🗞 What's New: The rise of the indie hacker

The startup economy is predicted to crash later this year:

• For indie hackers, most of whom are bootstrapped, this means new opportunities to acquire assets and products. Lean into hiring and AI.
• Land a cofounder that fits by understanding your goals and looking to your professional circle first. Also, don't be afraid to slide in the DMs.
• $6K in a week. $30K in 3 months. Inability to secure a visa appointment led to a new business, and helping senior citizens for free made it skyrocket.

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by James Fleischmann

Experts are predicting a dot-com-like crash in the startup economy in late 2023.

So, what's going on?

Rob Walling:

With every boom comes a bust, and we are experiencing a reckoning that comes from pumping billions into startups, many of which did not warrant that kind of investment.

Channing Allen:

Venture capital is like lifting weights on steroids.

It’s possible for financial steroids to suddenly evaporate from your system while you’re in the middle of doing a heavy squat. That’s what’s currently happening.

Is this an extinction event?

Igor Debatur:

No, it's survival of the fittest. The current situation is good for the market overall.

Channing:

The companies that took smaller amounts of funding, or still have a lot of cash on hand, will be able to survive if they hunker down internally and save money.

What does this mean for indie hackers?

Channing:

Economic downturns don’t tend to have a very noticeable effect on indie hackers except, in time, to swell their ranks with former venture-backed founders and laid off employees.

The economic conditions that make things inhospitable for venture-backed startups are also bad for indie hackers. But, the difference is that it’s much more rare for indie hackers to be over their heads with spending. When you’re bootstrapped, you tend to only spend what you have.

Rob:

The good news for indie hackers is that we are not dependent on raising another round of funding every 12-18 months.

While an economic slowdown might slow your growth, it is unlikely to mean the end of your company.

What are the opportunities?

Channing:

The two themes I keep coming across are hiring and AI.

With all the tech layoffs, tech worker salaries are decreasing. That means it’s becoming a lot easier for cash-strapped indie hackers to afford employees.

And, AI speaks for itself. The founders who are experimenting, moving fast, and adopting early are finding all sorts of ways to scale their processes and outputs through AI automation.

Rob:

At TinySeed, I'm seeing that now is a good time to make strategic acquisitions of competitors and complementary software products.

Assets, including startups, are cheaper than they've been in years.

Igor:

While it takes more time to fundraise, and valuations are lower than before, there are always options. Bootstrap until the market goes back to normal, or fundraise and hire the better talent that has just become available.

Time is of the essence!

Discuss this story.

from the Growth Trends newsletter

📱 TikTok is adding text posts.

🤖 ChatGPT prompts not working? Here's why.

🚀 Mastodon's numbers are soaring following Twitter's rebrand.

👨‍💼 Scale yourself...down? Leadership skills for companies large and small.

🦉 Learn "unhinged marketing" from Duo, the Duolingo owl.

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

from The Hustle newsletter

Do you actually need a cofounder? This litmus test can help you determine whether you do. If yes, here's how to land one!

Know your goals

Be clear on exactly what you want to build.

Also, be sure that you're ready to give up some control and decision-making power, in exchange for the support of a partner.

Identify candidates

The most obvious place to look is your closest circle. There's no shortage of famous sibling cofounders, or BFFs setting up shop in a garage.

*Cofounders of Hewlett-Packard. Source: SFGate

Why? Because you already have trust, an essential ingredient in a successful cofounder relationship. On the flip side, sometimes the friend or family dynamic can complicate business matters.

Former coworkers or school friends are great alternatives. Or, if your circle is coming up dry, you can hit up some apps. Scary, but worth a leap of faith if you do your due diligence. Options include:

• Indie Hackers.
• On Deck.
• YC's own cofounder matching platform.
• LinkedIn. Get referrals from alumni groups to add an extra layer of trust.
• The Trends community.

Testing fit

Prioritize finding the right fit:

• Do you actually like the person?
• Do they buy into your vision?
• Do they share your values and work ethic?
• Is this the right time for both of you?

The last one is a critical factor. Make sure your cofounder is ready to fully commit, and that you're not their rebound.

If a potential cofounder passes the vibe check, try working with them on a trial basis for six to 12 months, so you can observe them in a professional setting.

Get it in writing

Make sure everything is in writing, and legally binding. A simple, clean agreement will save you a world of pain in the long run.

Here are some resources to get you started:

• A handy tool to help you split equity fairly.
• A free template to generate cofounder agreements.
• A nifty legal service to tie it all together.

Subscribe to The Hustle newsletter for more.

from the One Page Love newsletter

Strengthen your landing page with these design, development, and conversion tips:

Run a regular speed test.

Speed tests can highlight excessive use of fonts, images, or scripts on your landing page.

Here are some great tools:

• Google PageSpeed Insights.
• Pingdom Speed Test.

Any poor results can become a to-do list for you, or even a fun optimization game, if you allow it.

Subscribe to Rob Hope's One Page Love newsletter for his favorite UI, design, and development finds.

by SolarFlare

The problem

I was trying to get a visa, and after filling out the application, the next step was to book an appointment. To my frustration, there were no available slots each time I looked.

I discovered that only around 50 slots were released each day at 12 PM, with over 1K people trying to secure them simultaneously.

There were tutorials on how to maximize your chances by clicking at the right time. People were discussing the problem in various forums and on social media. A solution was needed.

The MVP

My partner and I studied all the tutorials to create a strategy. I developed a simple script that queried the API for timeslots every second. When the API indicated that the slots were released, we'd solve the captcha and submit the form to get the appointment.

We created a landing page with a form to collect necessary information, and set the price at $200. Within 12 hours, two people signed up!

The next day at 12 PM, I anxiously sat in front of my computer. The pressure was immense, knowing that the speed of my clicks would determine whether I made any money. On that day, I wasn't fast enough, and didn't earn anything.

This wasn't sustainable. To transform this into a profitable venture, we needed to improve the success rate and scale the service beyond one customer at a time.

Since the website was a single-page app, we realized we could use the same booking data to recreate the API call when the slots were released, and scale it up to handle multiple bookings simultaneously.

We received an additional 10 signups over the weekend.

Note: We weren't scalping because we were only booking on behalf of customers, not taking up all the slots and reselling.

The traction

Our customers were delighted. Many of them had been struggling to secure a visa for weeks. They shared success stories on social media, and referred friends to us. When you build something that people truly need, traction will follow.

Other players in the market were still operating manually, serving only one customer per day. Consequently, they charged exorbitant prices (i.e. $2K), and demanded deposits for an unreliable service.

Our customers' primary concern was trust, given the time-sensitive nature of the service and the need to share private information. To overcome that barrier, we designed our pricing to "pay after you receive the booking."

An interesting challenge we faced was that all of our social media posts were maliciously reported by our competitors. So, we decided to focus our efforts on word-of-mouth. Our next campaign involved offering free services for seniors aged 60+. Since the system was biased towards younger individuals familiar with technology, this felt like the right thing to do.

Additionally, this strategy made it impossible for our posts to be maliciously reported and taken down. It turned out to be our best-performing campaign, driving hundreds of leads for the following couple of months.

Choosing the right growth channel, combined with the quality of our service, made all the difference!

Discuss this story.

by Tweetmaster Flex

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

Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.

Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to James Fleischmann, Darko, Cyan Zhong, Rob Hope, and SolarFlare for contributing posts. —Channing