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12 Comments

Entrepreneurship is all about solving problems, but you shouldn't try to solve future problems; wait until they are real.

  1. 1

    agreed solving the problem currently of an outdated email client to become more effective to increase productivity.

  2. 1

    I totally agree, the problem itself has to be validated.

  3. 1

    Totally agree on focusing on the problems of present and not the future and before anything else it's important to give your users a seamless experience.

    A lot of times you will run into problems but learning to prioritise is a skill which every entrepreneur should work on.

    Honestly It's much better to have only a few features that run smoothly than to have a 100 features riddled with bugs!

  4. 1

    It's true. Trying to solve problems that are not really priority for your target audience is one of the traps especially technical entrepreneurs easily fall into. They are used to (and have fun) building stuff and don't really pay attention to the whole marketing aspect in terms of does anyone need this direly.

    One of the ways I found to stop myself from solving non-critical or non-real problems is to validate the idea beforehand. This means wait for indicators that make the probability of this being a real and profitable problem to solve higher.

    Of course, while you can never achieve 100% validation, I found this pattern to be really efficient:

    1. See a problem you may want to solve
    2. Quickly create a professional landing page to capture email signups (use https://validate.run)
    3. Configure automated emails that will make signups tell you about their problems
    4. Follow up and ask for a call in which you can ask questions (books to read: mom-test or start small, stay small)

    This puts you already ahead of 90% of "Entrepreneurs".

    1. 1

      Step 5: Comment on potentially relatable problems on IndieHackers, then try to promote your business.

      These kinds of posts and comments are the reason I visit IndieHackers so rarely. There's nothing wrong with promoting your business, but please do so in an honest manner.

      A common marketing practice nowadays is to create fake accounts and post the problem and solution (by a separate account) just so you can bury your link somewhere. When I come here, I feel like I'm reading marketing posts generated by AI.

      I guess this was inevitable outcome in a community where profit is the main goal.

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        For real man, comments are mostly useless these days. The community is dead.

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        I think you got it the wrong way: people don't like to get blatant advertisments shoved their way (cause you said "honest manner" as if you are talking about "here is my product, buy my product").

        Instead, try to participate in conversations about the topic your product/service is already doing and just give valuable advice like the explanation I did above.

        I would feel similar to how you described it, if someone just pasted the link as a comment under a post that's not even about the same topic.

        For my comment under this post, I don't see an issues - no, actually it's quite the opposite, readers of the original post could benefit from my comment as well. If I see content that relates to what I am currently working on / learning about, why shouldn't I participate?

        1. 1

          When I said "do so in an honest manner," I meant that you could write a comment saying that you are the one who built the service and not just post a link as if it's common for people to use validate.run.

          I don't have anything against you or your service. It looks good, and I wish you luck. I'm just using your comment to make a point about the IndieHackers community in general.

          "Dishonest" is probably not the best term to describe it, but overall, people here are more focused on marketing their own stuff than helping others.

          You're not doing anything different than most of the users here, so just ignore me :) I just felt the need to vent and say that I miss the "old IndieHackers."

  5. 1

    Agreed on this concept. SO much time has been wasted in my past making solutions to things I assumed were viable problems. smh.

  6. 1

    It's easy to become overwhelmed by what seems like a big problem so, breaking down problems is key. And your advice about not trying to solve future problems is gold. Focus on the problems you have now not what you think you'll have in the future👏

  7. 1

    This advice 100% applies to me. As soon as I hit problems I tend to give up. The illustrations and strategy are really helpful. I'll be following your advice on my next project.

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