Dominik Sobe doubts himself, has no takers at launch, and then suddenly gets his first three customers

I don't want to be whiny, but being an indie hacker is hard. Especially if you're a solo founder who hasn't yet found their keystone project. It is a lot of trial and error. A lot of falling down and getting up again.

Yep, no two ways about it. This type of work takes a certain type of person. But while it's not always smooth sailing for @dominikSo, he did just get his first three customers for StorePreviewer in the span of a weekend. 🙌

🤓 Learnings:

• Writing can be therapeutic.
• Indie hacking is generally not glamorous.
• If you feel down, you're probably not alone.

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Anyway, back to Dominik:

As I was approaching the finish line for v2 of StorePreviewer, I started to doubt everything. Nothing made sense anymore. And I was overworking myself.

You see, you read a lot of success stories on Twitter. It's typical survivorship bias. "I made $10K in two days — here's how." There's nothing wrong with these posts. On the contrary, they're often encouraging. But they're not the norm.

I sometimes sat in front of one error message for two days. No $10K. Just 48 hours of trying to debug a memory leak. People rarely talk about that.

I don't know why, but a few months back, I just felt like I needed to write my feelings down. Here's what I wrote:

"I am kind of sad.
I am tired.
I am not motivated.
It’s 2:51AM.
I am almost done building v2.
Will anyone ever use it?
It feels complex — will it break?
Did I spend too much time on it?
At least I learned a lot.
It’s almost December.
There are a lot of things that need to be done for university soon.
Will I have time to finally finish v2?
Would love to have $1K MRR.
Saw a lot of success stories on Twitter — got more demotivated.
Read some fail lessons on Failory — that helped a bit.
Saw much easier and probably more profitable ideas on Product Hunt.
Someone launched a product with an awful design, yet he did launch, and even charged a high price.
Is my pricing enough? Too high? Too low?
How will people like it?
Will it be ever used by more than two people?
I got depressed.
I started writing this.
Good night."

In the end, I did finish it. I reached out to 80 emails that I collected from my first launch — people who were theoretically interested — and nothing happened. It didn't feel good.

But two weeks later, one of the companies I emailed signed up for an annual plan. Then I went to sleep and someone signed up who wasn't even on my email list. Then I went to sleep again and woke up to my third customer. All in the course of a weekend.

It felt terrific. It made me feel more confident. I still have a long way to go. And it isn't easy. But the only way to fail is to stop, cheesy as that may sound.

🍪 Food for thought:

• Dominik told me that he's been trying to write more recently because it provides him with clarity and understanding. I personally journal for a few minutes every morning (well, most mornings 😉) for the same reason. I've learned a lot about myself and I've made really positive changes to my life thanks to this practice. If you've never tried stream-of-consciousness writing, it could be worth a shot. What practices work for you?

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