🗞 What's New: This new platform makes idea validation easier than ever

Kernal is a new platform where founders can validate fast:

• Last year, 38% of founders built a prototype to validate their idea. Hootsuite founder Ryan Holmes is taking the stress out of validation with his new product, Kernal. Users can share, browse, upvote, and comment on business ideas. If you're worried about idea theft, Kernal has your back. None of its ~2,000 beta users have experienced theft on the platform.
• A new report found that US employees average 199 unread or unopened emails in their inboxes at any given time. To increase your email opens, think of your subject line as a miniskirt: Make it long enough to cover the essential parts, but short enough to leave readers wanting more.
• This founder quit his job with no plan, no idea, and no product. Determined to make his indie hacking dream work, he implemented the "small-bets strategy:" betting across multiple income streams on the lowest hanging fruit. This took him from $600 MRR to $6400 MRR in one month.

Want to share your ideas with over 70K indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

💡 Hootsuite Founder Discusses New Validation Platform, Kernal

from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch

Last year, 38% of founders built a prototype to validate their idea. Hootsuite founder Ryan Holmes is making it easier to validate ideas with his new product, Kernal, a platform that allows users to share, browse, upvote, and comment on business ideas.

The backstory

After hiring a CEO to manage the day-to-day operations of Hootsuite, Ryan launched Kernal. Despite commonly held fears that someone else may steal a founder's valuable idea, not a single Kernal user has complained about this. Why? Because the community knows that ideas are only a morsel of what determines success.

Popular ideas on Kernal range from “Tinder for books” to “Pitch deck analytics” for investors. Posts on the platform frequently spark conversations that result in valuable feedback for all involved. A few ideas on Kernal are already being built, including a newsletter digest service and a platform that aggregates news on small and medium-business acquisitions.

After a few months in beta, Kernal has garnered over 1.8K users and 400 pre-seed ideas. Several prominent entrepreneurs use Kernal, including Sam Parr of The Hustle, Shaan Puri of the My First Million Podcast, and Kickstarter founder Yancey Strickler. Indie Hackers caught up with Ryan to discuss Kernal's journey so far.

On Kernal's elevator pitch

We realized that there are platforms for products (i.e. Product Hunt), questions (i.e. Quora), and fundraising (i.e. AngelList), but there isn't a platform for people to share and validate startup ideas to see if they’re worth building. We built a consolidated space for entrepreneurial creatives to find, share, and grow startup ideas.

How the idea for Kernal came about

During my time building Hootsuite, I built up 12 years of business ideas in my notebook that I’ve been waiting to toy with. After looking around, I’ve realized there isn't a good platform to share startup ideas to get the validation you need to chase down an idea. As a result, I called together a small team to develop this platform with the goal of [helping] more startup ideas see the light of day.

On empowering creators

Starting my first business as a high-schooler, I was a sponge for any advice I could get when chewing on one of my ideas. When I think of the future of entrepreneurship on a global scale, I think a platform like Kernal can only further democratize the access to ideas, and empower creatives from any age, background, or ethnicity to come together for impact. And that point really excites me.

In my time as an entrepreneur, I’ve found a recurring theme: The best ideas don’t always come from the best entrepreneurs or CEOs. So I thought if we could create a space to be the platform of ideas, it takes the pressure off of everyone to be a perfect ideator, entrepreneur, and CEO. If you’re great at one, you can stick to that and partner with others on the platform to lift your idea off the ground.

Why launch Kernal?

We noticed too many great startup conversations happening on subreddits, Twitter threads, and podcasts. We wanted to launch Kernal to provide these creative people with the ability to post their startup idea on a landing page so that they can validate the idea, get early adopters, and see if it’s worth bringing to life.

Too many ideas die in notebooks or Google Docs without people knowing if they’ve got momentum. We want to arm the ideators and creatives of the world to get the feedback they need to know their idea is ripe for impact.

Kernal’s plans to monetize

We’re currently pre-revenue. We plan to monetize through creative ad space, affiliate marketing with startup brands that’d provide valuable offers to Kernal users, and possibly tiering different features for paid monthly users.

What’s Kernal’s biggest challenge?

The fear around people stealing ideas. The biggest question we’ve been asked is “How do I know my idea is safe when I post it up on Kernal? How do I know someone isn’t going to steal my idea?"

The truth? We’re building for the startup community that believes a good idea is only 5% of the success metric. The other 95% is the team, distribution channel, and execution plan after you’ve got the idea.

On building in public

We believe Kernal can be an amazing spot for those “build in public” creators that are looking for good feedback on their idea to see if it’s worth spending time on.

For anyone that’s worried about their idea getting stolen, keep working on it in your basement for 10 years until you pitch it to the world. We don’t want to take it. Kernal is for the people that come up with a new idea a day, and just need a public space to post it up to see if it’s got any legs.

In all the beta users we’ve brought on (1.8K+), not one user has emailed us complaining about the stealing of an idea. They know that anything is technically fair game on the site, but they believe that the [value of] community of ideators and builders far supersedes the chance of one of their random ideas getting stolen.

An indie hackers invite

We’d love to invite all indie hackers to come test out Kernal to see what we’re building! Also, if you have a startup idea you’d like to share that we can feature, we’d be happy to mention it in our weekly newsletter. Here's an invite for indie hackers!

Are you stuck in the validation stage? What are your thoughts on Kernal? Share in the comments!

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Indie Economy for more.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

🛑 The state of Massachusetts seeks to revoke Robinhood's broker-dealer license; Robinhood sues.

📨 Bezos says Amazon should do better with workers in his last letter as CEO.

📵 Pakistan has temporarily suspended all social media platforms.

🥪 This deli reached a $105M valuation despite making only $14K in sales.

🎮 This video game tackles racism by putting players in the shoes of a Black father.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

📧 7 Email Subject Line Hacks for More Opens

By Welly Mulia

According to a new report, US employees average 199 unread or unopened emails in their inboxes at any given time. In the last post, we covered how to NOT use subject lines to get more people to open your emails. This time it's the exact opposite: It's all about subject lines!

Tip #1: All lowercase

How many emails currently in your inbox are using all lowercase letters for their subject lines?

Probably none. Friends write to friends in lowercase, showing that there is a rapport there.

I almost always use lowercase:

Tip #2: Broken English

Occasionally, I’d purposefully write in broken English to capture people’s attention and stand out from the crowd.

Another example:

Tip #3: Engage curiosity

We humans are social creatures. We’re always curious about other people, sometimes to the point of being nosy.

Here are some examples of curiosity-driven subject lines I’ve used:

• Weird culture in my country?

Weird culture in my country? I wonder what that is.

• Don’t write another email until…

Don’t write another email until… Hmmm until what? I need to know about this before writing my next email.

• New subscribers not opening your email?

New subscribers not opening your email? I definitely got to find out why so that I can avoid this problem.

• This person spammed me

There was this one time I accidentally sent an email with not only the default subject line of [Subject line here], but also the default content:

As you can imagine, people were curious, they opened the email and replied to me with messages like these:

Tip #4: Keep it short and simple

Short subject lines (those that do not exceed 16 characters) catch your attention because they’re easier to scan. These days, people scan. They don’t read.

Also, when viewing your email inbox on a mobile device, as nearly 1.7B people do globally, long subject lines are going to get cut off.

Here are some examples of short subject lines that I’ve used for emails to creators and small businesses:

• are you making this mistake?
• get attention in 2 steps
• help

Tip #5: Demonstrate value immediately

Include benefits in the subject line. People want to know what’s in it for them. But first, remember that a benefit is not the same as a feature.

To clear up any confusion, a feature is what something actually is, while a benefit is what customers can accomplish by using it.

Features:

• Send sequence/drip emails
• Send broadcast emails
• Collect email addresses using our forms

Benefits:

• Sequence emails enable you to automatically follow up and build relationships with your subscribers, even when you’re sleeping.

• Broadcast emails are useful to inform subscribers when you have a new offer or newsletter or blog post.

• No more manually copy-pasting emails from Sheets/Excel to our system. Let our forms do the hard work and collect leads automatically for you, even when you’re on vacation.

WebEngage breaks it down like this:

Tip #6: Contradict yourself in the title

Contradicting yourself in a single subject line doesn't make sense; which is why people naturally want to open the email!

They want to find out what it’s all about (again, curiosity). For example:

"I’m coming back for poor food."

• Normally, you’d never come back if the food is poor.

"This karate beginner is a champion."

• How can a beginner be a champion?

Tip #7: The miniskirt

What’s the likelihood that this guy drops off the cliff and dies?

50 – 50? What if a woman wearing a miniskirt walks up to him while he is still cliffhanging?

Right before you end the email, introduce something that excites your readers, but don't complete the whole picture.

Tease them. You want to keep the skirt long enough to cover the essential parts, but short enough to make it interesting and exciting.

Because the human mind doesn’t like incomplete things, we’ll be on the edge of our seats. For example:

• PS: In tomorrow's email, I’ll reveal how I managed to get featured on the front page of Forbes.

• PS: Tomorrow, I’ll teach you how to come up with an endless supply of story ideas to hook people into your emails.

Final note

Use each of these hacks sparingly. Mix and match them. Don’t always use the same hack. As with anything, if you repeat it over and over again, it becomes predictable. And predictable is boring.

Boring = no emails opened.

Will you be implementing any of these tips? Discuss in the comments.

Discuss this story.

🌐 Best Around the Web: Links Posted to Indie Hackers This Week

📝 My biggest mistakes from two years of building. Posted by Lachlan Kirkwood.

📈 One tweet. 750K impressions. +1800 Followers in two days. Posted by Victor Ponamariov.

🚀 11 things to do before launching on Product Hunt. Posted by Hrishikesh Pardeshi.

🧐 $7.5B in stolen Bitcoin moves for the first time in five years. Posted by Courtland Allen.

✍️ 21 SEO lessons learned on the journey from $0 to $1M. Posted by Karthik Sridharan.

💻 Tips on finding brandable domain names. Posted by Ishmam.

Want a shout-out in next week's Best Around the Web? Submit a link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across an article you think other indie hackers will enjoy.

💲 This Founder Went From $600 MRR to $6400 MRR in One Month

from the Behind the Scenes newsletter by Jim Zarkadas

I'm Jim Zarkadas, and in June 2020, I quit my job with a year of savings (~$39K) to chase my dream of becoming a full-time indie hacker. I had no specific plans or project ideas to work on. I just had a goal, some savings, and my skills. Here's what's happening behind the scenes.

Before March 2021

I made about $600, and was scared that I'd run out of money in May.

After March 2021

Life proved me wrong. I jumped to $6400 MRR, and expect to have ~$18K on the side until the end of 2021.

What changed?

I implemented Daniel Vassallo's small-bets strategy, and made freelancing work in a way that doesn't take up my whole week (yet provides enough money to survive). Here's how:

My services:

• 1-1 UX weekly coaching
• Hands-on design with four-hour design sessions

I capped freelancing to 20 hours maximum per week.

After much persistence and luck, a client purchased the 12-hour per week option. On top of this, I got a second UX coaching client.

Now I have 26 hours left to work on other projects, and steady revenue to stay calm and enjoy the process! My other projects:

• I create educational UX content on Twitter and my newsletter.
• I'm building a micro-SaaS product to make user-testing more accessible to small teams.

Going with the flow

Life is random and unexpected. In April, I was stressed and afraid that I would have to abandon my indie hacking dreams and get a full-time job again.

But new clients showed up!

Why? Because I focused on showing up and sharing my work and my mission. Here are my best learnings so far:

1. Have faith in the process and in yourself. Keep going even when you want to quit!

2. Accept that randomness is something we all have to live with. Focus on things you can control, and hope for the best.

Thanks for reading! AMA in the comments.

Discuss this story, or subscribe to the Behind the Scenes for more.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

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

🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?

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 Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Bobby Burch, Priyanka Vazirani, Welly Mulia, and Jim Zarkadas for contributing posts. —Channing