LitPic is geared specifically towards creators: - **Subscription-based social network LitPic** has raised $1.5 million in funding to expand its iOS app. Mixing features similar to Onlyfans and Twitch, the new platform aims to help creators monetize t
LitPic is geared specifically towards creators:
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Subscription-based social network LitPic has raised $1.5 million in funding to expand its iOS app. Mixing features similar to Onlyfans and Twitch, the new platform aims to help creators monetize their content.
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77% of online shoppers read blog posts, making blogs one of your most powerful tools for audience-building. Dru Riley highlights the importance of building trust before products.
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We've profiled many founders, and each has unique insight. Read on for 10 lessons from 10 founders, and feel free to share your top learnings also!
Want to share something with nearly 85,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
📸 Get Lit With LitPic
from the Indie Economy newsletter by Bobby Burch
LitPic is a brand new social network that is geared specifically towards creators. Getting on any new platform early is always a good move for founders looking to create new products.
Get lit
What’s happening: With $1.5M in funding, LitPic is building a subscription-based social network that mixes elements of Onlyfans and Twitch, while helping creators monetize their content. LitPic founder, Maurice Yi, had this to say:
We believe everyone should be able to monetize their work and be paid for their creativity, while also rewarding fans and supporters.
The round: The Seattle-based company raised funds to expand its iOS app, attracting a variety of big tech investors, including ClassPass CEO Fritz Lanman, Brainchild CEO Kal Vepuri, TechCrunch cofounder Michael Arrington, and others.
How it works: Founded in 2021, LitPic’s app enables creators to post photos and videos, explore a discovery reel, and send messages to fans. It currently has 6K creators signed up for its beta, with a goal of onboarding 300K creators over the next few months.
The company created an in-app currency called "Lits" that allows users to subscribe to, and tip, their favorite creators across the site. Creators can also sign brand deals on the platform. LitPic allows creators on the platform to keep 100% of their earnings, and users can cash out via Stripe, Venmo, or PayPal. The platform also launched a calculator for creators to estimate how much they can earn on LitPic. The app isn’t yet available on Android.
The mission: LitPic's vision is to create a “pay-it-forward culture” for creators that values diversity, data privacy, and sponsored content that is actually valuable, as opposed to unwanted ads.
Trending topics
Capitalizing on trends: The company hopes to profit from the growing interest among younger people to monetize their followings. About 86% of millennials and Gen Z'ers surveyed in a recent poll indicated that they would post sponsored content in exchange for money. Since the app is free, LitPic hopes that its platform will remove the awkwardness that creators experience when asking fans for money.
Incentivizing community: The more users who send LitPic’s virtual cash to creators, the more the creators are seen by the platform's community. LitPic believes that this model will encourage higher engagement. Active users can also directly connect with creators to be the first to hear new songs, learn tips, and get membership access.
Game time: LitPic cofounder Andy Karuza told Indie Hackers that the platform will distinguish itself from competitors with social gamification:
Unlike other platforms, we designed ours to be gamified and rewarding for both creators and contributing fans. We believe the large platforms lack the social infrastructure for a true creator economy, [so] we've designed ours to solve that problem from scratch.
We believe you can't just throw in a tip button and expect people to use it; you need to create value and attention for the users that support creators.
In-app camera: LitPic also created an in-app camera that will include over 1K filters for photos and videos. That media will end up on a user’s profile, and can be discovered on LitPic's TikTok-style reel.
The platform has no plans to become available to adult entertainers. LitPic is strictly PG-13.
What it means: LitPic is just the latest company to build a business model for creators, as the creator economy has seen a record $1.3B in funding in 2021. Many social media firms and tech companies are fighting to attract creators and their fans to their platforms by providing them as many tools as possible to generate revenue, including tips, subscriptions, tickets, and grants.
LitPic’s launch underscores the value of the creator economy, which is now worth more than $50B and has more than 50M people generating revenue through their audiences. Creators are gaining more power in the media ecosystem, as fans seek out individuals over brands and conventional advertising.
That’s a win for the creator economy and indie hackers everywhere.
Does the creator economy need another social media network? Share your thoughts below.
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Indie Economy for more.
📰 In the News
from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
🚫 OnlyFans will block sexually explicit content starting in October.
🎞 Facebook will begin testing Facebook Reels in the US.
✨ Psychedelic retreats are becoming the new luxury trips.
👁 China will now tell influencers how to speak and dress.
🤖 Tesla is building a human-sized bot.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
🥇 Audience-First Products
from the Trends.vc newsletter by Dru Riley
77% of online shoppers read blog posts, making blogs a powerful tool to connect with your audience. Founders can build trust and relationships with audience-first products.
Why it matters
An audience-first approach can help you validate products, build distribution, and stay accountable.
Problem
You don't know what to build or how to reach customers.
Solution
Build trust before products.
Players
Predictions
- One-person media companies will continue to grow. Creation and distribution tools democratize leverage. Johnny Harris left Vox to build a YouTube channel with 1.5M+ subscribers. Barstool, The Verge, and Fortune are seeing similar exoduses.
- Brands will opt for equity over selling attention. Rihanna built a cosmetics company instead of promoting one.
- Commoditized backends will help smaller firms sell physical products. Printful lowers execution risk and marginal costs.
Opportunities
- Teach as you learn. Nat Eliason's blog posts led to launching an agency, app, courses, and affiliate income. Maria Popova has a similar story.
- Show your work. Damon Chen, Zoe Chew, and KP inspire others and promote their products by building in public. Stay top of mind.
- Use a freemium model. William Candillon monetizes free YouTube videos on React Native with a paid membership.
- Compound by committing to a schedule. Release a newsletter, video, or podcast on a regular basis. See Trends.vc and Bad Unicorn.
Key lessons
- Audience = Optionality. Building trust is hard. Monetizing trust is easy. We've seen audience-first agencies, digital products, SaaS companies, platforms, funds, and more.
- Proprietary distribution gives you pricing power and control over unit economics. Bidding on paid ads leads to unpredictable customer acquisition costs.
- Build an audience to increase your luck. Once we know your goals, we can conspire to help you out.
Haters
"Audience-building is slow."
Paid channels are faster, but less defensible. There's no free lunch.
"Where doesn't this make sense?"
If you're not serving a tribal audience, or if you have a small set of stakeholders.
"What if my validation efforts lead to false positives?"
We saw this with Level and Beme. Your supporters don't want to let you down, so they may lie. The Mom Test helps you validate in biased environments.
"What if I give away my secrets?"
We don't care about 100% of your business. Share the good parts. You can build public without sharing revenue numbers, key distribution channels, and algorithms.
Links
Related reports
More reports
Go here to get the Trends Pro report. It contains 200% more insights. You also get access to the entire back catalog and the next 52 Pro Reports.
Subscribe to Trends.vc for more.
🌐 Best Around the Web: Posts Submitted to Indie Hackers This Week
🤔 What would you most like to see on the Indie Hackers site? Posted by Courtland Allen.
🛠 Building a product in less than a day. Posted by Michael Andreuzza.
🐺 You won't reach your full potential being a lone wolf. Posted by Mike Drohan.
👶 Acquired a SaaS and became a dad in the same week. Posted by Andrew Kamphey.
🆓 Free(mium) tools for indie hackers. Posted by Max Prilutskiy.
💻 Building relationships with developers. Posted by Brayden W.
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.
🎓 10 Lessons From 10 Founders
from the Listen Up! IH newsletter by Ayush Chaturvedi
Indie Hackers has profiled many founders, and each has unique insight to offer. We thought it would be helpful to compile the lessons and advice of several founders together in one post! And, of course, you can always listen to each full episode on the Indie Hackers Podcast for more tips and learnings.
Enjoy!
10 lessons from 10 founders
1. Daniel Vassallo puts lifestyle first:
- Only intrinsic motivation lasts. Figure out what intrinsically motivates you.
- Build a portfolio of multiple bets.
Focus on many different things, and diversify motivation and attention. Expose yourself to new opportunities!
2. Greg Isenberg of LateCheckout on being a nerd:
- Find out in what space are you a nerd.
- In the world of niches, you have a competitive advantage over big players like Facebook.
- Come up with an idea around that niche and see what you can build.
Before an idea, just think about yourself. Think about who you are, think about all the things that make you who you are, [think about] and what you love to talk about.
3. Jordan O'Connor, the "Winner" of Indie Hackers:
- Learn transferrable skills that you can apply in multiple businesses. These include skills like web development, SEO, and copywriting.
If you actually take the time to learn those skills deeply and do them valuably, you're going to have a prosperous future. There's no way you can't.
4. Bruce Pinchbesk of WhereByUs on effective research:
- Spend a lot of time studying your users, learn to sift through the noise, and look for signals in your research.
- The more effort you take to understand the user beforehand, the fewer mistakes you will make in shipping the final product.
The best thing you can have is a deep understanding of the community.
Slow down, take the time to do the research, speak to people, and get feedback.
5. Li Jin of SideHustleStack on leveling up:
- Start one level below than your current skill level.
- Free up your energy and resources to actually gather feedback and gain some momentum. If you start at your peak level, you will stretch yourself too thin.
I think we're all on this personal goal of product-market fit, where we are the product and there is a market out there. Whatever we pursue and have a passion about, either we have to be sure that there is a market for this or we have to, by ourselves, create the market.
6. Evan Britton of Famous Birthdays on reaching 2.3B page views:
- Focus maniacally on the customer.
- You will need a lot of passion and commitment to get through the initial years. It will take time, blood, sweat, and tears, so be prepared.
Do one thing well... for everything else, don't hesitate to use third-party tools. Don't reinvent the wheel to build something that's not part of your core product.
7. Jay Clouse of Freelancing School talks building community:
- Take relentless action.
- Progress compounds, even if it's slow initially.
Not everybody can be a breakout success, but if you expand the surface area of your luck, good things will happen.
8. Dru Riley of Trends.vc on spotting winning trends:
- Build relationships and store goodwill.
- Don't be in a hurry to launch. Take your time.
Try to find something that you can stick with for a while. The market needs to want what you have to offer, but I think that version zero never survives... you have to be willing to stick it out through pivots, through iterations. That’s hard to do if you don’t love what you’re working on.
9. Arvid Kahl of The Embedded Entrepreneur on selling SaaS:
- Your audience and the market are the hardest things to change about your business.
- Everybody should start something that they really, really care about.
- If you want to impact the lives of other people, and if you want to impact the value that they can create by enabling them, then you should start a business.
Audience research, to me, is the most important thing in a business.
10. Sahil Lavingia of Gumroad on empowering creators:
- "Enough" is a decision, not an amount.
- Align selfishness with selflessness. Figure out what you can do that creates value for the world.
I think the most important thing is to build stuff, to start small and figure out what you want to build. Honestly, a lot of people aren’t going to know what they want to build; so just build something, as small as it is. Or maybe not even build something, just ask the people that you love in the communities that you care about how you could make their life better.
Check out the Indie Hackers Podcast for all of the full episodes.
What's your top learning as a founder? Please share in the comments!
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Listen Up! IH for more.
🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick
by Tweetmaster Flex
I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:
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Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.
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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Bobby Burch, Priyanka Vazirani, Dru Riley, and Ayush Chaturvedi for contributing posts. —Channing
