BootstrFM

Episode 1
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Erwin: [00:00:00] Welcome all. I first want to thank everyone for coming and having an interest. I had this idea for a Twitter space, not yet having a name a little while ago and I decided to Indie Hacker slash Bootstrapper fashion, put it on Twitter to just see if anyone would be interested.

And behold, people were, so that's great. I was thinking of a name and came up with the name Bootstr. I don't know how to pronounce this yet. I pretty much only thought of the name as I was typing it.

But it was available and stands short for Bootstrap, of course. And the concept is that I wanted to have a little bit more cohesion in our community of IndieHackers and Bootstrappers. There are many, many more builders joining every single day. I know it's on Twitter, but also on IndieHackers and on other platforms.

Many more taking the path, probably also accelerated by AI, taking the path of building on products and or productized services and content, et cetera. And as the community grows, I think it's also good to have some more ways to [00:01:00] build this community and I think this one is Twitter space gives some interesting possibilities.

I, was thinking of the following concept. I would like to besides this introduction, ask some questions to our main guest, Dom. Dom is building a product called Help Kit, I would love to know some more about that and then after that, we'll open up for discussions. I have some questions that I would like to know people's opinion about and figure out, what do we as a community think about it, potentially have some other opinions that I or we didn't think of and really give people some speaking opportunity and some speaking time.

Be aware that if you are joining on both mobile and desktop, especially on desktop, I think you can also tweet. So I'll be watching the tweet space as well. You should be able to see a comment icon on the bottom right there.

If you do get some speaking time later or want some speaking time later, you can also use the emoji on the bottom and raise your hand. I can see that here, so it's a bit easier for me. All right, Dom, would you like to introduce yourself first?

Dominik: Of course! Well, hey folks, super stoked to all have [00:02:00] you here. I can see we already have 28 in the space. They've already been, I think, like more than 30 already. So that's absolutely exciting. I'm going to keep my introduction a little bit brief because we probably got to talk in the whole, podcast anyways. But my name is Dom. I'm originally from Austria. Now kind of digital nomading around the world and I'm mainly building a product called help kit, which is a SaaS application that turns notion pages into a professional help center slash documentation page. And I've been bootstrapping help kit now for two and a half, I guess, probably almost three years now.

And learned a lot of lessons along the way, a lot of harsh lessons, I guess, and a lot of maybe funny lessons as well. And been also building some other side projects on the site, which I maybe can also go into a little bit later, but most of my experience I'm going to talk about in this space is probably going to result from building help kit and the products I built before it, because they led me to where all the knowledge I kind of gained to bootstrap help kit kind of successfully now.

Erwin: Awesome. Thank [00:03:00] you very much, Dom. I'm very excited to find out more. I was thinking of questions I wanted to ask yourself and some of the listeners may know some of them, may not know. Dom and I also know each other in real life. But I realized I never actually got to ask you the question how you actually got into bootstrapping yourself and I'm kind of curious to hear that. Like, how did you even get in touch with the idea?

Dominik: Well, basically how I started probably was a pretty unconventional way. As opposed to like most indie hackers, I guess, I did not unfortunately study computer science. I did my bachelor's in economics and management, and I was kind of on the path to become a management consultant.

I wanted to work at McKinsey or the Boston consulting group. That was kind of like my dream goal. And then I started when I was like preparing for my job interviews at these consultancies. I realized that in order to prepare for this, like job interview, you need to go through a really standardized interview process and at the same time, I was kind of learning myself how to code. I was teaching myself how to code. [00:04:00] And I realized that all these like consulting interview preparation books are super boring and I was like, I'm learning how to code. I need a project because everyone keeps telling me I need to build a project in order to learn how to code.

So there couldn't be any better way to just use this really boring, consulting, interview preparation book kind of scheme and like try to make an app out of it and so, essentially my kind of huge dream of becoming a management consultant led to me kind of trying out making an app that helps other people to prepare for the management consulting job interview.

And then I started building this app and I just put it on the app store. I had like a premium version for like five dollars back then and nobody bought it. I didn't know anything about bootstrapping, indie hacking, nothing. But then one day, all of a sudden, someone bought like the first like premium subscription for like five. No, it was a one time purchase for 5 dollars and then I was like, holy crap, I just made five bucks on the internet. [00:05:00] How insane is that? And then I realized Wait a second, are there people out there that are building products on the internet and are actually making a living out of this? I started researching.

I quickly came across like probably the most known indie hacker, I guess, Peter Levis and I saw that he has like so much content on this idea of like as opposite of Getting venture funding, going through this like huge drain of trying to build a company without like really actually focusing on making a product.

And I was like, wow, this approach that Peter is kind of following is amazing. And that was like, I guess the kickstart and I quickly found out about like indiehackers. com, like the website slash blog back then, and listen to like every podcast episode that they had and that really, I think kicked off my indie hacking journey that was like, okay, I can make money on the internet. I just now have to find out how I actually can make this like reliably and hopefully with a product that makes a bit more than just like at one time purchase of like five bucks.

Erwin: That's awesome. So yeah, you were basically just itching your own scratch there [00:06:00] and figuring out along the way. It's quite interesting. It's slightly different than how I got in contact. For me it went the other way around. I actually found out that there were people doing this and then figuring out, okay, so if they can do it, then how can I do it?

Just kind of the reverse, I suppose, but that's cool. And did that first project go anywhere after that, or did you really just, you know, have a one time purchase and then try to get into different things?

Dominik: Well, I think the thing that really kicked it off for me was when I, I put the app on the app store. I made a bit of, I had like maybe like 50 purchases, which was already enough back then to pay for my dorm room one month and that was absolutely enough, seeing that kind of money coming in and knowing that I can like, at least back then, like pay my shared flat was already like amazing.

But what then happened is I thought like, you know, I have this five bucks subscript one time purchase, why not charge 10 bucks? And I'm like, why not increase the price by 10 bucks and see what happens and all of a sudden I increased the price. Three days, nothing happened. But then all of a sudden, [00:07:00] like purchases just kept coming in and I was like so amazed by the fact that all of a sudden even though I doubled my price, people seemed to value the, I guess like the app more.

And they kept on buying and I got like really good reviews and I think that really like kind of was the moment where I realized, how magic kind of cool indie hacking is. Whereas like you're just trying things out and kind of do things that are very paradoxically, like increasing your price by 50 percent and all of a sudden 100 percent and then realizing that there are actually more people interested than before.

And so I think that kind of was the kickstart and then obviously this app was not anywhere near of like making enough money to make a living, I did try, but it was just like flattening out and it did spark my whole like Indie Hacker journey in terms of like thinking about other projects and other products.

And then I kept building like two or three other projects, like one big, kind of SaaS attempt, which is a product called Store Previewer. Which helps you preview your app store, [00:08:00] like helps you preview how your app will look like on the app store. Kind of like the app store listing preview, I guess, people doing Figma, but I built like a whole web app for it.

And it's still online. There are some customers even paying for it these days, but I would consider it like at least back then as a flop because I was literally spending like four months. Day and night building this tool without telling anyone kept it super secret. Cause I thought like, Oh, I cannot tell anyone my idea. Otherwise everyone is going to steal it. Yeah, the classic, right? I did this thing for five months or four months. It had everything, all the wisdom, like the bears and whizzes, it had like web sockets, real time interaction with like team members, even though I didn't even know about a single company that would ever use my product.

And then once I launched. I literally fell into the biggest indie hacker depression hole I think you can possibly fall into because like I launched it and then obviously no one bought it because I had no audience, I had no marketing channels, I had no waitlist and then I realized, oh, [00:09:00] Building a product is one thing, but then actually doing a marketing, doing the settings, a completely different space.

And I went like so horribly wrong on the whole, like approach on like building a product, just in my cave back home without telling anyone and then launching it and nobody knew about it. And so that was like the first kind of bigger, like big indie hacker lesson, I guess. And then from then onwards I just got to like more and more, sort of like knowledge through like pain that I experienced and that kind of led to Most of the lessons I learned to make better for help kit then.

Erwin: Right? Yeah, I see that there's a couple of people that actually joined by the way, just so very briefly You're up to speed. Dom is our guest today. We are in the process of asking him some questions So we can extract some extra wisdom to apply to our own journeys on bootstrapping journeys. I will later be having some discussion questions as well and you will be able to get on stage yourself and ask questions either to us or to others, give your opinion about things, etc.

Alright, back to the questions I have for you. [00:10:00] I was also quite wondering, it's probably very important for the audience, they'd like to know as well, is, if you could give advice to someone right now, and something that you would have loved to know at the very, very start of your bootstrapping journey, rather than now, if you could give an advice to people, what unique advice would you give?

Like, what is the thing that you think is really important to realize early on?

Dominik: I think it's not unique advice, but it's something I really wanna express. 'cause I think it's like super important and still a lot of people are too shy or they just don't think about it. And that is the whole concept of building in public. So for those who are listening in and maybe don't know what I mean with building in public is the whole concept is simply about sharing your progress on Twitter, online, in blog posts, anywhere where you can on Reddit. But the tip are is you share little milestones that you have achieved throughout your whole entrepreneurial journey with others.

And the reason why this is so big and why I think what is actually also the [00:11:00] reason why I succeeded with help kit is because before I was building in like my cave, I didn't tell anyone I was just like doing this secretly. And then I also thought like, how do I have the time to also be on Twitter and talk about what I'm doing, right?

And then also the kind of feel oh, someone's going to steal my idea, yada, yada, yada. And so what I then with HelpKit did completely differently, kind of against my own like gut feeling was like telling myself, you know what? With help kit, I'm going to do things completely differently. I'm going to be super public about what I'm doing about all the ups, but also the downs, because I just want to keep like some sort of accountability for myself and then hopefully some other can learn from it.

And even if I fail, someone will eventually hopefully get something out of it. So that was like the biggest lesson I guess I learned, and then I started tweeting, like in the beginning I had like 80 followers. I started tweeting about what I'm doing and even like after a week of tweeting, I had like maybe 10 new people, all of a sudden chiming in, giving me advice, kind of becoming my friends on the internet, which [00:12:00] was kind of new for me back then, especially on Twitter and I feel like that changed everything. People were just really invested in like the journey and I keep seeing like people popping up on Twitter now having like a hundred followers.

And then they just keep sharing what they're doing in such a raw way, which I think is a really important thing when you do this whole bill in public is there's a lot of people now that I see are just using AI tools to kind of just push it out something about what they're building about, but it's not really like authentic.

And what I noticed is the more authentic you are, the better. So just be yourself. And don't think too much about that use Twitter, actually how it's supposed to be like back in the days, just literally. Tweet whatever you think is in your mind, especially when it comes to like your product and people will absolutely love it. So yeah, building public, don't be afraid about it. That's another thing. Don't think the whole imposter syndrome, don't think that you're like worse than anyone else on the internet. So you cannot share your advice. There's this like really [00:13:00] cheesy rule. You've probably heard like hundreds of times, but it's, You're teaching someone, you're not teaching someone to become like a master, you're teaching someone that is like slightly in terms of their skill set below you and people love to learn from people that are slightly below them versus someone that has already achieved everything because it's not attainable. It's very hard to get to that point. So if you can just teach someone little bit about things that you know much better than anyone else. You think that's already like a huge win and these little milestones that you share online, I think, they will keep you motivated.

It's like little dopamine hits. It sounds ridiculous, but we're kind of wired to just get to need some sort of validation and in the beginning, when you're building a product, when you bootstrapping, you don't really get a lot of validation because the product is not ready. You need feedback, whatever. It might be a little bit like half assed. So if you share your stuff online, people eventually will like it and you will get some dopamine hits and that is so important in the beginning to keep going.

Erwin: I had the [00:14:00] same experience as well. Like exactly as a matter of fact, like initially it feels like you're just an imposter. You don't really have much to say. It's tricky to share things because you feel like, maybe people aren't all interested, or they're further ahead, or you think that you don't know what you're talking about.

Yeah, I had the same thing and I realized one extra thing. This is on top of your already amazing advice, I'd say is, there's also such a thing as not necessarily sharing your learnings and stuff. But even for people that are more experienced, it can serve as a different angle on the same subject that they hadn't considered yet.

Which is one of the reasons why I also still love interacting with people that start out or, dabble in some projects, et cetera. They tend to sometimes come across learning that I'm like, Oh, I never looked at it that way. Like, I didn't know that was also a way to think about it or do something.

Dominik: Absolutely. I'd say anyone should probably be building in public when you go the non funded bootstrap way it just gives you a lot to talk about your product. Whereas yeah, at the start of it can sometimes be very tough to do marketing because what else do you talk about? Talk about just [00:15:00] features can be salesy perhaps or you run out of things to say, but, once you build in public, there's much more things to talk about.

Erwin: All right, I would like to move on to some of the more discussion Explorative questions that I prepared. The first question is what is the right balance between validating whether you're onto something and your idea is interesting versus building it first?

Of course, we see a lot of people that are building a lot and tend not to talk much or validate much. And then end up realizing that they built something that may not be very interesting and then at the same time you can also validate too much and think or overthink too much beforehand and be hesitant to actually get started. So I'm quite interested, what other people think there. What the exact balance is, like how would you approach things? Dom, would you like to kick us off? What do you think about this?

Dominik: Yeah, happy to. It's a really tough question and while you asked the question, I was like, on what side am I on of this? I think I personally as an indie hacker, [00:16:00] you're dedicating a lot of time building products and basically being on your computer and I think sometimes you have this like specific idea you just really want to see come to fruition. Even if it's like very scrappy, kind of MVP ish and In some cases, just holding yourself back because you kind of want to validate first, if it makes sense, might not be the best approach, meaning that you just really want to build something.

And then I think it's perfectly fine to just build an MVP. If you can do this in less than, I would say seven days, I think a threshold. If you can do it less than seven days, maybe build it and then, post it on Twitter and see what people think about it. However, I think if you really want to be smart about it and also smart about your time, which kind of equals to also like money you might want to think a bit more smartly and do validate and before you build it, just create a landing page, make it look like it already exists with some Photoshop, Figma illustrations, and [00:17:00] then just slap, email waiting lists or some even like more advanced things where people maybe believe they're already buying the product, but then in reality they just sign up for like a pre order.

So if you really value your time, I think pre validating it makes much more sense. There, there are some just smaller ideas where you might just want to like quickly build it and push it out there, cause then people already have something they can try and see and get from there.

So yeah, it's a very tough question. I'm really curious, like what other people think and I certainly know there's one person here in this space, Alex, who is like the master of validating first. So I'm curious what he thinks about this, if he wants to chime in.

Yeah, these are kind of like my thoughts.

Erwin: Because you've got to figure out where your target audience is to begin with. For some of us that may be Twitter, but it might very well be Facebook groups, for example, right? So it's a bit of a tough thing. My personal take is the faster you can build, obviously, the better.

I think it's always good to build something to have something to show. Perhaps it could be a mock up that's not functional or in my particular case, did a demo [00:18:00] video that is functional. Put it on twitter. But just have like a little bit of build time just to show it off and then You know start validating and figuring things out you really only need that I personally didn't even have a name for the product to begin with and I already did that validating part. Alex, you want to weigh in on this?

Alex: Yeah, so the way that I see it is at least for me, I'm going to share my experience rather than advice the stuff that I build I need to be really excited to build. I realized that the excitement that I have is going to push through motivation to get something like the minimum amount of shit that I have to do in order to see if someone is going to try it out. This could be either a payment or just an MVP kind of like hacking an app and share a video on Twitter to see whether people would respond to that. But ideally, yeah, you do want to get people's money as quick as possible, just to see if they are actually going to pay instead of them being all like, Oh yeah, that's a cool idea and they never pay. So if you [00:19:00] can sip it as soon as possible, because otherwise you're going to spend too much time and eventually you're going to just lose the motivation and never actually move on anywhere with a product. That's how I see it.

Erwin: Yeah, the aspect of having people pay first and not say that they will pay is definitely a big one as well. Yeah, it's funny because that's a very popular thing, right? People have been sharing this on Twitter, I think a couple of months ago mostly it's just give people a Stripe checkout link. I don't know who started this. Might have actually been Levels potentially or maybe it was Mark from beta list share a checkout link and just see if people pay and then if they do, then build it.

Dominik: Ideally, for that, I think that a nice idea is to somehow get people to feel as if it's like a new kind of deal so that they actually jump on it. Because if you share a link without any context or to share your excitement there, I don't think that people will put their credit card details straight away because you also want to be able to get people to pay on that spot. That's all my thoughts for that.

Erwin: I think I [00:20:00] maybe potentially two times or three times I've put in my credit card details for a buy before it's built thing. But, I think also the situation matters, right? It's not always this or that. It can be a combination of both, I suppose. I see that Kenfi actually mentioned. They're both exists market validation and technical validation. You need both. It's actually a very good point as well there is an extra argument to be made for building at first. If something is technically challenging, because you obviously want to only build something when you know that you can actually deliver. You wouldn't want to be in a situation where you cannot deliver because it's technically too challenging.

So yeah, that's a good point as well.

Dominik: Maybe you want to quickly share. How did you actually get started with TaleScan in terms of the validating versus already building it?

Erwin: I can. So for me personally, I think I took a kind of a standard approach by building very quickly and then seeing if there was any interest. So my previous project failed. This is where it started like roughly a year ago. Our previous project failed. It was time to say goodbye to that. It really did not take off the ground and I [00:21:00] was kind of done of trying to build things for a long time, not having customers, etc. Spending way too much time on it. And, I decided to give myself one week to turn this Chrome extension that I built for myself, just basically some utility tools for Tailwind.

Turn it into an actual Chrome extension that like looks nice and usable. And so I gave myself seven days, built it, shot a 15 second demo video, put it on Twitter because that's where most Tailwind, or well, not most, but like a lot of Tailwind developers in general hang out. So it was a good place for me to get started. And I didn't have a name, I didn't have a website, I didn't have an email list and James Potter actually is in the space as well and he recommended me the moment that tweet went viral a little bit to also add an email list.

And I'm still very thankful that he mentioned that because I think there were about 120 people signing up to the email list when I did. So yeah, really just seven days of building, or slightly more like nine days of building, shooting a demo video, putting it on there. But yeah anything to just get that validation and [00:22:00] people were interested. People were asking me, how can I buy this? Where do I download this or when is it available?

So yeah, really try to keep it as lean as possible. I suppose summarizes as well.

As with launching products or validating, we are exactly doing the same thing with this first edition of Boots. Fm. I do have another question that I find an interesting one to ask.

What the story is about copying products. I've heard a lot about people doing it, I've heard a lot of accusations in some cases and I, personally always wondering, when is something inspired by, and when is something Copied?

Because, let's be honest, we perceive the world around us in a way, and you simply get inspired by things that you see. Right? You take your own spin on it. This is how you get ideas to begin with. So, inspired by is not necessarily wrong, but when is it inspired by and when is it really copied? And does it actually matter? And why is the community, do we care that things are copied? Is it bad or can it be good? In some situations, like I'm genuinely curious [00:23:00] about this. I think it's much broader than just saying it's bad.

Dominik: I think that any hacking space is like very interesting when it comes to these copycat situation because the indie hacking space in and of itself is very, feels a bit like a family. We are all following each other on Twitter, kind of supporting us cause we are all on the same path.

So when there is a copycat popping up from another indie hacker specifically, I think this is where it creates a little bit of tension and where it gets very interesting because you kind of supporting each other already, you follow, everyone's very open and transparent sharing their own journey, the ups and downs.

And then you obviously have some other indie hackers who know the pain and just maybe take all your negatives and utilize it for themselves. And then I think that's a bit of a complicated thing, especially also in regards to what does it really mean to copy a product, right? I think coping a product and getting inspired by are two completely different things.

[00:24:00] Where I personally draw the line is, if you see the whole branding and the copywriting is like heavily inspired by your own product, I think that's where I draw a line that would say that is way too far because it's literally just duplicating and plagiarizing in a way. The other way around, if you get inspired that's much more of a different question.

I think if you really can be able to put your own twist to it, like don't just copy the exact same features, maybe even like give them the exact same name, which I've seen like people do a bunch that can be a different route. That's the whole like idea of like blue ocean versus red ocean market strategies, right?

Do you want to be like a blue ocean product, which means like you are a new product that hasn't been invented yet and you're trying to get people to build it, or do you want to be. operating in a red ocean where there's a bunch of already existing products where you have much higher of a chance to actually succeeding because the market already knows about this problem.

As indie hackers, being in a red ocean makes much more sense, [00:25:00] especially if you want to have a SaaS that is like financially stable and growing, other than just building your next Elon Musk rocket ship kind of idea. So obviously there's going to be copycats. And I'm really curious if there's anyone else who has like some thoughts on where you actually draw the line and maybe if some of you here had a product that got copied and how you felt about it or what you did about it, that's another thing. Should you publicly Tweet about it. Should you be like open and be like very confrontational putting them like on the spot Or you should try to handle it like private or I don't know. I'm curious Maybe some of you here have some thoughts on this.

Alex: Yeah. Okay. I can speak on this a little bit So I think there's a big difference between copying a product like directly cloning it versus competition, right? So for example an easy one for competition is chat with PDF, right? There's a bunch of these chatbots for websites There's a bunch of these, These are not copying, cloning the products themselves, right?

This is competition and that's [00:26:00] perfectly normal, right? So I recently released a AI photo sass template, like a broiler plate for people to easily build their AI photo sass and one of the templates is a future baby So you just upload a photo to your parents, and then, you can get results of your future baby, right? And some people accuse me of copycatting another product, you know, another one exists, obviously. But the difference here is we're using the same API, right? So it's just the wrapper around the same API. So just because you created a wrapper around the API, it doesn't mean I cannot create another wrapper around the API, right?

The key difference is the website looks completely different. So just API, it doesn't mean I cannot use the same API. So in this case, I think it's more competition, but I feel like indie hackers, sometimes they think, oh, this person already made this product, no one can build this product anymore, he owns the idea, which I think is completely wrong.

Erwin: Yeah, I think it can kind of be boiled down to if the exact same,[00:27:00] use case, you know, if you serve the exact same use case, that does not necessarily mean that something is copied. It really is down to the twist or the way that the product behaves or the specific features that you have. And as Dom said, especially, when the copywriting is like the exact same, obviously it's actually copying. But yeah, it's an interesting thing. I think as we move towards a little bit more of a mature playing field with AI. We will see more diversification, but right now it's the API lens itself for a couple of things more. There's lots actually of these PDF builders, for example, and I see quite a few having their unique twist to it and then even serving different target audiences as well. So yeah, I agree that's not necessarily, I would say that's potentially inspired by, but definitely not copying.

I also invited David to speak.

David: Yeah, so I have some pretty gnarly stories. I've had people come to me Asking for advice on their startup and how I did things with Jenny privately, and then afterwards, literally blatantly copy [00:28:00] where If you took them next to each other, it's not really a questionable thing, and then when I asked him about it, he said, oh yeah, I sort of ripped your landing page and there are other times where, people have told me, they built something very similar and then when I ask them, Hey, this part seems pretty similar. What's that about? They say, Oh yeah, that's something that we were inspired by Jenny. And It's really a case by case thing.

There's some times where it makes me a little uncomfortable, but most of the times, I understand that, everyone's just trying to make a tool, everyone's trying to make something that makes them some side income or they get inspired by, I understand that it's not always a malicious thing. I've met with founders that have quote to quote copied me, and I think one cool thing is Like ecosystem, like two of the most famous people, which is like Danny and Peter, they have such like a healthy relationship like they don't really see it as competition.

I think in general, despite me starting this story. We've been copied several times, I think the people that are most annoyed by copycats are the people that are in it for, like, [00:29:00] I just found this little AI tool and I can pump up, X amount of dollars and I can, this is a nice little like hack that I found and I think the people that are scared that as other people are inspired by what they've maybe figured out because it's so not defensible and they're not providing as much value as they think they should, that I think they get a little insecure about it. This isn't always the case, obviously, but, I do think that. My general philosophy is if a copycat comes, they copy everything that I've made and then they're able to beat me, they're able to out distribute me, and then they're able to, in further down their product roadmap at provide more value to users than me.

Then I kind of deserve to lose and it's not like. I'm being super stoic and I'll be fine with it. I will be quite sad if a copycat were to kill me. But, that sort of thinking at least gives me some peace of mind and it also serves as some positive fuel of like, okay, it's [00:30:00] easy for them to build what we've built till now, but they don't know why we built it. They'll never know why you made the decisions that you made and they won't be able to get the micro little delight that you give to your users. For example, like the amount of time it takes to for a generation to come out on Jenny, or the amount of the way that we segment our users or there's probably a thousand little decisions that we've made in our product that is not easily apparent and even if they were able to dial in on all of those things. The next feature that we have coming out, they're not able to anticipate it and even if they do, they won't know why that feature is, the way it is unless they talk to thousands of users and if they do talk to thousands of users, then They're probably putting a lot of time and hours into their product. If they can beat me, then they probably deserve to win. So that's kind of just how I think about it. But yeah, thanks for inviting me. That was my Ted talk. I'm pretty passionate about this. So yeah.

Erwin: No, thats especially why I invited you to speak, I know you have a lot of experience with this and you had forcefully had plenty of [00:31:00] time to think about this. Exactly where you stand and how things work. I think you're spot on. I think it's obviously when a copycat would be able to outperform you with every single little thing, then perhaps they do deserve to win, but obviously, in the real world, the chances of that are very slim, right? And besides that, copying a product is obviously the function of things. But, being fully able to copy marketing is obviously next to impossible. You have your own distribution, you have your own soul in the marketing, really. And yeah, the chances of that being copied are probably next to zero. But obviously it can be frustrating.

Dominik: I just want to quickly also chime in.

I think the way you put this David is like perfect. Also kind of symbolizes also hashtag capitalism, if you think about it. What I noticed like with copycats, cause there is definitely copycats coming up for help kit as well. Is that whenever I see a new copycat, the first Immediate response I have is oh, I'm kind of like disappointed or angry because they are kind of like obviously doing the [00:32:00] same thing The copy is a bit same but then I immediately realized hold on like I can take everything they do but make it better and if they really somehow Be able to outperform me they deserve it. So I get like actually Motivated by this and I think that's what indie hackers or bootstrappers or any entrepreneur should actually be taking away from this If you see a copycat just get motivated to be even better and outperform them even more.

Mike: Yeah, this is awesome. David, the points you just made were 10 out of 10 as a marketer, the most important thing that I tell people to focus on when building a company is the customer and David just pointed that out really well. If you're worried about your competition, then you're already losing.

And especially in this day and age of API wrappers, the differentiation is what you should focus on. Because anybody can go tap into open AI and have a cool output, but really what matters is your distribution, your customer centricity and the problem you're solving for them and how you [00:33:00] position it because anybody can build a tool now that competes directly with what you're doing and especially if it's an AI tool.

So I really think that the points that both David brought up and also, Dominic, those are fantastic and the abundance mindset is crucial where there's plenty of money to be made. There are so many people that need these tools. You just have to go find them. So focus on marketing and even this morning in my DMS, a guy was like, Oh, this company raised 14 million. Is it even worth trying to build the tool? And I sent him from the 22 immutable laws of marketing, the law of duality, where any market is supposed to have at least two players. Now they might have more market share, but that doesn't mean you can't go after it. So I think competition is healthy.

It sucks when someone literally dubs your landing page. I see it all the time. Definitely funny that David you've called them out in the past Because when I [00:34:00] called people out, they're like, oh, no, i'm not doing that. It's like, oh, okay. Maybe I just Can't see very well, but you know, it is what it is.

See what they're doing. Like you said, Dominic and do it better, distribute better, find the customer insights and implement them. And then you don't have to worry about competition. You just have to serve your customers. Thanks for letting me chat here, guys. This is awesome.

Erwin: Yeah, I think this is a very good point you're making Mike. And of course, very valuable insight. I totally agree. The size of the market is at all times. So, incredibly much bigger than what it's being focused on. So, it's never a winner takes all market, I think, or in extremely rare cases, but definitely not in the space that we are in. So there's always more to be had and maybe it's a whole different discussion question to get into, honestly.

Do you look at your competitors? Do you look at their websites or how they do things? Or do you actually stay away from that and ignore them? Because it may be distracting or whatever. I think there's something to be said about both, to be honest.

David: I do look at my competitors and I think every [00:35:00] time I do it, it's actually a mistake and a waste of my time I think that the most important thing is just you talk to your users as much as you can and try to build the best product possible. There are obviously things like landscape changes, like changes in your ecosystem that are important to pay attention to, but there are a lot of times that we're all human. We'll see a competitor do something and our initial urges are just wrong most of the time.

Actually, I think in general a founder should rarely trust their gut. I think founders are wrong. Like the initial instincts are almost always wrong and you have to default to thinking about what has worked in the past. What do you need to double down that your users have told you or through data that you can actually trust and competition, one of the things, and I know I just gave like a rant about so many copycats all that.

But I think, if I could have full control of myself, I would not look at competitors at all because it'll tempt you to make features that they've built that maybe you didn't even need or lead you astray. Like maybe they're growing, they're [00:36:00] doing something and they have some spurt of growth, but what they're doing is unsustainable. It's really damaging their brand. And what you're doing is like a more long term play. Thinking in that way is pretty unhealthy obviously there's exceptions to every rule, but I would say just ignoring competition is actually I think it is a sexy thing to say, oh yeah, keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

But that sounds like, one, like a terrible fucking way to live, but two, I just think it's not very, I don't agree with that.

Erwin: I get where you're at, yeah. I love how you're saying if I had full control myself, that really hit me a little bit there because honestly, I have a couple of copycats of my own. I have to count one, two, three, four, five. In the last give or take six months, that were quite clearly inspired, like same icon, same layout, same approach, slight differences here and there, but still, yeah, if I could control myself, I would have never looked at them because it is a waste of time and my mood as well. Definitely a waste of my mood.

Mike: I think, when you're starting to build a business, if you're thinking going from [00:37:00] idea to a product, you should definitely look at what's out there and if there's businesses operating in that space, that means it's a viable market. If there's nobody that's made this tool yet, it could be, a sign that you could be the one to take it from zero to one or maybe there's not a market. So I definitely think that when you're starting, you should always do market research, see how people are positioning their tools, what the pricing is, but if you're in building mode, I think David pointed out one of my favorite points, like nobody's going to be able to segment or, reach, the customers the way that you are, and that's how you should be thinking and I loved the emotional side that you both brought in, that it's really just been like a mood killer. If you go see like your competition raised money, or they are making some big press release, if you're going to use it as positive fuel, then do it. Otherwise, just keep working your business and growing it the way that you think's best based on customer feedback.

Erwin: Yeah. Good points. Now, honestly I just want to say I'm loving this. I think [00:38:00] this first version of boot. fm is doing great. I'm absolutely 1000 percent going to do this every single week. So everyone listening right now, for the next time that you want to to weigh in maybe set up your microphone ready for next time. It will be the exact same time every week on Wednesday. Yeah, I think I want to ask one more question. What are some of the ways to go from zero customers to some. You start out with nothing, right? Everyone starts out with nothing, essentially.

We all started with on Twitter, zero followers, zero customers, zero moat, even zero knowledge about the space we're about to enter and for the ones of us that have built something, we came from zero to something. So for those that are right now listening in and thinking this all sounds great and there's a wealth of knowledge here, but, I do really have to take that first step and I don't just quite know how, like, how do you go from zero to doing [00:39:00] something? It's a very open ended question, but I do really would like to hear either opinions or your own experience as to how you went from literal zero to something.

Dominik: Awesome question. Just before, real quick, we also had Connor chiming in. I'm not sure if you want to share something, Connor?

Connor: All good. I think we've kind of moved on at this point. I mean, well, I'll just say it now because why not? But basically, I was just going to point out that sometimes the things are one in the same. When you're talking about what your customers are asking for and what your competitors are doing. I don't know about everybody else but our product is probably in one of the most competitive spaces out there.

And frequently we have customers all the time actually we have cus like paying customers that come to us and say, Hey, you know, the X competitor has y feature, can you add this as well? And I don't really, I don't really know what to do in that situation. Like I don't have broad advice sometimes I guess you could say listen to our gut and sometimes we don't so it really comes down to just kind of going with your feeling again as well. Anyway, let's move on! I think [00:40:00] Erwin had a very good question about how do you go from zero to one which is a book by Peter Thiel?

Alex: Yeah, on that, the way that I got my first customer was through Twitter, because I had a follower, a following for Android development, I used to write and share all my findings about how I leveled up my Android development skills back in the day and then I had a few people, like one or two thousand, no, less than two thousand and I shared some sort of a app template back in the day. That was like a few years ago and I had my first customers through that because people knew me and they wanted to see a ready made app using a technology that was trending back in the day. However, if I were to do it, you know without having any audience or anything right now I would probably try to find what is the place where a lot of people hang out and jump straight in the discussion, you know out of the blue And that place [00:41:00] that comes to mind pretty much for all the projects that I have these days that are not Android development related is reddit.

There's always a subreddit for your target audience like 99 percent of the times it can just jump into the discussion as if you are part of the community Which probably you are if you're trying to build something in the space saying hey, I had this problem I solved it by building this thing it I've been trying it out for a little while and it's pretty good.

Anyone wants to try it out? And if people come in and they're like, wow, this is amazing. I want to try out right now. You know that you might be into something and that's how you can also get your first paying customers as well. It takes a while to get it right, but I think that is the fastest way without having any audience and you know no one knows you.

Erwin: Perfect. Yeah, no, I think you're spot on. I think in the same way where it's very important to figure out where people are hanging out, where your target customers are. It's also [00:42:00] extremely important to even take one step back and figure out what your target ideal customer is, right? And then I think it's actually good advice as well. Like when you think you have your ideal customer and you're literally just starting out wanting to build something, I would say mission down even more, try to find a niche within the niche, like being as specific as possible and build the ideal solution for a very, very specific customer.

And then start building out again and the reason for this is that if someone would come to me and present a product that is so hyper specific for exactly who I am and what I'm doing, I am naturally much more enthusiastic and willing to try it out and gain value from it much more than if it's just another product. That is not necessarily targeted to me. I will be much less passionate. So yeah, niche down super deep, then try to find out if those people are hanging out in a specific place [00:43:00] and then draw them slowly again from there. Once you build something and it actually catches off.

David: I can share the first way that I got my customer, which for Jenny. Back when we were B2B, I actually did cold calls for eight hours a day, maybe more. So what I did was I was B2B, so I would call every single SEO agency in my city, and then I would just put SEO agency, and then I'd just put the name of the city that was next to me, and then I would call every single agency in that city, and then I would repeat that for the entire West Coast.

I was living in San Diego at the time, and then I would eventually move to a different state, quote toquote move, and I would call the SEO agencies there. I think the most, the best piece of advice is you kind of want to glide over like zero to one. I think if you go into calls with your potential users and you don't actually have a product, when you're amorphous and your product could be anything and you're going and just talking to them and you're learning about what their pain points are, how you could bring value to them and then from that point on you can, [00:44:00] like, as Erwin said, you could hyper focus and make something really niche down that you'd for sure know that they'll love and that they'll buy.

And then at that point you can actually build something and get a customer the same day that it's fully built or you could get a customer before it's even built and that's validation that will save you literally months at conservatively and possibly years of your life when you build something you find out that people aren't willing to pay for it or buy it and so yeah I think in the beginning you should do things that are unscalable, but things that allow you to have Like being able to interface with your users Really fast get feedback really fast and a way to do that is just to get that human connection of like just show up at an office just show up where they are or cold call them and it doesn't matter if you get a rejected 99 percent of the time, just be that crazy person that they're going to remember.

And build a relationship with somebody and just focus on having one person love your product. If you're going to have one person use your product every single day, then the world's pretty big. There's probably other [00:45:00] people that fit into that bucket. Even if it's super specialized to that one person that will also love that product.

And you'll definitely be able to make money and have an actual business and actual product. I see a lot of like strategies of you know, the trick is use trending audios on Tik TOK, and if you do this blueprint, if you comment below this Twitter, do this, you'll a hundred percent get, I actually think cold calling is pretty underrated. Doing unscalable things in the beginning, I think it's pretty underrated. So that's what I did and I would probably recommend that for other people as well.

Erwin: I love that. Yeah. Just cold calling is scary, but the way you're saying it sounds incredibly valuable. Just show up at an office, have crazy conversations as to what they really run into as a problem and then try to figure out. I remember having a conversation years ago with someone that was like, what can we think of is the most outrageous thing to do to come up with a unique product to build.

It's like, do 12 internships at 12 companies that you [00:46:00] love for 12 months. And you will have so many ideas on what to build that you can clone yourself a hundred times over and you still wouldn't have enough time for it.

David: One point about what you just said about maybe you're too shy to do cold calls or maybe that's something outside of your comfort zone. I think it's actually a very powerful thing if you're not a very like charismatic salesperson because I am not a super, I mean, when I started, I was very young. I had no experience. I was talking to business owners that were making millions of dollars and I literally was super broke.

But actually, if you're a very talented salesperson, you can sell shitty products and that will also waste years of your life. If you can convince somebody to buy something that they don't actually need, that's really detrimental to you because you want to build something that's so valuable, even if you're You know, shy and you're not the most persuasive but you're able to touch some pain point that they really need solved so they're willing to pay right [00:47:00] away for 100 a month, 1, 000 a month for something and that means you're building something that's that's going to be You know, actually used there's so many tools that are built and they're never used or so many tools that are built and just like they're not loved but if you're not a good salesperson and you're able to get someone to buy That's a pretty strong indicator that what you've built goes beyond buzzwords.

What you've built goes beyond like energy or like infectious energy or how you express yourself. It goes into something much deeper, which is actually providing value and so yeah, I think that it could actually be good if you aren't like the best salesperson, which seems counterintuitive, but it's just kind of how what I actually believe.

Erwin: That's amazing. That's a great point.

I wanted to just say thank you very, very, very much to all the speakers. Dom for being a guest, Alex, David, Mike, Connor for weighing in, massive amounts of insights. I actually learned a couple of things. I think my personal takeaway is do more cold calling.

I think we're going to stick to this concept for the next time as well. So next week we will be back with episode [00:48:00] two. I will be preparing hopefully just as interesting questions with another guest Dom, you're obviously also again, welcome to join.

Yeah, I want to thank all of you as well for tuning in. Check out everyone's Twitter and follow them. I think the insights and value goes further and beyond than just a Twitter space.

So yeah, thank you all. I talk to you all next week. Wednesday at the same time.

Connor: Thanks for organizing, man.