Focus is king, do not waste it
Recently with my Ex cofounders, we were analyzing the reasons behind the failures of our attempt to build 12 startups in 12 months ala @levelsio.
In the beginning, I thought it was a matter of better validating ideas, being more aggressive with the marketing efforts, solving our problems, or even doing things that were more financially profitable for a bootstrapper (e.g building less B2C and more B2B businesses).
Although all these seem very important learnings and things to consider when trying to build a successful business. One of my cofounders pointed out a much bigger mistake that we made:
Losing FOCUS
Yes, focus.
Focus is a very valuable asset, I would recommend trying not to waste it. We did.
Making such a mistake kept me thinking about the implications of recommending this type of challenge to new indie hackers and bootstrappers.
When working on the 12x12 challenge we ended up burned out, tired, and didn't achieve the grand goal of building a successful business. Yes, we learned a ton, but, nowadays I would've rather spent those 12 months iterating over one single problem/market than building random ideas.
I think it was @yongfook the one that hit a similar path while doing his 12S-12M challenge, he was trying a bunch of random things and not feeling very well about it, so he course-corrected in the middle of the challenge and in part due to this ended up building Bannerbear (his current successful business).
When you have focus, you will still learn a ton, but also those learnings will compound between them, because apart from learning: to launch, marketing, sales, product development, etc. You'll be learning about the problem and the user and the progress such user wants in his/her life. So you will start approaching things differently and smarter if you keep iterating, your mind will start finding more creative solutions to the same problem and in the end, you will need only consistency to make things work.
The first approach feels more like the shotgun strategy, this idea of throwing a lot of things into the wall to see what sticks. While doing the challenge around a common topic feels more like the scientific method. Testing different hypotheses each month, learning and refining until you find a working solution.
For me building a business is not about testing random ideas anymore, is about trying to solve a problem that people are willing to pay to have solved.
Do not get me wrong, you should do that as fast as you can, I'm not advocating for spending a year building a product, what I'm trying to explain is that 12x12 will distract you a lot if you pick different things each month and at the end, one month would not be enough to know if your idea will work or not. Better to be laser-focused and capitalize on your mistakes every month.
So when it comes to advising indie hackers and bootstrappers, I'd recommend doing something like 12 startups in 12 months but around the same problem. This way you will learn and test things fast, but always around a common topic/problem/market. I'm sure doing things this way will increase the chances of success.
What do you think?
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I think this post is partially off base re: 12x12 challenge is not a good use of your time to test projects/ideas.
I DO, however, 100% agree with "focus being king".
Where I think most people fail in their 12x12 approach is their belief that each project is supposed to be some epic startup that needs months of building but crammed into 4 weeks. And that they have to complete 12 projects.
The primary point of a 12x12 challenge is to test ideas and see if they gain traction (ie are valid) as quickly as possible. You aren't meant to build out a full functioning final product for the world to use. You should be focusing on building the smallest possible thing that functions just well enough to test a hypothesis (ie Most Viable Product). YOu throw this "test" into the wild, show it to some potential users and see if they will use and if others begin finding it. If you gain traction, you devote more time and focus to this, if not you leave it alone (maybe it will organically grow and you can come back to it) and move on to the next hypothesis/project.
It's a fail fast, fail often game. The chances are that your first idea will NOT be successful. But it COULD be, so you devote your focus on this idea and forget the other 11.
Remember, 12x12 is simply a numbers game. It could just as easily be called "shotgun approach to building a startup" or "As many shots as it takes in as much time as it takes" but Pieter Levels thought (correctly) that the blog post "12 startups in 12 months" was catchier and would draw more views. So that's what we have now.
As a numbers game, you have to realize your chance of successfully building a profitable startup that earns you 6-figure income is probably 1 in 100. That being said, we don't know which shot will be the golden goose: Will it be shot #1, #45, #100, #1000? The goal of a 12x12 challenge is to get all of our ideas out there so we find that 1 as quickly as possible. Not so we arbitrarily build 12 things to "learn".
For anyone who hasn't actually watched/listened to Pieter Levels, both here on IH AND all his youtube and other podcast appearances, I would strongly recommend doing so. He gives great advice and incite into why he did the 12x12 and how long it took him to build a successful startup. hint: it wasn't 12 months and it wasn't #7.
Also, I would highly recommend listening to @csallen presentations for Micro Conf or his podcast on YC. He also gives great advice on why trying more projects and failing fast are solid attempts at finding success.
All of this being said, I strongly agree FOCUS IS KING. Whether you decide to build a single epic project or do your own 12x12 challenge, once you lose focus and burn out it is VERY difficult to get going again and you will beat yourself up for not maintaining that focus and finishing your project in a timely fashion.
Hey @Scotalia thanks a lot for taking the time to read and provide such an awesome feedback.
I agree with you in some things. But I tend to disagree on the usefulness on the "Fail Fast, Fail Often" approach, because most of the times it its a "Fail Fast, Fail Often and Die" and the reason behind this I think is losing focus.
I do not think 12x12 is bad per se, but I do think that testing random ideas for the sake of failing fast is an issue. You do not want to fail fast, in fact, you shouldn’t be wanting to fail at all. Failing is very painful, and yes, when you fail you learn a lot. But If you can not capitalize such learnings into your next experiment/iteration/startup then you are only appealing to luck, and indeed some times this luck would be enough and you will gain traction. But in most of the cases you won’t.
This is why I recommend focusing your 12x12 efforts around a common topic/problem/market, because that way if you happen to fail, at least you get another shot putting those learnings to a good use.
Thanks again for the feedback and indeed if you can choose something, choose focus and consistency.
Maybe I'm not being entirely clear in my use of "Fail fast, fail often" as I don't think it should ever lead to "...and die".
This is the whole point (in my understanding and opinion) of a 12x12 challenge: not to die.
Going back to my numbers game comment: You don't know which idea is going to be a winner. You don't even know if the sector you're targeting is going to be the one that you should focus on.
Building and putting out as many projects, and therefore testing as many hypotheses, as you can and as quickly as you can, will allow you to confirm whether you are on the right path or not. If you are, double down and definitely cycle through multiple projects in the same sector as you can until you find one (or multiple) that gain even more traction. If you can not gain traction with a project quickly it probably means you are on the wrong track so you need to pivot or move on.
This is why I think Pieter Levels was so successful with his 12x12. He built random stuff he thought he could profit on: Youtube analytics dashboard, physical Gif flipbooks, money penalty focused goal trackers, and a number of other projects before building an excel spreadsheet of cheap places in the world with good wifi to live.
This random excel spreadsheet gained a LOAD of traffic and traction. He'd found a winner so he doubled down and built NomadList. Because he realized the Nomad community was a growing and profitable niche, he doubled down even more and built RemoteOk - a remote jobs board. Then he built a mapping tool for nomad travelers, then recently Rebase to help nomad's gain immigrate to Portugal.
There is a pattern here which I think a lot of people miss at first glance: Build things until you find something that people want. If this thing is in a profitable niche build more things this community wants.
So where as I don't disagree with you that once you find a good idea that you can validate you should build more projects around that project's target community. I do disagree that you should start with the focus of the community and building projects around it without validating its even a profitable community.
I suppose you could tweak the 12x12 and target 12 communities to build for, then build projects for each until 1. you find the community that is willing to buy from you and then 2. building the thing(s) they want to buy from you. But either way, I still think the shotgun approach of "build all the things as small as possible and as quickly as possible and move on when they fail" is the best bet for a lot of us who realize success is a numbers game.
The problem with the shotgun approach is that it assumes that "if you build it they will come", and if they do not come then you should go and build the next thing, and that is not true most of the times.
For example (although I think there are examples on both sides) Pinterest took 8 months to gain it's first sort of traction. The founder understood the problem/market so well that he kept working for over 8 months iterating, marketing and building the same product, he knew people need it what he was building. If he had been doing a 12x12 challenge maybe he would've gotten to the next thing, and Pinterest would've not be a success.
I know Pieter story, and I agree you should test things fast, but when it comes to doing this randomly he may as well be the exception of the rule and not the rule itself.
Another thing is that you suggested is that I recommend not validating the community/market, but is actually the opposite, if you follow what I wrote, basically you need focus in other to get compound learnings, if one of those learnings is that the community is not good enough -and I think you can lower this risk a lot, even before starting to build, some googling and talking too people will tell you want kind of market you are in - but say you build something and what you learn is that the community you are in is not good enough. Ok then change to a different one, is totally valid if that is what you learned, but, the problem is building random stuff and waiting for one of it to stick IMO, because you can not have this type learnings by doing that.
You need to be more scientific about all this, because if this were to be only statistics, then that would imply that no matter what you do, your chances of succeeding would be the same. And I do think that you can control certain things to increase such chances and not just keep build random stuff until something sticks.
Thanks again for taking the time to explain your point. I really value the debate and I do think that nobody has the magic formula for all this. Here I try to share what I think is best, based on my experience, but your points are valid too, and is great to talk this through.
Shotgun strategy is great for learning how to build and launch quickly.
But it sucks at getting to 5k MRR in a few months.
I've also tried launching random social apps (Sesame, Queerchart, Meetup) but they were just solutions to problems that weren't burning enough. All of them failed.
When I tried doing customer development first, where I find burning problems and customers willing to pay for them before I build, I got 40 paying customers in 2 months.
I'm now at 6k MRR (increasing 1k MRR every month!). Even now I spend most of my time doing customer development... I made my website once in August and haven't touched it since. Customer development is everything, not building, when it comes to getting that $$ :D
Agree 💯.
Do you mind sharing how you do customer development? Would love some insights here @gay
Read The Mom Test! That should explain it all
Will do, thank you!
I don't think dancing around the same topic is always good advice (it might be if the topic/problem/market is good).
The goal is to have 1 successful project, not 12. Good projects often show potential quickly after the launch. In such a case, focus on what you've got instead of starting the next idea. I did "one startup a month" once, but the third idea was a hit, and we focused on it.
The whole point of creating something quickly is the ability to validate it quickly. Create and evaluate. You may either find a flaw or see the potential. Act on it.
Some things can be worked out with a lot of time and effort, but in this approach, you rather try to find something that doesn't demand a lot of work to demonstrate it's worth focusing on.
Thanks for the feedback @deltabadger, I see your point and there is always and exception for the rule.
But I do think the risks of picking the wrong topic would be easily disolved by doing some early validations (googling about the market, talking with friends and family about it, etc.) while the effects of not having focus or change your focus every couple of days, can be devastating.
I did a 6x6, I highly recommend it!
I am doing it right now. I am full time working with children. So 12 x 12 was out of question.
I think you need enough time a finish an MVP. My sign that it is finished is: I publish it on ProductHunt.
What was your signal, that a product was "finished"?
When the month is over? :)
Seriously, it's super hard to tell. PH launch is a good point, even tho you probably work on it afterwards (and marketing efforts never stop!)
I meant it the other way around. Sorry, for being unclear.
What is your criteria, that you 'finished' product X in 2 months.
Can you tell us a bit more about your experience @xavier?
I made a AMA a few months ago on IH, and built everything on public on my twitter account (and a few posts here as well): https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-launched-6-products-in-the-last-6-months-and-made-15k-ama-a9545f4fbf
I'd be happy to answer any questions!
Congrats! and thanks for sharing @xavier very interesting.
I would have a couple of questions:
I wanted to learn how to market/fail/quit faster.
Yes! 2 of them are still provide some incomes:
UserBooster (a notion template)
Marketing4Makers (a community for makers)
My job board didn't bring any revenue but brought me some visibility with the podcast i started with
Good post. I've never tried the 12x12 strategy, but with your twist on it.. I think it could be a fun learning experience. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for reading and the feedback. Let us know if you do try it and how does it goes @mrbrazel
From my experience when I was in charge of 3 SaaS products everything went very slowly and after some time you see that your competitors achieve some new horizons but non of your products seem to be making any significant progress. It can be frustrating to feel like you're stuck in a rut while your competitors are outpacing you, but it's important to stay focused and keep pushing forward.
So now when I focus only on one particular product (leanbe.ai) I can concentrate all my strength, knowledge, and experience on leanbe.ai. It's a truly liberating feeling when you reorganize your workday and schedule around one thing and you can dive bravely into the depths of focused work on one thing at a time.
This is just my opinion to work on one thing and make it great, rather than trying to juggle multiple products and spreading yourself too thin.
Love the post Miguel. Wanted to reach out on Twitter but DMs are closed. What's the best way to connect? :)
Hey @Ak797041 you can reach out through email mferrer at hey.com
In fact i think at the end, we can’t have multiple deep true purposes.
Sometimes i reminder me this:
If something will work one day. It will be a creature which i iterated over 4/5 years. Something in a market which i truly enjoy, with an intrinsic motivation that will led me to do it even if there are any form return.
Pretty sad news in a certain way, cause it’s may be not about shipping many inventions in many niches.
Reading this discussion I had to think of Arvid Kahl's audience first approach. By figuring out which audience to serve you kind of stay in one domain, right? And by choosing an audience you like to serve, it's quite likely that you have own knowledge about that domain. I think having domain knowledge, also shortens the amount of research and user interviews one has to make.
Also, I'm afraid that if I would do "just" 12x12, I would concentrate on building to much and way too less on research and marketing. I would probably need some framework to ensure I do research and marketing.
And thanks for you post and the comments, they made me see my mistakes so far more clearly.
@PaintedPike thanks for you feedback and for reading!
I agree on the importance of building a community/audience first approach, that is something that @sahil recommends too and I do think it makes the difference.
"For me building a business is not about testing random ideas anymore, is about trying to solve a problem that people are willing to pay to have solved."
This statement really drives the point home for me. I got into programming and startups because I wanted to build things that didn't exist yet.
It's really that simple.
Appreciate the feedback, thank 🙏!
Great advice. For me, when I started the challenge, I ended up not finishing any project. Because of the fact that I want to go to the next idea, I dump the current idea and move on. In the end, I have 9 unfinished products. So, am still learning from the process, but I think, taking a single idea and building it end to end, marketing it end to end and if you feel like going into another idea, then is fine
Thanks! Let's focus on launching one of those 9 apps soon then
Thanks for sharing 🙏
Thanks to you for reading it 🤙🏼
Can we teach focus? After 2 years of Covid learning, students (teacher here) have lost (IMO) how to learn, how to focus (I try 10/2, 5/1 segments) for periods of time, and seem to really have a hard time staying on task. Any suggestions?
Good question, I think is tricky but you can definitely teach this.
It a sum of passion, methodology and experimentation.
I can recommend this book that has been useful to me
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Cal-Newport-ebook/dp/B00X7D8X8S/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=100530854312&gclid=CjwKCAiApfeQBhAUEiwA7K_UH5Us63l6EJPDHncAT76UjoPWG_dHcO5i1C0hMah5BrfIrBFCATYr4hoCSl4QAvD_BwE&hvadid=523205441755&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1003654&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=12872500592576816516&hvtargid=kwd-299098987646&hydadcr=19804_13313930&keywords=deep+work&qid=1646148446&sr=8-1
Thank you! I'll check that out!
www.focusmate.com really helps me.
this is valuable lesson, wise to read it before starting my own journey, thanks for sharing miguel. to this date, I have launched 4 product and all of that is failed, I mean, not getting user, even in product hunt the highest upvote I get is just 6 lol
Happy you find it useful.
Wish you luck in your journey and please share how it goes.
PD: Don't worry too much about not having succeed yet, with consistency and focus you will make it through
Thank you, will share my journey on post, still on progress though
I think things like the 5 hour work week and 12 ideas in 12 months are absurd marketing jargon.
@tjbo They probably are, but marketing is still a very important piece of the puzzle. So why not using that into your advantage?
Yeah for sure marketing is important. I think those 2 ideas might only be marketing!!!
The general of idea of working five hours a week, or trying 12 different ideas in a year, seem to be not great ideas, that work for everyone.
In fact, personally I know of 0 people who these ideas have worked for, but millions have read these books.
"When you have focus, you will still learn a ton."
Nailed it. All in.
Thanks for reading! glad you like it!
awesome!
Thank you!
What was the reason for switching to a new idea so quickly? I mean, how did you define the failure which was pushing you to change the main idea.
Well that is kind of the thing, we were trying to build 12 products in 12 months, so it was basically a new idea every month. And of course you need to build the next idea if the current one has not gain any traction or acquired any paying customers. We actually worked on one of the projects for something like 3 months and had 13 a max of customers, but lost focus and interest and decided to keep going, so in our case failure was not seeing future with the idea in a month.
@maciejcupial
Okay, I see. Well, a month it's not much. I kept building Calendesk for over two years, and still every day, I have new ideas related to my project. If I would stop after a month. I would never know the things I know now. For me, a month is just so small amount of time. It passes by so quickly.
Agree 100%, that is exactly why I'm recommending focusing 12 months around the same topic/problem/market, and giving that twist to the 12 startups in 12 months challenge.
Good points! All in on 1 problem like @yongfook
Thank you for the feedback, glad you like it.
Indeed @yongfook approach seems smarter.
Choose to focus your time, energy and conversation around people who inspire you, support you and help you to grow you into your happiest, strongest, wisest self.
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/focus-quotes
Thanks for sharing!
Without Ever Creating Product, Without Fulfilling Services, Without Running Ads, or Ever Doing Customer Service – And Best of All Only Working 30 Minutes A Day, All While Automatically Generating Sales 24/7
https://warriorplus.com/o2/a/pglfw/0
This comment was deleted 2 years ago.
I see what you are saying @Primer, and I is pretty obvious for me now, like it is also for you. But it took some failures realize this.
The problem is that we are used to reading success stories that tell you otherwise, For example what happen to @levelsio, or just check IH homepage on any random day and you will see things like this https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-we-made-13-500-in-24-hours-with-a-3-weeks-old-mvp-1d9814696a
And the tricky part is that these things do happen but they are mostly outliers, and you shouldn’t be trying to build a successful business using techniques that would only work from time to time. So that is why I decided to write this.