🗞 What's New: On building and iterating quickly

How do you build quickly?

• Building and iterating are essential for SaaS products, but doing this quickly can be a challenge. Founders weigh in with their top tips on building fast when you have a need for speed.
• This list of profitable marketing advice can help you kick off 2023 strong! Hint: People love "free." Use it to build trust.
• Founder 0xbadcafe launched 3 machine learning startups in 2022, and scaled to $200,000 in annual revenue. Below, he talks niche opportunities in machine learning, and how founders with no experience can get started.

Want to share something with over 100,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

⏰ Building SaaS Products Quickly

by Matthias Gabriel

How do people build SaaS products incredibly fast? I know how to write software, but not how to do so rapidly. I would love to become better at it to be able to build and iterate faster.

Do you have any tips and tricks that you can share?

Startup vs. project

Sachin G. Kulkarni sheds light on building quickly:

Here is how people build 12 project in 12 months:

• Build very small projects, say a small integration between two existing software apps.
• Build a simple CRUD-based application.
• Build software using no-code tools.
• Start a productized service and build a minimal website for it.
• Launch a modified version of existing open source software.
• Launch a small community.
• Create a curated list.
• Launch a consulting service.

In my opinion, these are projects, not startups. Startups involve sales, marketing, product management, and more. So, determine what you're wanting to build, and allocate the appropriate amount of time to do so.

Top tips

Deji Cranium gives two tips for building products rapidly:

1. Know your tools: Most people who are quick at building projects use technologies that they're comfortable with, or are experts in. My go-to stack for building projects is Vue.js (Nuxt.js) on the frontend, and Node.js on the backend. I know both of these well, so rapid prototyping is easy for me.
2. Create scaffolds and boilerplates: You should have boilerplate code for common functionality. On my GitHub, I have a backend scaffold for authentication that I can plug into and edit for new projects (derived from previous projects). For the frontend, I recommend using a CSS pre-compiler like SASS. That way, you can have variables, mix-ins, and other useful features that can be transported to new projects and easily modified.

At the end of the day, the more things you build, the more efficient you become as a developer, since you tend to see patterns after a while.

Pdyc agrees:

For your first project, you will have to make lot of decisions on how to authenticate, how to authorize, how to take payments, etc. These decisions are not directly related to building your app, but are necessary for a fully functioning SaaS. After sorting these things out for your first project, you can just copy and paste it for your next project. This helps you iterate quickly.

Alternatively, you can use ready-made starter kits that have all the functionality you need. This will allow you to concentrate on your actual app functionality.

Amando Abreu also weighs in:

Sometimes I code, sometimes I use no-code. Here, you can see my thought process live while building an MVP and marketing website in about 90 minutes.

Another thing is that most software is not unique in functionality. There are many patterns. You have your two-sided marketplaces, "swipe" apps based on proximity, things that essentially are a CRM, etc.

There's a big chance what you want to build already exists, and you just need to change the colors and logo for the MVP.

Finally, you also have SaaS starters and boilerplates. I wrote more about that on my blog here.

Why build quickly?

Leastbad says that building quickly is building poorly:

Nothing of real value is going to be created in a month.

12 projects in a year is perfect if you want to spend a year building some half-baked ideas, but don’t fool yourself; the chances of any of them making money is very low.

Now, setting aside time to build, practicing coding, and trying out different stacks is a smart goal. It can be tempting to notice loud outliers and think that there’s this lifestyle where people crank out products that people pay for in rapid succession. That’s not reality.

I strongly suggest that you actually join a real startup for at least half a year to see how things of value are created. One of the best ways to do this is to check out the "Who’s Hiring" thread on Hacker News. It's published the first of every month!

How do you build quickly? Share your experience below!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Growth Trends newsletter by Darko

🔎 The stats, facts, and figures that defined tech in 2022.

🤩 Streaming viewers have a high tolerance for advertising.

🩺 Google has introduced a ChatGPT-like model for healthcare.

🤫 The EU's privacy protections must extend beyond its borders.

📙 Steal WebMD's $128M SEO playbook.

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

💰 Profitable Marketing Advice for Founders

by RJ Youngling

I've got 20 pieces of profitable marketing advice to share with other founders. Let's dive right in!

The list

1. People love "free." Use it to build trust.
2. If your heart isn't in the product that you're selling, how will you convince others to buy? Find something you believe in.
3. Competition is a nonissue. Customers aren't maximizers (looking for the best), they're satisfiers (do I believe that this person can solve my problem?).
4. Selling to previous customers that trust you is much easier than selling to people who have never heard of you.
5. Distribution is not marketing. Marketing is about selling, and that starts with research. Think of marketing as qualitative market research, instead.
6. The best way to convince people is to demonstrate that you can help them by...actually helping them (for free).
7. People don't have short attention spans. Your content just sucks, according to the audience.
8. Don't sell features. Do the cognitive work of translating it into a benefit. If you don't, you're leaving that work to be done by your audience. Hint: They won't.
9. You can't target "anyone." Figure out how much money you need to make per year, then divide it by $100. Now, you know you need X people per year who'll give you $100. Multiply that by 1K, and that's how tiny your serviceable available market can be.
10. Choose a niche to serve from the very start.
11. The best product doesn't win. The best product out of the ones that your customer is considering wins. You don't have to beat everybody. You just have to beat the ones in your customer's consideration set.
12. People are lazy. If it seems like you're genuinely trying to help them and your product is good, they'll do business with you.
13. Become kind of a celebrity to the people in your niche. When they think of solving their specific problem, you want them to think of you.
14. Getting new customers is much more important than keeping customers, despite what everyone tells you. You will never stop churn. Even at 0%, a lack of churn can't grow a business. Even happy customers can outgrow you, and that's okay. Acquire new customers before you need them.
15. If people only want to work with you, you've effectively eliminated competition.
16. People are much more motivated by the prevention of significant downside than they are by the prospect of significant upside. (Loss aversion.)
17. What generates results today may not tomorrow.
18. What doesn't generate results today might tomorrow.
19. Don't create demand. Identify existing painful problems that your audience is already spending large amounts of money on.
20. If you have a starving market, you can screw up almost everything else. If you don't, doing everything else right won't save you.

Bonus points

Price and the quality of a customer often don't scale linearly. Sometimes, cheaper means more customer support headaches.

Hope some of these gave you some ideas that you can apply to your own business. If you're into content about marketing fundamentals for solo founders, I write about that daily here!

What's the best marketing advice you've received? Let's chat below!

Discuss this story.

🌐 Best Around the Web: Posts Submitted to Indie Hackers This Week

💭 Will AI end indie hacker dreams? Posted by Amardeep S. Parmar.

😼 Copycats are hurting the build in public community. Posted by Fernando.

💪 Name one small habit you picked up this year that changed your quality of life. Posted by Temidayo.

🚀 Tell us about your upcoming launch on Product Hunt. Posted by Manas Sharma.

👀 Describe your 2022 in one word. Posted by Sid Hussain.

🐢 Website loading speed: How slow is too slow? Posted by Anand.

Want a shout-out in next week's Best of Indie Hackers? Submit an article or link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across something you think other indie hackers will enjoy.

🤖 0xbadcafe Talks Opportunities in Machine Learning

by 0xbadcafe

Hi indie hackers! I'm 0xbadcafe, a founder and machine learning (ML) researcher.

As most of you are aware, ML has made incredible leaps forward this past year, with everything from large language models (GPT-3), to visual diffusion models (DALL-E, SD), to gameplay (Pluribus, Cicero).

There are infinite options for founders to apply ML to niche problems and create a thriving business. I've done this three times over the last year, with two successful products and one "okay" product.

My products have niched down into:

• US healthcare: I've stayed away from clinical ML models, as that would be very hard to take to market without funding. My models are more on the business and planning side.
• SEO content creation.
• Business planning.

Some of the models I've taken to market:

• Cutting-edge image classification and object detection in the browser.
• Custom digit classification (DNN OCR).
• SD image creation.
• Diffusion video model.

AMA!

How can someone with no tech experience get started in ML?

The ML space will need all kinds of people helping to build the future. With all of the auto-ML tools, you don’t need to be an engineer to build something exciting.

Some good starter resources:

• YouTube videos covering ML capabilities. I really enjoy Two Minute Papers.
• Reddit has great subreddits for all different flavors of ML.
• Papers With Code is a good overview of the state of art.
• Andrew Ng’s course has some math, but will give you a solid base of ML.

What are some niches where ML can be used to build a business?

When it comes to ML businesses, I'm 100% focused on B2B. I think there are some great consumer applications out there, but it will be hard for an indie hacker to take those to market.

What are some niches? The short answer is "all of them." Here's the longer answer:

1. Find a human inefficiency:

We are bad at so many things. When I think about ML products, I like to envision all of the things that humans are already doing that are error-prone, slow, or expensive.

Why these? Because most applications of B2B ML could be done by humans if time and money were not a concern. But, this may change in the future.

2. Check to see whether ML can help:

This is probably the hardest part. If you're technical, you can read papers to see how state-of-the-art algorithms are performing. If you're not, you can look at examples of existing ML to see how they could be applied.

Example: GPT-3 is already being used to write blog posts, so maybe it could also be used to write resumes and cover letters.

3. Determine value to a company:

This isn't exclusive to ML, but it's important to try and understand for all projects. Value usually falls into a few different buckets:

• Saving the company money.
• Helping them make more money.
• Allowing them to do something that was not possible before.

The best way to determine this is by talking to customers!

Example:

You are renting a car. You stop by the rental agency, and one of the staff members steps outside to inspect the vehicle with you. They mark down all of the current card damage on the contract.

Problem: It takes time to walk around the car to mark down all the issues. It is also very easy to miss damage, either at the beginning or upon return.

Solution: An application on their smart phone records video of the car and itemizes existing damage.

We've found a process that is error-prone (missing damage) and slow (lots of time per car).

What's your technical background?

I’m a developer (CS degree) with an interest in data and some background. I’m self-taught on the ML side; I started in 2020 with nearly no ML knowledge.

I started with Andrew Ng’s free course. I wanted to do the fast AI course, but never found time. Then, I started building, made a ton of mistakes, and learned a lot.

Now, I can understand all major ML technologies and techniques, and have built cutting-edge models and products.

What did you waste the most time on when building?

I wasted the most time on:

• Data cleanup: Fixing mislabelled data and cleaning dirty source data.
• Optimization of models that didn’t actually provide any substantial improvement in the product.

How is selling in healthcare possible for indie hackers?

Selling in healthcare is an absolute nightmare! But it is definitely possible for an indie hacker. Building in public for healthcare isn't really possible, as most companies won't work with you if you're too small.

On the positive side of indie healthcare:

• Not much competition.
• Minimum deal size is ~$10K ARR.
• Average is ~$20K ARR.
• Churn is effectively zero.

I've been working on one deal for 10 months. It will likely close in early 2023 for $160K-$200K ARR.

Healthcare is the largest single slice of the US economy. It is huge!

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Matthias Gabriel, Darko, RJ Youngling, and 0xbadcafe for contributing posts. —Channing