Dynamic Image
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Despite getting another paying customer (Now at 2!) I'm feeling incredibly dissatisfied with my progress, I started this project over 2 months ago and I don't really feel like I've had 2 months of progress.
Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, maybe I'm not being hard enough?
Do you work full-time and run an indie-business?
How do you manage it all?
As many probably do, I find coding easier than dealing with the hard things: like talking to people and getting harsh criticisms from strangers.
Instead of working on important things to get my product actually into the hands of people, I worked on a problem that might arise in the future.
I solved some cool things but they weren't useful to my product right now
To solve this: I'm stripping back the "nice to haves" from the functionality and giving myself a strict deadline
Let's go! 🚀
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I've been there. Coding is easy, turns out the computer always do exactly what you tell it too. People on the other hand....
P.S. Your site looks really cool! I signed up for the beta. I think personalized marketing is definitely the future. Looking forward to trying it ou.
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Thanks for signing up!
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I know this too well myself.
I would try and get a number of paying customers as soon as possible and then forcing yourself to do the customer service as thoroughly as you can. It is surprising, but once people pay a meaningful amount of money, they dial down the blanket criticism and turn to tell you what they truly need. And at that point, talking to customers is enjoyable.
Learned that myself in my own startup. Once customers find their problem mostly solved by using your product, the discussion about features and roadmaps is a completely different one compared to "I would pay for this maybe"-kind of people telling you what else you need to do to get their business (which you never will).
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Thanks for sharing
What have you found to be the most useful questions when talking to people to understand where to go next?
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Asking them if the solution provided solves their problem fully or if there was one particular thing that, when created/changed/removed, would make the experience multiple times better.
The trick is to ask questions where they can focus on one response. Not "what else would you like" but "name the most important problem still unsolved". Understanding customer priorities is more important than building the right feature. Features come and go, but priorities and goals stay the same.
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I like the focus and making sure you get a focused response
Thanks for taking the time Arvid, I really appreciate it
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"I find coding easier than dealing with the hard things" I'm with you here :)
One thing I am trying to do is introduce some "double personality disorder" when picking the tasks I need to work on. Then I am not myself but a virtual CEO or boss of mine. His job is to analyze the situation and then take decisions on what to do next. He makes the decisions and then I become myself again and execute.
That's working pretty well so far :)
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I find out that OKR frameworks work for me in this matter. I decided to create a usable product that will be published at the end of a quarter (aspiring objective) and created some outcome that will tell me that I've achieved my goal (measurable key results). Right now, a long time before the end of Q3 I had a product ready and then I'll be able to work with user feedback.
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Resonate :( I found myself in this trap all the time! I have to check myself every day when I have "some little idea to validate" and push myself to the marketing :)))
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Deadlines were very helpful to me at my first startup. But I realized later on that they acted more as lipstick. They cured the symptom, but didn't address the cause or beliefs that prompted me to avoid customer interactions.
After deadlines became exhausting and lost their efficacy, I was forced to look deeper. What I found out was:
- I dreaded a conversation with a customer that would render my plan (feature, enhancement or marketing strategy, etc) useless. My brain wanted to keep its interpretation of the situation unchanged. ie stay on plan, keep coding.
- I doubly dreaded criticism of something that I've been working on for weeks. Like an artist hesitant to show a painting which he thought was a masterpiece, but was too worried about critique that would dispell his perception of it.
- After being in maker mode for a while, you start getting too comfortable and absorbed in your project (what you're alluding to). Switching to shaker mode will become costlier (energy wise).
I agree with @arvidkahl. Get people to use it as quickly as possible. Embrace flexibility. Pray for criticism. Switch to shaker mode daily even if for 30 minutes.
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Specifically what would you do for those 30 minutes?
Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed response
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For my current project, I try to do one pomodoro session for marketing or selling related stuff. I will increase the number of sessions once I have an MVP. Right now I'm trying to find out where my potential customers hang out and how I can talk to them. So I've been signing up to FB groups, subreddits, and forums.
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Switch to shaker mode daily... That actually doesn't sound bad. I might actually try it out for 2 weeks. Keep a specific timeslot in my daily schedule to force myself to do all the dreaded stuff!
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Talking to users was a daunting task, but when I forced myself to have weekly deadlines I found that our product got much better in shorter periods of time. After failing so many previous ventures, we didn't feel comfortable actually coding the bulk of our product until the end of our 50th customer interview. There's a great Y-combinator video that helps teach how to talk to customers. It's by the founder of Pebble named Eric. That video was a great resource while we were doing customer discovery, hopefully it helps you!
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Great video, thanks for sharing
Here's the link in case anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT4Ig2uqjTc
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@Davidpark good advice and thanks for sharing that resource. Jenni AI looks extremely useful.
Is it cool if I emailed you in regards to a question that I have?
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Of course! dpark@altum.io
Look forward to the email.
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Being there myself as we speak. Coding comes easy. And things that need fixing/enhancing are everywhere. It's just easier postponing the hard stuff and just write more code. ..
I tried the deadline concept, but it didn't work very good for me. I am starting to think that making me liable to a 3rd party (like promising to some people that they will get to test it out or something at a specific date) might work better.In any case, I hope you get to overcome this yourself! Go 🚀!
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Yea I agree, that's also why I'm sharing here on Indiehackers and on Twitter also (I've got a long thread for this product if you're interested: https://twitter.com/DannyAziz97/status/1161643561407918080)
Something tells me being liable to a whole community might work out better than just to an individual - Strangers are harsher and more truthful than friends
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I know the feeling Danny, I have a similar problem in that I prefer building stuff to talking. If you ever need a beta tester/feedabck get in touch. The idea sounds really interesting, who did you see using it most?
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At the moment share images seem to be a powerful and useful use case, but recently I've had some people asking about more custom use cases
What would you use it for?
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I actually have no idea.
My first thought was dynamic targeted ads would be pretty cool - variable text over a chosen background pic. Dynamic memes might be fun too and might let you encourage adoption if you allow some free use.
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Although it might be a bit niche, I think I can see a lot of usefulness in the case of Images served using chatbots. When you are showing services/products over a chatbot discussion (usually as choices for the user), real estate it's quite important. You do not have too much room and overlaying the most important information (usually price) on the served image would help for a better UX.
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Hmm thanks for that, I'll give it a think
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I have the same exact problem! It took me many years to get out of this loop. With my latest project (HearApp - https://hearapp.co), I took a conscious (and very hard) decision that even if the app isn't a 100%, I'm going to start putting the word out there and start having discussions.
This helped me literally forget I had to fix those small things cause I was so busy talking to people. And once enough people reported a certain UI/UX or feature issue, is when I would work on it.
Good luck to you and Dynamic Image! :)
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Specifically what are you doing to put the word out and have discussions?
Thanks for replying and sharing!
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Tbh I'm not a marketer/sales/business person. I have no idea if this is the right thing to do.
This is the first time I'm trying this out. Basically what I've done, is make a list of places to go and interact on. Currently it's ProductHunt, Indiehackers, BetaList and a few other Slack channels. It's either posting about my learnings, asking questions, or commenting on posts! :)
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All thanks to indie hackers and contributing to the community I was able to connect with somebody (A fellow indie hacker) who needed Dynamic Image for his website.
I haven't even finished the product (The backend works, there are a few bugs that thankfully the customer is patient with 🙏)
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Congrats my man! Onto the next one :)
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Thanks, dude!
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Great news brother. Keep up the good work.
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Thanks, brother. You too!
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Congratulations bro... We keep pushing!
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Thanks brother!
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Congrats!
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Thanks, Matt!
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Great job! Well done !
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Thank you!
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I would show the URL (and make it shorter) instead of making user go through the source, it will appeal to less tech-savy people!
I can see any person, not just developers, using this in their newsletter etc. even individuals on their social media posts
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Makes so much sense, thanks for the suggestion Eralp 👍🏽
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Nice hustle congrats!
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Congratulations!
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That's a cool service!
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Great way to leverage the network! Congrats.
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This is a great idea, congrats. Does it allow to host the images elsewhere instead of dynamic image server?
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That is definitely possible. At the moment, when an image is generated it actually gets saved to a CDN and if those same parameters are requested again then the saved version gets served
Is this something you would be interested in?
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Congrats!
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Thanks!
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Well done!
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Thanks!
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Great job. take your time you will fix the bugs
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Thanks! Got quite a few of them fixed already but then more popped up! It's all a learning process
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Congrats :)
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Thank you!
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That's great, Danny!! Keep us posted! :)
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Thanks! Will do
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Awesome work, Danny! :D
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Thanks Tyler!
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Well done Danny! It's the beginning of a fun world!!
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Thanks, Nitesh - I'm excited 🚀
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Building a product is great, getting people paying for it is an incredible feeling! Congratulations!
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That's for sure! Thanks
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Cherish this one. Your customer is one that understandings you and had a lot of patience.
Onwards to the next one!-
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You're totally right, thanks Edwin!
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Congrats!
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Thanks Troy!
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Well done!
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Thanks Zane!
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Congratulations! Keep it on.
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Thanks Wei!
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That feeling just be awesome! The app is also pretty cool! Not something I would probably use regularly, but really cool none the less!
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Thanks a lot, Tom. Yea it has a very specific use case I guess
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Amazing! Must feel huge! Keep on hustling :)
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Thanks, feels crazy. You too!
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Congratulations! That was quick, have you tried Hacker News?
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Thanks, it was surprisingly quick, I thought it takes me a few months or something to get the ball rolling.
Waiting for my product to actually be ready before putting it out there, for this first customer I literally had to by hand create the image (manually typing in the coordinates of all the different element )
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Congrats!!! keep grinding
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Thanks! I will do, you too!
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Man, congrats! That feeling must be awesome!
Hopefully, I'll be there too with Caliverse one day 😀 I know that a lot of customers are ready to use it your product if it's free but when it comes to money - they are not so open anymore.
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Thanks, man I appreciate it.
Just checked out Caliverse, the first thing that stood out was the main tagline wasn't very informative "Hey, have you met Caliverse?" doesn't tell me much - maybe change it to something a bit more informative but also catching?
Hope that helps
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Hmm, well that actually makes sense to make the main tagline as clear as possible about the best features my app has!
Thank you for this suggestion! Will definitely update description!
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🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
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🚀🚀 Thanks, Ruben
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Well done!
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Thanks, Volkan!
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That's amazing, well done!! 🔥 I can't wait for that day with https://trackmylift.app !! Must be a nice feeling!
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Thanks, Alan - You'll get there soon, keep at it!
More than happy to provide some feedback if you want it-
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That would be great! Release date is 31st August so i'm still tidying up and finishing the last parts of the app, but the promotional site as above is pretty much done.
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Just signed up and played around, where would you like to me send the feedback? Here?
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Just saw your sign-up come through. Keep in mind it's still in development and some of the stuff in there that's "live" doesn't work ATM.
You could email me it, might be a bit better even -> contact@trackmylift.app
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I've gone through the arduous process several different times on different products that I've built/companies that I've worked at.
I've built plugins to solve this for Sketch, which was close but not the right solution.
I need this. If anything it scratches my itch, hopefully, it scratches other peoples itches
12 Comments
You are 2 clients ahead from where you were 2 months ago.
Don't think anyone has never had that feeling before though. It's hard to say beforehand how quickly you will grow.
I work full-time as a startup advisor and marketer. On the side, at least one hour a day, I work on my other businesses. On the weekends, I usually spend between 5 and 8 hours a day on them. This allows me to work anywhere from 15 to 20 hours a week on other things. The commute from and to work and gym time is spent on thinking about the other businesses, how can I improve what I am doing? How can I cut down execution time on certain tasks?
Set goals: where do you want to be in a month? Is it 10 customers, 20, 30? Then cut that down into actionable tasks: what do you need to do every day/every 2 days to get 1 or 2 customers? Then spend time on that.
When you're starting out, it's hard to have a good balance. It takes time. Nobody goes full Tony Hawk on a skateboard on day 1.
Hey Frank, thanks for your reply
I think one of the things that I was doing wrong was trying to do too much too quickly, instead, I think I'll do similar to yourself and dedicate at least an hour a day
Do you have clear goals? If you don't you can't know if you are making progress.
2 paying customers after 2 months? that's great!
progress is relative. consistent discipline to keep at it will get you there.
you got this!
Thanks, Malcolm - I appreciate that
Progress is progress. There are people who haven't gotten one single customer after a whole year. Congratulations!
Most folk haven’t released their product after 2 months so I think you’re doing pretty well!
Most people (aka me) can't even get one paying customer, so I would be super excited if I had 2 paying customers. If you look at how far you have to go still, sometimes it can feel like you haven't done anything. But if you look at the road behind you, you'll see that you have made some progress. Now you just need to continue improving and moving forward.
Focus on your wins - what about those 2 folks are special that made them decide to buy? Where can you find more folks like them?
Do you have solid data tracking on your conversion funnel in place? Are you running multiple tests to determine what works doesn't? That type of data will keep you focused and allow you to track progress and make changes via solid data metrics vs how you "feel".
To be successful in starting a new company or project on the side is that you basically have to be a bulldozer chugging along pushing a crapload of shit all by yourself. This is not a sprint and if you treat it as such you are going to burn out like a cheap paper match on a dive bar floor. </analogies>
I'm consulting full time during the day while starting photivo.com. I've been working on my project pretty hard all year and I've had some rough weeks where I struggled to get good work done and I always (literally always) feel like I should be way further in the process and it's definitely hit me in the feels a few times!
There is no sugar coating this, you just need to find ways to mentally cut across those ups and downs and just know this is a long push. We all go through it, but it's so easy to also feel alone when going through this stuff. Not everyone is built to take this, it takes a special kind of stupid sometimes... but you got this!!!
Thanks Russ, your analogy was quite helpful actually haha
I'm curious about what you feel "progress" is?