@jaegpark
I've been saying.
Skills get commoditized over time.
SWEs were apex, then it got offshored, then it will get automated.
The US prestige -> immigrant labor -> offshore -> tech automation pipeline is a feature not a bug.
Coal, steel, Wall Street trading floor, data entry...
No
I went on the wildest rabbit hole today I simply have to share. Buckle up cause this was mind opening to me and it might be life changing for you (if you’re into this kind of stuff).
My earlier tweet was from when I was right in the thick of it (first screenshot).
In this
I think it’s time to tell my story.
In 2023, I…
💼 Quit my corporate job with nothing lined up
🏠 Ended my lease with nowhere to go
💸 Sold everything I own to fit my entire life in 2 suitcases
Now, I’m traveling and living off my life savings to build something meaningful.
"🔖 bookmarks that I often share with friends" by
@visakanv
is an act of curation. In many ways, a lot of the featured content pieces are themselves forms of curation.
This post is an example of "curators of curators of curators of..."
Again, it sounds obvious when laid out like
Anyone else make a spreadsheet of all their ideas?
I landed on 3. One for cashflow, one for diversification, and one for lifestyle.
I’ll build all three of them in public: explaining my reasoning, crowdsourcing some decisions, and showing my market research and positioning
Looks like I was scammed out of $2229 USD.
You've probably seen the Notion doc floating around.
Some notes.
1. No full name, no real face.
If they won't even show their face in private video calls after months of online friendship, red flag.
(you can still get scammed by
What's the difference between
@darylginn
's endless(.)design,
@BrettFromDJ
's Designjoy, and
@SahilBloom
's bitesized(.)design?
Join me in a short lesson on market maturity stages, adoption curves, and differentiation strategies.
1️⃣ Designjoy was first on the block.
Maybe not the
What indie hackers think PMF is:
• "If people pay, then I have PMF!"
What PMF actually is:
• People vote with their time: they use the product
• People vote with their money: they pay for the product
• People vote with their voice: they recommend the product
• people vote
Raise your hand if your product has a free trial/free tier 🙋🏻
Keep it raised if it also has a refund policy.
Now tell me, is your product pricing subscription based because it deserves it or because you see everyone else doing it?
@iaiocabron
@jaegpark
Personal brands are inherently unique and cannot be 100% replaced.
There is only one pewdiepie. Some people get their pewdiepie itch scratched by markiplier, but markiplier is not pewdiepie.
A king’s court was full of personal brands. Every person in that court only had their
@idariusdan
Two upside down 1s and a dot
But yes dw over time the logo will clearly mean two ds
Just like the swoosh means Nike.
A good logo doesn’t have to be super obvious right away, let your brand give it meaning.
Big day today!
Show up every day and have fun engaging with cool & motivated
#buildinpublic
#indiehackers
.
I learned a lot about Twitter during my short time here.
Will share with everyone over the next few days.
Introduce yourself with a growth question below & I'll answer!
This is the secret. Please learn this.
▪️The reason everyone doesn’t do ads:
They don’t know how.
▪️ The reason everyone doesn’t A/B test:
They don’t know how.
▪️ The reason everyone doesn’t do marketing:
They don’t know how.
▪️The reason I prefer cleaning and let my gf cook:
Which is harder?
•learning to build? (Dev)
•learning to sell? (Marketing/Sales)
If you could choose which one you already know (harder) and which one you still have to learn (easier), what would you choose?
#indiehackers
#buildinpublic
#marketing
#developers
Growth and PMF start with positioning.
Positioning starts with competitor research.
When's the last time you made a spreadsheet comparing the positioning and messaging of major players in a market you're entering?
Don't reinvent the wheel, best practices exist.
No blue check mark, so tldr
🎓took classes in linguistics philosophy polisci accounting… degree economics
📈cofounded digital marketing agency for car dealerships senior year
🎯Fractional CMO for 8+ B2B SaaS startups
💼Amazon Business Marketing Manager
🌟
#buildinpublic
Let's get to know each other better and share your path like this. I am curious how everyone in
#buildinpublic
and outside got where they are
I will start
⚽️ Decent soccer player
🫰🏽 Market trader
🦸🏽♂️ 3D world builder (Second Life)
🕶️ Cybercrime Developer @ Dutch Forensics
🧠
@sgorlick
This is a great reminder that to get the ball rolling, you have to roll it yourself.
This is where VC support can really help. You have to subsidize one or both sides until things get going.
Looking to pay $100 for someone to help me set up a Figma file for daily content creation.
Looking to pay $100 for someone to help me set up an Obsidian system that works for me.
Looking to do this in public (record session, post learnings).
If interested or know someone,
There’s no way Google can compete with this.
Creators are no longer incentivized to blog. There’s way more benefit to running newsletters and podcasts and courses.
As a result, the highest value information is no longer search engine optimized.
@aakashg0
will bring on
“The
@smartbear
blog is a goldmine of startup wisdom” -
@ShaanVP
My First Million episode with Jason Cohen dropped today. I watched it and you should too.
Distilled nuggets below. It gets a little long, you can bookmark and come back to this later.
SEO is not going anywhere.
If your website is the digital equivalent of your physicals store, SEO is the the sign outside.
But the true winner?
Community-focused content marketing.
Everyone has testimonials and 5 star reviews. That’s the new baseline. Brand-provided social
I dream of a browser that cares about link history (giving it a URL and getting back the page in my history that links to it), that keeps track of forking-path rabbit holes, and maybe even gives you cute little information network graphs.
I don’t know what “Trails” means in
Thank you everyone! 🧑🏼🍳
I spent some time thinking about the best ways to grow organically on X but
My top 4 posts were all unplanned, long "rants" about things I'm passionate about. And that's what people resonate with.
I'm feeling vindicated in my interests and stances. Other
Ok my last Tweet about personal brand went viral and I got a lot of responses including from IRL friends agreeing and disagreeing with parts of what I said.
Bookmark this for later, but please read it. It may change your life.
1. Why social capital? What can I get from social
I’m not very good at building in public but I’m trying to get better.
I’ll publicly share my process when starting any new brand/project from comp. research to positioning.
I’ll do this for the following projects I’m currently working on:
🔭 *The* hub for productized services
I made this account in April, I started using it actively when I started traveling in July.
In 2024, I’m gonna spend less time here and more on Tiktok and LinkedIn. I feel like I learn more on there.
I doubt I’ll make as many connections there as I have in the short amount of
In the olden days, people in Mexico would use obsidian disks like this one to look at the sun during an eclipse.
Didn’t think I’d get to use the one I got so soon.
I’m flying from Seattle USA to SOMEWHERE in October.
I will be spending the next 5-9+ months there.
I want it to be warm and inexpensive (safety and good wifi implied).
You control my destiny:
tell me where to move for the winter/year 👇🏻
current leads:
Mexico
Southeast Asia
Just found
@heygoutham
’s momentum stream page thanks to this tweet by Igor and I’m really enjoying the curation.
This is stuff you could and should be doing today.
Your personal knowledge base is your secret weapon in the labor force. Sharing it publicly = personal brand growth.
@karanbhakuni
Thank you Karan!
FYI you can also create your own streams in Momentum and attach them to your page hosted elsewhere
Here's the great example of the feed by
@heygoutham
You can build an audience around one topic (indiehacking, playing one videogame, SMMA, dropshipping, etc.) but you can quickly expand.
There's more to monetization than Patreon tiers and merch.
The meta right now is to have at least one of each of these. What's the list
You get this Twitter growth tip a lot:
“Replying is more important than posting early on”.
If you’re struggling to find posts to reply to, you’re approaching Twitter wrong.
Be a user first. Immerse yourself in the community. Follow engaging thought leaders that speak to you.
You have 10 skill points to allocate between
⌨️ Dev
and
📈 Marketing
Your goal:
#indiehackers
#buildinpublic
#ramenprofitable
🍜
What is the ideal skill distribution to maximize your chances of succeeding? (building 1+ projects that generate $1k+ MRR)
Product-led growth sounds cool but it can be a trap if done incorrectly.
Marketing-led growth is just as hard to mess up but differently.
PLG:
1. Product speaks for itself.
2. Want as many people to try it --> offer free option
3. Onboarding optimizes activation,
When I first hopped on Twitter a few months ago, I didn't even know how to navigate the app.
Today, I'm having fun engaging with motivated + ambitious makers & friends.
Time to start taking Twitter growth seriously!
Will share all learnings here for my
#buildinpublic
challenge
I love watching numbers go up! I rarely check but
You can see:
June - made an account, started lurking
July - started sharing knowledge in replies
August - started posting and engaging
September - started thinking about my posts and replying more often
Next step? Stay tuned.
Please ♻️ repost: doing some research, will publish results for everyone to see when complete.
Share your favorite profile pics on Twitter! 👇👇👇👇
Bonus points if you explain why it's your favorite.
The sad truth about business is that networking is a real, unfair advantage.
When the Alaskan retiree I met at our pool upstairs hired me to do marketing for his website, when an old coworker approached me to help with their project, when an old employer contacted me to revive
Please read this!
Whenever I ask you to do a why/how ladder exercise to better understand your persona and what problem your product is a solution to, think of this example.
My takeaway:
Instead of repeating the same “lesson” every time, synthesize it into a story example.
3 high-impact tips you can start using today
533% increase in first-page search engine results
603% increase in organic search traffic
114% MQL production vs goal
63% Increase in organic search traffic
390% Increase in first-page search engine results
These are a few of the
Never thought I’d say this but…
I’m actually excited to be done traveling!
So many ideas I want to execute on. So much content to put out.
This vacation has officially overstayed its welcome 🧑🏼🍳
It's happening! 🚀
I'll be interviewing
@jenniferchou25
on a live call at 11am CST on Sunday, March 17.
There will be a few limited slots to watch the full thing live and ask questions in real-time.
I'll be interviewing
@lizengco
and
@shortmarketer
over text in the coming week
Inspired by a conversation from this morning, I’m making a condensed X growth guide with case studies featuring
@shortmarketer
@lizengco
and
@jenniferchou25
I’d love to interview you all separately either on a podcast-like video or hold a space right here on X to learn directly
Message to small indie projects
Stop thinking about marketing and start thinking about growth.
A lot of us want to do the auto-pilot thing. The don't-have-to-talk-to-anyone thing.
Just tweet build in public updates, put up a "sign up" button, and they'll come.
Or if you've
Simply moving countries won’t fix your life.
Been in Mexico for almost 6 months and I barely went to the beach 10 times.
I’ve gotta focus on health and habits if I want to maximize life enjoyment.
I posted an unedited 75-second tiktok about small business and as expected, no engagement.
My plan is to use revenue form elsewhere to hire an editor/video person in a few months.
Beta is out! 🤩
I sent the email with access details to all early adopters in the waitlist; almost 90 people! 😱
Check the spam folder because I used ordinary email and since it has a link and password it has a high probability of ending in spam.
If you
The bad news about being your own boss is you don’t really have weekends.
The good news is you don’t need to log into your HR tool to request a sick day when you need a break.
Some days it’s okay to go slow because that will ensure you can go fast on future days.
Swim. Lay in
I thought I was being smart by making a video to bypass the twitter character limit. But my 9-minute video is too long for Twitter apparently (who's surprised?)
So I'm putting it on youtube. Will share when done uploading:)
But it really was just supposed to be a tweet.
I just wanted to interview
@jenniferchou25
about her online growth and monetization secrets and I ended up with 83 bucks
Just because she had the brilliant idea of turning it into a paid live webinar!
Thanks for everyone who tuned in, your questions made the podcast more
I want to try something
Give me a question you’re having in your business/project regarding:
Growth
Product
Distribution
Validation
Pricing
Positioning
Marketing
Copywriting
I’ll answer right here in public (so others can join in and help too)
#buildinpublic
@eshear
Potentially silly question but how are employment agreements/contracts handled in such cases?
I know the money is secondary but what are the mechanics of getting paid for interim-CEO-ing for a few days?
Tool I want to see:
X account discovery.
X looks at your account and puts you in general areas (movie twitter, indiehacker twitter, etc.)
Then it pigeonholes you. You’re stuck seeing content X has decided you should see and only shows your content to that same interest group.
299 is an not the prettiest number but I love it. This is my first non-anonymous social media account, I really treat it as extension of my thoughts.
299 here is way more validating than 299 somewhere else.
💯Great reminder that:
Pre-launch campaigns can sell like crazy without a single line of code written.
Or even mock-ups.
Some of the best used only words.
Plain words.
+Your words: the vision, the why
+User’s words: pain + benefit
+Others’ words: testimonials
Just watched
@jayclouse
interview
@JennyHoyosLOL
on Youtube and I really think you should too.
I love data-based approaches to content creation.
I might get Twitter blue just so I can have more characters to share my favorite takeaways when doing posts like this.
Question for the group
When browsing, are you more like to:
Homepage -> Pricing
or
Homepage -> Product/Features
How many of us go straight to the Pricing page to understand what the product actually does specifically?
#buildinpublic
"Here’s the 8 step formula to starting a productized service:
1) pick an asset you want to sell
(Landing pages, pitch decks, coaching sessions, resume review, etc.)
2) pick a loose segment you want to sell it to
(Founders in startups, Product Managers in Financial services,
A lot of people wonder if they should force a .com / .ai domain to "settle" for alternative TLDs.
A lot of people grow super attached to their brand name.
But not a lot of people check USPTO's trademark database (TESS).
I never completed a rebrand without checking.
Nassim's Twitter Finds No.2
I'm evicting my bookmark graveyard. Forcing myself to revisit and delete bookmarks by sharing my notes with you.
1. We hate to think it but the correct answer is boring: just do the basics well and perpetually.
Great example of $0 marketing to
@asmartbear
After 5 or so B2B SaaS GTMs in an agency setting I experienced first-hand the difference between mature vs immature markets.
Not having to educate your audience, better defined + more easily findable ICP, competitors for learnings and inspiration…
First week in Mexico has been full of sun and tacos.
Here's what that meant for my bank account. I Ubered twice almost every day. I overspent at Costco, won't be going there again. Some restaurants were more expensive than they needed to be. Love the street Taco vendors.
The summary so far:
OpenAI announces Sam ouster.
@Microsoft
, biggest investor, finds out a minute before the rest of the world.
Interim CEO, CTO Mira finds out the night before.
@gdb
, also blindsided, leaves.
Public is expecting a few more to leave as well.
The main
Many years ago, I was put on probation at
@UW
for having too many credits without a declared major.
I took a wide variety of classes:
Linguistics, Philosophy, Political science...
Eventually, I decided to major in Economics.
I did the entire degree's course work during my
@levelsio
lol devs were fine stealing everyone’s jobs from finance to idk what but of course when it’s your turn there is resistance to change.
Embrace it, level up.
@WillManidis
I see this often especially with good physical therapists. The system silos different disciplines and cuts off information lineage.
In old times, medicine and martial arts (this can be seen in academia today still) each expert could trace their “family tree” to their teacher’s
Anyone try working with their ADHD by keeping a notepad handy to map out new branching questions to revisit later?
Been trying it and it does prevent getting distracted down tangential rabbit holes.
Instead of opening new tabs, just jot down the idea and stay on task.
The future is crowdsourced. And Google is taking notice.
It’s the reason Reddit and TikTok have become so integral to buyer journeys.
Too much information, too many conflicts of interest.
Directories (in their current form) are only part of the answer. I’m endeavoring to
#Marketing
is 2 things really
1. Demand generation
Connect people with a problem with your solution
2. Market/Product research
Understand people’s problem to build the right solution
Everything else falls in marketing under either 1 or 2
This was in my drafts for a few days but I don’t have time to make a whole post so here’s the short version.
So many headlines and posts here lately about paid ads and CAC getting more and more expensive.
But this is nothing new. Here’s why this isn’t scary and maybe even good
I just wanted to make *one* tweet and ended up making a youtube video...
Why are you doing SEO? Cause everyone does it. But what's the goal outcome?
Full vid in comments
Here's a Twitter preview.
Can you tell I don't know the twitter video length limit? I was rushing.