I Spent 6 Months Building for Indie Hackers. My First Real Customer Taught Me I Was Wrong.

This is such an important lesson you've captured here. The trap of building for builders is so easy to fall into because the feedback feels good and comes quickly. Your story about the agency owner needing client portals instead of dark mode really crystallizes how different real user needs can be from founder preferences.

i feel your pain, but in my opinion you will need to get feedback from the niche you are targeting, i did not try posting here but i am in the process to do so, but i think i will selected what i need.

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Wow, this really resonates. I’ve definitely fallen into the trap of building for the feedback of other founders instead of real users. It’s easy to get caught up in what your peers think is ‘cool’ or ‘minimal,’ but until you talk to someone who actually pays for a solution, you’re just validating features for the wrong audience.
I love how you pivoted to speaking directly with agency owners — that’s exactly where real product-market fit comes from. It’s a good reminder that the people who understand the pain aren’t always the ones in your community.
I’d love to hear more about how you structured those 15-minute calls — what questions worked best to uncover their actual pain points?

Man, this hit hard. I went through almost the same thing. I built a sleek, minimal tool that other makers loved to praise but not to pay for. It felt good at first, getting that validation from peers, but it was all surface-level.
When I finally started talking to actual business owners people who didn’t care about dark mode or APIs everything changed. They wanted results, not aesthetics. They cared about saving time, reducing chaos, and looking good to their clients. That’s it.
It’s wild how different the “real world” market is from the indie hacker bubble. The feedback loops are slower, but the insights are 100x more valuable.
Huge respect for sharing this. It’s a tough lesson, but one that separates builders from entrepreneurs.

These same mistakes committed more often due to lack of ground level awareness. Once you get the ground level information it is easy to build the product and address the real pain in the community.

This reminds me of that episode of Silicon Valley

Love this reflection Pratham.... wild how talking to real users always humbles your assumptions...

I totally understand this. I've been told this. But my challenge comes from actually trying to reach these ones. How do I connect and talk with these people? Some people I've tried to reach out to, don't reply at all. Any suggestions?

Such a relatable shift, from building what gets applause to building what gets adopted. It reminds me of how Startup Wars approached product-market fit differently by letting students experience real startup decisions through simulation rather than building tools for founders themselves.

Do you think indie hacker-style validation still has a role in the early stages, or is it better to avoid that bubble from the start?

This hit hard — and it’s such an important reminder. 💯

It’s so easy to get lost building for other builders instead of real users.
I’m going through something similar right now while working on CraftName (check it in my profile) — an AI tool that helps founders come up with startup names and instantly check domain availability.

When I started, I was asking feedback mostly from other indie hackers.
Everyone loved the concept, but the real insights only came once I talked to actual founders trying to launch fast and struggling with naming under pressure.

Your story nails it — validation inside the bubble ≠ validation in the market.
Appreciate you sharing this so honestly. 👏

This is such a valuable lesson you've shared here. It's easy to get caught in the echo chamber of building for other builders. Your pivot to talking directly with real users outside the indie bubble paid off clearly—going from 12% to 41% retention is huge! Thanks for the honest reflection.

This hit home. It’s easy to build for people like us and forget that real customers think totally differently. Curious ,did you change your marketing strategy after that realization, or mostly the product direction?

This is painfully relatable. I launched a QA audit service for lean teams — modular reports, backend logic checks, founder-friendly pricing. Got compliments, a few upvotes, even some early traction.

But my first real customer wasn’t a fellow builder. She was running a SaaS with a messy admin panel and said:

“Can you help me stop losing users because of silent backend bugs?”

She didn’t care about my audit layout or tech stack. She wanted trust, reliability, and fewer support tickets.

That’s when I realized: Indie Hackers are amazing for support and feedback — but not always for validation. We love clean tools, clever features, and building in public. But most customers just want their pain solved.

Now I spend less time polling Twitter and more time talking to founders who aren’t in the indie bubble. Retention jumped. Real MRR followed. And I stopped chasing applause.

Thanks for sharing this — it’s a powerful reminder to build for pain, not praise.

Hits hard because it's true, other indie hackers saying “nice build!” doesn’t mean real customers actually need it.
And yeah, most people outside this bubble don’t care about dark mode or lifetime deals. They just want their problem to go away.
Your story is a good reminder to stop guessing in our own heads and start talking to people who might actually pay.Thanks for keeping it real and sharing this.