Finding feedback as an IndieHacker

Feedback as a solo-founder

​

Okay, so we need feedback. Feedback is how we get better. But it’s kind of hard to come by as a solo-founder.

In our day jobs, these cycles are built-in for us. Quarterly check-ins, one-on-one’s, annual performance reviews — these all serve as formal feedback.

And then there’s informal feedback, the kind of feedback you get from your peers after shipping very good (or bad) work.

I’d argue that these peer incentives have the most impact on us.

So how do we recreate that while Indie hacking?

I'm not the expert here; I’m just starting to figure it out.

Twitter feels like a good candidate, but it has its flaws.

Seth Godin talks about generous critics, the people who want to help us ship better things by helping us see more clearly.

Remember to find the generous critics on Twitter (or IH).

Ask yourself:

before you take it too seriously.

When you get generous feedback, implement it ASAP.

​
And this is how we get to the update of what I’ve been working on this week.

I had been DMing back and forth with Christian Genco about plzdm.me when he asked if I wanted some additional feedback.

I opted for hearing it, and he said:

"Right now it looks like you're putting a lot of focus on the design and layout of the page instead of the content, and I think you should be focused not at all on the design and entirely on the content to hone the value proposition of this product."

...and he was totally right.

He recommended a course on landing pages, which I promptly bought.

Before

​

After

​

The new landing page is a lot better. It speaks to the true pain that plzdm.me is trying to solve.

Moral of the story: good feedback is hard to find when working alone. Try to find more good feedback.

Notable links

​

Schlez @galstar I migrated my blog from Medium. I'm using @vercel to send drafts for peers to get feedback. Ever since, I missed the ability to co-locate the feedback with the actual words. I wanted @github's PR flow, but outside of my repo. I built it. It works. Everywhere. >>> pic.twitter.com/qKVyAW73kS March 21st 2021 1 Retweets 24 Likes

​

Okay, this thing is dope. I added it to my blog. Check it out & give me some feedback on any of my posts! (Use guest mode and try it out at this URL: drew-feedback.vercel.app)

It even works great on mobile.

Shaan Puri @ShaanVP You spend a year as PM of facebook voice before quitting and traveling across south east asia for a year. It's not all bad. you had a hell of a ride, and made some good money. You vow to only work on enterprise saas for the rest of your career the end. Shaan Puri @ShaanVP It worked in the tech bubble, because the hype cycle drove in so many tech people that you hit critical mass. You can't replicate that magic in every community The end of the story isn't so much fun. growth slows. users churn. You end up getting acquired for $90M by facebook. March 16th 2021 36 Retweets 1,809 Likes

​

The ending of Shan’s thread on Clubhouse has some extreme IndieHacker vibes. Nothing says guaranteed revenue like B2B SaaS.

I think we all start out wanting to ship B2C products. After all, it's what we mostly know. We are consumers.

But then we, or at least I did this, slowly realized how much more profitable and stable selling to businesses could be.

Maybe the new prosumer category will be the end of this generalization, though. I'm building plzdm.me for the prosumer category — people who create and consume content.

Thanks for reading!

I'm getting really close to launching plzdm.me, but I decided to start creating some content around it first.

Check-in next week where I'll be writing about the "year of hustle" speed challenge I'm doing (see more below).

Drew Bredvick @DBredvick @VicVijayakumar Following the launch roadmap in this pdf stackingthebricks.com/year-of-hustle/ I’ve got the product 3/4ths built, so it motivated me to create useful content for the next few weeks while I wrap things up. Vic 🌮 @VicVijayakumar @DBredvick Gonna take your site as my inspiration to put up a site and allow early signups. March 24th 2021 0 Retweets 2 Likes

​