[HN Gopher] 2023: Focusing on a single product pays off
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2023: Focusing on a single product pays off
Author : rozenmd
Score : 213 points
Date : 2023-12-27 09:53 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (maxrozen.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (maxrozen.com)
| baz00 wrote:
| I've run a few businesses over the years and the return of
| investment of self sufficiency is barely worth it in the long
| run. It's very difficult to replicate the benefits of working for
| an SME (forget big tech) which it comes to security. You never
| have to worry about MRR because it's static and only increases.
|
| Also some advice on hyper-optimising for cheap hardware. Don't.
| Buy something with a warranty from a respectable company. Or buy
| two of everything else. Downtime will cost you customers. I say
| that having spent most of those years running off cranky ex
| corporate thinkpads. They _will_ let you down and you _will_ need
| an exit plan. At this point I 'd rather just buy an off the shelf
| MacBook config I can walk into the local Apple store and just buy
| another one if I break it or lose it. No waiting 4-5 days for
| another ebay thinkpad to turn up and hope it works ok. I run off
| a base model 14" M1 MacBook Pro now.
| WJW wrote:
| His business seems to run on AWS Lambda, which is about as far
| away from running on cheap (unreliable) hardware as possible?
| The laptop he mentions is just for working.
| baz00 wrote:
| That's the cheap hardware I'm talking about. What is in your
| hands is the most important thing of all because without it
| you can't serve your customers or increase ROI.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I can walk into a shop and have a device I can be
| productive in 1-2 hours.
|
| I don't think it's a huge deal, just keep your secrets
| backed up in multiple ways you can retrieve
| lelanthran wrote:
| > That's the cheap hardware I'm talking about. What is in
| your hands is the most important thing of all because
| without it you can't serve your customers or increase ROI.
|
| Yeah, but ... what is in my hands can be replaced in a
| matter of hours: just go out and get a new laptop at the
| nearest place!
|
| It's even easier than that, because I primarily use Linux,
| there are times, in 2023, that I used a Core2 Duo with 2GB
| of RAM for days at a time on a particular project.
|
| That's about 10m to pull the old laptop out of the
| cupboard, due `git pull`, and carry on working.
| coldtea wrote:
| I think the parent is also speaking about working, not
| servers.
|
| The downtime he speaks of is developer downtime. He isn't
| implying he served from used Thinkpads before, or that he
| serves off of MacBooks now.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >I've run a few businesses over the years and the return of
| investment of self sufficiency is barely worth it in the long
| run.
|
| Most people aren't looking at it from the perspective of making
| a killing. They just want to get away from having a boss. For
| whatever reason they don't fit the corporate mould. Running
| their own show represents freedom.
|
| http://reactionwheel.net/2019/01/schumpeter-on-strategy.html
| baz00 wrote:
| Whoever is paying you is your boss. There is no escape, only
| a change in the illusion. If you're a sole trader, it's your
| customers. If you're a corporate wage slave, it's your line
| manager. If you're a startup it's whoever gave you capital.
| Even if you're CxO it's the other board members and
| investors.
| uh_uh wrote:
| The difference is that some bosses are more easy to say no
| to than others.
| WJW wrote:
| The real ease of saying no to bosses of any kind comes
| from financial security, no matter its origin. There are
| certainly plenty of small business owners who are
| struggling enough that they can barely afford to so "no"
| to any customer/ Conversely, there are plenty of
| employees who manage to tell their line manager "no" just
| fine. Whether you can afford to do so does not depends on
| the type of boss but on the ease with which you can bear
| the repercussions of doing so.
| uh_uh wrote:
| In a typical employment scenario, your line manager can
| cut off 100% of your revenue.
|
| In an ideal SaaS scenario, your customer can cut off a
| tiny percentage of your revenue.
| soneca wrote:
| Multitude of customers as a "boss" is a much different
| situation than having one boss. So much that the analogy
| breaks up.
|
| A customer firing you might affect 2% of your income. A
| real boss firing you will cut 100% of your income.
|
| Also, if you are the founder and CEO of a startup you have
| to answer to the board and investors, but there is much
| less power imbalance. Sometimes a CEO being fired is
| financially better than continuing to work. Think of the
| founder of WeWork.
|
| "You always have a boss" is a bland phrase that doesn't
| account for all the very important nuances of the matter.
|
| Definitely not an "illusion". There are very practical
| differences between the different types of bosses.
| rozenmd wrote:
| Cheers for the advice - not aiming for hyper-optimising for
| cheap hardware, it was just something I built out of personal
| interest.
| mryall wrote:
| > Focus is about saying "no".
|
| Always loved this advice from Steve Jobs, but it can be hard to
| put into practice in a startup.
|
| From my own experience, I've found there is a strong temptation
| (and also external advice) to try many different things in trying
| to get traction.
| rimeice wrote:
| Love warren buffett's quote on this topic. "The difference
| between successful people and really successful people is that
| really successful people say no to almost everything." But
| totally agree it's v difficult to decide what to say no to
| especially if you're still honing PMF at a startup.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| This is kinda misleading though. If you say no to everything
| then you literally won't do anything. That can't make you
| money unless you're a trust fund kid. So obviously you have
| to say yes to some thing (s). The true essence of the message
| is that you have to say no to most things but still say yes
| to that one thing. Good luck with that!
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| There is a big difference between when you are starting out
| and once you are established. If you have any kind of
| success then there will be an endless queue of people
| knocking on your door with "opportunities". You soon learn
| that most of them are worthless and the sensible thing is
| to default to rejecting them.
| ojosilva wrote:
| Well the quote says "...to _almost_ everything " not
| "everything, period".
|
| From my experience meeting highly successful people, or
| whatever that means, meant deducing most of your
| interactions should have a straight no from you right away
| after listening attently, many times no eye contact is made
| (to make it more objectively perhaps). Then that "no" can
| be a blunt, almost out of place surprising no at the start
| "I don't like/see it", "not interested", "can't do that"
| etc. Which should quickly lead the conversation into
| solving your objections. Think of it as a figure of speech
| or a Socratic rhetoric. Once your petty or founded
| objections are resolved your "real no" may materialize as
| non-rhetoric. Remember, if you are the one saying yes or no
| it means you have some, if not all, leverage in that
| interaction.
|
| Like I said, I've seen this from extremely rich, old money,
| people with whom I've interacted, so it's anecdotal and
| take it with a punch of salt. It's easier said than done
| anyway.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| it did say "almost anything".
|
| >That can't make you money unless you're a trust fund kid.
|
| Yes, Jobs indeed comes from a very priveledged background
| that can afford to send their kid to college, have them
| drop out less than a year later, then send them on a 2 year
| soul searching journey before founding and crashing 2
| startup businesses. And Buffet was a son of a congressman
| who bought stocks at 11 and land at 15 (I dont think either
| of those things are even legal o do today at those ages).
|
| They very much were trust fund kids.
| dilawar wrote:
| Said a very successful person who can afford to say no to
| almost everything.
| ergocoder wrote:
| Don't say no when you have 0-10 customers lol.
| OJFord wrote:
| Sure but that is definitely not causal!
| szundi wrote:
| Haha he started with some yes. Saying nos come later. Btw he
| was lucky his first yeses were bulls-eye.
| brandall10 wrote:
| I worked at a well known B2B some years back that seemed to be
| successful in part because they allowed the customers to do
| whatever they wanted AFA custom JavaScript applet work, and
| then made a killing on support plans dealing with landlines
| those customer's devs created.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I kind of think it is worth smashing out a few quick ideas to
| "get it out your system", and the process of being in motion
| makes you spot more opportunities.
|
| Thus you may be "selling shovels" - your customers are software
| devs etc. Since the problems you face building are the problems
| you aim to solve.
|
| This is something you can't get at your day job unless it is a
| true startup, est. 2023 because they are probably doing things
| the old way and a very peculiar way to boot :-). The work problem
| is usually solved by convincing the team to do something less
| dumb :-) rather than another SaaS sub.
| thewizardofaus wrote:
| As much as I enjoy linux.. it's just a real pain to use daily for
| work.
|
| Hackintosh a T480 and it's the best of both worlds.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| KDE is mature enough to be useable and has tons of extra
| features I miss when I'm on Mac.
|
| I try to setup a system with i3 or sway every once and then but
| then I always end up back on KDE eventually.
|
| I do miss good window tiling though!
| MaKey wrote:
| Can you elaborate? I've been using Linux for work for 4 years
| and I'm an Azure consultant.
| discordance wrote:
| I've played with a bunch of hackintosh setups and these days
| just stick with M1 Macbook Airs. They are incredibly capable
| and silent machines.
| OJFord wrote:
| You found it a pain maybe, there are plenty of us that find it
| less of a pain than macOS (or, [shudders], Windows). I hear
| about plenty of grief using macOS from people who do use it and
| like it (and simultaneously love to talk about what a pain
| Linux supposedly is).
| kbrannigan wrote:
| What is so shuddery about windows? I run windows + WSL as my
| main for years, and it's just as stable as my mac.
| konschubert wrote:
| I've had multiple side projects over the years, and every time I
| got a little bit further with them towards a commercial success.
| My latest project is the one I've been working on the longest.
|
| It's been almost 4 years now I think, and within the past year,
| I've started getting traction commercially. (But the first paying
| customer was after two years or so.)
|
| I guess what I'm saying is that it's okay to abandon ideas when
| you feel like they don't work. Your gut feeling may be right.
|
| You learn something from it, you move on and eventually you
| hopefully find something that sticks. It's almost like love.
| konschubert wrote:
| Also, if you want to avoid wasting your time, you have to do
| everything to find paying customers as fast as possible.
|
| It's embarrassing to go out with a product that you know isn't
| perfect, but if you are meeting a need in the market, people
| are willing to pay even for an imperfect product.
|
| And it's much easier to improve a product that has a market,
| then to find a market for a perfect product that has none.
| codeptualize wrote:
| The build many "startups" quickly hype gives me strong get rich
| quick vibes.
|
| It works for the influencers because their audience is big
| enough, but for everyone else it's very unlikely to work and they
| will just pay for the courses and boilerplates the influencers
| are shilling.
|
| Most things that create significant sustained value will take a
| lot of time.
|
| It's sad to read the blog posts of people spending so much time
| building crappy products no one will ever use, and still trying
| to sell you on their latest idea.
|
| It's sad that this is what indie hacking has become.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Tell me about it. I've been plucking away at an online business
| since 2004. It makes just barely enough money that I'm not
| quite willing to shut it down but not enough to get excited
| about or quit my regular job. Hate it.
| MaKey wrote:
| What about selling it on Acquire?
| collaborative wrote:
| Would you sell thousands of your man hours for 10,000
| dollars?
| jddj wrote:
| If the result of those thousands of hours is worth <=
| 10000 by some valuation method which makes sense to me.
|
| More nuanced answer: I have a project that I've been
| plugging away at for years now. It may never pay for
| itself if I value my time at the same rate that I charge
| it out to others, but in that time it's improved the
| quality and speed of my other outputs significantly.
|
| In that regard it's probably already paid for itself, but
| I wouldn't sell it because it continues to be valuable to
| me both in that regard and as a creative outlet.
|
| If it were a throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks
| saas I'd have no problem selling it for a reasonable
| valuation of future earnings.
| collaborative wrote:
| Wish I could edit my comment as I see it has triggered
| many responses. To me, the effort of closing a deal to
| sell something that's not losing money isn't worth
| $10,000. I'd rather keep it alive and let users enjoy it.
| If I'm losing money, that's a different story, of course.
| But since selling on Acquire tops at $10,000, I decide
| that it's not worth my time. I might think differently if
| instead of $10,000 it was $100,000. That would pay off
| part of my mortgage. But having to do KT, sign documents,
| consult with lawyers, do loads of admin for $10,000? No
| way. I am almost offended
| ryandrake wrote:
| Maybe people are assuming it's $10,000 _net_ after the
| cost of lawyers and "admin" or whatever it takes to sell
| your thing on Acquire. $10,000 is a lot of money, if I
| had some hobby project that was break even and I was
| getting sick of dealing with it, I'd even sell it for
| $1,000, let alone $10,000 which can be life changing!
| lesuorac wrote:
| Even if it meant you can't work on something similar to
| that hobby project again?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Probably. OP said he can't get excited about the project,
| and hates the situation, so sure. For a few grand in the
| pocket, no big deal. Is this really a standard term for
| selling a failed business? You can't work on something
| similar ever again for the rest of your life?
| mritchie712 wrote:
| > Hate it.
|
| If I was at that point, probably.
|
| The thousands of man hours are a sunk cost. If you
| wouldn't start the business today knowing what you know
| now, you should probably sell.
| mathgeek wrote:
| If those hours are in the past, sure. All jokes aside,
| you'd be selling an asset, not the time you already put
| into it.
| codingdave wrote:
| Those hours are gone. If I am no longer interested in a
| side project, would I sell it for $10K vs. just turning
| it off? Absolutely!
| nine_k wrote:
| Think not about the hours you have spent, but about the
| hours remaining in your life. They are finite. Do you
| want to spend more of them on that thing that has turned
| dreary? If you can afford it, it's usually better to call
| it a day and free up time and mental energy for something
| new and better.
| szundi wrote:
| Hire someone and produce proof he can run the business as
| a manager - then you can have at least 5-7xEBITDA
| j4yav wrote:
| Why sell them when you carry them with you to your grave?
| codegeek wrote:
| Depends. What will I get for it 2 years from now ? Would
| someone even pay 10K ? You need to know when to let
| something go. SOmetimes, at a huge loss. And I am a
| founder so I know how hard it is to let things go that
| you put your blood and sweat into.
| icedchai wrote:
| If it meant I didn't have to spend thousands of more
| hours working on something that doesn't interest me
| anymore, sure.
| j45 wrote:
| There's opportunity cost of what worse might be on the
| radar.
|
| Sunk time isn't always invaluable.
| fasterik wrote:
| Sunk cost fallacy. It doesn't matter how much time or
| money you've put into something, the question is always
| what is the best use of my time and money _today_? The
| value of something is what someone else is willing to pay
| for it.
| eastbound wrote:
| It's really hard to change project and recognize the blurredd
| line between "it doesn't work" and "I didn't put enough
| effort into it".
|
| My first product worked, but very average. My second project
| worked excellently, there was quasi-immediate traction. That
| second thing was resolving an actual business issue.
|
| It's stagnating now. It's probably because, even though I
| don't feel it, I'm bored (it's been 7 years). I have
| difficulty waking up in the morning.
|
| You need to innovate. If not just for your brain and sanity,
| the market didn't recognize your first product. Evaluate
| whether you should trust the sign that the market gives you.
|
| Launch a second product.
| rainbowskys wrote:
| Do you have a way I can contact you? I'm looking for a
| business to acquire and I wonder if there would be a fit.
| rainbowskys wrote:
| Do you have a way I can contact you? I'm looking for a
| business to acquire and I wonder if there would be a fit.
| TeeWEE wrote:
| Well, if you try a lot of stuff, and stop early.. You have more
| chance of success.. "put your eggs in one basket" kind a thing
| codeptualize wrote:
| There is some truth in that, but if you only spend 1 month on
| a project it will be really difficult to realize any
| potential there might be.
|
| It shouldn't be about the time spend but how quickly you can
| validate assumptions, those are different things.
|
| My point is: It's not "that easy". I'm pro indie hacking, but
| it's hard work and difficult to create a profitable business
| that you can live off. Spinning off crappy quick projects
| only works if you have a big audience you can sell to, and
| most don't have that, so they will have to put in a lot more
| effort and time.
| colesantiago wrote:
| This take sounds very bitter and I disagree.
|
| I know someone in the UK who has been in a very poor situation
| and told them they can make a bit of money by building a small
| side project and charging for it.
|
| About 6 months later, I caught up with them and they made over
| PS700,000+ by just learning to code, taking advice from others,
| discipline, and turning around their dire and desperate current
| situation they really wanted to get out of.
|
| Depending on the situation it actually changes lives.
| codeptualize wrote:
| I think you are misunderstanding my point, I'm specifically
| referring to the "build 12 companies in 12 months" version of
| indie hacking that is really vocal on twitter and other
| places.
|
| They usually build a landing page or bad prototype, wait for
| people to come, then move on to "the next startup" if it
| inevitably doesn't work. Their ideas usually don't have
| enough potential to sell, and if they do they don't take them
| far enough to actually realize even a fraction of the
| potential.
|
| I love bootstrapped companies, I'm all for building side
| projects and turning them into jobs, but this movement has
| moved away from that and is now about selling the dream
| instead of the work.
|
| It sounds like the person you know did not do this and
| actually created something valuable, that's amazing and I
| congratulate them. I would like the indie hacker movement to
| move back to celebrating these success stories instead of the
| influencer BS.
|
| Edit: and maybe I am a bit bitter as I loved the indie hacker
| movement. I found it to be incredibly inspiring, and I truly
| miss the stories of people doing lots of hard work, solving
| difficult problems, and building incredible products and
| companies.
| vasco wrote:
| Influencers sell ads around content. Whatever is in that box
| surrounded by ads doesn't really matter other than being fresh
| and getting clicks. It's generally more interesting to see
| videos about different types of projects because it's always
| new and different people like different things. There's a
| difference in doing things for content and doing things for
| real, almost for any content type. Camping content, woodworking
| content, programming content etc, is optimized for views, not
| for the actual thing, usually.
| ostenning wrote:
| It's really incredible how YouTube shapes the zeitgeist today.
| Hype cycles and their "movements" should be avoided like the
| plague.
|
| At the end of the day if you want to gamble, buy a lottery
| ticket, then at least you are being honest with yourself.
|
| It takes tremendous effort launching products that have
| integrity, and its something that should be respected, the
| journey is what its all about.
| j45 wrote:
| Stating with problems actually belonging to B2B customers
| that they have tried and failed to solve and are willing to
| pay for good a long way instead of being a solution in search
| of a problem.
|
| Being a solution in search of a problem is being everything
| on one hypothesis of what you built being correct instead of
| problem based thinking that would line up multiple hypotheses
| to then select one to start with.
|
| Startups are a learning engine and most don't get setup to
| learn and iterate based on customer feedback.
| TylerE wrote:
| I've always been extremely skeptical of the whole "serial
| entrepreneur" thing.
| codegeek wrote:
| You mean build 12 startups in 12 months doesn't work ? Wow, who
| would have thought ? /s. Sorry for these "SAAS influencers"
| really piss me off.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I think both ways work. Focusing on a single product failed for
| me, focusing on many small bets worked.
|
| Many small business ideas which can be built quickly are really
| hard to scale beyond a certain point so having many is the only
| way to build reasonable income. These small bets also need to
| require low effort to build and support (eg. think b2c with
| advertising income or a product with little support costs).
|
| Of course if you can scale up a single business, good for you,
| you can focus all your energies there and provide a great
| service.
| ao98 wrote:
| I agree both ways work! I'm curious what about the many small
| bets worked in your case. It would be great to have a framework
| for "when to focus" and "when to diversify".
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| Thought this was the dude making the remote control hardware..
| very similar
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Congratulations and good luck for 2024!
|
| > Turns out they got fed up with their existing service,
| remembered my pitch, and checked out what I built since.
|
| Marketing and selling pay off. The sad part is, you never know
| when.
| zubairq wrote:
| I keep hacking away on Yazz for over 10 years now.... even if
| there is zero payoff I keep hacking... and that is what hackers
| do... we are not doing for the money...
| https://github.com/yazz/yazz
| purplerabbit wrote:
| If the purpose of life is any broader than "construct a
| beautiful fantasy world" then such an approach is a mistake
| wowmaxdavid wrote:
| It took you 10 year for that? No hate but it's horrible!
| RobRivera wrote:
| I took a look at your resume; I'm going to quote Robin
| Williams' character from Good Will Hunting 'you're just a
| kid'
| MyFirstSass wrote:
| Ironic but where do people discuss niches/undersaturated
| markets/trends/rushes these days?
|
| I've always felt it was a part of the HN spirit with lots of
| threads, but it's completely died down, maybe because of the
| economy?
|
| I'm well aware it's luck and lottery, but it's a hobby for many
| of us anyway, finding a market for our tinkering.
|
| Even Indiehackers seems saturated with a lot of the spam and very
| little profitable. Like this gibberish wix template making 100k a
| month on the frontpage
| https://www.indiehackers.com/product/gibble-ai.
|
| Is the discussion IRL only now, or are we just in a downturn?
| LikeAnElephant wrote:
| IMO many viable niches are not being discussed online at all.
|
| I've recently stumbled on an exciting niche that's showing a
| lot of traction. The customers know very well how to use
| technology but the notion of joining forums / discussing their
| frustrations anywhere online just doesn't seem to be something
| they consider doing. It's all word of mouth.
|
| My "luck" completely shifted when I stopped trying to find
| these users online and instead physically walked into a shop
| and started asking for opinions.
|
| All that to say: I'm coming to feel that niches can more easily
| be found offline, even for SaaS type businesses. Just walk up
| and ask a business owner what they find annoying!
| MyFirstSass wrote:
| Thanks, this is kind of on the path i'm also on.
|
| A lot of entrepreneurial types are very much running around
| in the same circles jumping on the same trends and seeing
| life from the same perspective.
|
| I remember being part of an incubator where there were 4
| coffee distribution companies at the same time, pretty funny.
| Many others were doing online services for other tech people
| like some ouroboros.
|
| At the same time designers and hacker types are often a bit
| introverted and isolate themselves with their work.
|
| This creates a very deep disconnect between "the vast
| majority of people" that aren't very vocal online about
| problems, even more so the huge elderly demographic, but even
| zoomers are not tech savvy these days. So there should really
| be lots of opportunities out there if you don't focus on the
| tiny hot niches or techy spheres that so many people here
| target paradoxically.
|
| Ie. combining "techy, nerdy or design skills" while forcing
| yourself out there is honestly a potential superpower - the
| other way around is not feasible for most, ie. the sales type
| learning tech that takes years and years to learn. Off course
| you can also always team up.
| MattRix wrote:
| FYI your OnlineOrNot site seems to have some typos which are
| probably scaring away some customers.
|
| > Monitoring thats simple, effective, and lets you sleep a bit
| better at night.
|
| > Check as often as every 30 seconds, and catch the issues take
| your website down for less than a minute.
| rozenmd wrote:
| Good catch, thanks
| tamarlikesdata wrote:
| Just read that human memory isn't as reliable as a git commit,
| and it's all about 'read-and-update' rather than 'write-once'.
| Makes me think twice about how I 'commit' things to memory and
| rely on 'aha moments' for debugging code. Maybe stepping away
| from the screen is the best git push for the brain!
| bluedino wrote:
| Focusing on more than one thing is easily the best way to get
| nothing done.
|
| Certification: Cisco, Red Hat, AWS, Azure. Pick one and finish
| it. Then do more. Having basic certifications in all of them
| sounds like a good idea, but employers don't seem to care. Keep
| going with whichever one you pick.
|
| Programming languages: don't spend a month on every language you
| can find, or every framework you can find. It's great to know
| more than just one language or framework but it's more important
| to actually make interesting shit in whichever one you pick.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| I'm gonna be that guy and say cerfications are not very helpful
| if you are building your own SaaS. This is coming from me, a
| guy who has a few profitable SaaS and has never done a single
| certification course. Learning by doing, "just in time"
| learning, and looking up stuff you need in docs / youtube
| videos when you get stuck seems to work fine.
|
| However, I can definitely agree with the comments on tools /
| frameworks though. Don't focus on the "newest thing", just work
| with what you know you are fastest with.
| bluedino wrote:
| I just meant in general personal development - you definitely
| don't need any certifications to start a SaaS
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