Newsletter #10:
This newsletter was originally published on the Revue platform, which Twitter (now X) killed after being taken over by Elon Musk. I now republish it here. My latest newsletters are on Convertkit.
I’m building for two reasons:
(1) For fun. Every idea I come up with I give a go at it. I believe in connecting the dots in hindsight, like Steve Jobs once said.
(2) For professional development. Until I’m making money as an entrepreneur, I want a fallback option: to be a freelancer who’s building his product with a digital nomad lifestyle*.
When deciding my goals, I believe I have to follow the people who have already achieved my goals.
- Want to become a musician? Study the life of top-tier musicians...
- Want to become a politician? Study the life of presidents, ministers, …
- …
So I asked a question on Indiehackers this week: How to find the people I want to study?
And the response was, as often, a mirror:
What do I want?
I want to run a successful online business
(and use that to start a real-world business, more on that in a later newsletter)
But that isn’t detailed enough.
If I want to build a business, what type of business?
- Do I want to build a niche Saas? No because I want to focus on fun, not just profit. I want something I’m passionate about
- Do I want to raise a lot of money? No because I want to be able to focus 100% on the customer.
- …
That brings me back to the start.
I want to build for fun. Until something sticks.
The typical approach for this is the 12 startups in 12 months approach (eg Nomadlist, Bannerbear,…) or other companies which were just trying (eg Designjoy). The Indiehackers podcast is full of cool stories.
So I have to follow these people!
And straight away I notice I’m mostly building but not shipping.
Only one solution:
Focus on shipping
I wish you a great week!
* These two are sometimes complementary but often at odds. For example I read today that when you’re building a business, your income should be from a low-effort job. Coding is not low-effort.