Making a thread of makers & entrepreneurs who inspired me, and what they taught me.
#thread
👇

Strong marketing game, super hard work, can stream for 24 hours and currently leading a new streamer movement with the #24hrstartup challenge.
Make it bigger than yourself.
👉 @thepatwalls
Made the awesome https://t.co/lBYn9nP3KJ which works perfectly and saved me hours and hours.
Make a simple, helpful product.
👉 @gvrizzo
Making the stylish @threader_app looking for maximum integration with Twitter (it might even become part of Twitter one day...)
Raise the bar for quality, look for seamless integrations.
👉 @marie_dm_ + @yesnoornext
Successfully monetized a tiny social network @wip without screwing his users, focusing on the maker community.
A small engaged community is enough.
👉 @marckohlbrugge
15yr old maker, made a Whatsapp bot that sends you wikipedia summaries, and many other projects.
Age doesn't matter.
👉 @jajoosam
Strong Twitter game. Go study how he's been building, launching and getting feedback in public for years, and why it works.
👉 @levelsio
Bought billboards to get kanye west on the phone.
Do unexpected things. Be bold.
👉 @harrydry
Find a simple problem and solve it elegantly.
Go global, go B2B.
👉 @fgrante and the https://t.co/sWgA11zP8A team
He literally saves lives from online gaming addiction.
Info products are not all get rich quick schemes.
👉 @camerondare
Committed to ship music everyday for 100 days.
Discipline is hard.
👉 @internetVin
Writes awesome, well structured JS tutorials at a crazy pace.
He owns tomorrow's SERP about anything Javascript.
👉 @flaviocopes
Experiencing the compounding effect of SaaS, even in a crowded space.
👉 @sinequanonh from https://t.co/X8EGyrBtkM
https://t.co/zyzZPq4qLU unexpectedly took off in Korea.
You can't control your users.
👉 @ajlkn
made 50+ projects over the last 15 years, some sold, some shut down.
Be there for the long term.
👉 @Shpigford
It's entirely up to you to define what success means.
Richard Branson could want a peaceful life and be miserable because he keeps building companies like an addict.
👉 @sivers
50 side projects and counting.
Just keeps shipping.
👉 @mubashariqbal
Left his job to focus on building his own products for a hardcore year.
Reduced expenses to the minimum, even if it means fighting the Bali wildlife with his bare hands when he walks home at night.
Go all in.
👉 @andreyazimov
From designer to blogger to $1M MRR SaaS.
A story of compound interest.
👉 @nathanbarry from ConvertKit
You can build a successful side project even in a very small niche
👉 @czue from Place Card Me
full thread as a blog post here
👉 https://t.co/iabKpc8uWR

More from Makers

1/ I wanted to show you some sneak peek this week, but instead we DEPLOYED TO PRODUCTION 🔥😄

If you’re a creator, get an invite here 👉 https://t.co/D8H6g8TL9o

Week 2 highlights: our first ever podcast 🎙, meeting @Jason 🦄, shipping @BREWdotcom alpha 🚢 & laptop stickers!


2/ First off, thanks for the mind-blowing response last week (120k+ views 😲 omgwtfasdasd!)… absolutely pushed us to get the product out there.

also, there’s something magical about watching people try a buggy product and fixing it on the go 🤓


3/ Thanks @JasonDemant for inviting us to grab some behind the scenes at @LAUNCH.

As a huge fan and avid listener of the @TWistartups show🎙, it was great watching @Jason do his thing live!


4/ 🎙@domainnamewire invited us to chat about acquiring https://t.co/GOQJ7L2faV domain and that was officially our first podcast ever. Check it out here: https://t.co/eusVCOlUSb.

You nailed it your first time, Maddy! 🍻 Thanks for having us on the show, Andrew.

5/ Great news: Brew partnered with @Tipalti to enable payouts for creators everywhere (unlike @kickstarter which only support 26 countries).

Platforms like Twitch use Tipalti to payout instantly and via multiple methods like Check, PayPal, local bank transfer, etc.
Results from yesterday’s poll. I’m inclined to agree. And this is something I’m going to fix in my next move.


As an indie maker you have a huge advantage if you can genuinely dogfood your product. Don’t do what I did and try to make a product for teams if you’re just one person. That’s really, really dumb 🙃

Before searching for product-market fit, ask yourself if you have founder-product fit. It is a humbling question but one worth investing the time to answer truthfully.

In hindsight, I have low founder-product fit with Talkshow. It’s for teams but I’m solo. It’s a big broad idea but as an indie I should be focused on a niche.

Just braindumping 🤪 Again thanks to @tylertringas for the micro-saas content on his blog, it helped me navigate / articulate some thoughts I was having.
What are some things you should *NOT* do as an indie hacker?

I was recently on @ProductHunt Radio (
https://t.co/IuSMrZTaYG) where @Abadesi asked me this question about all sorts of challenges that founders face.

Here are a few of my thoughts…

@Abadesi Don't blindly follow advice without considering the context in which the advice was given (from who, to who, when, for what) and adapting it to fit your personal situation.

E.g. advice that works for a high-growth VC-funded startup might be disastrous to your indie business.

@Abadesi (This applies to any and all advice in life, btw, not just advice for how to start and run a company. It's almost never a good time to turn off your brain and blindly follow what others are saying.)

@Abadesi Don't equate being a founder with being an inventor. It's an analogy that can easily go too far.

You'll end up overvaluing and over-protecting your pet ideas. Or worse, you'll never come up with an idea at all, because you'll assume that it needs to be something completely new.

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