u/BlacksmithOld6392

That may sound pessimistic. But hear me out. So I've been going through a lot of content the past couple of years from indie hacker/solo builder/founder communities on discord, x and reddit. And most posts (the ones that claim to help) are the same and most people have the same problem. Distribution. Not just distribution but attention.

Everyone can build as you all know but attention is now the bottleneck. In fact it always was. And unfortunately, attention is a zero sum game. You can't get attention without stealing it from someone else. Humans only have a finite amount of attention to give to things. Which is why I think, because most indie hackers/founders aren't built for the attention economy, they should play to their strengths and not try become influencers.

Getting customers is difficult and anyone who promises to make it easier for you should just be called a liar. But one thing that could help is perhaps looking at businesses avenues where the effort one inputs to get customers is directly correlated to the output one gets.

I think that's also what makes it difficult for most solo founders. One can spend so much time trying to get attention and get nothing. Crickets. Silence. What's worse there are no signals. It could be your product, your messaging, your positioning. Or all three. But you have no data points to know. So you end up being in a loop of launching, guessing, launching something else and before you know it a year has passed, a couple of users, 10 euros of revenue and so much money spent on compute.

While this is the reality of most founders (I've experienced it myself, painfully), I started thinking about how they can be another way. Because I believe that the economy has room for anyone who wants to create value. I then realised that there are so many non internet businesses that are functional and operational that don't seem to be even reachable through x, reddit, or discord.

Cleaning services, repair shops, restaurants. Local businesses make the economy move. And for the first time one person can service or create products for these businesses without needing to scale to justify infra costs. Imagine creating a product for 20 cleaning services that helps them operationally. you charge. €79 per month. That's 1580 € per month gross.

With most of it being profit and all it would have taken was simply taking a walk and having a conversation. I think this is where solo builders should focus. Local business, run by real operators just trying to service their customers. The market is too small to for VC backed startups. And it's ideal for solo founders because they can service them cheaply and efficiently.

And if you talk to many of these small businesses (which I have - spent the last 4 months speaking to 6000+ across Europe), you'll realise that their businesses are really based on relationships. And many would prefer service providers they know and can keep accountable.

Like you won't make a billion dollars from this, but you could make a liveable income, with less stress, less social media performance too. Just something to think about

That may sound pessimistic. But hear me out. So I've been going through a lot of content the past couple of years from indie hacker/solo builder/founder communities on discord, x and reddit. And most posts (the ones that claim to help) are the same and most people have the same problem. Distribution. Not just distribution but attention.

Everyone can build as you all know but attention is now the bottleneck. In fact it always was. And unfortunately, attention is a zero sum game. You can't get attention without stealing it from someone else. Humans only have a finite amount of attention to give to things. Which is why I think, because most indie hackers/founders aren't built for the attention economy, they should play to their strengths and not try become influencers.

Getting customers is difficult and anyone who promises to make it easier for you should just be called a liar. But one thing that could help is perhaps looking at businesses avenues where the effort one inputs to get customers is directly correlated to the output one gets.

I think that's also what makes it difficult for most solo founders. One can spend so much time trying to get attention and get nothing. Crickets. Silence. What's worse there are no signals. It could be your product, your messaging, your positioning. Or all three. But you have no data points to know. So you end up being in a loop of launching, guessing, launching something else and before you know it a year has passed, a couple of users, 10 euros of revenue and so much money spent on compute.

While this is the reality of most founders (I've experienced it myself, painfully), I started thinking about how they can be another way. Because I believe that the economy has room for anyone who wants to create value. I then realised that there are so many non internet businesses that are functional and operational that don't seem to be even reachable through x, reddit, or discord.

Cleaning services, repair shops, restaurants. Local businesses make the economy move. And for the first time one person can service or create products for these businesses without needing to scale to justify infra costs. Imagine creating a product for 20 cleaning services that helps them operationally. you charge. €79 per month. That's 1580 € per month gross.

With most of it being profit and all it would have taken was simply taking a walk and having a conversation. I think this is where solo builders should focus. Local business, run by real operators just trying to service their customers. The market is too small to for VC backed startups. And it's ideal for solo founders because they can service them cheaply and efficiently.

And if you talk to many of these small businesses (which I have - spent the last 4 months speaking to 6000+ across Europe), you'll realise that their businesses are really based on relationships. And many would prefer service providers they know and can keep accountable.

Like you won't make a billion dollars from this, but you could make a liveable income, with less stress, less social media performance too. Just something to think about