IndieHackers - 🗞 What's New: How to build an MVP

A good MVP can help you validate and iterate quickly:

• Identify your MVP goals, and don't forget to plan for growth. While iterating, prepare your infrastructure for your full-scale development.
• Are you feeling like you aren't doing "enough?" Instead of chasing "enough," try carefully considering what's next.
• $12K MRR from a social investing platform. Being punched in the face led Rich Watson to indie hacking, and he used Discord to build a community.

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by Tucker George

Creating a minimum viable product (MVP) for your SaaS can be a game changer, allowing you to validate your idea with minimal resources and time. Whether you’re using no-code tools or traditional development methods, building an MVP helps you gather user feedback and iterate quickly. Here’s a comprehensive guide to help you create your SaaS MVP!

Define your core idea

1. Start by clearly defining the problem your SaaS product aims to solve, and the core solution it offers. Focus on the primary functionality that addresses this problem.

2. Set specific, measurable goals for your MVP. These might include user validation, feature testing, or finding product-market fit.

Conduct market research

1. Research your target audience to understand their needs, preferences, and pain points, so you can tailor your MVP to their specific requirements.

2. Analyze competitors: Examine existing solutions in the market, identifying their strengths and weaknesses. This will help you craft your unique value proposition.

Choose your (building) adventure

1. No-code solutions: No-code platforms enable you to build your MVP quickly and at a lower cost, without writing code. These tools are ideal for validating your idea before investing in full-scale development.

2. Traditional development: Traditional development involves coding your MVP from scratch. This approach provides more flexibility, customization, and scalability, but requires more time and resources.

Design your MVP

1. Create wireframes and mockups: Design the UI for your MVP, focusing on the core features. Keep the design simple and user-friendly. Try tools like Figma or Sketch for this.

2. Involve designers early: Involve designers early in the process to ensure the UI is functional and visually appealing. A good design can significantly enhance the user experience, and increase engagement.

Develop your MVP

1. For no-code development: Use platforms like Bubble or Adalo to create your MVP. Follow tutorials and leverage community resources to get up to speed quickly. Continuously test your MVP with potential users, and iterate based on feedback. No-code platforms make it easy to implement changes.

2. For traditional development: Choose the right tech stack for your MVP. Common choices include React or Vue.js for the frontend, and Node.js or Django for the backend. Use agile methodologies to develop your MVP in iterative sprints. This allows you to make adjustments based on user feedback throughout the development process.

Launch and test your MVP

1. Soft launch: Conduct a soft launch with a small group of users. This helps identify any major issues before a wider release.

2. Gather user feedback: Collect feedback through surveys, user interviews, and analytics tools. Focus on understanding how users interact with your product, and identify areas for improvement.

3. Review the feedback: Prioritize changes that will have the most significant impact on user satisfaction and product viability.

Plan for full-scale development

1. Roadmap to full product: Once your MVP is validated, create a roadmap for full-scale development. Plan for additional features, scalability, and potential integrations.

2. Prepare for the future: Ensure that your team and infrastructure are ready to support growth. This might include hiring more developers, investing in marketing, and enhancing customer support.

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from the Growth Trends newsletter

🔎 Y Combinator trends and what they mean for founders.

🛠️ LinkedIn's expanded tools for B2B marketers.

💲 Link to your product here. Our most affordable ad.

🤖 Gen AI is leveling the playing field for smaller businesses.

💰 Discord is making it easier for app developers to make money.

📧 Crafting effective re-engagement emails.

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

by Kevin Bronander

At work and in school, we’re given a blueprint to follow. We know exactly what we need to do to accomplish our objectives. Unfortunately, we don’t have the same clear-cut definition of “enough” for our lives as a whole.

Is clocking in and out of work, then going home to watch TV, "enough?"

Searching for enough

We’re prone to thinking that specific changes will make us feel like we’re doing enough, and we can finally relax and coast knowing that we’re doing everything right.

If we can just make X per year, have a job with more flexibility, or spend more time on hobbies, we’ll feel like we’re doing enough with our lives.

Our expectations rise, and what was once a lofty goal becomes our new normal.

Focusing on what’s next

If we recognize that we’ll always feel like we could and should be doing more, then we can stop chasing “enough.” We can then start focusing on what’s next. Instead of worrying about doing more, we can enjoy the process of improving and adding to our lives.

This shift in mindset also removes the expectation from everything we’re pursuing. Rather than doing everything with the hope that we’ll finally feel complete afterward, we can remove that pressure, and enjoy our pursuits for their own sake.

There’s no such thing as “enough,” so we shouldn’t waste energy chasing it. The best we can do is be grateful for where we are today, and carefully consider where we’re going next.

Prompts

1. Do you feel like you’re doing “enough” right now? Where do you feel like you should be doing more?

2. What are you chasing that you think will make you feel like you’re doing “enough” once you accomplish or have it?

3. How can you shift your focus from doing “enough” to enjoying what comes next?

For further reading, check out Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life by John C. Bogle.

This post is part of Prompted, a series on Indie Hackers. Subscribe to join 500+ ambitious, thoughtful folks who receive new insights and prompts every week!

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📖 Free directory on where to post about your SaaS. Posted by Pavel Gupta.

😕 Why am I not getting any users? Posted by Arunima.

🎉 I closed a $50K client! Posted by SolarFlare.

💵 Profitable AI niches to build for. Posted by Santanu Dasgupta.

📈 How to steadily increase website traffic. Posted by Smoteria.

💡 Five product ideas that people are actually waiting for. Posted by Katt Risen.

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

Rich Watson built a $12K MRR fintech product on the back of Discord. Here's how!

From road rage to day trading

I've been interested in writing code since I was an early teen, back in 2003. Instead, I became a machinist. I was happy with my trade, so I didn't pursue indie hacking until 2020. It all started with a road rage incident.

I was stopped at a red light with my window down. Suddenly, someone approached and delivered a precise left hook. It's possible that I inadvertently cut someone off or didn't allow them to merge, but the details are unclear. The impact left me feeling dazed, and by the time I regained my composure, he had left.

Nearly a week later, I realized something was seriously wrong. Turned out, my jaw was broken. I had surgery, and they wired it shut for several weeks. Then, I found out it had not healed properly, so I had to undergo yet another surgery, and start the healing process over.

It was a setback, but it gave me downtime. In that downtime, I really immersed myself in the stock market, and became a full-time day trader. My eyes stayed glued to the stock and crypto markets, even after I'd healed. I got really lucky in the bull market of 2020 and 2021.

Finding a gap in fintech

The GME squeeze was fully underway, and Reddit's r/wallstreetbets was buzzing. Tons of trading communities on Discord were exploding, and I was actively taking part. While looking for an app or Discord bot to fit a use case, I noticed that there was a gap in the fintech market.

I wanted the ability to track all the buy/sell signals and trades I was sharing, calculate all my performance stats, and share them, without showing position sizes or balances.

So, I set out to build a solution, despite the many difficulties of the fintech space, which include expensive financial data and tons of regulation.

Today, NVSTly is bringing in between $8K-$12K per month. It's a social investing platform in the fintech industry. Traders can track, share, and copy trades, with extensive insights on every position and in-depth performance stats.

It's paired with a trading community on Discord with 40K+ users, so newcomers can learn investing and trading through an abundance of educational material, access analysis content, and hear about trends early. Veterans can collaborate on strategies and technical analysis, and earn recognition for their contributions.

We also have roughly 100 free Discord bots known as Tickerbots, which display an asset's price in their nicknames, updating every ~10 seconds.

An attempted strong arm

Getting here wasn't easy. I was out of my depth with the development of the vast scope of the platform I envisioned, so I needed a team. I invested $6K from the money I had made day trading, and used a portion of it to contract a designer.

After about a week or two of working together, he attempted to strong arm me for 51% ownership of the project. He claimed he could have devised all my ideas, concepts, and detailed outlines himself, then threatened to leave and develop the project independently.

I politely told him to kick rocks. A few days later, I encountered him in a web design server on Discord seeking feedback on the design that we had been working on. Someone responded with their own spin on the design, which turned out to be significantly better. Seeing this, I reached out to that individual, explained the situation, and paid him roughly $2K to handle the design!

A surprising cofounder

I contracted a guy, Meow, and he knocked out the development. After reaching nearly all the development milestones I had outlined, I felt it was time to extend Meow an offer for partnership and equity. If I wanted to keep this momentum, he needed to stay on as the lead developer.

Initially, I proposed a 25% stake, with the condition that, if he signed that day, I would cover the remaining budget. He countered with 30%, and we sealed the deal that day. Interestingly, regardless of our equity percentages, we actually split the profit equally.

It wasn't until about a year later, when we established the LLC, that I found out his first name...and that he had been only 14 years old when I first contracted him. He remains quite secretive about his personal life.

Monetization

Since this is a social platform, our focus has been on helping users earn money, rather than taking their money.

Prioritizing monetization is misguided for a social platform. Instead of concentrating on the bottom line or generating revenue, a social platform should aim to provide value, create a fun user experience that retains attention, and offer incentives for users to keep interacting and coming back.

The revenue that we're currently bringing in comes from subscriptions (~$7K MRR), affiliate partnerships with crypto exchanges ($1K-$2K per month), paid posts ($250-$800 per month), and white labeling our Discord bot ($550 per month).

Despite that revenue, we've only surpassed $1K in profit a couple of times. We've been able to keep most of our costs low with some out-of-the-box thinking, but we spend 65-85% of our revenue on our team via a revenue-sharing model.

That makes sense to me for now, as they are the main reason why people subscribe to our $24 per month membership!

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by Tweetmaster Flex

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Tucker George, Darko, Kevin Bronander, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing