What I find interesting with Indie Hackers is that it covers a wide range a personal/business situations. It goes from real lifestyle business, to beer-money-making side-projects.
I feel that there is a world of difference between a side-project that is free, to one where you ask customers for their credit cards. Of all professional experiences, I have never learnt as much as I did taking a side-project idea from idea to MVP, then to beta users, then to paying customers, scaling server issues, and marketing strategies. It's not so much about the money, than the fact that you learn so much on so many dimensions.
Sincere thanks + shameless plug, the interview about Smooz was fun, a good self-reflection exercise, and a good source of traffic too (https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/smooz)
Exactly! What I love about IH is that it doesn't define success as 6+ figures revenue streams, many of them are in early stages or making <$1k/month and are people happy with what they are building even if it is not their main job yet. Which is good to divert from the nonsensical thinking that only unicorn status/IPOs/acquisition equate to success often spoken in the startup world.
Me too :-) Lots of people around me were dismissive of the early days of Smooz, that it would never be a "real business". My big goal is 1000€ / months. Not a billion-dollar company : just a life step I'd be really proud of
Thanks for sharing your story as it resonates deeply with me, especially the family life part of things. The idea is also pretty good as well. I'm also curious about your direct sales efforts and what happened there that made it not so successful? I have my assumptions but I'd love to hear your side of things.
Well, direct sales is a bit difficult because my core target is "Agencies that use Slack, of which clients use Slack". So I need to convince a layer of users (let say 10% conversion) and they have to convince another layer (10% again) => 1% conversion rate.
What worked was publishing some articles on Medium and optimizing a bit for SEO, so that the handful of people who actually has the problem, can find me. The Slack app Directory helped quite a bit at first, but I should take better advantage of it now that they have add features.
But really, the main growth factor is : almost no churn. People are super satisfied. So even if I don't spend much time finding customers, the very low growth keeps adding up...
Yeah, that's an interesting core target and quite pleasantly surprised that agencies themselves are using Slack. I would've guessed that the clients themselves would be the ones who would use Slack and then maybe you can work with agencies on setting Slack up for them like a concierge service of some sort.
In other words. Reading about success to become successful is like reading the autobiography of lotterywinners. There are no secrets to success other than luck, timing and actually shipping your product (or play the lottery).
Contrary to the lottery though much fewer people ship and there are much more winning lottery coupons.
There is nothing to learn about how to build a successful product.
If you want to read anything read about specific obstacles you get into.
Reading about success might create a feedback loop to yourself so that you feel more motivated and possibly more guided to get to success. Kinda like hanging out with games enthusiasts, and you gradually become one yourself?
I have definitely read in one of those exact type of books that surrounding yourself with successful people helps you become successful. Same for surrounding yourself with the rich. Something about feedback loops, and greater access to opportunities through networking.
On the other hand you could start experiencing imposter's syndrome. In any case, it's not easy to get that golden ticket for such circles, let alone maintain your rep once there!
To be fair, there's about sixteen million articles on how to eliminate this.
>it's not easy to get that golden ticket for such circles
Not sure I agree. I want to remember the book I read this in but I can't, but in this case the dude just rented in an super expensive apartment complex. I guess he was able to do that because he had a job, sure, but the point was he rented higher than he was comfortable doing, yet it paid off in the end.
Most of the ways I'm thinking of involve money (get VIP badges at conferences, clubs, whatever), but a simple and free way is to go to shitloads of meetups and other "people gathering" events, being gregarious and meeting everyone you can. No reason you couldn't bump into a high falutin CEO at a motorcycle ride day or on the Frisbee golf course or something.
Well, I'm not sure if I'll ever have the wit and guts to hustle my way to that circle, dunno if I even want to in the first place. But there's truth in "it's who you know, not what you know" so ya, feedback-looped, thanks ;)
Thats very different. You are talking about proximity I would agree with that but mostly because of the opportunities that come with hanging out with them. Again back to luck and timing.
Not true at all. There are methods and practices that can help with the skill of starting and running a business. I've done it before successfully and the advice in the article is helpful. Luck helps too, but you need to set yourself up to be able to take advantage of the luck you get.
There are no methods to make you successful. If you believe that you are fooling yourself. There are plenty of methods and practices to run a company but that has nothing to do with whether it successful. You can be very unsuccessful and still following all the right methods and practices.
Success is a complex function, but there are some inputs like networking, testing the market, experience, etc. that will improve your chances. It's not helpful to think of success as a lighting strike.
I don't think this is lottery winning. We all get paid a lot of money for our skills, they just work and observe that some of their skills can be amplified in value(in the viewpoint of contractors that turn to startups).
There has been a lot of indiehackers that have started as contractors and built startups. I think the biggest value I learned is, "Understand you market" and "find problems that people have" and its brilliant to be a contractor cause you learn both for a living!
No one is claiming it's purely lottery winning simply that even among the very talented people there are many failures so the only thing that really stand out is the luck and the timing aspects. Talent is mostly a hygiene factor.
It's the "only" part that keeps tripping me up. Very talented people come out with products that don't fit the market demand properly and therefore don't succeed. That isn't luck. I'm not saying that is the "only" reason for failure but just a quick hole in your logic here so there are probably many more.
There are no holes in my logic. You are basically supporting my point. If very talented people come out with failures what separate those who are successful? And we are back to luck and timing. Talent is important but it's not defining for being successful.
How is a business anything like the lottery? Thousands of decisions over years vs 1 random event.
Domain knowledge obviously plays a role as well, if you can't code you're going to have a hard time making software. There's a lot of money to be made in AI right, the timing is good but it doesn't matter if you don't know anything about it.
By your logic some random guy off the street would have the same chances of building a successful business as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.
Survivorship bias: because for every Steve Jobs and Bill Gates there are millions of folks, whose business ended without any success (something like 80% of businesses close during the first year).
That's my point, 80% of entrepreneurs can't make it one year, so what are the odds of Steve Jobs starting multiple multi-billion dollar companies over multiple decades, with tens of thousands of decisions, through pure luck?
You're saying that skill and knowledge play no part in success. A mentally handicapped person would have as good a chance at success as Steve Jobs by your logic, because it's all luck.
I don't like the lottery metaphor, because the math doesn't work out (you can't buy out the total # of lottery numbers to guarantee a win and still profit), but basically, the more money you got, the more tickets you can buy, the higher your chance of winning.
Mark Cuban said something along the lines of "You only have to be right once." Get your first couple million, and from there on it's just intelligent investing, which you can literally pay an intelligent investor to do for you.
I wasn't making a lottery metaphor. I was making a if you start a company you have better chances than playing the lottery but you are still playing that game.
There are literally thousands of talented people executing like there is no tomorrow and failing.
Access to capital, access to distribution, luck, timing. Thats what you primarily have the other factors are less relevant because most people playing the entrepreneur game have those.
You are missing the point and having a wrong understanding of what talent means.
There are many extremely talented people doing exactly the same not succeeding. You have the same in everything from music to movies and art.
The primary defining factor are things which has nothing to do with the talent but with timing and luck. So the primary insight is to play the game to have a chance to win.
Yea, you don't understand what talent is in this context, and that it's not equally distributed.
There are hundreds of thousands of people who have gotten the same training on valuing companies as Warren Buffett has. But no one comes close to his long term results because the talent of doing an accurate valuation is not as important as the psychological abilities needed to make smart investment decisions, as well as the ability to determine enduring competitive advantages. So few of these talented people actually have remotely the talents of Warren Buffett.
For entrepreneurs just a few of those key talents include recognizing opportunities, the balls to actually quit a job to pursue opportunities, and an innate ability to understand how to find or build significant competitive advantages.
People with those skills won't succeed 100% of the time, but they succeed far more than people who only have one or two of them.
Oh I understand what talent is. What you don't seem to understand is that Buffet isn't the rule but the exception. His wealth wasn't something he foresaw but something that happened over a long time. His insight is primarily to invest in the US market overall and everyone who did that have done well for themselves. That could might as well been wrong no one had any idea.
You can read as many books and follow his strategies as much as you want you will never be him and it's not because you can't be as talented as him and that was the point my comment. You can't read your way to success.
He couldn't have foreseen his wealth? He was predicting it since he was a teenager.
Buffett would have beat any market, any where any time. That's what you don't understand. He didn't succeed because he invested in the US, he did better because he invested in the US. He averaged 40% returns his first 12 years as a professional investor, quadrupling market returns. He's only had a couple down years in over 50 years of investing. How is that luck? His diverse set of skills is the reason.
Again his set of skills is similar to a successful entrepreneurs skills. The average entrepreneur may only succeed 20% of the time, but a skilled entrepreneur clearly succeeds at a far higher rate.
Do you really think that someone ignorant of competitive advantages, budgeting, market research, leadership skills, etc, etc, has the same chances of succeeding as an entrepreneur as someone who is very skilled at all of them?
Again I understand perfectly well what you don't seem to understand is that you are taking an anomaly trying to make it a rule.
Many people were predicting they would be rich were wrong. Again survivor bias.
And no he wouldn't have beat it in any market which is also why he didn't really invest in other markets and mostly advice people to do it.
But it doesn't really matter because Buffet is not useful for anything in this discussion which was about whether luck and timing played a crucial and defining role in companies success. Pointing to Buffet or Gates makes absolutely no sense what so ever anyone who invested in the US market the last 50 years would have gotten out on the good side. Just because they didn't made as much as Buffet doesn't change that fact.
You are missing the point entirely because you think that I am saying that luck and timing are the ONLY things that matter.
What I actually said was that out of the talented people there are, luck and timing become the defining factor not superhuman abilities to predict the market. The same reason the VC community in general is doing really bad and even companies like YC are mostly wrong.
There are no secrets to success. They are mostly unique stories not formulas which means they are mostly about luck and timing NOT about talent as there are plenty of talent out there.
Steve Jobs only started Apple and NeXT. Pixar was already a division of Lucas Films and had leadership prior to Jobs that aided in it's success post Lucas Films.
That said, of the 2 companies he explicitly founded and ran, only Apple was successful. NeXT was a spectacular failure.
NeXt had gotten out of hardware to massively cut it's costs (and resized it's workforce). It had a good customer base for it's software. It likely would have continued on for a long while. I believe they would have repriced WebObjects and continued to enhance it and NextOS and grow their customer base.
Pixar was a software company when he purchased control. What turned them around was their switch to making feature films. I'm pretty sure that they would have gotten distribution from anyone once Toy Story was far enough along, the question is whether they could have financed the effort. Having Steve Jobs helped a lot because he believed in them and people would return his calls.
Let me put it another way. There is a whole army of successful technology CEOs who could have run NeXt or Pixar into the ground. The fact that both became huge successes wasn't just luck, Steve Jobs played a huge role in both.
Apple was going to switch to Windows NT or buy BeOS before Jobs convinced them that NextStep was the better option. He connived Disney to partner with Pixar. Could Steve Ballmer have done that?
He didn't convince Disney to partner with Pixar he convinced Pixar to partner with Disney as Disney we struggling not Pixar. Creativity Inc goes through the details of how those things got about.
And no Next wouldn't have made it by any stretch it was only because Jobs forced them into Apple that they survived. The world belonged to windows at that point and Next had no chance to actually do anything with that.
Was it? Apple bought NeXT for their OS which eventually became OS X. Copeland was a dismal failure, and that is why Apple bought NeXT. Jobs' became the interim CEO, did the initial iMac, and iPod and the rest is history.
Other folks have pointed out that NeXT had a successful exit and the software lives on, to which I'd add a nice continuing career path for many of its employees (with Apple).
Those folks are missing the point. Next was bought and brought into apples ecosystem thats were the found sucess none of that was part of any plan. Again luck and timing, ifJjobs hadnt been introduced the chances of Next being incorporated into Apple would be much less likely.
That seems like a high bar for 'success' that I'm not sure many share. Lots of startups people deem successful had exits that weren't originally part of the plan. Luck and timing are huge parts of 'success'.
We are talking about companies who are successful because of their product/services/business. Not companies who get saved from going under by some other company. Next was saved.
A new business run by reasonably competent people is like a lottery in the sense that everything takes a certain amount of luck. Stated another way, there are sometimes obstacles that you can't see, directly, and so you don't know why you're failing. "Bad luck."
If you're really lucky, then luck doesn't affect your business.
The 4-Hour Workweek is the first book listed and I have heard of it so many times I finally decided to read it. I picked up an old copy from the local library and I'm a little over 1/2 way through.
So far I have not been all that impressed. Just in general it seems so light on anything really concrete and more just a motivational book. Where it does have concrete things though they are just really out of date (One example is that they recommend Yahoo Stores where today someone would probably use Shopify or another alternative. Another example is there is a LOT of talk about using magazine ads, but how many people are actually still reading/buying print mags today?).
What are other people's thoughts on this particular book, and what about the updates in the latest edition? Has it changed enough to be somewhat current when the realities of today?
It was a groundbreaking book _at the time_. For me, certainly. But I hear it mentioned in nearly every SMB interview podcast I listen to.
Many things are outdated now or simply more mainstream, as it's been read by almost everyone and part of the culture of many.
I consider it a book marking an "era", at least to myself, much like "The Web Startup Success Guide" or "Micro-ISV" by Bob Walsh.
You can't ask Tim to "update" the concrete steps, as those are the ones that worked for him at the time, and now he's doing very different things and he's a very different person.
He specifically recommends niche magazine ads, which then and today will probably get you a print + ad on their site. So like, take an ad out in PCGamer, and get yourself an ad on their website as well, if you're making an indie game. Better yet, find a magazine + website that specifically is about indie gaming.
I can't think of a single magazine that doesn't have an accompanying website.
EDIT: Might as well include my thoughts on the book. For me, it was the second "success genre" or "self help" style book I had read, the first being How to Win Friends and Influence People. I was about 22 at the time, fresh out of college, living abroad in Taiwan, trying to figure myself out and find myself. Very impactful time, so for me it was a very impactful book. Not so much for anything specific, but because the specifics were there. Here was a guy laying out concrete plans, concrete schedules, to making money. It guided me to how it really was possible to make money on my own, to live the kind of life I wanted to, to work remote etc. It planted a seed that took a long fucking time to grow, but it did grow, and the result is by the time I was 25 I had managed to sneak my way out of my liberal arts degree'd relatively futureless life into software engineering. Now my goals and objectives are framed by that first read - I haven't looked at it since, though I should.
In short, it's a great book for those new to the whole concept of working for yourself, creating a life for yourself, stepping outside the "normal boundaries" of life (go to school, get job, poop kids, die). Those on this site reading this may not think it's such a big deal, to those of us here it's pretty normal to step outside the box, but there's a reason I'm here now and this book contributed in a big way to it.
I've always wondered what the advice would look like if you compiled a list of what not to do from failed companies. TFA is a list of the successful ones who got it right, so we know what they did to make it. Yet I'm sure many people follow this advice and still fail.
You can find wildly varying statistics, but somewhere between 50% and 90% of startups will fail within 2 years. What did those companies do (or failed to do) that made them close up shop?
Startup success is Anna Karenina Principle[1] flipped. I wrote about it some time back[2]. Every startup dies either because it failed to build something that people would want to pay for, or failed to create a profitable business around it (or, maybe the founders just got burned out). Successful businesses, on the other hand, find their own path to make it to the top. That doesn't mean you can't learn from articles and books, but it takes plenty of learnings and failures of your own to 'get' it. That's why it's important to keep shipping and trying.
Yes that is an interesting point. While on some level I agree with you (in the same way all people die from lack of oxygen to the brain stem), the path that failed startups take to get to the point of failure is very diverse. Every time I think I have seen every possible way for a startup to fail I am surprised with something new.
If I was going to go with your thesis, the common thread of failure is to be found very early - people are working on startups that just will never be successful because the underlying idea is bad. It is really hard to come up with an idea that can allow the unavoidable mistakes to be made and still succeed.
More than anything, it proves that you can use quotes and statistics in a manner to confirm your own biases. :) The decision tree has far too many branches to predict where the starting point will lead you but my point was, even when the recipe of successful startup (build something people want, talk to people, start small ... etc) sounds so obvious, the process of accomplishing it is anything but obvious.
This is genius. Where does this old story come from? Never heard it.
EDIT: thanks for the answers! This analogy is pretty good for simple cases (improvement on planes' armor). But if you optimize only this variable, your war plane will be heavier and you'll have a lot of other problems and fail, too.
Fourth paragraph in the entry about Wald[0]. 7th paragraph in the entry about Ops Research[1]. I'm sure that there are more in-depth stories about this on the web.
Virtually all of them ran out of money because they didn't have enough customers to cover their expenses. It seems silly but if you put it in basic terms, this usually maps to something very concrete in your domain.
if you put it in basic terms, this usually maps to something very concrete in your domain.
For those of us who didn't go to college, can you translate "maps to something very concrete in your domain" into concrete terms? It's pretty abstract.
It means that in the area in which a (failed) business tried to operate, the failure can be more specific than "couldn't cover expenses". For example, a shoe company that makes very cheap shoes. Costs 5 dollars to make, sells them for 10 dollars. They have basic operating expenses of 50 dollars a day. They need to sell 10 shoes a day to stay in business by the skin of their teeth. If they don't, they 'failed to attract enough customers to cover expenses'. But they could have a more specific view:
1) We didn't have any advertising since we were operating on a shoestring (hehe) budget - losing customers
2) Our low prices actually made us seem like a low quality entry in the market, and hurt our sales.
3) We could have invested more into our production line to reduce recurrent costs.
Or any number of things. But it ultimately comes down to "we didn't have enough money"
Agreed. I know plenty of people including myself who tried to start something and didn't go anywhere despite putting in a lot of time and effort. It would be good to look at what the failed attempts did vs the ones that succeeded.
Personally I think there is a lot of luck involved (right time, right place, meet the right people) but maybe with enough data one could find lessons for how to do better.
I think it would be less insightful than you think to hear from failed companies.
I wouldn't be surprised if 50%-90% of startups begin life as side-projects and the founder(s) get lazy and decide to fold before even really attempting to get off the ground.
Out of the remaining startups that either succeed or fail after substantial effort, I'd be most of the failures can be attributed to rather mundane, predictable circumstances (most of which are mentioned in TFA):
- Building a product or features no one wants
- Taking too long to ship and offering a discounted beta in the meantime
- Wasting time & resources on non-revenue tasks because "business"
Which is exactly why I posted this! We know what the survivors did. We get their interviews all of the time. Did the failures follow the same path and fail? Did they fail to follow some golden rule? How much of startup culture can be distilled down to follow some given advice versus some dumb luck?
I can’t add anything concrete, but anecdotally the reasons I have personally seen are very diverse. To misquote Tolstoy all successful startups are all alike; every failed startup is a failure in its own way.
> Ship. Ship. SHIP. The overwhelming failure case among people who read interviews like this one is that they spend 98 units of effort reading about running a business for every 2 units of effort running a business. Flip that on its head.
I wonder how many successful entrepreneurs actually spent time reading advice blogs when they were starting.
As one of those folks featured on IndieHackers (https://www.submithub.com), I can say that I didn't read a single interview, advice blog or anything of the sort. I just focused on rolling out an MVP that streamlined the problem I was trying to solve. I confess that to this day, I haven't read any of the other interviews on IndieHackers :-D. Oops, hope you're not seeing this Courtland <3
I struggle with this so much that I even managed to unearth a buzz term (1) for this syndrome of reading too many advice blogs.
That aside, I think a lot of this is relative to where one is at in terms of education, network, support structure, access to capital, and a raft of other factors
Eg, if you're an MBA with a deep and narrow understanding of a certain niche, you're not going to lean on startup blogs in the same way an enterprising trucker from Wyoming is who's fuelling the hustle with Youtube tutorials on Java and epub torrents.
Entrepreneurship is a very long and lonely road, so it's perfectly reasonable that many of us look at these sites to (re)validate our decision to take a risk and steer off-course in our career choices from the rest of our peers.
It is also a way to procrastinate. We often do it because we want everything to be perfect. It is really fear of something not being perfect what that causes the paralysis. Reading blogs is just a way to convince your brain that you are being productive. But you are not.
So forget about perfect and just do it. Once you start moving it is easier to get going. You will get a chance to improve things later on.
I knew this existed but I never knew the name thank you!
I suffer from this in many ways, not just shipping a product, but even when just starting a dumb side project it is easy to get sidetracked with simple decisions, such as language, framework, etc.(the infamous JS fatigue)
It's a real thing and I've been involved in teams where we continue to spend so much time doing research instead of talking to prospects and launching something. We went so far to convince ourselves of why our solution sucks. If you don't have belief in your solution, why should someone else pay money for it?
I can't stand reading about startups, advice, etc. I regularly watch my friends, people on HN or Reddit fall into the folly of discussing different strategies or trying to create the "perfect team" or "perfect business" prior to launch.
I create products regularly, and many of them make a profit (not a ton yet, but all growing). My consumer facing apps include https://easy-a.net/ or https://projectpiglet.com/ both are (clearly) boot strapped together, but I launched as soon as I had anything resembling a product. What I will caution is that I did wait to launch the products until they were stable and easy enough to use. Sure, they don't look pretty, but it works.
I think advice (blogs or otherwise) are one of the largest hurdles an entrepreneur has to over come. Starting a business isn't about other people, it's about yourself and your business. Even going through things like YC's Startup School can be a detriment, because they fixate so heavily on various components of the business. Often, you just have to tune it out and do what's right. In this case, that's building something, speaking to customers, and improving.
Ironically, I think even this article is the same rehash of the 30 other stories I've seen (assuming the quote you took is from the article, as I didn't read it).
That being said, I do see value in interaction. Which is why I post comments like these on HN or discuss an idea. It's generated tons of leads and that is much more valuable.
It's worth thinking about the team in advance, especially to understand what things you do well and where you need complementary talents. Good teams also work through the problems that are inevitable in new products. There's a great speech by Ed Catmull that makes this point well. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2h2lvhzMDc)
Of course this is useless advice if you are doing a one-person business. :)
I find a good product needs some, but minimal marketing. Customers will recommend it to friends if it's a good fit and it'll continue to grow that way, and obviously try to get some SEO. To get started, I'll regularly post on Reddit, HN, Slack, Facebook, etc. (typically providing some insightful comment, using one of my applications) and I'll get signups. One of my particular posts recently got me 50 sign ups for my website, to put it into perspective.
Those people are also my target customers though, so it makes it easy.
When "marketing" to companies, a cold call, email, or intro from a friend usually can pique their interest. Then you just need a really good demo / app. Even then, they likely wont bite; hence I'm moving away from that business and mostly to consumer apps.
Depending on your projects, are some of your friends better fit for them than others? How about friends of friends? What I've done is make a list of channels and spend some time with each channel. However, what really worked for me was my network.
Finished writing my first novel, waiting on cover art now, and yeah. Reading about writing is a lot more pleasant than the actual writing. Rather, it's editing that sucks.
All good advice, but I'm going to propose something that may be a bit contrary to current wisdom: if you really want a decent lifestyle/work-life balance don't start a business!
So what's the alternative?
Go contracting. Reduce your expenses to the bone, and limit the contracts you do. I now only take 3 month contracts and I do one a year. I make about £24K from that - I know many developers making double my rate. That £24K is more than double my expenses though. If there's a 6 month contract I really like the look of I will do it (especially if it's remote working) - but then I'll take at least a year off.
The great thing about a contract is you go in, do your thing, get out. Job done. No stress. No worry. No customers giving you grief and wanting their money back. No infrastructure going down with admin alerts at 3.00am. No hassle. I don't even have my own limited company. I use an umbrella company and while not as tax efficient I have no dealing with accountants, HMRC, tax returns and all that nonsense.
I think there are many good reasons to start a 'lifestyle' business. I'm just not convinced it's the way to go if work-life balance is what you are looking for.
My way was to find maintenance contract where I do programming few hours a week that pays my bills and mortgage + occasionally taking some contract work (about once a year, month - three months long).
Contracts could be very stressful (as I am usually picking on some VC type of startup as they use to pay more), but I know it is going to be over soon so it is easy to just go through it.
I am doing that for more then a decade and it works, the only thing is to figure out what you are going to do with your off time: I used to start startups, side projects, travel the world, but for past few years I am just farming and spending time with my kid.
More people should really think about this alternative.
What do you do with the other 9 months of the year? side projects? travel? Id be interested to hear how your lifestyle is with all the free time.
I've considered this approach myself too but more 6 months on, 6 months off. Scala in particular seems to pay extremely well (£600-£650 /day) so easy to make the money to live a comfortable lifestyle in 3 or 6 months per year. I think other dev contracts are usually around £450 in London which is still more than enough.
Id love a permanent 2-3 day a week job too for work/life balance but those seem non existent for devs unfortunately.
Hi Matthew, my rate is £400 a day, I'm a tech writer. Most contract developers I know are on a lot more than that. Double mostly. They do Java/Scala/Perl. That is probably just the niche I have been in though. My very first contract wasn't particularly high £260 a day, but you get known and you can charge more once you've got people who will vouch for you.
With regards the 9 months. I write code (Python), read (a lot), watch movies, relax, listen to music. The point for me is I have to do this. Many years ago (I'm 55 now) I got very, very depressed and considered suicide. I was totally and utterly burnt out due to never ending work.
I spend quite a lot of time in Philippines and Thailand - mostly for the diving. My partner and I are keen divers (she's a nurse - but only does contract work now too). I also like photography, hiking, camping, biking and so on. I am studying for mountain leader exams.
I read Hacker News too but rarely comment. Just today and yesterday. Probably today will be the last day!
p.s. I used to work with a guy who negotiated a four day week. He is still doing that to date as far as I know. You might be able to negotiate fewer days but it's not easy.
I'm so glad you posted. I'm a 57-year-old tech writer (UK-based) who followed a similar pattern to you for 10 years.
Then I got sick of static daily rates and now work as a permie (2 days in Birmingham, 3 days from home) for a US based tech company.
My first contract rate in 2004 was £350 a day, and now I'd probably struggle to make that again. Maybe £400, but above that, I'd need some special USPs. And from where I live, it's £50 a day to get to London, not to mention the extra 4 hour journey times!
Great to know you've found a perfect formula!
PS: Topping was also on my agenda until I reached 50.
I've worked a 6 month contract before, 3 months would have been ideal I think as after that it was starting to drag on a bit but I don't see many contracts that short. Unfortunately the company didn't really utilise my time very well until I was almost at the end of the contract. Id rather hit the ground running but I guess each contract varies.
It's hard to know what we'd all do with so much free time and I think some people would be a bit lost, but it certainly sounds like you make the most of it and live a nice lifestyle. Particularly all the outdoor activities is something id like to spend more time on myself.
I’ve been doing remote consulting for the past three years - product design & development - but over the last several months I decided to bump up my work rate from the usual 2-3 days per week I had. Realizing now that I prefered the more leisurely schedule I had before.
I’ve been to the Philippines a few times and strongly considering working from there next year to avoid Canadian Winter for at least a few months of my life. Just good to hear more references about expat life there. :)
haha - I'm more like Mr. Shoestring Mustache. MMM has several hundred thousand a year coming in from his blog alone. He also had I think a million bucks in the bank before he retired. He also has a couple of rental properties I believe. I don't have anything like that.
I live in UK so healthcare is free here. Many years ago I had some mental health problems and the NHS here literally saved my life. I am so grateful for that. I also have a private medical plan that covers myself and my partner but it only costs about £1k a year, and I only have that because it can potentially reduce waiting times. I am considering just doing without it though.
> I also have a private medical plan that covers myself and my partner but it only costs about £1k a year
I know you pay for it in other taxes and what not, but... for comparison, we're paying more than half that per month, and it doesn't cover any expenses until we spend $10k in a year. We are in a really crazy situation here.
What about preexisting conditions? Would anything prevent someone who was just diagnosed with cancer (but not bed ridden) from migrating to the UK, paying this $300/year, and receiving full coverage?
They call this "health tourism" and its a fairly regular subject that comes up whenever NHS budgets are discussed, in reality though I believe latest figures put it at about £300m /year (0.3% of the NHS budget).
I don't know how easy it is to do what you describe but some people evidently do it. I imagine if you're an EU citizen you can come right in but if you're non EU you might have some more difficulty.
I've got a 2.5 day a week job as a developer in the south east of the UK, but got it by originally working there full-time and then later applying for flexible working (I have kids so had a legal right to request flexible working, although employers are allowed to turn down such requests on certain grounds). I do suspect that word of mouth would be the only way to get such a job from scratch.
This is great until you have dependents and your expenses grow. It requires everyone to be on board with your vision which is a lot more challenging to maintain over time.
You are absolutely right. It's much harder to do with young dependents. I'm 55 now and my son is 27 and daughter 24!
However, I still think the same rules apply. Ram down expenses as much as possible. I did this when my kids were much younger. I couldn't get away with working 3 months a year, but I often did a six and maybe a 3 and had 3 months off. Back then I'd spend the free time with my kids. These days because they do their own thing I head off to Phils or Thailand and go diving.
Obligatory link to mr money mustache. He has a great blog on keeping expenses low and living a frugal post tech lifestyle. https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/
You've perfectly summed up my goal of making the transition back into Software Development. I'd like to be a well compensated, project based employee when possible. Then, I can have the skills and interest to work on my personal projects and if they provide gratification or income, then I will be hitting the desired work-life-creativity balance that is a bit tricky to land and maintain (in my experience). Thanks for your perspective!
Good question. The company I was working for at the time went bust - I'd been with them about 7 years. I just searched online for contracts (I'm actually a tech writer, not a developer, but have coding skills - there are a lot more contracts out there for coders compared to writers). My very first contract was with a wonderful web company in London.
Anyway, as to the commuting. Yes - you are right - it's a total pain in the bum. Sometimes if the gig is a long way away I will stay up in cheap B&B. It depends. But - you can put up almost anything for three months right? That's the beauty of it. You know the pain will end - you know the exact day.
The commuting is soon forgotten when you are heading out to a wreck dive by boat in the Philippines. :)
> So you essentially work for the rest of your life?
Not quite. I still pay National Insurance contributions, and in fact am already entitled to a full UK state pension (at age 66). I also pay into a private pension plan and have done so for years. I also built up my tax free savings in cash and stocks and shares (low cost index tracker). I can access the private pension and private savings whenever I want.
So the plan is I will continue to do this as long as it makes sense to do so.
My partner and I are actually considering complete early retirement (I'm 55 now) to Philippines next year - but that's another story.
You can make a lot more than £24K a year running a lifestyle business. Running a lifestyle business does not mean you have to sacrifice a work-life balance. Think hard to avoid working hard.
Of course you can potentially make more than that - if that business is successful. There are no guarantees. It's a lot harder and takes a lot longer than most people think to create a £24K a year business. Just drumming up enough customers is a pain. Remember I get £24k in 3 months and the work is not especially hard.
Sure, if you can hit on a business idea that works, and is stress free, and doesn't take much time and effort to set up, then good luck to you!
I want to emphasize something though - for me the money is not the important thing, as long as I have enough. For me the work-life balance is the priority. Had too much stress in the past to want to go back to that lifestyle again!
A lot of this seems to reflect the consensus among experienced HN posters as well: you have to actually ship something and charge for it, it has to be something people actually want instead of just what you enjoy making, and so on. Arguably much of this is just common sense, but maybe that's just hindsight talking.
The only one I strongly disagree with is "raise your prices". While this is common advice on HN as well, I think it should come with a caveat that it mostly applies to B2B businesses. If you're running a B2C business, your customers are spending their own money, and possibly on something that isn't a necessity and isn't immediately going to make or save them a greater amount of money in return. Customers in this situation may well be extremely price-sensitive, and even small adjustments in pricing can have dramatic effects on conversion rates. As a counter-example showing that a big price cut can be effective, look at the way that games suppliers like Steam and GoG run their sales.
Very interesting post. I think the author can head his own advice and could have hosted it on a domain like startuptools.com or something, because this blog post is going to be backlinked heavily and with a touch of SEO this can be a regular source of targeted traffic.
Just add a pdf checklist at the bottom that needs an opt-in (anybody who reads this will have a very conversion rate) and soon you've got a small list. Pitch them the startup tools or whatever you think is best for the list (using affiliate links) and soon you have a site that is making a passive income. It's easier said than done, but creating a passive income is really that easy and if you're doing the effort you may as well reap the rewards.
One other thing not mentioned in the article is the community on Indie Hackers. If you are working on a side project, the majority of the people in the forum are there to help you. They have given me great feedback and ideas for my project.
I believe this list is missing what I consider to be the most important factor for success, an underlying strength that the most successful business I read on IndieHackers (and elsewhere) have that is systematically underestimated as a reason for success: previously acquired audience.
I believe audience is the most important currency in today's world, especially for digital products. Audience may be followers on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, etc. Audience may be an email list. Audience may be traditional networking (as if you are in a B2B niche business). If you do not have audience, you can buy one with ads (even so it is easier said than done); or you can borrow the audience from someone else, an influencer (I know there are ways to pay for influencer's audiences, but I do not believe it is very effective, to get some influencer to legitimately love your product and act as your referrer seems to me to be more effective, if harder). Or you can borrow the audience from something else, like HN, Reddit, PH.
All of the steps of launching and building a business, especially the very first ones are enormously easier if you have an audience. And enormously - some times impossibly - harder if you do not have one. This is derived from the adage that your first idea is always wrong. You have to learn everything by shipping early and talking to customers, but if you ship early to 20 eyeballs and talks to luckily one or two potential users, this feedback loop just doesn't count. But if you launch to thousands to eyeballs, even if you are making the mistake of no shipping early or not focused on talking to customers, you will receive unsolicited feedback from some of them.
And a previously built audience of people who trust you at a basic level will be much more responsive and engaged in rationalizing and vocalizing their opinions about your product. They will be "early adopters" type (hard to get that when you buy an audience). And they also will (likely) be people that are your target audience (hard to get that when you borrow an audience from HN and similar).
Some of the most impressive successful business in IndieHackers (according to my own criteria) are the ones who had years of building an audience. Through foruns, email lists, blogs.
A genuine audience is hard to plan ahead. Does not seem plausible to have the vision, the will, and the diligence to think about the industry/niche where I want to launch a business years ahead. So it is good to launch a business where you have genuine passion, somehow you will have the network (even so, not necessarily a large audience).
If you are in that position of having a large audience, seriously consider launching a business because you have a very big unfair advantage (and follow all the advice on this list). If you are not, pay a lot of attention on how to reach your target audience. It is a very tough problem to crack.
This is an underrated comment. Breaking through the public's indifference for the first time is mostly luck, snowballing with some existing audience is much easier.
While the items mentioned on this list are certainly valuable, every 1,000 followers you have amplifies your chances of success. Even if the product doesn't work out, there are more people to hear about it—perhaps, you can fail faster.
I've read most of the interviews on IH and some of them do mention audience as a big factor, but you are right, it is very underestimated.
Good audience, network, reputation or community involvement doesn't just get you product validation or your first customers, it gets you free ambassadors for your business.
Actually I should rephrase thatand say, the way I make money, my profession, takes up 3 hours of my day, counting commute time. I can live off that money. The rest of the time I just do what I want, which is what I generally consider to be 'the work.'
Your comment would add more value if you actually explained what you do and something related to the link. Right now I only know someone, somewhere, can work for 3 hours a day and play for the rest of time.
I feel that there is a world of difference between a side-project that is free, to one where you ask customers for their credit cards. Of all professional experiences, I have never learnt as much as I did taking a side-project idea from idea to MVP, then to beta users, then to paying customers, scaling server issues, and marketing strategies. It's not so much about the money, than the fact that you learn so much on so many dimensions.
Sincere thanks + shameless plug, the interview about Smooz was fun, a good self-reflection exercise, and a good source of traffic too (https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/smooz)