Jason Leow

Offered to refund via email but no reply for 2 weeks 🤷‍♂️

Let’s settle the debate:

Many small bets, or one big bet?

What are the factors and context that helped you decide which to choose?

I tweeted that question out and was blown away by the nuances in the replies. Here’s me trying to do justice to them all and summarizing it:

It’s not binary, it’s a spectrum
----------------
Many small bets versus one big bet is a false dichotomy. In between there’s many shades of grey. It can look like this:

• Many many small bets (5 or more?)
• Many small bets, with 1 more in focus (like 80:20)
• Many small bets, but work on them one at a time serially
• 2-3 small distinct bets, in different markets
• 1 big bet with 2-3 spinoff related small bets in same market amplifying each other
• All-in on 1 big bet

For different stages of the journey
----------------
• Small bets for learning (when uncertain about market or problem space), place big bet when more certain after learning
• Small bets as a means to get to a big bet - this is a common approach. Try many bets, see what sticks and go all in on one
• Small bets as a safe-fail if big bet fails - as Plan B of the prior point. Do small bets to learn how it’s done, go big on the one with most potential, but if it fails, go back to small bets
• Small bets for fun in itself - this is for makers who might not be after monetization.

Other factors to consider
---------------
It’s about discerning probability of success, which we’re notoriously bad at estimating but do so anyway:
• Growth stage (pre-revenue, pre-PMF vs post-PMF) - makes more sense to adopt more bets at early stage.
• Market demand, competition - if there’s established demand, presence of other competitors, less need to make small bets to test and learn
• Personality - I get bored if I just do one project for years. I enjoy variety and it suits me. Others prefer a focused, craftsman path on just 1 thing.
• Product type, niche - some products simply need more time/depth to build, or need more support/maintenance, hence need more focus (i.e. 1 big bet). More technical SaaS with machine learning could be an example. Ebook, digital downloads are on the other end, and a small bets approach are more likely to succeed.
• Cash runway - this determines the approach. Basically, the longer your runway, the longer you can focus on 1 big bet without payoffs.
• Family situation - if you got many mouths to feed, less chance you can have a long enough runway to focus on 1 big bet for a long time. Sprinkling it with freelance work while working on products is a common path here.
• How fast you can ship - if you can ship fast, there’s less opportunity cost to make many bets
• How enjoyable - similar point to personality. Do you enjoy making many bets or just one? Besides cash, attention and motivation are scarce resources for a solo indie hacker.
• End goal (unicorn vs lifestyle biz) - if your aspiration is to build a typical VC-funded unicorn startup and have a grand exit, then 1 big bet is the obvious way. For lifestyle-business solopreneurs, you have a choice of both.
• Risk appetite/assessment - one big bet means big win or big disaster. So lower risk appetite means you could go for many bets. Higher risk appetite more likely to go for 1 big bet.
• Full-time vs part-time - if you have a full-time job, going all in means taking a leap of faith and quitting. But holding a full-time job and doing side hustles part-time is like having a few bets going on.
• Scarcity mindset - going for many bets might mean a scarcity mindset. A desperate grab at whatever the comes. Good to reflect if that’s the case.
• Shiny object syndrome - does going for a portfolio of small bets a good business strategy for you, or are you just using it as a front for a deeper, shiny object syndrome?
• Distraction - more bets can mean more distraction, stress and time/energy suck. Depends on ability to manage and context switch.

It’s too confusing. Give me a silver bullet.
-----------------
Sorry no silver bullets. Whatever advice you follow, understand that that advice represents only 0.00000000001% of reality, yet it’ll be expressed as if it represents 99.9999999999% of reality, as absolute truths. Classic survivorship bias here. So, a possible, less sexy way through this jungle that I imperfectly practice is:

• Ask about their context, back story.
• Discern if your situation is similar to others based on the non-exhaustive considerations listed.
• Cherry pick and intuit the best ones that suit your context.
• Experiment, collect data, analyse and reflect, iterate or pivot. Make decisions based on reality not ideals, predictions or advice.
• Whatever the bet size, it should be pulling you forward. Overall trajectory should be upwards. Indicators/metrics may differ.
• Don’t be dogmatic on any one approach. Strong opinions, loosely held. Always be open to even challenge yourself.
• Act accordingly.

I once wanted my products to earn $1,000,000/year

Now I'm happy with this:


I [tweeted](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1562801975967641601) this out as a reminder to myself. It's a tweet that's special and close to heart. A emotionally significant one, more than any viral tweet I had.

That life is made of memories not money.

Not achievements. Not any of my entrepreneur or indie hacking goals.

Yes, money, career goals and all are important things to me. They feed me, fulfil me, give me a sense of purpose in my work. But more and more I feel like they are just enablers for other even more important and urgent things. Like being present to my son, creating memories like this with him, together with my wife.

Sure, money, goals create memories too, but I doubt I will recall how my product got #1 on Product Hunt on my deathbed.

Agree, money does buy happiness to a certain extent, and money is needed for survival, and feeding the family is critical, but such memories are free to create.

*What's life's endgame, ultimately?*

Give me a ball pit with my son anytime, over a viral tweet, a grand exit, huge revenue.

"Build an audience" they say, but I realised the audience builds me too.

I'm no influencer (*cringe), but the influencer isn't just influencing but is also being influenced.

Because if I "double down on what works" and follow the validation loops to the extreme, I might end up becoming a person I don't want to be. I don't want to turn into [Nikocado Avocado](https://gurwinder.substack.com/p/the-perils-of-audience-capture).

But of course, the blowback can't be 100% bad. An audience might not always be a [prison](https://golifelog.com/posts/the-prison-of-an-audience-1659570063818) – yeah I'm revising my perspective.

It can be a vicious feedback loop where you lose your way. Or it can be a virtuous loop where it helps you grow.

So build an audience that will help you build your best self in public.

I WANT THAT.

That's the only way this game can be played in the long run. For me. I've been trying out a new way to be on Twitter.

I used to watch my likes, replies and follows like a day trader watching the stock market. But no longer. Most days now I don't even look. I just reply and enjoy the conversation.

I'm tweeting more off-the-cuff, inspired moments kind of tweets. And definitely way more shitposting. It's just way too much fun. If my audience are those who don't find my shitposts or jokes funny, maybe they shouldn't be part of my audience haha.

I also changed my [Twitter bio](https://golifelog.com/posts/im-an-indie-solopreneur-1659662395379) recently to reflect more authentically who I am, not just what I want to sell. That felt great. And guess what? I got a slight boost in followers and email newsletter subscribers. And I wasn't even watching.

The Universe always seems to work that inverse, perverse way. Stop wanting it, let it go, and it comes flooding back to you.

Lame. But that's reality.

Redirected it to plugins.carrd.co 😱 Crazy right? Who does that?! Nobody redirects the root domain you own to a subdomain you don't own

This is a tough question. Something I’ve been thinking hard about.

Thing is, I enjoy learning collectively, from others. Learn from the mistakes of others so that I don’t have to make the same mistake too. Lessons and insights might provide new opportunities for me. Above all, from learning collectively, we form connections, make friends, build relationships.

It’s hard to hate on learning from others.

Yet there’s downsides.

You form narrative and perspective of how things should be, where there might be none, or where it doesn’t apply to you. Success stories and the factors that led to it, might not be applicable to my context. Survivorship bias, recency bias, lack of data, hype – all contribute to a narrow perspective becoming all-defining view of the world. Like my post about how the indie maker playbook is dead. If we didn’t observe reality close enough, I would assume the playbook still works as influenced. Yet the meta kicker is, it’s from learning from someone else’s experience that I learned this new discovery.

It’s a tough balancing act for sure.

On one hand I would love to continue learning from others. On the other hand, I want to have independent thinking, be discerning and selective, and not be overly influenced.

HOW?

It takes a lot of effort basically. It takes energy to not accept a cool idea or hack at face value, and consider the nuance and do the research. Anything that’s either/not or polarized are likely too simplistic – those are easy to tell. When it appeals to what I already like, or suits my personality is when it gets harder to be discerning. Worst of all, if it comes from an idol or someone you look up to, or someone with power or authority. Being around people who practice mindful speech, nuanced thinking, healthy skepticism is also great reminders. Above all, test every idea through my reality, my context, before accepting it into my worldview.

A self-aware, mindful gatekeeping thoughts, perceptions and narratives going in and coming out from the mind is the best way perhaps, of being able to benefit from learning from others yet be independent thinker.

Reading Jakob Greenfeld's [blog post](https://jakobgreenfeld.com/money-ads) "Why the indie maker playbook is dead (or how I learned to spend money on ads)" got me seriously thinking if the indie methods I've been using are no longer as effective.

He talked about how indies were able to create a profitable business without running ads. To the point it became a sort of humble brag on Twitter. Most depend on a personal brand to capture attention, usually by building in public. Jakob also mentioned how the landscape had changed a lot since. You can't launch features on Product Hunt. Twitter algorithm had also had a sea change from social graph to interest-based – so only a very small percentage (less than 10%) see your tweets. The Indie Hackers community feels kind of dead, with too much marketing noise, less people building cool shit.

Is the indie maker playbook really dead?
How can we confirm?
If dead, what's next?

I love how Jakob put words to some hazy suspicions I've been nursing for some time. I've been feeling the efficacy of my indie hacking efforts undergo stagflation too. A 'dollar' of effort seems to 'buy' a lot less conversions and followers these days. Building in public feels harder if I'm only ~4000 following and I'm likely only reaching less than 400 followers. I'm getting only 1-2k impressions per tweet on average. This feels similar to what happened to Facebook. Many influencers found it hard to reach their audience after algo changes, and had to resort to ads (which of course was what the platform wants). Product Hunt seems rigged, full of fake account upvotes, and gone are the days when a solo indie can make it into the leaderboard easily. I don't find the IH forum engaging anymore as well.

Of course, this is just my one person's experience and hard to confirm if the playbook truly is dead from that. But the writing's on the wall, isn't it?

Either evolve and change the playbook, or die.

What's next then? Is it really ads as Jakob said? I've always hesitated using ads, but seems like it's worth a shot.

What else can I do?

Brainstorming a bit:

- Emails. Email newsletters had always been recommended as a hedge against deplatforming. You own your audience's emails yourself, and every email gets sent. No algo comes into between you and the email. Only issue is whether users open it, which you can influence.
- Shift efforts to new features that the platform is actively promoting. E.g. FB/IG Reels get more algo weight when just launched.
- Building in public on video? With the overall trend towards more and more video content on social media, I wonder if moving to Youtube, Tiktok and IG Reels would help...
- Platform diversification - not depending on a single distribution channel for your business. Maybe Twitter starts to fail, but if you're also on LinkedIn, Tiktok, Instagram, you're more resilient to platform shocks. I definitely need to consider diversifying my indie hacking beyond Twitter. I'm building on audience on LinkedIn as well, but that's solely for my consulting biz.
- Diverse portfolio of bets. Again, using diversity as a hedge against risk. Have more than one product. Have different types of products in different industries. Have different pricing models - subscription and one-time. Have different business models - products *and* services.

What else can we do? What would you add to this new indie hacker playbook?

How to autoplay videos on mobile on Carrd

Q: I have put those videos on the auto play but it's not doing that on mobile. But on the desktop, it's totally fine.
What should I do?

A: Allegedly this is a feature not a bug - to prevent unsolicited downloads over cellular networks at the user’s expense..

I did find this custom code which might work for autoplay on mobile - just switch the videoId and paste in an Embed element in Carrd.

Someone made this video walk-through on youtube. Just follow it step by step from 2:15 onwards:

https://youtu.be/Xc25RykxUrM

Custom code here:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/59267421

I tried it on Carrd and it works! Video will autoplay but muted:

Demo: https://autoplay.carrd.co
Template: https://carrd.co/build/b9e3f6cff9b52c6e

Please use this with care!

“I’m too busy / I don’t have time for this” is often a good enough reason for not doing something.

This seems plain simple enough, until we realise that when we say that often enough to ourselves, it morphs from an excuse to an illusion of truth. We start attributing not showing up to causes outside of our control… when it’s totally within our control. It’s only understandable. An excuse—a lie we chose to accept intentionally—causes cognitive dissonance. It literally hurts our mind. It’s easier and more comfortable to take it as some sort of subjective but false personal ‘truth’.

"Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth." – Joseph Goebbels

“I’m too busy / I have no time for this” is just code for “This isn’t my priority right now”.

No one is too busy to eat food, drink water, sleep or have sex.

We don’t forget to do these things because it’s important to us, it feels good. It’s a matter of survival! And survival is our top human instinct and priorities.

It’s all just a matter of priorities.

We’re never “too busy” to write daily, exercise, meditate. So that next time you catch yourself saying it, rephrase it into:

“I’m not too busy to work out. I’m intentionally choosing to not prioritize this right now.”

The key is the self acknowledge, the self awareness, the intentionality behind it. You’re being clear and transparent to yourself, your ego. “Not right now” is a legitimate reason, and you can always choose to revisit the priority again.

Priority > busy

Sleep really is the first mover. It shapes your moods. And your moods shape how you perceive the world, the work you do, and the quality of life you have.

I’ve been sleep deprived for a while. It all started when the baby arrived. Sleep biohacking was less about optimising sleep but about making sleep deprivation less difficult. It got worse lately when I was burned out, feeling low and lacked energy and motivation to keep up my sleep habits.

And once sleep as a foundation goes down, everything else falls.

It’s like a vicious feedback loop.

I don’t sleep enough, I feel low energy, I struggle through the day, I struggle to maintain good sleep hygiene, I sleep poorly, struggle even more tomorrow, rinse and repeat.

But thankfully somehow something shifted and I decided to get into a 8h sleep rhythm.

I’ve done about a week of 8h, and damned… it’s such a huge difference!

I feel rested, I feel better, I don’t struggle with just getting through the day, that gives me some bandwidth to better manage sleep, I sleep better, and struggle less tomorrow. My moods improved, I feel better, stronger. I exercise more. Work feels less stressful. I don’t feel under attack by the world all the time. I got more presence for my wife and son.

A virtuous loop now.

Onwards!