Pio Dubro

Day in the life of a solopreneur who makes $77k per month:

I just got back from 1 week of sailing ⛵️ It’s been a fantastic week! Being on a boat with your friends is the best way to disconnect Now, back to work! I’ve got 70+ emails to reply to 🥲 What did I miss?

Launching a B2B SaaS and marketing it everywhere, you quickly realize how easy founders who build for other indie hackers have it. Like, you can literally go on any podcast and just talk about yourself or post daily videos sharing your life story and it will be interesting for the listener (your potential user) because they probably relate to it in some way. Your domain expertise is one layer deep: it’s in coding. And you’re selling something you’d probably use yourself, to people who are very much like you. It’s different when you’re building for other industries. You’re dealing with people who only care about whether your product can solve their problem. Your knowledge and understanding of the industry become crucial if you want to convince someone to take you seriously and consider your product. Your domain expertise is at least two levels deep: coding plus whatever niche/niches you’re operating in. Now, Build in Public appeals to so many, even though, in reality, it’s practiced by a tiny percentage of builders. Obviously, they’re the loudest around here and it can feel sometimes like everyone is doing it. But that’s just not true. For those who build for other makers, it makes sense. They might even feel like they should build in public. Their face and persona should become their marketing. They should share what they do, learn, think. It’s so easy and simple. If they wish, they can take it even further: they can cross the boundaries into becoming influencers, turning their lives into bite-sized Big Brother-like content. It’s what’s referred to as a personal brand. But if your face and your life become your marketing, how do you remove yourself from your business in the future? Is it even a business in the first place or a job you created for yourself? A cage around you: if you don’t keep posting about your product, will your growth keep going up? And what if you want to exit at some point? What if something happens to you? What if you eventually don’t feel like sharing your life anymore, or people stop finding it interesting? Most importantly, is it ever about your product? Or about you? On the other end, the vast majority of indie makers aren’t building in public. Why would they? It’s a waste of time for most. Talking about their tech stack or what they shipped last night wouldn’t get them any extra traction. To market their product, they post industry-specific content instead. That kind of marketing can be done by an employee. Or the next owner of the business. Ultimately, it’s easier to build for other makers. You’re dealing with a single domain. And it’s not about the size of the audience, you can grow an audience in any industry. It’s more about what kind of work you want to do and how you want to grow your business. Because the kind of marketing you do can work initially, but it can then become a limiting factor when it comes to growth. And even though being real and genuine sells well these days, it eventually comes with its own limitations.