Also arent most products just useless things relying on other ecosystems?
I've found great insight through following actual marketers though, such as Jordan Platten on YouTube who builds a social media marketing agency from scratch via cold calls [1]. Now this is, in my opinion, what programmers should be doing, not learning the latest new Javascript framework to make their MVP just right.
On Reddit, there is similarly /r/sweatystartup [2] which also has a website with more podcasts and articles [3]. But the gist is that it's more about boring industries like lawn care, plumbing etc than shiny tech businesses. One of the best things you can do is to take a look at [2] and call 100 local businesses in a niche you pick (lawn care, etc), ask them about their problems then either start a competing service or start creating software for that niche. Nick Huber, the guy who started the subreddit and site, did both and has a ~$25 million business now.
The above is basically what I'm doing, I'm looking into making software for the boring industry of social media marketing.
[0] https://podcasts.google.com/search/Indie%20Hackers
[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdO5xp5occOzfVGNbR_WZ...
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/sweatystartup/comments/dmgy0f/usefu...
Nowadays, people start learning React and useEffect hooks as their "first programming" experience. That is simply insane to me.
What this causes, is a fundamental inability to understand what a computer is actually capable of. Which in turn means a lot of hackers are actually not innovating on technology and using tech in new ways to solve problems in the real world. "What can technology unlock" is a powerful question. One that is not asked nearly enough in my opinion and that's where the riches lie in tech.
Our contribution to the world is not marketing, and while we still need to do some of it, there is still a lot of money to be made by unlocking things for people by using technology in novel ways and for that one needs to actually step out of the herd mentality once in a while.
So instead of Jordan Platten I would recommend Andreas Kling [0] instead. Imagine if you could build a custom OS for an industry which needs to use only certain programs and use low powered devices? That is how you can make tremendous wealth both in the financial sense but also in the actual "value creation" sense.
So, no I would not recommend Andreas, gifted as he is, to anyone who is an indie hacker. His work is almost purely an intellectual exploration of the problem space of operating systems, something which has next to no business value these days when Windows, macOS and Linux exists. The riches (if you mean material riches and not intellectual riches) in tech exist by selling and marketing the product, not by the technological decisions of building the product itself. There is a reason YC tells you to create an MVP quickly with whatever technologies you know and to iterate on it after customer feedback.
For many indie hackers, who are not the next Elon building rockets in some novel way and who just want to make $10k a month, copying and improving on an existing product is good enough.
In short:
> Entrepreneurship embodies this romanticized vision of Shark Tank and Tech Crunch and newness and innovation when in reality most people need to simplify the way they think. I judged a pitch competition at UGA a few months ago, and all I could think of with every pitch was the need to simplify. People want to complicate things, do something revolutionary, and chase glory and the lure of entrepreneurship, but that doesn’t mean they have a real shot at being successful.
> When you take away the sex appeal and fun, you come into a more rational and less saturated market. There’s a shortage of people doing things that aren’t fun, that’s why plumbers make more than most people with liberal arts degrees.
> With sweaty businesses, all you need to do is answer the phone and do what you say you’re going to do and you can make a lot of money. Innovation is sexy and fun, but the way people make real money is by copying others. My first business was just a Frankenstein take on the current offerings and competitors I saw around me.
> The businesses I love aren’t fun. People are told to chase their passion, but the entrepreneurs that make money are chasing customers. The market doesn’t care about your passion, you need to provide real value in something that customers want.
Basically niches are a bit like Mandelbrot sets. If you study then you will see more creases and patterns at the edges.
The main note is that you may not know what people want, and I've been around long enough to know people that advertise themselves as knowing what people want are usually full of shit.
tbf to TFA, it is exactly about how one could be one of those survivors if one did those totally not simple things. It is a crash course survival guide for a build-in-public solopreneur, if you will.