Will my idea be worth a million dollars? probably not, but let me know if I can get 2$ at least.
Hello everyone,
First, thank you for reading this.
In December I decided to create and join the indie hacker movement for real (I've been a member for 3 years as of now).
I've always been super shy about shipping a product and getting the traction that everybody needs to get started.
But here's my first attempt.
Enter Gitswag https://www.gitswag.dev/
Gitswag is a team/solo tool to track and monitor your progress in public/private repos.
It will let you see and reward (think gamifying features) your team.
Share custom dashboards with internal/public clients. And more!
For now my focus will be in serving my first users. I have multiple ideas but I want to hear the crowd first. (everything will be free for as long as posible for those users)
I know some of the pitfalls for the project but I don't have the full picture :) even your smallest idea could help.
Thank you so much hackers!
Follow the journey here 👉 https://twitter.com/RonnyCodes
Hey Ronny,
Couple of things.
Make sure that others are making money selling a similar/same solution. Trying to succeed with a product that doesn't have existing demand is very very very hard.
Your number 1 priority needs to be revenue. It's why free is a bad idea for reasons I outline here - https://www.indiehackers.com/post/why-freemium-free-trials-are-a-terrible-growth-strategy-for-startups-937542e2a1
Hope that helps you somewhat.
Best
Chris
hey Chris! thank you for the kind comment,
Thank you Chris, hope to hear back from you :)
Hey Ronny,
As long as others are making money with the same/similar product then you've got a viable business idea.
Features are only important if the only thing you are selling is your product. If you're selling your product then the quality of your features are absolutely vital.
I wouldn't recommend selling only your product though because it's extremely inefficient way of convincing people to buy it.
Why?
Because most people in your market aren't actively looking to buy your product right now.
Finding the less than 1% of those actively looking to buy your product is hard and expensive.
And, when you do find them, you're fighting an uphill battle against your competitors to convince them to choose you.
Can it work?
Of course, businesses do it every day. But as I can tell you from nearly 20 years marketing & selling, it's very difficult - you're fighting an uphill battle.
There's a far easier and more effective way.
Sell a new belief system to potential customers.
Two major advantages of this are:
a) It means you can sell to everyone in your market (not just the 1% of active buyers)
b) the quality of your product's features become irrelevant
Example - HubSpot grew to $29 million ARR with a product that the CEO/CTO himself admitted was terrible. Yet they their customers loved them. Why, because instead of selling their product they sold a brand-new belief system.
You can check a free resource on this strategy right here - www.thebluntmethod.com.
Hope that helps
Best
Chris