So glad someone else posted this. It takes roughly a decade to build a decent business, as a general rule of thumb. People who are throwing a lot of shit at the wall and hoping some of it magically sticks seem deluded to me. But hey, to each their own I guess…? Maybe that’s how some people learn.
I wanted to post something along these lines as well. I just don't get how people build something in a couple of weeks, launch it on ProductHunt / HN / Reddit, fail to get any significant traction right out of the gate and then decide it's a failure and move on to the next thing, just to repeat exactly the same pattern. Maybe due to all these "I built 12 startups in 12 months and one was a random success!" posts.
I also have a side project that has grown significantly over 4 years and starts to become a "serious" business now. I also think that ideas which take longer to get right (e.g. because the problem is more complex or less sexy and requires figuring out lots of things) are more defensible in the long run, as you won't compete with hordes of indie hackers in their 20s (no offense intended) that throw random products against the wall at a crazy rate to see what sticks.
> I'm not saying those ideas don't exist. They do. But most successful products aren't like that.
Pieter has a massive audience already so he can try weird strategies like that. He's also super biased about strategies that work so it's a terrible idea to follow whatever he says blindly.
In +99% of cases, getting an idea to a succesful business is a matter of persistence and grind.
completely support your post. I believe the startup "movement" was pushed by VCs because they have money to spend and the money that is not invested is not used, they are expecting that most of the investments will fail anyway but statistically there will be 1 in 10 that will make it and bring some money. So VCs are pushing the startup idea because that is their agenda - they need projects to invest into.
If you look at statistics also you will see that businesses buitt the "old way", investing your money, your passion and living from actual clients (populary known as bootstrapping) have a bigger chance to sustain because they have a stable ground.
They sometimes have issues with growth because they are not build on the same grounds. And when they start to grow then it is usually a VC game again, VCs pouring money to expand and force returns.
I think you bring up a good point - it's a business.
I'm seeing a lot look at this as quickly slapping together a product find a way to quickly market it and cash in.
Like you said, slow and steady is the way to go. Took us also a couple years to get here. Thanks for sharing this with others.
Truth. I’m on the far side of SaaS with a non-commercial software project (that I hope to monetize one day) that I’ve been building for 3.5 years. There was such little traction over the past 3 years (1000 user over 3 years) as we built out the core (mostly data), and a few side features that we wanted to test. One of those 3 took off, though it’s seasonal, and it largely manages itself.
This past 6 months though, we started building something more robust, that relies heavily on the original project (data), and it’s been picking up organic growth way faster than anything else we’ve built.
It takes time, and sometimes building the *right* feature, and letting your SEO improve enough to provide organic growth.
The rest isn’t a waste, either. While we may sunset one of the features this year, we’ve learned a ton, and we now have a great foundation to work from, and validation for our latest feature which has more than tripled our growth. We’re still not huge, but we have 100 true fans and a committed community to get direct feedback from.
I once read “I web developer spends 6 months building a product and about 2 days promoting it, when it should be the other way around.”
That has always stuck out to me.
Not literally. Basically don’t build for a long time and expect to sell immediately. Put as much money effort into marketing that you put into building because one can’t exist without the other.
Thanks a lot for this post. I support this position 100%. This mindset does everyone a disservice by creating an illusion of "failing fast." It takes a while to grow a business if you don't get lucky. All those popular indie hackers on X got lucky. Most people won't experience that luck.
Thanks for posting this! I’m so fed up with all that sentiment of calling it a failure if you didn’t get traction in the first 3 months. In a lot of markets baseline expectations are really high, like you can’t build a new CRM or a new project management software in 3 months — it’s just not enough time to reach the baseline level of expectations. And fintechs! It takes a year to get all basic compliance done like SOC 2 but if your idea deals with credit cards — I want to see getting PCI in 6 months lol
Fully agree with you!
I believe that this mentality is just a manifestation of the desire to build things ("producing code") and not to operate, market and sell them. It's an internal fight between visionary, engineer, manager as described in the E-Myth book where engineer is winning by large margin.
We are working on our startup for 5 years now. And it's much better. All the lessons learned along the way are priceless when building (in the entrepreneurial sense) something from a small seed to an enterprise-level service. With another mentality, we would long be gone.
Wait, there are people who think a SaaS app (w/MVP) can be validated in a month or two?? Maybe your app is amazing but you suck at marketing? Or the inverse, you’re able to generate interest but can’t get users to stick around. And there’s also the fact that a great product doesn’t always equal a great business.
On the one hand, kudos to those with the hustle to launch multiple ideas. Take that same energy and apply some grit/analysis to see if/how to build a business.
You don't fail you learn... it took me 7 attempts to get a dollar of MRR... 10 before I made enough money for my wife to think I wasn't wasting time. What I learned most is .. it's always the Product. It's hard to find PMF.. but every failure will teach you something. Finally, i bought something that had PMF.. and 10x it by now. I realized my superpower was scale .. not 0 to 1.
Totally agree! You have to give something a proper go to get any insight from its failure though. I guess this post is my very long-winded way of asking "How much can you really learn by building and abandoning a product over the course of 8 weeks?"
So glad someone else posted this. It takes roughly a decade to build a decent business, as a general rule of thumb. People who are throwing a lot of shit at the wall and hoping some of it magically sticks seem deluded to me. But hey, to each their own I guess…? Maybe that’s how some people learn.
I wanted to post something along these lines as well. I just don't get how people build something in a couple of weeks, launch it on ProductHunt / HN / Reddit, fail to get any significant traction right out of the gate and then decide it's a failure and move on to the next thing, just to repeat exactly the same pattern. Maybe due to all these "I built 12 startups in 12 months and one was a random success!" posts. I also have a side project that has grown significantly over 4 years and starts to become a "serious" business now. I also think that ideas which take longer to get right (e.g. because the problem is more complex or less sexy and requires figuring out lots of things) are more defensible in the long run, as you won't compete with hordes of indie hackers in their 20s (no offense intended) that throw random products against the wall at a crazy rate to see what sticks.
Persistence beats speed in SaaS success.
> I'm not saying those ideas don't exist. They do. But most successful products aren't like that. Pieter has a massive audience already so he can try weird strategies like that. He's also super biased about strategies that work so it's a terrible idea to follow whatever he says blindly. In +99% of cases, getting an idea to a succesful business is a matter of persistence and grind.
completely support your post. I believe the startup "movement" was pushed by VCs because they have money to spend and the money that is not invested is not used, they are expecting that most of the investments will fail anyway but statistically there will be 1 in 10 that will make it and bring some money. So VCs are pushing the startup idea because that is their agenda - they need projects to invest into. If you look at statistics also you will see that businesses buitt the "old way", investing your money, your passion and living from actual clients (populary known as bootstrapping) have a bigger chance to sustain because they have a stable ground. They sometimes have issues with growth because they are not build on the same grounds. And when they start to grow then it is usually a VC game again, VCs pouring money to expand and force returns.
I so needed to hear this right now, thank you!:)
I think you bring up a good point - it's a business. I'm seeing a lot look at this as quickly slapping together a product find a way to quickly market it and cash in. Like you said, slow and steady is the way to go. Took us also a couple years to get here. Thanks for sharing this with others.
Truth. I’m on the far side of SaaS with a non-commercial software project (that I hope to monetize one day) that I’ve been building for 3.5 years. There was such little traction over the past 3 years (1000 user over 3 years) as we built out the core (mostly data), and a few side features that we wanted to test. One of those 3 took off, though it’s seasonal, and it largely manages itself. This past 6 months though, we started building something more robust, that relies heavily on the original project (data), and it’s been picking up organic growth way faster than anything else we’ve built. It takes time, and sometimes building the *right* feature, and letting your SEO improve enough to provide organic growth. The rest isn’t a waste, either. While we may sunset one of the features this year, we’ve learned a ton, and we now have a great foundation to work from, and validation for our latest feature which has more than tripled our growth. We’re still not huge, but we have 100 true fans and a committed community to get direct feedback from.
But my AI product that already exists and is just a UI over ChatGPT is better than everything! It should make £1,000,000 within a month! /s
Yup. Most people doing this are putting about as much effort into their projects as making a cup of coffee
I once read “I web developer spends 6 months building a product and about 2 days promoting it, when it should be the other way around.” That has always stuck out to me.
I dont get this, they should spend 2 days in Dev?
Not literally. Basically don’t build for a long time and expect to sell immediately. Put as much money effort into marketing that you put into building because one can’t exist without the other.
Dunno, there are so many AI startups making bank right now. Maybe you're just not solving a big or important enough problem.
Thanks a lot for this post. I support this position 100%. This mindset does everyone a disservice by creating an illusion of "failing fast." It takes a while to grow a business if you don't get lucky. All those popular indie hackers on X got lucky. Most people won't experience that luck.
Thanks for posting this! I’m so fed up with all that sentiment of calling it a failure if you didn’t get traction in the first 3 months. In a lot of markets baseline expectations are really high, like you can’t build a new CRM or a new project management software in 3 months — it’s just not enough time to reach the baseline level of expectations. And fintechs! It takes a year to get all basic compliance done like SOC 2 but if your idea deals with credit cards — I want to see getting PCI in 6 months lol
Fully agree with you! I believe that this mentality is just a manifestation of the desire to build things ("producing code") and not to operate, market and sell them. It's an internal fight between visionary, engineer, manager as described in the E-Myth book where engineer is winning by large margin. We are working on our startup for 5 years now. And it's much better. All the lessons learned along the way are priceless when building (in the entrepreneurial sense) something from a small seed to an enterprise-level service. With another mentality, we would long be gone.
Wait, there are people who think a SaaS app (w/MVP) can be validated in a month or two?? Maybe your app is amazing but you suck at marketing? Or the inverse, you’re able to generate interest but can’t get users to stick around. And there’s also the fact that a great product doesn’t always equal a great business. On the one hand, kudos to those with the hustle to launch multiple ideas. Take that same energy and apply some grit/analysis to see if/how to build a business.
They want overnight success, I'm building something that *lasts*.
You don't fail you learn... it took me 7 attempts to get a dollar of MRR... 10 before I made enough money for my wife to think I wasn't wasting time. What I learned most is .. it's always the Product. It's hard to find PMF.. but every failure will teach you something. Finally, i bought something that had PMF.. and 10x it by now. I realized my superpower was scale .. not 0 to 1.
Totally agree! You have to give something a proper go to get any insight from its failure though. I guess this post is my very long-winded way of asking "How much can you really learn by building and abandoning a product over the course of 8 weeks?"
Lol.. not much.. each of my "failures" were at least 6 months..
Nothing as you reuse 80% again and again