5 tips on making first sales as a Solo Founder, without leaving a 9-5 job as I did..

[keneyhector]

Hi. I left a 9-5 job as a full stack dev, built 2 new startups, and made my first money from both. Rethinking life, I have a conclusion I could do it without leaving a full-time job. You can too.

Having more free time helped me build faster (~ 3 weeks to MVP). But I wouldn't have made it here without previous projects. Learning through failures! They failed in the commercial aspect, but made me where I am now!

Tips I can give you from my little journey:

• build many side-projects, and ultra-small MVPs with a 1-feature-only mindset. With each startup, you'll get better. It will improve your marketing, design, and launch strategies!
• find a tech stack that makes you build fast. Learn smth popular like NextJS, Tailwind, shadcn, etc, or good old tech stack you already know very well. But don't jump into hyped tech news when not needed! It won't make your product better 99% of the time.
• skip perfectionism. Don't reinvent the wheel. Reuse components. Use existing libraries for advanced tech aspects, not coding everything yourself.
• with each project try to spend more time on topics you're bad at. I'm a tech dev, so I lacked design and marketing skills. I try to improve every new landing page following best practices. I learn how to create better marketing copy and attention catchy headlines.
• look at the successful Founders you see in media from a little distance, don't compare yourself and feel bad about getting 0 views, payments, or failing the launch. It's okay to get motivated from others, but remember people mostly show the good side of their biz. I failed a ProductHunt launch (it was my 2nd worst launch) and still got the best results, a few first-ever online sales, and positive feedback.

To summarize, I'd say just build, learn, and trust the process. We can make it, just continue the grind and don't give up! Also, don't leave your 9-5 if you have no rev to support your life!

Let me know if you find my tips helpful!

 

[broken1989]

@keneyhector "build many side-projects, and ultra-small MVPs with a 1-feature-only mindset. With each startup, you'll get better. It will improve your marketing, design, and launch strategies!"

I love this approach, and i think this makes the most sense when starting off.

 

[keneyhector]

@broken1989 Yup. Consuming content about other great Solo Founders reminds me daily to stop overthinking, building too advanced features and the idea to create "1-feature-only" MVPs is awesome.

Already got results from that compared to prev years building so big apps for no reason into the void...

 

[tre_corvus]

@keneyhector Good that you're actually recounting your experience without trying to subtly shill your projects.

 

[adean]

@keneyhector Any low-cost marketing tips?

 

[keneyhector]

@adean All my marketing is executed "for free". Only one payment I made was recently for IndieHackers Premium Profile 25$ for a year to get follow backlink and test whether it will help with a domain authority.

I write honestly, openly about my business, learnings, failures on sources like IH, Twitter, Reddit. I launch projects in popular startup directories you can google like ProductHunt, DevHunt.

I tried with a blog for SEO, but failed, was time consuming & low results, cuz I'm not great at writing long content as a non-native English speaker.

Also hoping for some "virality", recommendations from happy customers, but it's work in progress currently.

Apart from that, a new thing for me that is free and gives okay results is programmatic SEO or making pages for low hanging fruit keywords for SEO e.g. I made a Screenshot Editor for Startups and try to position for a low/medium difficulty keyword "screenshot editor" or "startup screenshot editor" or even longer one like "gradient background screenshot editor" (popular on Twitter like xnapper tool).

And I reuse those pages with some sections, add custom content dedicated to this keyword/page and that's it.

With such concept it's easier to position due to lower competition!

 

[claireu1111]

@keneyhector Solid advice! Embracing the grind with my company Profullstack.

 

[keneyhector]

@claireu1111 The success tastes better after such a crazy road

 

[tevkevhop]

@keneyhector just curious: did you file for an LLC? did you report your business to your 9-5 job?

 

[keneyhector]

@tevkevhop I had non-binding contracts and thanks to my residence and use of LemonSqueezy for payments as a merchant of record, they take care of taxes, so I can focus on building for now

Later when I will make bigger sales, I will consider different strategy, based on local biz requirements, etc.

 

[kinggeorge]

@keneyhector Solid advice, resonates with my own journey. Keep iterating!

 

[tke129]

@keneyhector I honestly not really a fan of this whole indie hacker, build some stupidly simple low effort toy/tool that makes a few hundred bucks for a few months and then gets competed away.

I'd rather build one thing that brings real value.

 

[keneyhector]

@tke129 @tke129 so did you build anything successful and want to share with us as an example? I understand your point of view.

That's how the journey looks for most of small people with a dream to build something great online:

• start as a noob, launch non commercial projects
• upgrade to "indie hacker" - a person side hustling, launching multiple projects, starting to make better products, with some value
• you become a "solo founder", "startup founder" when you launched tens of mini projects, learned a lot, and finally understood what to build, how to bring a valuable products, find a product market fit, etc.

And at the last step, if you managed to build cool things and started making money, people start to respect you, as you're making more than people hating while working a 9-5 job, some people strive to be "like you".

The journey isn't easy, for sure there are a lot of useless apps, poorly developed, but isn't that the case for everything you do in life in the beginning?

You're crazy until you're successful, then you're a genius

An example of IndieHacker making useless apps (habit tracker apps, lol) was Marc Lou, who now makes $100k+/mo

 

[evi]

@keneyhector I am building something which is already out there, i am just trying to build it better, i am trying to make it perfect and better and with more features. My notion is if there's already something out there with more features and support why would users care to check out my product

what would be your advice here?

 

[keneyhector]

@evi Been there, done that and failed miserably. "Lost" a year building a note-taking app with some unique proposition I thought I will win over customers. I wanted it to be dedicated for remot workers, connect Google Calendar, one click to join Google Meet, auto add Notes to Meetings, etc.

There wasn't an MVP. I was building in hidden for a year while working full time job. Launched, thought I will "change the world". Ended up with ZERO paid customers, and few hundred Free Trial users over time.

Noone upgraded to Pro and I understand now those people, I wouldn't too. There are so big companies like Notion, Apple Notes, Evernotes, etc. so why they would pay monthly for some shitty note taking app...

There are limits what you can deliver as a Solo Founder in a managable time.

" i am just trying to build it better, i am trying to make it perfect and better and with more features."

Better product != sales, getting anywhere near success. You will learn it yourself. There is so much startups launched every day, they are great, have ton of features, great landing pages, designs and still they fail. Imagine there are Y Combinator backed companies that got funding, launched and closed biz after a year due to not finding product market fit etc. - in similar niche to mine product...

So imagine how hard it is to reach customers with your product as a Solo Founder and get meaningful results.

if there's already something out there with more features and support why would users care to check out my product

They may not know those solutions, they may prefer simplicity, not overcomplicated app doing all-in-one. You can focus on a niche, build a main feature and promote around some unique proposition. You can try to make it better in some aspect than competitor, but building dozen of features in most cases isn't a thing.

Try to launch quicker and see how the market reacts, maybe tweak it a little, you can try pivot to smth else!

 

[nigel]

@keneyhector Thanks for sharing! It’s tough but hopefully we all love THE game. Building this on the side of my 9-5 too.

Currently have 5 paying customers - any ideas around getting the next 5 customers?

I’d love your thoughts on my first saas product I released. It’s for content marketing and called Gigopost.com.

 

[happychristian738]

@keneyhector I'm sorry but builing just 2 startups doesn't give you enough knowledge and experience to teach others. I've build ~30 projects, 2 of them are success but I still don't feel such confident to make some generalization and teach people how to do it right. You have your own, very tiny, very specific experience, so please.

 

[keneyhector]

@happychristian738 I'm sorry, but from seeing a few of your comments I see you more into discouraging fellow founders from building... we should support each other!

I try things, share my journey, and don't say it's the best way, simply share tips from someone who made a progress in the startup journey and is a doer, learner, not the hater

I feel our community would thrive more if people reaching success like you shared their footprint for others. There isn't a line where your success is approved and now you can teach others.

Already got a few great conversations with Redditors after this post, learned some new things, wouldn't got it when kept everything a secret.

 

[chiefofsinners97]

@keneyhector Builders unite

 

[happychristian738]

@keneyhector Supporting doesn't mean teaching. You would instead tell us your story, your wins and losses, instead you behave like you are so experienced teacher what is not true. This is very annoying and not useful because you try to generalize your experience and it's tooooo small to do it. It may hurt instead, think about it.

And yes, I discourage people to do stupid, useless thing.