It’s really amazing how there’s so many helpful people on the Internet, especially on Twitter and in Indie Hacking communities.
No wait, hang on. “Helpful” doesn’t fully describe this entirely. Having lurked in indie hacking communities and on Twitter, where indie hackers also hang out on, I’ve witnessed many of them start from nothing and succeeded making a living from what they’ve built.
When they started out from nothing, they struggled a lot — so much that an ordinary salaried person would give up and retire to a mundane life, or the safety of his/her normal job.
I believe the ones that stick around weren’t always particularly mentally strong people, like the Navy Seals who stretch the limits of what man could achieve. The difference was in the amount of encouragement and resources the indie hacking community provides as an essential ingredient to their daily struggle.
I call this Indie Energy; a kind of force that can be passed on by:
actually building something
succeeding with it in some way as measured by some metrics (twitter following, revenue, active users, views)
sharing your journey in public in some way (open startup, twitter threads, stories, essays, writings)
giving advice to aspiring indie hackers / makers
Creating books / manuals (Arvid Kahl’s Bootstrapper’s Compendium, The Mom Test, Rob Walling, Amy Hoy)
Creating a gated sub-community with training materials and resources
In that order, like a staircase which you’ll have to incrementally climb.
Most of those are provided for free. If you acknowledged your vulnerability and expressed your struggles in a way that makes it easy for people to help you, they usually will. You just have to ask.
I was stuck on Young Makers and I expressed this in WIP.chat and Pete asked if I was ok. I DMed him and told him my struggles and he told me he faced that too and told me how he overcame it.
i listened and followed it. And progress came back and I don’t feel that lonely in this lonely path — all my friends are salaried workers or they’re trying to run startups, not in an indie way.
thank you Internet.
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