Indie Hacker Insights and a Year-End Reflection
The Indie hacker trade is the so-called 'independent' path to profitability. Is it accessible? Also, let's wrap up the year.
This is issue #004 of the TK brief; the newsletter brought to you by the TK team. This is the last day of 2023, at the time of publication. Happy New Year. More on that at the end.
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Newsletter format / Table of contents (TOC):
This issue’s Tech word
Musings on tech
www
The indie hacker 'trade'
From TK community
Sign off
This issue’s Tech word: WEB
A web could mean the product of a spider’s spin. It’s fascinating that some think of entanglement and others structure when they hear the word web.
However, when we say the web, or even more elaborately, the World wide web, it’s clear we are talking about the information system enabling documents and other resources to be accessed over the internet (online).
Musings on tech
www
www is the short form of the world wide web and is now the most common subdomain of online sites.
Uses:
Some sites use www to distinguish between desktop sites vs mobile-optimised ones, for example, www.twitter.com VS m.twitter.com or mobile.twitter.com.
With the advent of many TLD (Top-level domain) names, www is used to distinguish that a particular link is a TLD. For example, microsoft.cloud, testimony.fm and md.engineer could be mistaken for random text or even filenames with file extensions. However, they become very apparent as domain names when www is prepended - www.microsoft.cloud, www.testimony.fm and www.md.engineer.
The indie hacker ‘trade’
This issue started with the question: The Indie hacker trade is the so-called 'independent' path to profitability. Is it accessible?
Short answer: YES! Now more than ever before.
Introduction
So what’s a indie-hacker?
I derive the definition from this webpage.
An indie-hacker is a software engineer, designer, marketer, digital creator or community manager who builds and launches their own products or businesses independently, without the support of a large organization or team.
In that article, Dane Cobain lists a number of steps one would take to be an indie hacker, a successful one at that. These include having a clear value proposition and creating a minimum viable product (MVP). Nothing extra ordinary to creating any typical business really. However, the crux of the matter is doing this: independently.
Interested? Let’s get you pumped 💪
A disclaimer first,
Being a Software Engineering and Digital Products Professional, myself, I know several individuals who are in different stages of being an indie hacker. Some start building their own products or businesses as a side-gig putting their non-working hours to use. Others do it full-time, first with minimal revenue or working capital. One thing is for sure; it’s not easy and success is not granted. Well, success is not always granted, is it?
It’s important to start by distinguish this from typical solo-preneurships.
Leverage
An indiehacker is a solo-preneur who has leveraged systems and processes to effectively run a business solo. Therefore instead of hiring people and creating processes around your workforce, you build the systems and processes solo and operate them solo.
The success stories I have studied show that software developers and engineers have an edge because they can write code and hence leverage that skill to build (Software as a Service) SaaS products. The current digital market space allows this model to work really well.
MRR
With a Saas product up and running, the next thing is to get paying customers. A freemium model (a free product with options to upgrade) has worked for most. Working out the pricing levers is important intricate work.
By this time, best case scenario is that you have product-market fit, that is, you’re not complaining of how difficult it is to get customers; they are already using your product and more are at the door.
Once the pricing is done right, then you start getting MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)
Moving forward, you improve the product, maybe have more pricing tiers, and work on support tickets
Exit
Even though this is all done independently, an exit is imminent. Some get bought without soliciting buyers. Some build to sell, thus serial entrepreneurs but only difference, they are working solo.
I recently learnt a motto in an event I attended (Youth+ Africa festival that had Wandia Gichuru (Co-founder & C.E.O., Vivo Fashion Group) and Vusi Thembekwayo (South African entrepreneur and author) among others as speakers;
Start, Sustain and Scale. That’s an apt way of remembering the steps:
1. Start by leveraging skills
2. Sustain by getting and keeping revenue
3. Scale (out of yourself) by selling or getting a workforce (indie-hacking can be a business growth stage)
4. Repeat!
The accessibility of the indie hacker ‘trade’
I’ll attempt to break down key pointers of how being an indie hacker is now more accessible.
Indiehackers are building in public and sharing their story. There’s actually a hashtag #BuildingInPublic
My favourite story is about the foundation of Insomnia. Read it here.Technology stacks for businesses are more public than ever before
Here’s the tech stack of a popular tool; Wappalyzer (a technology profiler and leads data provider)Coding is becoming a Digital literacy skill and the barrier of entry is lowering year on year. On top of that with no-code tools and generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), prototyping an MVP and deploying it, is potentially easier.
FreeCodeCamp, CS50 are a few notable avenues to learn. Retool, and Bubble are no-code tools to build full-stack apps. Imagine you building a Tinder clone with no-code!There’s a huge community ecosystem to plug into. Developer communities, startup communities, creator communities, name it. Leveraging communities is an important differentiator.
To the last point, I want to believe TK community is already helping some on their journey. We share resources and discuss pertinent matters. Feel free to join us on the Whatsapp group or follow our Whatsapp channel (you’re anonymous in the channel 🛡️)
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. Are you a indie-hacker? Which stage are you in? Are you planning on being one? Is all this over-hyped? Comment below or in the group.
From TK community
This year, 2023, has seen the community grow the most. We did not get to meet up in person as the admins hoped. It’s more likely for this to happen in 2024.
What’s more?
Stop
What have we stopped or will stop?
The Signal group will be closed in the new year
Continue
What are we continuing?
TK quizzes (Our avenue of continued Digital literacy and general knowledge education) continue every Thursday at 9PM (GMT+3).
Follow the WhatsApp channel for updates.
The quiz is always published at techkln.org/quiz, see you there. On occasion there are prizes to be won.Themed days continue - Relevant to the Whatsapp group members.
Start
What have we started, or will start?
The WhatsApp channel was created
To serve a dual purpose: as a public announcement-only avenue that keeps members’ contact info private "Signal folks we've got you". It'll also create an organic pull of more members.A simplified Community Discourse guideline was shared:
“Discourse can happen but should be handled civilly! Attack ideas NEVER attack people (not even as a joke). DM (Direct Message) admins, any questions, suggestions or comments you may have regarding the community.”
Themed days - start on the TK Slack
Community members highlights
The TK community is serving all of us in different ways. The proof is in the pudding - see the comments below. Let’s keep up the good work!
“This group is FAST! Brighter Monday is overrated 😅 Thank you all so much for the swift responses🙏🏾”
A comment following a job posting
“My friend and I discuss what we learnt from the group every end-of-week. ‘Did you see that post on X?’ I’m glad to be part of TK”
A verbal comment by a member
“… it's my first time getting a plug/gig from a community like this”
A recent comment during our Wins Wednesday
Sign off
The community is actively run by yours truly, Stanley (Founder and lead) and Susan (community manager), with support from so many. Thank you for a vibrant year.
See you in the community. Once again, Happy New Year 2024.
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