I didn't understand the indiehacker community/product mindset until I discovered the indiehacker "influencers" / lifestyle vloggers / etc. that might be the only ones actually turning a profit on all of this.
The influencers sell a lifestyle of throwing a million darts at the board with simple apps and building tiny businesses off the handful that get a lot of interest or seem to resonate with users. And the apps they build that do well are mostly small tools for other indiehackers to use to build/host/augment their apps. So they not only have the distribution and marketing aspects solved already, but they've actually created the demand for their own products by selling what they do as a viable (and easy/glamorous) path to success.
The other indiehackers are mostly in it to be like their favorite influencers, so they copy them by making small tools for other indiehackers and trying the million darts strategy. But it just gets lost in a sea of other indiehackers with no audience or distribution, all trying to sell the same kinds of products to each other. It just seems like a really bad community to sell to: very cost conscious, building competing products, familiar with all your marketing/fake-it-til-you-make it strategies. If at first you don't succeed, watch more youtube videos and throw more darts!
I don't think "market pull" is a terrible strategy and I'm sure for some it's just a fun way to write software but I worry that it's mostly a hybrid get-rich-quick scheme, parasocial thing for the small number of influencers at the top that wastes a huge amount of time. Personally I don't like the idea of baiting people with fake landing pages and think it's actively harmful for so many people to only build simple apps with immediate traction. It's just poisoning the well and making small-scale software low-trust, trying to get rich quick off other people trying to get rich quick
That's hilarious. The post reminded me of Marc Lou, who's launched like 30 SaaS, and from what I gathered by far his most profitable one is the one that helps you launch your own SaaS...
The same guy who sold a Saas starter kit riddled with security flaws that allowed anyone to just have access to your product, then when it was pointed out to him, he berated the person who told him and said it was 'no big deal' and to 'build something'.
The guy's extremely sketchy and is selling a non existent pipe dream to people who are easily swayed by "how to make money online" nonsense.
Haha brilliant. I remember my ex going to courses from guys that claimed to have become successful "entrepreneurs", and when I asked her what's their main income from? She told me: well, selling courses. (PS: So the course basically consisted of teaching them how to speak in public lolololol.)
I find it pretty fascinating that these "asia backpacking entrepreneur" types are in general so stuck with the "fake it, perception is everything" mindset, that they build products such as:
"Create Stunning Travel Photos at Popular Destinations Without Leaving Home. Our AI model crafts your perfect travel photos."
which is the featured example client on https://codefa.st - the vibe coding course by aforementioned Marc Lou.
That guy is sooo shady. Just something really insincere and sinister about his whole shtick. Unfortunately lots of young, eager devs dont know to avoid these characters yet
And vices! That's what's really driving this phenomenon. The users have a deeply meaningful goal they are pursuing (achieve financial independence, realize a great idea), and end up repeatedly taking low effort dopamine hits from "building their toolset" or whatever.
Same with the self-help world. Big, life-defining subjects hijacked for quick dopamine hits.
I strip out the sharp-bladed, fiberglass handled ones and sell them individually, then combine the leftovers with other shitty shovels and sell them as sets of top quality, grade-A dirt moving implements.
Well Pieter Levels has a negative customer acquisition cost because he gets most of his business off of X and he gets so many impressions that he gets paid to post there. That's a pretty incredible marketing hack if you ask me. I invest in startups and the ones who do really well hack marketing. They have tech in their stack that is specifically devoted to automating and scaling their marketing.
But if you listen to Levels' interviews, especially before his Twitter stardom, you will see that he always promotes the find your audience and build to them approach.
your audience is supposed to guide what you're selling. The fundamental belief is getting the audience is harder than building something they want. This part is probably true, while the rest of the ecosystem is garbage and scams
Something very similar applies to VC investing. Sure, some founders get rich. But founder returns averaged across all founders are horrible. The VCs however... they are like those influencers. They'll tell you exactly how you should maximize for their return, just in case you strike it big. They're not going to tell you how to minimize your risks, unless that happens to align with their increased returns.
Kind of like all the investment and finance influencers. If they’re so good at it why do they need to spend all that time trying to be an influencer? They should be rich already. They even beg for likes and subscribes so they’re obviously not doing it as a hobby. It’s simply because they’re trying to get rich selling advice to gullible people.
Personally I find indiehackers unique amongst get rich quick schemes because it's very transparently a community of people trying to get rich quick by building small apps for other people trying to get rich quick building small apps. It's not necessarily that the influencers are deceiving anybody (I think some do), they really do build apps like that too, some of which are genuinely successful. They're not selling advice.
So it's like, on one hand it's not like "I'm a genius trader, buy my course for $3k and you will be too" because the people at the top actually, (mostly) demonstrably do the thing they claim is possible. And it's not like an MLM because there is not really any pyramid scheme dynamics involved. But on the other hand it's a market that only exists on the buyside because enough people believe it exists on the sellside to build for it, thus generating demand on the buyside.
Most influencers also don’t sell courses, although some definitely do. They try to ramp up eyeball time any way they can. It’s more about starting a mini-community in their favor which is where I see the parallel. You’re right though, it’s more fragmented it seems in the indiehackers community and a bit more ponzi.
There is a similar "community" of real estate investors. I've met one of them through a friend and asked a lot of questions about his business. He was "pivoting" to seminars and courses as well. I asked him why and he said he can "easily scale" with seminars/courses while investing, even pure flips takes time and you can only do so many with a limited budget, maybe one/two transactions a year.
I am very skeptical as well and I think there is a lot of truth to "those who can do, those who can't teach" adage. It's one thing if you are in "who can't" group because you are older/retired/done with it after many years. It's another if it's a guy in his 20's or 30's selling courses. Those in my experience are almost always just snake oil salesmen.
The sad part is, there are people building genuinely useful tools or creative projects, but their stuff gets buried under the avalanche of low-effort trend-chasing
> might be the only ones actually turning a profit on all of this
I don't think this is true at all. How many such influencers are there, really, a dozen? I'd guess there are a million people making everything from absolute bank, down to pocket money. Most of them are probably not even aware that these influencers exists.
The thing about MLM schemes (or I guess MLH schemes in this case) is that the pyramid at the bottom is flat and small, and this example illustrates that intuitively more immediately than Avon. Are you interested in being a follower of a follower of an indiehacker? No? Then as a follower of an indiehacker you have no market.
Yeah, I spent some time researching this crowd and most of the ones I found have the playbook of selling to indie hackers and talking about how successful they are with fake MRR screenshots.
The influencers sell a lifestyle of throwing a million darts at the board with simple apps and building tiny businesses off the handful that get a lot of interest or seem to resonate with users. And the apps they build that do well are mostly small tools for other indiehackers to use to build/host/augment their apps. So they not only have the distribution and marketing aspects solved already, but they've actually created the demand for their own products by selling what they do as a viable (and easy/glamorous) path to success.
The other indiehackers are mostly in it to be like their favorite influencers, so they copy them by making small tools for other indiehackers and trying the million darts strategy. But it just gets lost in a sea of other indiehackers with no audience or distribution, all trying to sell the same kinds of products to each other. It just seems like a really bad community to sell to: very cost conscious, building competing products, familiar with all your marketing/fake-it-til-you-make it strategies. If at first you don't succeed, watch more youtube videos and throw more darts!
I don't think "market pull" is a terrible strategy and I'm sure for some it's just a fun way to write software but I worry that it's mostly a hybrid get-rich-quick scheme, parasocial thing for the small number of influencers at the top that wastes a huge amount of time. Personally I don't like the idea of baiting people with fake landing pages and think it's actively harmful for so many people to only build simple apps with immediate traction. It's just poisoning the well and making small-scale software low-trust, trying to get rich quick off other people trying to get rich quick