Jason Leow

Saw this tweet by [@visakanv](https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1678745111411212290):

> "One day, while doing nothing particularly out of the ordinary, because of natural laws he was completely powerless to understand or intuit, he was instantly killed in a horrifying way by forces vastly in excess of anything he was ever designed to experience, for no reason, to no ones particular surprise or upset. In this we are more like him than different"


This resonated, because that's so... much like how we win or fail. Or in life in general.

We're more like him than different.

One day, just launching my next product, and then it goes viral. We think it's due to something we did. We happily pat ourselves on the back. But there's natural laws beyond our understanding, network effects at play we never observed. Somehow we make it through.

And if we try reproducing the same success at another time, it didn't work.

The same for failures. We think we wouldn't have failed if we didn't do something. Yet it succeeds the next time we repeat the same something.

There's free will, and there isn't.
We have agency, and we don't.

We're more like him than different.

Reading a lot of:

https://brainstorms.substack.com/archive
https://www.reddit.com/r/Startup_Ideas/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Business_Ideas/
https://killedbygoogle.com/

Saw this tweet from [@thematt_ross](https://twitter.com/thematt_ross/status/1676351995920150528) and it got me thinking about where good ideas come from:

> The origin of good ideas according to @tferriss:
>
> 1. What are the nerds doing at night and on weekends
>
> 2. What are rich people doing now, that everyone might be doing 10 years from now?
>
> 3. Where are people cobbling together awkward solutions.

Love those tricks. It's a good to see what early adopters like nerds, and rich people who can afford to be ahead of trends are doing, There's a higher chance that something they are doing will catch on and go mainstream as it gets more affordable with high volume.

A good example is private chaffaeurs. Rich folks had that all along. Then Uber came along and with a mix of tech, demand and excess capacity of idle cars, they made private drivers mainstream and now everyone can have one at the drop of a few clicks. The personal secretary to virtual assistant movement is also another example.

Similarly for awkward solutions. Workarounds are the best, especially if people are paying to awkwardly mash together a few paid services to do it. It shows validated demand, a willingness to pay, and a desire for a better all-in-one package.

It's about watching people with the specialised skills or the wealth to do things that normies can't do.

***What other ways can we come up with good ideas?***

- **Listen to what people complain about**, especially for products and services. Read reviews of popular apps/websites, find a recurring complaint or a 1 star review, and make an app that addresses that specific complaint in your website's copy. Try finding them on Google Reviews, Amazon, or any marketplace.
- **Unbundle features.** This is opposite of the bundling idea from "cobbling together awkward solutions". Look at Craiglist, eBay, Etsy, Amazon, classified ads on your newspapers, bulletins, aggregated feeds on any topic, and you'll find a sub-niche that you could build something for.
 
 
- **Find a community**, participate in it, and make something that helps them. The riches are in the niches, they say! Go to Reddit, find a community that you're interested in, scroll through the top posts and replies, see what they comment on, complain about (see #1) or give ideas on. Or just read through subreddits like [r/Business_Ideas](https://www.reddit.com/r/Business_Ideas/) or [r/Startup_Ideas](https://www.reddit.com/r/Startup_Ideas/) to see which idea resonates with you and aligns to your skillset.
- Similar to the point about niche communities, **serious hobbies** are great untapped opportunities. Someone who's serious about a hobby wouldn't mind paying good money for solutions that help them enjoy it more. Craft, sports, anything.
- **Scratch your own itch.** Observe your daily life and work. Find moments of friction or frustration. A deep painpoint that perhaps a few other peers similar to you might share. Build something for yourself. Then share it, get people pay for early access, and iterate from there.
- Look through **failed tech startups**. Revive one that resonates. In most likelihood, that startup had an app or product that serves hundreds or thousands of users. That might not had been enough for the startup to survive, but it would for you, a solo indie dev. Google is infmaous for doing this. Many in their [Google graveyard](https://killedbygoogle.com/) are known to make hundreds of millions of revenue. But by the billion-dollar benchmarks of a trillion-dollar valued company, hundreds of millions is considered too small to pursue. But great for us indies! I still miss Google Reader btw.

*So how do you come up with good ideas?*

> If you're a ship lost at sea, look for the lighthouse of curiosity. – [@itswillmyles](https://twitter.com/itswillmyles/status/1677993411381436417)

Okay then. So what am I curious about these days? What am I keen to learn more about? What am I curious enough to want to go build something?

Some broad niches:
- Serverless functions
- Telegram bots
- SaaS built entirely on plain vanilla Javascript
- Sleep management
- SaaS swag
- Twitter tools (risky, yes I know)

Some specific ideas:
- Build a tool for sleep, e.g. sleep cycle calculator, sleep directory of tools and resources
- Telegram bot for anything, e.g. a bot to calculate streaks, or post recurring messages on my behalf
- A Nuxt.js SaaS boilerplate with associated backend tech stack (Postgres, Heroku) for myself to be able to quickly launch products
- A plain vanilla Javascript tech stack for SaaS
- A HTML-CSS-JS boilerplate for myself to quickly launch directory sites for any niche
- A Twitter long form tweet preview formatter for seeing where the "see more' breakpoint is
- Other Twitter tools like tweet backups, animated visuals/media/charts
- A Google Sheet backup feature for Lifelog where each post is automatically added to a Google Sheet (if you so choose to)

Curiosity-driven development combined with the F it mindset of launching would be a lethal combo.

Watch out.

I think I've been in exploitation mode for so long, I 'forgot' how to be in exploration mode. Maybe that's why I'm stuck.

I just need to stop exploiting for a while, and ease back in to exploration.

It's kinda like if you're in a job, you're working really hard to meet deadlines before going on leave for vacation. Then on Day 1 of vacation, you find you can't relax. You're still think about that email you sent to Meredith. You're tempted to check your inbox. You check your messages in case your boss sends you any messages. And you ask what the hell is wrong with you. And then by the time you have to go home, you feel like you've only started feeling relaxed and settled into vacay mode.

Maybe it's not some huge mental block but just a matter of taking time to transit.

Stop pushing on my current projects. Stop aggressively marketing. Take it easy a bit on the pedal. And start looking around at the scenery. Scroll through feeds, take time to check out what other indies are doing. Seek out sources of inspiration elsewhere, in real life. Be on the lookout, sniffing for new opportunities, things that make me curious. Read. Tinker with fun lame projects.

That's it.

Explore, not exploit.

Thinking through how I'm [stuck](https://golifelog.com/posts/stuck-1688696682065), I think the best way to describe it is by borrowing a similar concept in writing:

Writer's block.

> Writer’s block is a phenomenon experienced by writers that is best described as an overwhelming feeling of being stuck in the writing process without the ability to move forward and write anything new. – [Source: Masterclass](https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-writers-block-how-to-overcome-writers-block-with-step-by-step-guide-and-writing-exercises)

It's the best thing I've found to describe how my 'stuckness' feels like.

IMHO, writer's block usually arises from:

- Fear/anxiety, of not being perfect, of opinions of others, of contraints/rules
- General lack of inspiration, a dry of creativity
- Apathy, fatigue, from working or writing too much
- Feeling disengaged from the writing because it doesn't interest/align

Perhaps from the recognition that this is some form 'hacker's' block comes possible solutions. There's well-known ways to overcome writer's block, so I could try out the same for my own creative block?

The same Masterclass article offered some solutions, so adapting it to my hacker's block:

- Take a break. I've been charging forward so the past few months on plugins. I'm in a do-do-do mode. Perhaps it's time to take a step back, top up my creative tank by seeking out inspiration.
- Do something thoroughly mundane. Apparently monotonous tasks like cleaning, showering, gardening, walking, are great for unblocking because the brain goes into autopilot and the creative part can daydream. Maybe I can try this together with taking a break. Just go for walks, swim in the sea, hang out with my kid, not worry about work.
- Jump ahead by making new products without worrying about whether it will bring in revenue or help me with my goals. Just create first, and maybe it will cascade into something else. Ready, shoot, aim.
- Do something else, act on an idea that I've always wanted to make but never had time for, revenue-generating be damned. It could be something fun, something pro bono, something for social good. Anything. Just like point #2, it can bring about tangential opportunities or discoveries.
- Create a deadline. Artificial time pressure can bring about a focus. I always felt that that's the true secret to the 12 startups in 12 months challenge. The focus within a small timebox is the real benefit, the forcing function we need to force ourselves to not over-analyze and just ship things.
- I always enjoyed freewriting. Just writing without pause in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way, not second-guessing myself or concerned about proper words and grammar is really freeing. What's the equivalent of freewriting for indie hacking? Just sitting down, and make the first thing that comes to mind. Don't care about anything else. Just do first, talk later.

*What else do you do to unblock yourself creatively?*

Recently read this post by [Paul Graham](http://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html):

> People show much more originality in solving problems than in deciding which problems to solve. Even the smartest can be surprisingly conservative when deciding what to work on. People who'd never dream of being fashionable in any other way get sucked into working on fashionable problems.
>
> One reason people are more conservative when choosing problems than solutions is that problems are bigger bets. A problem could occupy you for years, while exploring a solution might only take days. But even so I think most people are too conservative. They're not merely responding to risk, but to fashion as well. Unfashionable problems are undervalued.
>
> ......Working on an unfashionable problem can be very pleasing. There's no hype or hurry. Opportunists and critics are both occupied elsewhere. The existing work often has an old-school solidity. And there's a satisfying sense of economy in cultivating ideas that would otherwise be wasted.

It's intriguing. Got me thinking: What's an unfashionable problem? Especially for indie hackers?

That's easy. Anything that's not AI right now. 😂

Ok but a few spaces I see from other indie folks:

- @poppacalypse creating a online ordering app for F&Bs. Not one-time payments, not MRR, but a % cut from each payment.
- @DmytroKrasun making a screenshot tool for other makers and startups
- @greglim81 writing ebook and courses on coding on Amazon
- @yongfook creating automated design software for developers
- @jakobgreenfeld doing service on cold email
- @Kamphey as the Google Sheets guy
- @searchbound selling onions on the internet, and his job board for ranches
- @dannypostmaa selling component templates for Figma, Webflow, Tailwind (not his AI apps)

The more I listed, the more I realised, that's what most indies are doing, isn't it? Unfashionable problems.

Just problems and opportunities that opened up to them at the right time, right place. Problems that they were perhaps uniquely positioned to solved. Opportunities that maybe only they saw.

Not what's fashionable, not what everyone sees.

What's *my* unfashionable problem? 🤔🤔🤔

A few days ago I wrote to think through about the [hard truths about my Carrd plugins project](https://golifelog.com/posts/hard-truths-about-my-carrd-plugins-project-1688521643237). It didn't feel good for sure. That's the thing about writing. It makes me confront what I was only vaguely aware into a full-on contact sport.

Almost overnight the project went from favoured child to now yet another 'failure'.

Okay maybe I'm being overly dramatic here. It's not a *complete* failure. More like not performing to what I need, which is $5k/m ramen profitability. It's a project I will still keep building and running. But it definitely failed in helping me hit my goal.

Despite all the caveats, the proceeding days after writing it out, I felt low, like I was nursing my wounds. I felt like I failed yet again. Did I shoot myself on the foot again by thinking too much, or is this a hard truth, reality-confronting moment?

I think it's the latter.

Fact is, it's taking too long to get the results it showed so far. Like it or not, that's what's real and true, my feelings about it be damned.

Okay so what's next?

Truth is, I'm stuck. Okay I said it.

I've been stuck for some time now, actually. And maybe I need to write about this too now, to confront it.

I have no new ideas. I feel like I'm inside some invisible bubble barrier. I know I want out, but this barrier is walling me in. Somehow. I don't know how, I don't know what, I don't know why. All I know: It's there. I'm still stuck, even though I *want* so badly to get unstuck.

It's not just an intellectual thing, like lacking ideas (which is true but not the complete picture). It also feels like a feeling thing. Like there's a certain fear perhaps, hesitation or even procrastination.

What do you do when stuck?

- Take a physical and mental break?
- Seek out creative inspiration?
- Explore what makes you curious?
- Write more?
- Talk to your therapist?

*What else?*

There's this poignant scene from The Office US where Andy was saying, “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.”


Things ain't easy on my indie journey right now. The past few years had been pure struggle. All these [hard truths](https://golifelog.com/posts/hard-truths-about-my-carrd-plugins-project-1688521643237) are hard sh*t to deal with.

All tough questions.
No easy answers.
No handholding here.

All the while looking on either side at others getting through it with ease.

Sometimes you feel like rage quitting.

But somewhere in the future, a future me will be looking at this moment now and saying what Andy said.

These are the good old days.

That I will reminiscience at my struggles and look upon them fondly.
That I will re-read the writings here, and wonder what the hell was I thinking.
That I will pine to live this day, this moment, all over again, if I had the chance.

These are the good old days. And I've not left them yet.

I can still act now, to not miss them.

2nd PPP sale!

In the past 9 months since I went hard on Carrd plugins project, I've achieved these:

- In at least 12 distribution channels, not counting the occasional guest blog post
- 19 new plugins launched, more if I count those not published
- tripled my revenue, and looking to hit $1k from my plugins revenue alone in the next few months
- took over first page (7 out of 10) of Google for "carrd plugins"
- built up street cred/personal brand as the Carrd plugins guy

But there's some hard truths I need to face:

- **Small market:** Plugins continue to sell, but not at a volume that can help me reach my goal of $5k/m soon. Ahrefs tell me that the search volume is just 30 (i.e. average monthly number of searches for “carrd plugins” on Google in the US alone). Google Trends can’t even show me any data. So even while my SEO game is great, the search volume—and by inference, the market size—is just too small perhaps. By “small”, that’s of course with reference to my $5k/m revenue goal. After 9 months being on so many channels, realistically speaking, the most I can expect from this project is a slow and steady growth in small increments. Not reason to drop it, but not a good reason to focus on and keep hammering at it either. I need to try new bets where the market size and/or revenue steps are bigger.

- **Little to no moat:** The competitive advantage, or moat, around this project isn't huge. All it takes is someone who some dev experience to come in and start making plugins to compete. The dev don't even need to be very experienced or senior. Over the past few years, there's always been devs coming in and dropping out. But as Carrd gets more popular, I'm sure more will come. Who knows, maybe even copycats.

- **Unsustainble community contribution:** The current way of actively contributing to communities might not sustainable in the long run. It does take time and effort. Right now it's still manageable. But as the user base grows, there's more questions being asked. And there's a bit of a Schrodinger's cat paradox going on here too – my mere presence actively answering questions is bringing in more people, leading to more questions, and vicious cycle. I might have to start looking for more scalable ways, e.g. trying out ads, on Google, Facebook, Reddit.

- **Platform risk:** This is probably a remote chance, and the Carrd folks are super nice, but I'm still building on someone else's platform. Like how in March this year I had one such [black swan event for my mega navbar plugin](https://golifelog.com/posts/platform-risk-on-carrd-1678417360475). That in itself is a great reason to explore products that does not depend on a platform for it's existence. An example could be creating plugins for any website instead of just one platform.

I love this project, I love the product, the founders, the community, and I want to keep building plugins for it. But it's dawning on me that I cannot put all my chips in this project now.

I got to keep shipping new projects, to land on something else that has a bigger market, more revenue, and sustainable.

The time is now.