Candid and potentially controversial series of tweets coming up... (I hear twitter is good for that sort of thing 😅) read 👇🏻

Here’s what it feels like to launch something to the indie maker community:

Launching a free, open source tool:
“This is awesome! You’re awesome!”

Launching a commercial tool:
“TWO DOLLARS? You are literally Hitler”
I’m exaggerating for comedic effect of course. But there’s a lesson here...
I knew before I started working on Promomatic to be very wary of building a utility tool for makers. Makers are by definition problem solvers and their favorite hobby is finding a better / faster / cheaper way to do what your product does.
It’s so tempting to build things for makers because they seem accessible (thanks to PH, IH, Reddit etc) and you get an immediate feedback loop.
But I see too many indie makers getting seduced into an endless loop of building products for other makers and ending up generating little to no revenue.
I don’t think there is a long term business opportunity in “utility” tools for indie makers. It’s fine to launch to that audience, but you need to quickly move up the value chain if you want to survive.
As an entrepreneur you don’t want an individual pondering whether your product is worth a single digit dollar amount. You want a *business* to not bat an eye at putting your 3-digit monthly / annual subscription on the corporate card because you solve such a valuable problem.
So, don’t do what I’m doing. My goal is not to sell to indie makers. My long term goal is to move up the value chain to businesses. For that, I will need longer than 30 days.
Plus, launching in and of itself is the majority of the challenge for me right now. Turning one of these things into an actual business, that can come later :)
In summary, don’t expect to make money from tools aimed at indie makers. If you do find yourself in that situation and you want to grow revenue, you’ll need to move up the value chain to SMEs.

More from Startups

.@zapier built a $140M ARR business on $1.4M in VC that has become the logic layer of the no-code industry.

But it has the potential to be something even bigger: the Netflix of productivity.

Our report and a thread 👉

We believe @seqouia and @steadfast got a good deal buying into Zapier at $5B.

We value Zapier at $7B based on:

- 30-50% YoY growth over the next five years
- Zapier’s monopoly status in the solopreneur/SMB market
- 30-40% YoY growth of no-code TAM

No-code is huge and growing, but as @edavidpeterson has written, no-code is about more than tools: it’s about a philosophy that emphasizes interoperability and customizing your software to your needs.

https://t.co/UJY6BRtXwl


.@zapier enabled interoperability by building a solution to one of the intractable problems in SaaS: APIs that don’t talk to each other.

The product took off and hit $100M ARR in just 9 years, comparable to companies that have raised 100x as much money.

https://t.co/0Thk42eRpJ


Zapier was riding an explosion in APIs that started the same year they were founded—2011.

Suddenly, every SaaS business wanted to offer its users extensibility, but not spend time figuring out what integrations to build or building them.

That’s where Zapier came in handy.
I shipped all these apps in 2020. Most of them generated $0.

🎬 https://t.co/JAhXqsuu6h $0
🌍 https://t.co/BrNUAhfiIT $0
💡 https://t.co/ZWcLfOH4aI $0
🐞 https://t.co/aghOxYEcPI $1.99
👍 https://t.co/2JhJLe27pW $3,025 in 10 days.

But that's ok, just keep shipping! My stories👇

🎬
https://t.co/wuiBp1XsYD is the first thing I created. It's a community for indie makers. The different thing is we post updates in videos. I created it for fun as I think the world doesn't need one more text-based forum, so I make a video one. No monetization plan so far.

🌍 https://t.co/fiwjgCWho5 is a social app. The idea is from Linktree, an app to share your social links. I thought it would be cool to add more visuals to it, and meanwhile we can explore others around. I also have no monetization plan for it. Make it for fun too.

💡 https://t.co/fZfL45uvVX is a platform to connect influencers with their fans. People says it's like @superpeer. But the only difference is it's all sync. Influencers don't need to commit their time to fixed slot. Fans pay to ask questions, influencers can answer at anytime.

Continuing Influenswer... I think the product has its potential. But for now maybe I didn't find the right niche to serve. Will re-evaluate it in future.

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