My solo founder experience
Title says it all really! After falling in love with the idea of indie hacking and creating a few small projects, I have paused being an indie hacker to focus on other things in my life.
Rather than feeling like I’ve somehow given up on “the dream”, this decision has been a painless and positive one, and I wanted to share why.
You see a lot of amazing success stories about indie hacking, and a few scary failure stories. I’m hoping that this kind of “average guy” story helps round out the picture a little, and helps with the problem of Survivorship bias. It’s the kind of perspective I’d have wanted to see if I was me a year ago.
First, a lightning quick rundown of my projects, none of which got more than ten users (hi Mum!).
Zenkettle - a Zettelkasten style note-taking app
I decided to make a note-taking app (how cliché). It was based on the now popular zettelkasten style of note-taking, where you can form a rich network of ideas and connected concepts.
I told myself that it was to learn new programming techniques, but in the back of my head I dreamed about making it big and having tonnes of paying users. I did zero customer validation, zero market analysis, and never even released the app.
I did however learn that I can create something cool on my own, and that I don’t hate the process.
BjjGymFinder - find BJJ gyms in your country
When going on holiday I found it very time consuming locating Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gyms. Their websites are often missing pricing, out of date, and not written in English. My aggregator site kept all the basic data (timetable, cost, contact details) in one easy place, and was easy to search by city and country.
This time I wanted to actually ship something. I still had no business model, but at least I was scratching my own itch and keeping the scope small. I started by adding all the gyms in London and Poznań (I was going to Poland at the time).
It barely got traffic (like 20 organic views, and 100 impressions). Not quite enough to slap some ads on and leave the day job… This was maybe because it was built bang in the middle of the covid lockdown, and flights were banned to almost every country. I decided to pull the plug and try something else.
Sell by weight - zero waste store plugin
Getting slightly smarter, I picked a market and a niche! Zero waste stores who were driven online during covid had pretty bad websites. I decided to build a plugin that could solve (what I thought at the time) was a real pain for them.
I was going to create a slider plugin for Shopify stores to let people sell by the gram. One of the best things about zero-waste is that you can cut down your spending by only buying the exact quantities of ingredients. However, most online store builders don’t let you do this. Zero waste stores were having to sell in 50g batches.
It took me five hours to build out an MVP (two weeks of real time on a busy schedule). I then contacted store owners, pitching the idea and asking for feedback/payment. I got tonnes of feedback, but nobody was interested.
Turns out, most zero waste stores actually liked having 50 gram increments as it lets them pre-package batches of ingredients for delivery without weighing them on request! So much for reducing waste…
Another valuable lesson about validation, another discontinued project.
Deciding to stop
In my own mind, none of these unsuccessful products were big failures in the grand scheme of things. During each one I learned something new, and got a little closer to creating a solo project that generated income.
So why did I decide to stop? There were two reasons:
- A big new life project that requires huge amounts of time
- I found ways to get what I wanted from indie hacking out of my day job.
Big project: Learning a language
At the same time as I started indie hacking, I started learning Polish very seriously. My wife and her family are Polish, and I wanted to be able to communicate with them in their first language.
The method I found (Comprehensible input) was quite unlike any I’d tried before. It requires that you consume a lot of content in the language (3 hours a day minimum), and let your brain’s language learning mechanisms do the bulk of the work. I found huge progress unlike anything I’d experienced dabbling in language learning with Duolingo, and made the decision to keep at it until fluency.
This however meant that my hour before work, lunch break, and hour before bed were now needed to meet my daily immersion time, and I found myself with only 1-2 hours a week to work on side projects. I decided it was best to take a break from indie hacking, at least for three years, maybe more.
Changing my job
I wanted to become an indie hacker to:
- earn more money
- become location independent
- become financially independent (work less)
In order to fulfill those same goals while learning Polish, I was lucky enough to find a remote job with a higher salary. I also learned about the financial independence movement and started saving more aggressively.
My new work has good work life balance. Not quite the 20 hour work week I dreamed of, but no crazy overtime. More importantly for me, it was a salary increase, and has allowed me to travel. I’m writing this article in a coffee shop in Porto!
As the first employee in a self funded SAAS business, I also have had the privilege of helping us grow from 0 customers to over £3000 MRR in the last eight months. Needless to say, I’m taking notes about what works and what does not.
Due to saving more, I’m also still on my path towards financial independence. When I do start working on solo projects again I’ll do it knowing that a big chunk of money required for my ideal lifestyle has already been saved away.
When all is said and done
I feel that I’m still on the same journey, but I’ve slowed down due to shifting priorities. I could maybe buckle down and grind, but I have decided that’s not for me. I like my life now, and I want to use my time to take advantage of different opportunities that contribute towards my overall happiness (which is what this should be all about in the end).
I have time for my hobbies, I’m valued at work, and I’m growing my income. At the same time I’m I’m building skills and a safety net that’ll make my journey easier if/when I choose to go back into indie hacking more seriously. I’m also over two thousand hours into learning Polish, and I’d not trade the conversations I’ve had with my new grandfather and grandmother for the world.
This is not a success story, or a failure story really. I just hope it’s been useful to hear a somewhat un-inspiring story about someone who fell in love with the idea of indie hacking, but chose to put it down for now to focus on other things. 🙂
In survivorship terms, I’m one of those planes that did not make it back. I’ve not been shot down though, I just disappeared into the sunset.
Happy hacking, and wishing you all the best, regardless of where your journey takes you!