🗞 What's New: Why competition is good for your startup

Don't be too intimidated to operate in a competitive market:

• Having competition in your market means your idea is already validated. Now, you just need to nail your unique selling proposition to stand out.
• Want to increase your chances of going viral on Reddit? Create 2-3 accounts so you have a backup, and warm them up by commenting.
• $50K MRR. An acquisition. Burnout led Micha Mazaheri to sell, and he regrets it today. Instead of selling, he would have focused on recovering.

Get access to hundreds of case studies from founders who have gone from zero to profitable. Tailor it to fit your specific skills, target market, and revenue goals, with powerful filters.

by Sam McManus

I operate in a very competitive market. Before you start a business, you're always told to find a gap in the market. If you don't fix a problem no one else is solving, you'll fail.

But I disagree. I used to be very intimidated by competition, especially as a rookie. I felt like my idea was doomed to fail, merely because others had a similar one. However, I realized that just because there were other players in the market, Bootstraw still had a place; I curate profitable acquisition opportunities and send them out in a weekly newsletter.

The Iron Law of the Market

In his brilliant book The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufman introduces the concept of "The Iron Law of the Market": Even the most innovative, genius idea will fail if no one wants it.

So, if there are successful competitors in your market, it means that you've already passed this step. They've essentially validated your idea for you. It's very easy for us indie hackers to spend months building a slick SaaS, but we may be trying to fill a gap in the market that doesn't actually exist. If there are other players in your market, like mine, that also means there's demand for your product!

To build a successful business, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to create something revolutionary to gain your first customer. Put simply, you just need to provide value that others aren't.

How to stand out

So, if there are competitors in your market, you've already done something right. Now, you need to give users a reason to choose you over the others.

Maybe you charge a lower price, making your service a very easy buy. Maybe you improve your product, and add a new feature no one else can replicate. Regardless, your best ideas will come from what your competitors do, and crucially, what they're not doing.

So, find the biggest players in your market and go through their process as a consumer. Find 2-3 things about the experience that you can do better. These will become your unique selling propositions, and should be what you spend most of your marketing copy focusing on.

Now, get to work and find that first customer!

Discuss this story.

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🤗 People probably like you more than you think.

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

by Russ Halilov

Reddit has millions of users, so it’s one of the fastest and cheapest ways to generate traffic. For our AI startup Bluedot, it's been one of best performing traffic sources.

Redditors can be brutal! But after two months and 40+ posts, I learned some fundamentals that can save you time.

Learn what works for each subreddit

You need to spend at least an hour on each subreddit to learn what works there. Filter by the most popular posts. Try to find a pattern for what is going viral. Subreddits are subcultures with their own languages, and you need to become a local.

I didn't come up with the idea for my post that hit 1M views on my own. I saw a similar post for another product getting 10K upvotes, and found a pattern that I could replicate. It worked!

Read the rules of each subreddit carefully

Moderators can be religious about the rules, and they will punish you if you break them. Just yesterday, I was banned permanently from a subreddit because I violated the rules.

Don't try to sell your product

Redditors hate when someone is trying to sell to them. You'll likely get an immediate ban and lots of hate. Include information about your product in a subtle way, using engaging stories or questions. You can also just pretend like it’s not your product.

Don't expect people to check out your profile and bio

Unlike X and LinkedIn, there is no pattern for users on Reddit to check out the profile of the person who posted. One of my posts generated 793 upvotes, but there was no link to Bluedot. Therefore, it had zero impact on my traffic.

Create 2-3 profiles and warm them up with comments and posts

Since there is a high likelihood that one of your accounts will be blocked, I recommend having a backup. Reddit is anonymous, so you can easily create multiple profiles and post from them.

Use these accounts to upvote your posts. It will increase your visibility in the first 1-2 hours, which is crucial for going viral. But don’t upvote from all your accounts at the same time. You will get banned for manipulating the voting process!

Discuss this story.

😞 Am I an inefficient developer? Posted by Edgar.

💪 My little SaaS made $50K+ in 11 months. Posted by Florin Pop.

💰 Breaking down the costs of a bootstrapped SaaS. Posted by Caspar von Wrede.

💻 AppSumo is about to unlist me because of low sales. Posted by Hmong.

💵 How to charge before your product is built. Posted by Lisa Erez.

💌 Mentorship and therapy. Posted by Sfernando.

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

Micha Mazaheri launched a SaaS-style Mac app way back in 2013. Competitors eventually came out of the woodwork, but he still managed to grow it to $50K MRR with almost no marketing.

Then, he burned out and sold his company...which he regrets.

Getting started

I started Paw, a Mac application that helps developers test APIs (REST & GraphQL), in 2013. Back then, Postman, Insomnia, and other similar tools didn't exist. Paw was actually the first of all these apps.

A year after launching, and working on it part-time, Paw started taking off quickly. I didn't do much marketing. Word-of-mouth and organic growth was working. It soon was making $10K monthly, but that wasn't recurring revenue.

I really didn't do much besides focusing on building a high-quality product. I believe that people will naturally speak about your product to colleagues and friends if they really like it. We all do it! We're excited to share the cool new tools we've found with developer friends, and we also rant about the products we hate. Word-of-mouth spreads quickly.

What makes a high-quality product?

Essential elements:

• An absolutely stunning landing page. You must look extremely professional.
• Your website and other marketing materials should be straight to the point.
• Create a brand, don't be just a product. Be a brand, be a company. Also, have a beautiful logo.
• Have a free trial. Here, I disagree with Pieter Levels, who recently tweeted to nuke your free plan. As a growing business, you have to trade revenue for growth.
• Have "Share on X" buttons, collect emails, and send occasional (rare, but newsworthy) newsletters.

I did use one non-organic marketing strategy: Free giveaways in exchange for retweets. One day a year, people would get a free license if they retweeted. That worked really well, and I got thousands of retweets. That helped spread the word really fast.

Burning out

We switched from B2C to B2B, creating Paw for Teams, a syncing service that allowed developers to sync work across their teams. Within four years, Paw grew to ~$50K MRR. I got burned out, and decided to move on. It's just so easy to get burnt out as a founder.

Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to share the price. I can say, however, that it was a rather typical SaaS acquisition. Looking back, I think selling was a mistake.

Today, my opinion is that, as a bootstrapped founder, you have little to win in selling. As an indie hacker, you probably own 100% of your company, and a SaaS company is likely to have 50-80% profitability. You basically own a money printing machine. Don't sell it!

Work on something else, or take a sabbatical, while the business is on autopilot.

How can founders avoid burnout?

1. If you're on the verge of quitting, just take a full month off.
2. Spend each weekend away from work.
3. Hire contractors for the tasks that are relatively easy to delegate. Customer support really comes to mind. Also, having a virtual assistant can be greatly helpful.

Check out my series on IH for more!

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 Sam McManus, Darko, Russ Halilov, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing