Jason Leow

My first tweet to hit 1M impressions!!! 🤯🤯🤯


A blow-by-blow breakdown of the [breakthrough tweet](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1675089127841071105):

- I read this [HN post](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076) before, and recently re-read it. Resonates every single time.
- Decided to screenshot it and save it in my Telegram Saved Messages as reference.
- The story kept running in my head, kept thinking about it.
- A QT by @levelsio about GDP and hunger for success made me associate it with this HN post, decided to reply it there. The reply got many likes.
- Didn't know what to tweet for the weekend, so thought that since this post keeps running through my head, I should just tweet it out and put a close to it. From experience, writing and publishing it helps to close the circuit, stranegly.
- Didn't try to be be clever or witty or controversial. Or anything at all. I literally just wrote what resonated with me, and shared it. It didn't even try to give any so-called "value".
- It started slow but after a few big accounts QTed it it started to take off. Seems like it resonated with them too.
- Realised I started a Twitter war on class struggle, even though I never intended it to be. I guess topics like that just trigger a lot of positive and negative responses, especially on Twitter. It's got a life of its own now, nothing I can do. 🤷‍♂️
- Many replies completely missed the point. Some took the analogy literally. My top favourite is probably "Why does the middle class only get ***one*** throw?!" Like, dude, it's metaphorical not literal. 😂
- Survivorship bias is rampant even though many disagree with the analogy, when they said they're not from rich family/poor immigrant/family lived with dirt floor/etc but they made it due to grit and agency and all the nice sounding words associated with "meritocracy". A minority of outliers doesn't mean the system as a whole is equitable. In fact, I'd argue that rags-to-riches stories have become weaponized to maintain status quo of wealth stratification.
- Another reading comprehension problem - the HN post is "dangerous" because it affirms a defeatist attitude in poor. Nowhere does it argue for that. It's just plainly states high probabilities of success from having easier access to resources.
- Decided to not reply every single reply or QT to maintain sanity and stay away from toxic/lame arguments.
- Built on the tweet and QTed something more useful and practical on Day 3 – how [indie hackers can get more throws](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1675818408385052673).
- Got maybe new 200-300 followers from this. I would normally be excited af, but most replies are from waaay outside my Twitter circle so unsure if the followers are even folks I would normally even *want* to chat with...
- First time seeing my tweet keep going even after 48h. It went out on 1 July, and 3 days later it's still going strong. Past 100k impressions after Day 1, >700k impressions after Day 2, and now 1M after Day 3.
- No fancy tips or tricks to share, no $999 Twitter course to pitch here. As with most viral content, you can never reproduce it. Only thing I will say that this affirms:
> Twitter hack: Spill your heart out and don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks. – [@LaddLaddLadd](https://twitter.com/LaddLaddLadd/status/1675235283036504070)

And "Twitter is dead", they say. 😂

It's been 4 months since I first crossed the $1,000 monthly revenue milestone. Initially I thought it was a one-off fluke, even though revenue had been climbing slowly but steadily close to the $1k mark in the past months leading up to the month of March.


That's the thing about one-time payments as revenue – you'll never know what you're going to get. There's always a nagging doubt that this month could be the fateful month where you didn't acquire any new customers, and your sandcastle comes crashing down. It's weird when you contrast that doubt with one-time revenue with the optimism of monthly recurring revenue – by itself, customers can still churn, but yet we tend to *expect* MRR to be more reliable and steady.

When can we start to feel more assured in our hot seats and say with confidence that we passed a revenue milestone, when your business model is mainly one-time payments?

I don't know.

But sometimes I like to think that this "I don't know" is a good thing. That I don't take things for granted and start feeling complacent. Because accepting that you can win big with asymmetric bets that will take off like a rocket, also means you might lose it all in an asymmetric black swan event that rug pulls everything you built up under your feet.

The bold might thrive sometimes but only the paranoid survives.

The trick seems to be knowing the best time to be either.

There's this great Hacker News analogy about how [entrepreneurship is like the carnival](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076#):

> Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on. Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work. Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it.

[I'm that middle class kid](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1675089127841071105). I had my one throw, but now trying to afford more tickets for more throws, through things like freelancing.

All the while just hoping I'll never have to go back to working at the carnival.

The funny thing with being middle class is that our situation sets us up to not even try. We're neither here nor there. Comfortable enough to fear losing it all, not poor enough to want to risk it all. So doing this whole indie hacking thing so far feels like swimming against that narrative current.

But try I will. I think us indies can get more throws in by making it as cheap to do so:

- bootstrap and keep infra costs low
- pre-launch to minimize building wrong things
- make small bets, commit to big bets after better data
- move and live in low cost location
- freelance at the side to extend the runway indefinitely
- spouse works in a job while another tries a business

The carnival analogy ain't watertight, but the best part about it is:

Guess what the indie hacker's favourite ride at the carnival is? The rollercoaster.

LOL. #dadjokes

My new intention for every week in July:

Say "F**k it I'm doing it" at least once a week.

Why?

I'm a chronic over-thinker. I think it there's benefits to thinking deeply, especially in an era of fake news, misinformation and media manipulation. But a virtue brought to extremes becomes a vice. Or when in the wrong context.

The wrong context here is this whole indie hacking thing.

Success here depend much on a bias to action. To the point of being almost foolhardy. So the instinctual reflex must be to act. But my first instinct is to think. Deeply. Take a bit more time.

Over time, the missed opportunities accumulate. Deep thinking becomes passivity. Passivity turns into procrastination.

I think myself out of a business, basically.

Not good.

Damn it, it's like I'm just not built for indie hacking. So much to unlearn and let go of. So many of my existing strengths are actually weaknesses.

I need to be hungrier. Like on an instinctual level. If one was truly hungry, they grab whatever, whenever. Grab first think later.

So... for July, that's what I'll do.

Act first, worry later.
Ship more, think less.

At the start of my birthday month, I talked about how I missed that calm and centered self-assuredness, how I want to come back to myself. No more feeling disembodied. Back to mindful presence. Mind and body aligned. To truly live, and to celebrate this gift of yet another year of being alive and well.

I had a super busy month juggling consulting and indie hacking, but I think I lived out the month aligned to those broad intentions.

I felt more centered for sure. None of the anxiety and stress that plagued me for the past few months. It's wild that it could be all due to a [chemical imbalance!](https://golifelog.com/posts/mind-that-magnesium-1685414275146)! Sometimes I don't want to believe it's just so simple, but more and more I'm convinced it is, and could be the hidden cause of all my past depressive episodes. It could all just be conjecture, but it feels relieving to know. That all along maybe my mind's not as broken as I thought.

If anything, the possibility offered through that realisation is probably the best birthday gift I could get.

Onwards to July!

---

📈 Current MRR (all from Lifelog): $119 (↑$10)
💵 One-off revenue: $928 (↓$46)
💰 Total revenue: $1047 (↓$36) (4th month in a row above $1k!) 🎉🎉🎉🎉
💸 Total costs = $170
⚖️ Total profit: $877 (↓$16) (excl. consulting revenue)
💎 Profit margin: 84%

Example: https://writingemoji.com/#blog

I started Side Project Weekends in March, so that's about 3 months ago. In that time, I built these new things for Lifelog:

- hover md preview
- esc key shortcut to md preview
- rich text editor
- preview button
- typing sounds
- saving status
- screenshot
- scheduled backups
- heroku stack update

3 months, 9 features. Average 3 ships per month.

Which kinda makes sense, because I would ship a bunch of features, somethings break or create more bugs, and then I would spend week #4 fixing them.

I hit a snag in beginning of June when I tried to [over-analyze what I should build next](https://golifelog.com/posts/not-all-features-are-created-equal-1685873032170), but since switching back to ["ship more, think less" mode](https://golifelog.com/posts/momentum-driven-development-1687606035650), I feel the momentum back again.

Not all the features were mission-critical features. Some were for fun, like the typing sounds. Some were helpful, like the rich text editor. Others were invisible, like the backend infrastructure updates and backups. I'm painfully aware that there's many high-value features that Lifelog folks had requested and waiting for, but I had to make the tough decision to trade off and balance user needs and developer needs. The idea is: Better to keep building what keeps the momentum going than building what might stall the building. ***Some progress is better than no progress.*** The hope is that eventually I'll get to the high value features (like a WYSIWYG editor).

Overall, I'm satisfied with the progress. More can be done, better features can be built, but maintaining the momentum is key at this stage.

First ever PPP purchase!

I want to make a new product, but I'm struggling with ideas on what to build.

Yet when I turn my head and look at my Carrd plugins project, I am—on the contrary—overwhelmed with ideas for new plugins. The funny thing is, I'm not even looking out for them. People literally hand them to me on a silver platter, sometimes directly (like "Hey have you thought of making this...?"), mostly indirectly (like "I got this problem, any help?").

The contrast couldn't be more stark.

That's the biggest benefit of being plugged into a community. If you're happy solving problems for the community, getting new ideas is easy peasy.

Like how I just launched a randomizer Carrd plugin today. The conversation that seeded this literally happened a week ago. A friend and fellow Carrd maker Mark Bowley asked me about it, I saw the opportunity right away, and built a MVP the next day. And today, I launched the plugin.


Maybe I should stop trying to think of something new to build from a vacuum, but instead find a new community I'm interested to be part of, and solve problems *for them*.

No need to think of strategies, do market research, speak to potential customers, think about technology trends.

Just be immersed in a community, be part of it and try to be helpful.

That's it.