🗞 What's New: Can ChatGPT help find product-market fit?

Is it possible to find product-market fit using ChatGPT?

• Below, we guide you through a series of ChatGPT prompts that can help identify niche gaps in the market. These prompts can be relevant for any industry, so give them a try!
• Micro-SaaS helps you design your life, without optimizing for investors or large teams. It can also be a wedge into larger markets. In this guide to micro-SaaS, Dru Riley illustrates how big things can start small.
• Founder Yuriy Yarovoy went from free product to $11,777 in revenue in 3 days with his Twitter browser extension, dewey. Here's how doing things that don't scale helped him personalize his messaging, and his exact steps for reaching out to his target users.

Want to share something with over 110,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

🧐 Using ChatGPT to Find Product-Market Fit

from the Growth & Founder Opportunities newsletter by Darko

ChatGPT is surprisingly good at answering many questions related to finding product-market fit. Let's take a closer look!

Most likely to succeed

Let's try asking ChatGPT which idea is most likely to succeed.

This is a long way of saying that the third idea, an app to help teachers manage their curriculum, has the least competition.

Let's ask it more about the competition:

Now, we have some names. What we're really interested in are the weaknesses of each product. Let's ask for more details.

We're already seeing some patterns, but we're probably not the only ones who saw these weaknesses. Are any other tools addressing these shortcomings?

Wow! We have some potential competition. These are some good prompts to help you see the weaknesses in any industry.

Start with the problem

Interesting. Now, how are they solving those problems? Let's start with problem number one.

It gave us a pretty vague answer. Can we get more specific names sorted by usefulness? Here's an interesting follow-up prompt to try.

Here's another prompt we can try.

Much better!

Can we get into people's minds with ChatGPT?

Let's say we're selling a a software tool to CFOs. Can ChatGPT tell us more about their motivations?

These are all things that we can address with our value proposition.

Running this query again, being more specific this time, gives us even more reasons.

Let's say we're trying to pitch a tool to CFOs to manage their finances. Are there already tools that do this?

This can work for a lot of niches. Let's take marketing, for example.

If you want to find any specific types of publications, like newsletters, just ask.

Now, some of these names are made up. This is one of ChatGPT's weaknesses: When it doesn't know something, it tries to invent an answer (as many humans do).

In summary, ChatGPT can be pretty awesome at things like discovering problems, finding potential competitors, etc.

Always verify what ChatGPT tells you with real users, though. What the AI says vs. what actual people say can be quite different. Nothing replaces getting feedback from real users!

Will you use ChatGPT to find product-market fit? Share below!

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Growth & Founder Opportunities for more.

📰 In the News

from the Growth Trends newsletter by Darko

⏳ TikTok's days may be numbered in the US.

🙅‍♀️ Avoid these seven advertising mistakes.

💻 Aligning your blog with your organic search conversion funnel.

📝 Google provides more details about Head Section and JavaScript.

🎁 These were the top videos ads during the holiday season.

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

🔬 Trend Alert: Micro-SaaS

from the Trends.vc newsletter by Dru Riley

Why it matters

Micro-SaaS helps you design your life, without optimizing for investors and large teams.

It can also be a wedge into larger markets, morphing into SaaS or a platform. Big things start small.

Problem

Large SaaS apps solve lots of problems for lots of people.

Solution

Micro-SaaS apps solve a specific problem for a specific group of people.

Some traits:

• Run by a solo founder or small team.
• Focused on a single feature or minimal feature set.
• Extends a platform such as Shopify, Stripe, or Intercom.

Players

Micro-SaaS:

• Potion: Create custom websites in Notion.
• TextRetailer: Let customers shop using text messages.
• Placid: Generate social share images.
• Plausible: Simple, privacy-friendly analytics.
• PermanentLink: Prevent link rot.
• Control: Financial management app for small businesses.

Predictions

• We'll see more micro-SaaS apps built with no-code tools like Bubble and Bildr. InvestorFuse reached $50K MRR using Podio and Zapier. SendPilot runs on Bubble. The first version of Shoutout was built on Bubble.
• Open source SaaS alternatives will continue to emerge. A few examples: Baserow is an alternative to Airtable. Joplin is an alternative to Notion and Evernote. Athens is an alternative to Roam and Obsidian. Papercups is an alternative to Crisp and Intercom.
• Platforms will continue to clone popular plugins. Shopify now offers native abandoned cart recovery.
• Micro-SaaS will thrive, despite platforms cloning features. Abandoned cart apps, like CartHook, Consistent Cart, and Privy solve problems missed by Shopify. They can move faster than large apps and design for thousands, instead of millions, of people.

Opportunities

• Index into an existing market to reduce market risk. Find fast-growing form factors like AI-Generated Copy, Notion-to-Site, and Sheet-to-Site tools. Don't try to recreate the wheel.
• Build a micro-XaaS. See NurtureKit and Gloat. Services are typically faster to revenue than software. This is another way to stairstep your way to SaaS.
• Buy instead of build, to save time. XOXO Capital owns a feedback tool, screenshot service, and sheet-to-API tool. See more examples in the Micro Private Equity report. Time is not money; it's non-renewable.
• Look at digital product subscriptions. See Page Flows, GoRails, Storytale, JustDjango, and Start React Native. Content can offer a faster route to revenue than software. Stairstep your way to SaaS.
• Make the leap from services to SaaS. Tyler Tringas got the idea for Storemapper while freelancing. Craig Hewitt ran a podcast editing service before a podcast hosting service.

Key lessons

• Micro-SaaS is about focus. Large, monolithic apps may have more features, financing, and people, but they lack focus. Micro-SaaS apps can make design concessions for specific groups of people.
• Technical moats are fading. Code is being commoditized. Distribution matters more than ever.
• Micro-SaaS is an example of the increasing leverage of individuals. Solo founders and small teams can build more and faster than ever before.

Haters

"Your definition of micro-SaaS doesn't mention revenue."

You're right. It doesn't. A revenue ceiling may be correlated to small teams and hyper-focused features, but making money doesn't make you less of a micro-SaaS.

"What if a customer outgrows my micro-SaaS?"

Some will. Productized services are similar. Their ability to streamline operations stems from their ability to focus. If you're selling to everyone, you're selling to no one. Focus isn't free. Don't lose a diamond by chasing glitter.

"You say index into markets. What about well-established markets?"

It's not a hard rule. Slow-growing markets with embedding effects may be hard to break into, or the market is already small. Consider opportunity costs. Some battles aren't worth fighting.

Related reports

• Micro-SaaS: The first version of this report.
• Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses: On highly-leveraged individuals.
• Micro Private Equity: Micro-SaaS apps are being rolled up.

Links

• Who should I talk to about micro-SaaS? The tweet behind this report.
• The Stair Step Approach to Bootstrapping.
• SaaS Market Predictions.

More reports

Go here to get the Trends Pro report. It contains 200% more insights. You also get access to the entire back catalog and the next 52 Pro Reports.

Subscribe to Trends.vc for more.

🚀 The Spector Report

by Josh Spector

I'm sharing growth tips for creative founders! Here's this week's:

Your target audience may not be demographic-based.

Their age, gender, job, economic status, race, location, or relationship status may not matter.

Instead, your target audience may be people with shared beliefs, values, desires, challenges, or fears.

Psychographics.

Subscribe to Josh's For The Interested newsletter or I Want To Know podcast for more.

📱 Yuriy Yarovoy Does Things That Don't Scale

by Yuriy Yarovoy

Hi, indie hackers! I'm Yuriy Yarovoy, VP of Growth at a tech company, and proud cofounder of a side project that has completely taken off! My friend and I put together a small bootstrapped tool to help with the mess that is Twitter Bookmarks.

We launched a free version of dewey. in April 2021, and grew it through SEO, direct user outreach, and word-of-mouth referrals.

This past Sunday, we converted dewey. to a fully paid product with a seven day trial. Within three days, we hit over $11K in revenue from a mix of lifetime, annual, and monthly subscriptions.

Read on for more about my journey!

On scaling (or lack thereof)

The things that worked really well for us early on did not scale one bit.

Given that we are a Twitter utility, all of our users are already on Twitter. Searching the platform was invaluable for finding users that were frustrated with Twitter Bookmarks, and venting publicly. Replying to these people directly with a quick, short value prop and link landed us our first 1K users.

We knew that people were actively complaining about Twitter Bookmarks being a completely underdeveloped product, and most of these complaints were happening on Twitter. So, here's what we did:

1. Find the most common phrases used by these people.
2. Search for these queries using Twitter’s search.
3. Sort by latest, and start replying to each user individually in the context of their original tweet. If this was a conversation happening between friends, we tried to inject ourselves casually. If this was someone searching for a solution, we pitched a little more directly.

Big thing here: Don’t automate. You will look like you’re spamming. The goal is to genuinely try to provide value, and bespoke replies create much better value than automated ones.

On driving growth

We leaned into the fact that we are a specific niche product targeting a subset of users experiencing a frustrating problem. These users had high search intent across Google and other search engines. People wanted their bookmarks exported, and they wanted them to be manageable.

All of our videos, on-page content, etc. focused on these queries. We currently drive a substantive part of our new users from people searching for things like "export Twitter Bookmarks."

Additionally, we built an SEO growth loop into the product. Users can make their folders public inside dewey. This means that their bookmark folders can be indexed by Google, so niche long-tail queries can drive users to the folder. This, in turn, drives new users to sign up for dewey.

Right now, our biggest challenge is scaling without deploying an additional budget. We're still small, and need to cover our infrastructure costs. Ads are not well-aligned for now, even with a defined CAC and payback.

We're thinking about launching an affiliate program. Ideally, we do something directly on Twitter, since this is where all of our prospective users are.

Last things last

This is the first time I've gotten paid for something that I bootstrapped, rather than something I built for someone else. I'm still very new to this feeling, but I'm happy to share what I've learned so far!

I've created a discount code for the Indie Hackers community as a thank you for your support and motivation! Use this code for a discount: IndieHacker5

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 Darko, Dru Riley, Josh Spector, and Yuriy Yarovoy for contributing posts. —Channing