Feel free to email me with suggestions! courtland@indiehackers.com
EDIT: I should say that the navigation is a work in progress, and the interviews/podcast/etc will eventually be easier to get to.
EDIT: I should say that the navigation is a work in progress, and the interviews/podcast/etc will eventually be easier to get to.
- Blog : this was the single most valuable part of IH in the early days. Your struggles to grow, make money were so relatable. While the numbers might not have given you an idea of how wonderful the blog was, I'm sure people who've read it feel the same. Please consider restarting the blog. Share your struggles, what metrics you track, what goals if any Stripe expects you to hit, life post acquisition, why you make certain decisions (pushing for signups which IMO is a terrible idea) etc. The blog can be a great way to get feedback before making changes.
- Don't push for signups. Someone mentioned that signing up was required to read the transcripts. This pushes people away. While the numbers might be great, moving away from a no BS design rarely works long term. It's good that you reverted that signup requirement.
- Community participation : You and your brother's participation is extremely valuable but I've noticed that you guys are taking a back seat and letting the community grow organically. In theory it sounds good, but I urge you to reconsider. The community is not large enough to be self sustaining.
- Development speed : Why do you take sooo long to make simple changes like changing the navbar? If there's a reason, I'd love to learn why this is so. Please move a little faster. All the changes like badges, changing the podcasts page. interviews page, adding Stripe verified revenue actually make the experience worse. The interview and podcast pages are unusable now with so much going on. It's so cluttered. The old one was way better. The new design has actively pushed me away from the interviews and podcasts. Focus on building features that actually make a meaningful difference : DMs, software to organize meetups etc.
- Speed : the IH site is slow and full of junk tracking. Please make it work faster. SPAs are great in theory but are almost always worse than server rendered pages.
- I enjoyed blogging about IH, but it was also quite time-consuming, and not that many people found it interesting relative to the other stories we feature on the site. So it was just a tradeoff on what's the most effective way to spend my time. That said, I do have a "product page" for Indie Hackers where I will occasionally share what's going on: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/indie-hackers. You can find similar pages for other companies or create one of your own here: https://www.indiehackers.com/products
- Pushing for signups was an experiment that I'm happy to have reverted. Appreciate the feedback I got about it from multiple sources.
- Channing and I spend lots of time on the forum. We do a lot of moderation, emailing people individually, encouraging and suggesting posts, and making comments ourselves. Much of this work is invisible. But I do think that as the forum continues to grow (which it hasn't stopped doing), we'll become a bit harder to find, like two needles in an ever-expanding haystack.
- I'd like to move waaaay faster. It's tough. I do feel slow, especially during the last couple of months. (Lesson learned: say no to giving talks, say no to most meetings, respond to fewer emails.) There's also just a ton of work involved in running all the different parts of IH. There's a lot to prioritize, including numerous issues at any given time where a solid case could be made that "this is the most important thing." We're hiring a couple of engineers, so in the long run this should improve.
- Aware of speed issues. Will improve over time. Again, one of the many things to juggle prioritizing. MLK once said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I'd like to think the arc of Indie Hackers' development is long, but it bends toward a better, faster site.
Thanks for the feedback!
This. How often I post a comment, want to edit it, and when I visit a link, the comment is simply missing. I need to go to my profile page to see it.
No idea if that will ever change (or if it has), but I’d imagine there are other people like me who enjoy building things and talking about the process, but are not interested in sharing such personal details.
I have the sense some founders are inflating those figures but I could be wrong.
I don’t see what could be the motivation behind lying?
If one did hoping to catch investors eyes, investors would quickly uncover the lie, as they definitely do check!