Social St

I made my first IH post asking people for any feedbacks on what I've built. Here was the post: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/feedback-on-my-website-helping-people-meet-irl-and-find-companions-to-do-activities-with-d64206d271

I didn't get any response for it yet 😔. I have to reach out to more people. With a social app, I think getting traction is pretty hard because it only works when everyone else is in it. I think a good potential early-adopter could be existing local communities like Running Clubs, ethnic communities like chinese associations, study groups, etc. Somebody is hosting those, and I believe we can make their lives easier.

I have a few ideas on my brainstorming list early on for how I can monetize this platform (one being advertising), but nearing the end of finishing my MVP, I figure that a good way to validate my idea would be to see if anyone would pay for it.

So I went ahead and build the idea of a subscription plan called 'Guild St' and try to pre-sell it. This is just an idea and obviously didn't bother building it unless I can find a customer for it - which is something I probably had to do early on before building the whole MVP this far.

Yes, it is a pretty lonely journey, but I had much fun. A few things really helped me:

1. Trello board with (backlog, MVP, In Progress, Done) columns. Everything good-to-have is in backlog, the essential todos in MVP, the things I've picked up in progress, and the tasks I've completed. This kept me focused on the current task, 1 step at a time. And when you looked back, you'll be amazed how far you've gone.

2. Rails. I wouldn't be able to build these things fast if it wasn't for Ruby on Rails - a stack I'm very familiar with and makes building full-stack software easy.

3. Finding time everyday. Small progress is better than no progress, and when I have to step out I try not to step out for too long or I might loose context of what I worked on. I try to keep the tasks small and easy so I don't get too bored stuck on one.

I'm an immigrant in Canada, and so I haven't been interacting with a lot of people after I graduated from University. I thought finding friends and community is hard unless you're involved in some type of activity / club. So on this day, I begun brainstorming and writing down some ideas for a meetup platform.

The problem with existing meetup app was that it's too rigid; you have need to sign in as a group and make formal activities. I wanted Social St to be more informal, like finding companions to play basketball, or grab dinner with. Anyone can go ahead and make activties with little friction.