🗞 What's New: How founders can win in the creator economy

Startup funding has declined by 90%:

• But fresh opportunities for founders are ahead, despite the decrease. From disrupting education to multiplier jobs, the future of the creator economy is indie.
• Totally new to marketing? If you're starting at the very beginning with no audience, focus on peer groups, cold emails, and outreach marketing.
• $58K MRR and a life-changing exit in 2.5 years. Mac Martine advises (largely) ignoring your competitors.

Want to grow your business? Try running a promo in the Indie Hackers newsletter to get in front of 80,000+ founders.

by James Fleischmann

Last week, we talked about a forecasted crash expected for startups. The creator economy isn’t coming out unscathed; there has been a 90% decline in funding for creator startups.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Out of the ashes, new opportunities are emerging for founders.

Has the bubble finally popped?

Nathan Barry:

The only bubble that's burst is the VC-backed companies that were rushing in without truly understanding the creator economy. The profitable creator-first companies that have been around for years are serving a growing customer base.

Sahil Lavingia:

I think [the future is] bright, growing 5-15% a year for many decades, slightly faster than the rest of the economy. But we likely won’t experience crazy growth for years.

Hugo Amsellem:

25% of Gen-Zers and 30% of 8-12 year olds want to become creators. This trend isn’t going away.

Good or bad for indie hackers?

Channing Allen:

The situation is good for indie hackers, but maybe not in a straightforward way. In general, I don’t think creator platforms are great for direct monetization. Instead, I see indie hackers leveraging these platforms as a bricolage of top-of-funnel marketing tools that drive customers to their actual revenue-generating products and services.

Ayush Chaturvedi:

A creator business is a small business on the internet, like a corner coffee shop. That's a bad thing for VCs, because they will never get their 100x exit. But, I think it's a good thing for indie hackers because we can still build a profitable $10K MRR business around it.

The future of the creator economy is indie: Indie hackers building products for indie creators.

Opportunities

Ayush:

Any product that helps creators on any platform grow and monetize an audience will be valuable.

Ann Gynn:

Given that many solutions are designed for larger companies with many employees and much bigger budgets, the potential exists for more targeted solutions for creator businesses.

Nicolas Cole:

Find a multiplier job. You'll grow faster if the job that's paying the bills is accelerating your path to leap and do your own thing. Find an opportunity where you can learn the skills you'll need later, on someone else's dime.

Jay Clouse:

The real opportunity for most of us in the creator economy is disrupting education.

Sahil:

It’s still early...you have to be patient. Think in decades if you can.

Discuss this story.

from the Growth Trends newsletter

🔎 Meta Ads targeting: The ultimate guide.

📧 Master email marketing with these effective templates.

📱 New GA4 features enhance your app's performance.

🤖 Leveraging AI to unlock creativity in marketing.

💻 Digital advertising can help you build brand equity.

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

by Cyril Gupta

What do you do when you are totally new to indie hacking, and have no audience?

Don’t run out and buy just any shiny object that promises X clicks on autopilot all day, or says it will get you traffic while you are sleeping. They won’t work.

Here are the best friends of a new marketer!

tl;dr

Here's how to build from zero:

• Peer groups: These include Facebook Groups, forums, Reddit, etc.

• Cold emails.

• Outreach marketing.

Peer support

The first thing you need to do is build a network, and the best place to find a network is through peer groups. Start by joining a handful of groups and note what they talk about. Then, participate by commenting on posts. Later, start talking about your solution.

Be open to partnerships, or giving a part of your earnings to the moderator or organizer (kind of like an affiliate setup). Ask for support.

Be nice, and you will get what you want.

Cold emails

I love cold emails, and in running PursueApp, I am seeing so many people build their businesses using this channel.

Find people who may need the service you offer. Get their emails using one of the many tools available online.

Craft a polite, personal email (emphasis on personal) introducing yourself and outlining how you can help them. Follow up at least 4-5 times if you don’t get a response. Beyond that, drop it. Not everyone converts.

Cold emails are not spam. They are not sent out indiscriminately. They are one-on-one conversations that address the prospect directly.

Outreach marketing

Direct outreach is one step up from cold email. If you know who your prospects are, keep up with them. When you see an opportunity to hit them up about your product, do it!

The best place for outreach is LinkedIn, because people actually expect professional contact over there. It’s not the space for personal sharing.

The second best place is X, since it’s 100% public. Then, there’s Instagram, and finally, Facebook.

People on LinkedIn are more open to forging professional connections. On the other platforms, be more careful to make sure you are not invading someone's privacy and personal space.

So, start building!

Discuss this story.

😔 It sucks that the easiest way to hit $15K MRR is to get a job. Posted by Tom Hazledine.

🤷 Your landing page is probably bad. Posted by Dan Kulkov.

🚀 Preparing for your Product Hunt launch. Posted by Igor Krasnik.

💲 Freelancers, how much do you charge? Posted by Arbaaz.

🤓 Starting a blog. Posted by Thomas Griffin.

🧐 How do you find problems to solve? Posted by Lorenzo Tenti.

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.

by James Fleischmann

We're back with Mac Martine, who bootstrapped his business to $58K MRR, and a life-changing exit, in two-and-a-half years. He's going further in depth below!

Ideating a B2B business

I started out by reaching out to anyone I knew who ran a business or an agency, or had a fairly high-level job. Industry didn’t matter at this point. I was putting out wide nets.

I’d email five people at a time, asking if they’d meet me for coffee. There, I would just start picking their brains. I wanted to know about their businesses, their processes, and their pains. I would just sit there and ask them a lot of questions, like:

• What does a typical day look like?
• What tasks are really time-consuming?
• What tasks do you dread doing?

The process required a lot of deep listening, asking follow-up questions, and just getting them to talk as much as possible. There was a lot of “tell me more about that.” It was up to me to figure out how to filter and interpret their true pains. At the end of the meeting, I'd ask them if they knew anyone else I should talk to. This would usually lead to a few more conversations.

After these meetings, I would go home, make notes, look for patterns, and figure out my next steps.

$0 marketing

I don't think you can truly know that you've found the right idea until people start pulling out their credit cards.

I was a user of my lead generation tool, so I knew what it should do. I could see where the gaps were, and what was important to have. Since it was my tool, I could use it for free to generate leads. So, I spent zero dollars on marketing or advertising.

Ignore your competitors

This will be an unpopular opinion, but you can do really well by largely ignoring all competition. It guarantees a unique position.

If you are talking to people about solving pain points, and you can tell that they really want these pains relieved, then I believe that's enough to know there's room in the market. And, if you approach it this way, you are guaranteed to have unique positioning in the market because the chances of you doing everything just like a competitor are slim.

Seeing what your competitors are doing can often make you think that's what you should be doing too, which is not always the case.

This is not to say that you should never pay attention to competition. Rather, I don't believe that deep analysis of the competition is always as important as some say.

Check out my newsletter, The SaaS Bootstrapper, here!

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, and Cyril Gupta for contributing posts. —Channing