[HN Gopher] Building LawStar - a year long indie hacking journey
___________________________________________________________________
Building LawStar - a year long indie hacking journey
Author : jamesmackey
Score : 49 points
Date : 2024-11-15 16:09 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mackey.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mackey.substack.com)
| xyst wrote:
| First mistake was trying to market to _students_
|
| Not sure how long this person has been out of school, but
| students are notoriously cheap. I'm not surprised there was no
| interest when monetizing/charging.
|
| Maybe a collab between law schools and including the tool there.
| Students get it "free" and you get paid by the law school.
| mtlynch wrote:
| I agree they're not an ideal target but I've been surprised to
| hear indie projects that succeed with students as customers.
|
| Mitchell Hashimoto created a service that students at UW could
| use to find out when registration slots were open for high-
| demand classes and made $160k/yr from it.[0]
|
| Aaron Francis sold a study guide for an accounting class at
| Texas A&M[1] and made a lot from it, though I can't find a
| public source on it.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/vMzToDQPgH4?feature=shared&t=1720
|
| [1] https://acct229.com/
| jamesmackey wrote:
| Yeah, explored options like that. The schools and teachers that
| teach legal writing don't think about giving students
| experience with the tools they'll have in the workforce - they
| think that every student needs to learn how to do things by
| hand. It's an unfortunate way of thinking that I wasn't able to
| get them out of the mindset of.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| That's surprising to me, as the school I went to had reps
| from the big legal research/writing services with offices on
| campus, we got free training in using them, and the idea was
| we'd be hooked on those very expensive services when we were
| out in the real world!
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > Not sure how long this person has been out of school, but
| students are notoriously cheap.
|
| If you aren't in the US, you wouldn't know, but law students
| aren't your standard student, and they aren't notoriously
| cheap. My law school had an overpriced cafe in the basement
| that targeted only students, and it was packed with us every
| day. We're paying for an education well in excess of $100,000
| in tuition alone.
|
| My journal kept our office stocked with tons of treats, just
| like a dot com startup. We were on the top floor of the
| building, had a good view, had lots of privacy and quiet, a ton
| of floor space, couches, a TV, etc.
|
| My journal charged $60/yr and had a circulation of around 1500.
|
| I can't remember what the printing cost was, but that's $90,000
| in revenue and zero labor costs. Law students do this work for
| free because it's the second best thing you can have on your
| job applications aside from graduating at the top of the class.
|
| So yeah, law students could afford a few subscriptions. :)
| elijaht wrote:
| I don't agree with this - law students still skew more frugal
| than white collar adults. Definitely _less_ frugal than
| undergrads - folks coming from the workforce generally have
| some savings, and I do think there were more students coming
| from an affluent background than in undergrad. But the
| spending pattern of the average student was still quite
| frugal - housing was almost always student housing, many
| students did not use a car, most were taking significant
| loans etc.
|
| My wife attended a school ranked ~30th in the US, and was in
| a leadership position at her school's flagship journal, which
| was in a dingy room with the only amenity being a microwave.
|
| Maybe it looks different at a T14 school, but the vast
| majority of journal students I know would have balked at a
| >$10/month subscription like this
| notahacker wrote:
| I think the wider point is that, yes, it takes a bit of
| access to money to be $150k in debt, but when you've got a
| choice of selling labour-saving stuff to individuals who
| aren't in work or an adjacent market composed of firms whose
| hourly rates mean they save the $120 annual subscription cost
| in about ten minutes...
| brudgers wrote:
| Because lawyer salaries in the US have a bimodal
| distribution, I would not be surprised if the disposable
| income of law students does as well.
|
| If that's true, then segmenting for one mode or the other
| might make sense...and conversely just targeting "law
| students" as a single segment might not.
|
| For example, students with money to eat at the high end cafe
| would tend to expect a high end experience and expect to pay
| accordingly, while ramen students would seek a value price
| and accept a less luxurious experience.
|
| Or to put it another way, some segments are a choice between
| bread and cake. Other segments are a choice between bread and
| nothing.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > students are notoriously cheap
|
| if you're going to law school you're already spending a
| gazillion $ to get through school, and are willing to pay a bit
| more for a tool that actually saves you time and your sanity
| aguaviva wrote:
| _First mistake was trying to market to _students__
|
| And yet there's something to it. Of course it's a nothing
| market, from the standpoint of _immediate_ revenue. But the
| students will become professionals in just a few years, and if
| you can get them to not only use your tools, but to be thinking
| "this is just how its done" -- that, in theory, can help you
| establish your market.
|
| This was Venmo's strategy, apparently -- there's was a
| completely different vertical, of course, but they went for the
| "long game" in this regard, and it seems to have paid off for
| them.
| skwee357 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. A refreshing, and more real perspective on
| business compared to other "indie hackers".
| codegeek wrote:
| Inspiring story. TL;DR: Built a legal tech for students, tried
| selling for a while, didnt get a lot of traction and then
| ultimately sold the project to someone else.
|
| I think you did a lot of things the right way but probably went
| after a tough market. Students. Students are the most broke
| category and then comes indiehackers :). I would usually refrain
| from selling to these 2.
|
| "A quick market-sizing exercise: there are ~110k law students in
| the US, ~25% of whom are in journals, and half of those are 2nd
| years. If I could penetrate even 10% of that market at $10/month,
| I'd be at $165k in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)"
|
| Haha. This is a classic newbie founder mistake thinking all you
| need is a % of the market. We all have made it. Now you know.
| Market estimate should be made bottom up, not top down.
|
| "find the connectors"
|
| This is so key. If you are in a niche industry, finding the right
| connections who can open doors can be huge.
|
| "Don't be a solo founder"
|
| As a solo founder (even though with a small team), I couldn't
| agree more. I know having co-founders brings in risks of conflict
| etc but I am so ready to build a fresh team with cofounders who
| are thinking about the business 24-7 like I do. If you have a
| team like that and you work well together, that's a dream.
|
| Tell us more about your next thing.
| jamesmackey wrote:
| Thank you! Glad you found it interesting and it resonated with
| you.
|
| You can find out more about the next thing here - https://mura-
| website.notion.site/Founding-Engineer-at-Mura-1...
|
| tl;dr - helping commercial HVAC providers accelerate and
| automate their order-to-cash cycle. Big and interesting market
| with a lot of opportunities for efficiencies
| codegeek wrote:
| Thanks. HVAC space is huge and as a home owner who literally
| just paid $1000 to replace a control board, I know how
| critical that market is. Will check it out.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| > Haha. This is a classic newbie founder mistake thinking all
| you need is a % of the market. We all have made it. Now you
| know. Market estimate should be made bottom up, not top down.
|
| dang, my goal was 3% of my market. what should i be doing
| instead?
| meiraleal wrote:
| get 10 customers and aim to grow it by 100%. Then repeat.
| Again. And. Again.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| It's targeting the self-styding people the same? Like tools to
| learn by themselves?
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Interesting post. It's been a while since I was in law school
| (and it wasn't in the US) but I don't remember spending anything
| close to 10 hours a week doing citations. I don't remember it
| being a significant portion of my workload at all. I was on the
| editorial board of a journal where I was reviewing a lot of
| citations, but it was on the authors to actually _do_ them, and
| if I found they weren 't doing them correctly it was a simple
| matter of "please ensure your citations conform to our house
| style" (it wasn't Bluebook). I wouldn't have paid to use this
| software either, though it might have been a worthwhile
| investment for the journal itself to make (or the law school, as
| others have mentioned).
| rfw300 wrote:
| I'd note that most U.S. law journals work very differently from
| what you describe. Strict Bluebook compliance is their raison
| d'etre, much more than legal scholarship. I am not exaggerating
| that. (And authors are not generally expected to get it right
| themselves, fleets of law student editors do the checking and
| correcting.)
| vlark wrote:
| Doesn't Zotero already do this? See this LibGuide from the
| Unviersity of Hawa'ii Law School: https://law-
| hawaii.libguides.com/TLC_Research_Writing/Zotero
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-11-15 23:01 UTC)