en/v1/pages/stacks
When it comes to the product, validate the idea ASAP. Build the marketing site first, and make sure you have analytics to track engagement, a feedback tool (not a plug 🙂) is also very important to make sure you work on features that your users actually need.
Thanks for the tips on building fast!
I appreciate the info on using a custom remix-stack template. I'll definitely keep in mind to validate my idea ASAP and focus on building a marketing site first. 👌
By the way, do you think it's worth it to change from React to Remix for building fast?
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Thanks Luke, for the advice! 🙏
I really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience with me. I'll definitely keep in mind to stick with the tech I know and have experience with. Thanks for the encouragement too, and good luck to you and Ferdi in your future endeavors 🏄♂️
Nice, I actually think both those launches already sound quite interesting. I'm curious what learnings you've had already with those 2 launches, especially on the marketing side of things?
On a side note, it seems like so many people on here (me included) are software engineers struggling with marketing. I wonder if there's like an indiemarketers.com where a bunch of marketing people are lamenting about how they love to engage with audiences and validate ideas, but they just get stuck when it comes to actually building it.
Interesting idea 🤔. A couple of early observations I’ve made when it comes to marketing. Know which platform is generating the most leads and build a network on that platform. LinkedIn is incredibly good at generating impressions…
LinkedIn is an interesting one, I think I tend to shy away from posting any early-stage ideas on there for fear of it looking "dinky" and not worth sharing yet with my professional contacts. Are you just making status post on LI, or are there groups or some other platform feature that's better suited for this?
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Yeah, the Early Access landing page seems like a commonly recommended first-step that I've always avoided as well, great to hear that it's working out well for you guys, I think I'll give that a try next idea as well. Have you guys just been posting it to your socials, or doing any methods to get people to check it out? Also are you guys using an existing service to set it up?
Very exciting! Be sure to keep us updated, would love to hear your progress :D
We’ll be posting updates here and on twitter 👍
Is 12 in 12 better to try to LEARN to make and sell things? Or is it a good framework to find the idea that sticks? It seems to me it take so much effort to push the rock up the hill that if you do it over and over month after month all anew, no project can get the push it needs? Or am I thinking of this wrong?
The motivation behind the challenge is to validate ideas without spending too much time on it. Like I said in the post, if an idea is showing promise we would put more focus on it. The challenge is a guide not a rule
I like that you guys are using the 12 in 12 just as a guideline to experiment and not get hung up and to specifics of building MVP, validating ideas, and all that jazz.
Iterate quickly, see what works and what doesn't, discard the losers and keep going with the winners.
Best of luck with this!
Nice one gents, wishing you all the best in this journey. Intrigued to know how you will be marketing the products and subsequently generating leads.
Followed both of you on Twitter.
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Would be magnificent if you should share extra important points about your improvement stack.
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