Exactly one month ago, I decided to go all-in as a solo founder/indie hacker to see if I could bootstrap my way to a successful product. So far, it's been a pretty enjoyable experience, but that's not all that matters. What have I achieved in these 30 days, and am I happy with my results? Let's do a recap!
Let's first look at the expectations I had for myself for the first 30 days or so:
I wanted to start writing.
Build an audience/following and a profile online.
Build at least one project and attempt to sell it.
Complete about two projects (two-week cycles).
If we start with the first thing first, I've definitely managed to consistently write content. I've enjoyed it a lot, and I really feel like writing gives me some additional value that I wouldn't get otherwise. I wrote an article that you can read here that explains the added benefits I get from writing, if you find this topic interesting. At the time of writing, I don't have many followers on my blog, so for the time being, it's mostly the value of writing itself that has been useful for me.
And that takes me over to the next point - building an audience. I'm not so happy with what I've achieved in terms of attracting readers. I have posted content on my blog, but I haven't been very good at sharing it online on different platforms. No one's going to stumble over my little blogging platform on their own, so I need to get better at posting on platforms with better reach like Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
I think those platforms require a different type of content than what I've been generating so far. It needs to be shorter, a little more click-baity. It's also scary because I know that I will actually reach people on those platforms. Meaning that they will read my content, which is a daunting thing to think about! It's a barrier that I still need to breach, you could say.
These last 30 days, I've mainly worked on three different projects: Typzet (this page), a GPT-based name generator, and rendering for architecture designs using generative AI. Of the three, I only consider Typzet to be fairly "done”. For the rest, it's still a work in progress, and I haven't tried to monetize any of the projects yet. I don't have any plans to monetize Typzet, as it's more of a fun side-project, but I was hoping that I would've managed to build something in addition and that it would've been monetized by now.
So for future me, I hope that you manage to achieve the following:
Post more on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Monetize your projects.
Do you enjoy what I write? I follow the "build in public" philosophy, which basically means that I try to share as much of my progress as I can with the public as I build products. If you're interested in reading more or reaching out to me, head over to holwech.com.
Project status
Typzet
A simple blogging/newsletter platform inspired by Notion and Instagram.
Status: completeish
MRR: $0
Number of users: me
Nameo (cover name)
A name generator that uses AI to generate unique names for your startup, business or project (not yet published).
Status: WIP
MRR: $0
Number of users: -
AIZ (cover name)
Render 3D models and drawings of architecture using generative AI. Reduce the rendering time from hours to seconds.
Status: WIP
MRR: -
Number of users: -