[jlangenauer]

Why do "indiehackers" want attention from and create products for other "indiehackers"? As a group they seem the people with the least amount of money to spend on products, and are some of the most cheapskate people on the planet.

Here's some advice: if you want to make money selling a software product, sell to people who are able and willing to spend money on it.

[kybernetyk]

This. It's the "developers trying to sell products to other developers" conundrum. You know the development workflow. You came up with a great tool to increase productivity for developers. You set a low price of $50. And yet no one is going to buy it because "lol I could do this in a weekend".

Developers are cheap bastards (I'm still fighting over whether I should shell our $99 for Panic's Nova editor or not - even though it would be the perfect fit for my editing needs. But I'm a cheap bastard and VIM is good enough so...)

I guess "indiehackers" aren't much different. Only maybe they have less disposable income that old fart developers?

[throw10920]

Developers are also the kind of people who will refuse to pay money for or use proprietary software on principle - regardless of price! I constantly see people on HN suggesting (often highly immature) open-source alternatives to free or reasonably-priced proprietary software for no other reason than the fact that it's open-source.

Just like being an author, it's hard to make a living writing (books : software) unless you're either very skilled+lucky (Brandon Sanderson : Jetbrains) or sell to companies (HR/marketing position at a company : either making B2B software or working for a software company yourself).

[lallysingh]

Proprietary software risks lock in. Most developers experience the pain of that eventually.

You can use that stuff safely if you can survive losing it and continue reasonably (e.g., switch to Emacs or Jenkins). If you can't, it's a huge risk.

[throw10920]

> Proprietary software risks lock in.

This has nothing to do with proprietary software. Sublime Text, for instance, is proprietary software, but there is zero lock-in because it operates on plain text files. This argument is invalid.

[hahajk]

Furthermore, getting new software approved at a big corp can already be a hassle. But at all the places I've worked, seeking approvals for and opening up a funding line to pay for a license increases the hassle 10x.

[throw10920]

This has nothing to do with selling to individual developer-users.

[andrew_]

> Developers are cheap bastards

Am a developer and can confirm. I am a cheap bastard.

[emadabdulrahim]

This made me chuckle.

[lallysingh]

Developers underestimate how much work it takes to build things. For large stuff like IDEs, developers buy them and pay good money.

But yeah many developers look at prices badly. Will it save you more time/effort than the price? That's the threshold. Not some abstract idea of "worth the money."

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

ya.. a lot of these things are no brainers when you do the math. let's say i believe myself to be worth $100/hr and the software costs $50. can i build this in 30 minutes? hmm, i might be able to set up an empty project in 30 minutes.

[nmfisher]

I actually totally disagree with this. Developer tools are probably one of the easier segments to tackle because technical people 1) like trying new things and 2) often have company credit cards that don’t have to justify expenses.

[tlarkworthy]

Having worked in a successful developer tool (Firebase) this is utter nonsense. Developers are super cheap. People are ringing their hands over the 10 dollar per month copilot price for the world beat ai to help you code for Christ' sake.

[giardini]

... wringing their hands...

[adversaryIdiot]

yeah, and i plan on cancling my co-pilot subscription after the free trial

[giardini]

I'm not gonna do it! Someone else, please!8-))

[vlaskovits]

Uh......

Dev tools is one of the hardest segments to tackle.

Developers are notoriously cheap and every one of your developer-customers (falsely) assumes they could build a better version of your product over the weekend.

Developers will always compare your fully-featured, supported product to a shitbag OSS "free" alternative they found on GitHub (abandoned by some dude who tried to build a clone to a real product over the weekend and then discovered that is actually not possible...)

Developers will take great pains to overstate the case for building internal tools as it gives them more control and embededness in an organization.

Selling to developers is not for the faint of heart -- and ironically, takes MORE* sales skill than, say, selling marketing automation tools to marketers. No sales/marketer will say to you on a sales call:

"You know, I could build that if I wanted to...."

First-time entrepreneurs who happen to be developers often attack devtools because that is all they know.

*This is a weird self-esteem insecurity tic.

[mrbuttons454]

Nova is fantastic, btw

[kybernetyk]

I know. But their "$99 then $49/year" price is somehow off putting to me. Now I know this is stupid. Because before this model was en vogue I bought a lot of software (Omnifocus for example, or 1Password) and I bought paid upgrades every time there were some available. But this "you just pay $49/year to get upgrades" is somehow psychologically completely different for me. I know it's pretty much the same - but the subscription-feeling of it is off putting. Can't really explain it - just a dumb me thing I guess.

[jamie_ca]

Honestly, I think Agenda [1] had a brilliant take on this - a free version with baseline features, and a continual improvement of "Pro" features. Pay for it once, get all the current pro features plus whatever they release as pro in the next year. Then your feature set freezes at that level, and whenever you feel like they've added something worth the pro price point, you pay for the catch-up and another year.

They get to maintain one version of the app, with a reasonable number of feature flags, and users get to pay when something adds value.

[1] https://agenda.com/

[vineyardmike]

> Why do "indiehackers" want attention from and create products for other "indiehackers"?

They’re influencers. That’s why people want their attention.

I think it kinda has the look of a cool lifestyle from the outside (to some). They’re digital nomads and they travel to cool places and meeting cool people and tweeting big graphs that go up and to the right. They disavow lots of possessions (again a nomad) while professing being all tech all the time. Once upon a time tech-entrepreneurs might have rented a shack in Palo Alto, but now they tweet while couch surfing in Lisbon. Silicon Valley is too crowded when you’re solo.

I would take a house in Palo Alto over an airport lounge and an AirBnB du jour but the nomadic life is honestly cheaper and seems attainable, if only I can build that indie business.

[ehnto]

Something worth thinking about in this context, is that businesses simply must exist in a community of some kind. When you start a small business in your local community, you have a pretty good idea of the appetite, and space for, the product you are selling, you just have to win the popularity contest and then make the financials work.

For digital nomads, that community has to be online, which is a difficult landscape. You are competing with every online business across the globe, and it's difficult to gauge the desire for what you're selling. Just being online won't do it, and even if you find some customers, have you found all of them? Maybe you missed a connection to a broader community that needs what you sell. You'd never know.

But from my thrown made of failed SaaS products, the biggest mistake I see solo-entrepreneurs make, often they don't know what they're selling. They know what they're building, and they conflate their solo-SaaS business with venture capitalist powered startup. VC startups aren't businesses yet, they're proto-businesses, they can afford to be a lofty idea and the money can happen later. Solo-entrepreneurs, you don't have that luxury. You have to have the "business" part, the money flow, figured out already.

My advice for someone who is trying to bootstrap a solo-business on the net: have a product that someone can buy as soon as you quit your paying job. If no one can give you money, you're just counting down the days until you can even begin being a business.

[daveidol]

Great advice, thanks!

[seydor]

> they travel to cool places and meeting cool people

I was looking at some forums and it seems that the first question after someone arrives in a new place is "where do i meet you guys (digital nomads)". It seems to me that it's a closed group of people selling things to each other.

Tbc, I don't have anything against this kind of living, and in fact i d like it to be easier to work in other countries. Unfortunately, even within the EU you can't work in another country.

[themitigating]

I thought digital nomads were mostly remote workers who just wanted to travel.

What is an indie business?

[synu]

Something where you make a business that takes minimal commitment so you can spend your time on the beach.

The actual business seems to be taking photos of yourself on the beach and making money as an influencer, while telling people you made money from your startup though.

At least that’s my impression. Maybe there are counter examples.

[satvikpendem]

This is mostly incorrect. Indie business are what the name says, independent bootstrapped businesses that does not take venture capital. They are usually SaaS but not always. Lots of examples on the IndieHackers podcast, including a guy who makes money doing cookie delivery.

You're more likely thinking of Instagram, Twitter or YouTube influencers.

[vineyardmike]

An “indie hacker” is a solo entrepreneur who (may be a digital nomad and) builds small revenue generating projects. Typically building them in series and letting them grow passively while working on a new one. Often active on twitter sharing work in progress and success/failure stories.

A key theme for many is building lifestyle businesses that collectively provide “passive income” and financial independence. But unlike “FIRE” it’s “financial independence, casually work while enjoying life”

A common and well known person is Pieter Levels:

https://levels.io/projects/

[rchaud]

> What is an indie business?

Mostly video courses, job board websites, affiliate link hustles.

[make_it_sure]

that's because people that usually become indie hacker don't have much expertise outside of development and a few very saturated markets. Everything related to indie hackers, statups, etc are super crowded because it's easier for a newcomer to enter the market and build something familiar to them.

Most people that have expertise on agriculture, oil drilling, saw-milling etc where there are real opportunities don't know much about startups or know how to build an app.

[seydor]

Because they probably don't know another community. A lot of people are also inspired and copying what Nomadlist did, but that is a project aimed at precisely this type of wandering wannabee entrepreneurs.

[KaiserPro]

> Here's some advice:

I strongly doubt OP wants advice.

[mschuster91]

> Why do "indiehackers" want attention from and create products for other "indiehackers"?

Two things come to my mind:

1) "indie hackers" are way easier to get a relation started with than companies or even start-ups. And forget about big enterprise if you don't have an angel investor or some other experienced and well-connected guidance.

2) With smaller users, you're more likely to get better testing and feedback. In companies of all sizes, it's rare to have a "we have an issue with vendor X's software" pipeline that goes straight from the affected user to the vendor, in most cases every report or feedback question will take six to seven steps in between.

[tdeck]

While these things are true, I can't help but think the advantages are outweighed by the fact that tech savvy people are some of the cheapest people around when it comes to paying for software. How many of us expect to build an MVP entirely on the free tier of something?

[h05sz487b]

That's what I asked myself reading the post. Business wise nobody cares about your product blog.

[jwtnb]

This is great point. Every idie hacker wants to scratch his own itch but doesn't realize nobody else will want to buy even if they have similar problems.

[ericmcer]

Well one of the indiehacker mottos is to solve problems you are familiar with. So...