Will hey get the same buzz when it's built by someone?
I could feel all the buzz over the hey.com's launch this week. My mind is wondering if not basecamp any other indiehacker or a bootstrapped company have done this, would get the same amount of coverage?
Product differentiation matters but in the end, it all matters to credibility and following earned over the years matter most.
No way. They have an audience, both personally and as a business.
I don't mean to say it's not worthy of the attention, but from indie hacking, it is clear: Building an app is a small part of making a successful product.
Or:
https://www.indiehackers.com/article/why-running-a-business-is-80-marketing-and-only-20-product-57f748a821
That's also why IH marketers always say to find your market first. We aren't Basecamp, we can't just launch and get all the press we want. If we're lucky, we launch of Product Hunt and it goes viral :)
I don't believe so, they have been hyping this for months.
For launch they made it exclusive and only invited folks with huge twitter audiences to build FOMO.
If you're a bootstrapper with 0 audience good luck doing that.
Exactly. It's all about the audience at the end of the day.
It's not just the following that sets them apart - they have a long standing reputation for building quality products, it stands to reason to many that Hey will continue the trend. That's enough to justify a $99/m price tag for some.
Meanwhile if the same thing was launched here I would be hugely skeptical, for any $ mark. It takes a lot of trust to give over all my email to a company and a solo hacker or even a small team isn't going to pass that bar.
I think just the fact that as soon as you land on hey.com you have to read a whole statement goes to show that they rely on their community. Also, no Twitter account; just its founders'.
I doubt it, but that is true well beyond the development and indie hacker world.
If you have a solid brand and a large following, you will likely get attention to anything you release, launch or announce.
Celebrities launch things all the time that no one would care about if their name was not attached to it, but it works.
That said, success is relative and to many indie hackers, the traffic and revenue they generate is something to envy, while to those brands it may be well below their expectations so they ultimately shut them down months later.