Ideate - problem solve - profit. Here's how I did it.

Hey Indie Hackers!

I was suggested to write this post and I'm happy to share my insights on finding an idea that will profit. I hope this community will find inspiration and determination for their visions from my story.

To begin...

I'm Karol and I've always been fascinated by problem-solving and building something of my own.

I like to help people, my passion has always been business, and I knew it was what I wanted to invest my time in. I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur. And like any other Indie Hacker, I searched for ideas that people would love and want to pay for.

Actually, I wasn't looking; you could say I was perpetually running into them.

How? Careful observations. From other projects, my passions, listening to clients (before BOWWE I had four other startups and experience in running business processes in other companies), problems of people I talked to, and my own experience.

Needless to say, there were many different ideas that had the potential. However, I have not always been able to use it.

So how did I come up with the one I'm working on now?

After 7 years of running BOWWE, we finally scaled the business. 2021 was a year of celebration for us; even though BOWWE was already growing earlier, this year Appsumo chose us for their campaign (I will share this experience in the near future), the number of BOWWE users increased and our team grew to 33 people (although we were lucky that we made the right decision earlier, we were self-funded and so we started with 20 people).

Currently, more than 30 000 websites have been created with our tool, our customer satisfaction rate is 96% (based on customer reviews which we continue to request), and 74% of our users return with new projects.

How did it work out? How is the idea that I and @wandruszkow came up with more than 8 years ago gaining momentum?

And above all, since I often see on Indie Hackers inquiries about this, I would like to share my way to make the idea turn into a profitable business.

What was the story behind BOWWE?

As I said, I am a helpful and enterprising person by nature; I love solving other people's problems. I see a problem and I know I have to solve it.

Before BOWWE was founded, we created Honaro (a marketplace that lists and offers services for local businesses), which greatly influenced the idea of BOWWE.

By the way, the idea of Honaro came from my and my brother's experience.

Together with @wandruszow, my brother, we traveled the world a lot. I studied abroad computer science, management, and marketing, and he studied computer science and finance. Through travel and lack of acquaintance in different cities, we noticed a nagging problem when it came to finding essential services like barber, shoemaker, good restaurant, and searching the web took too long when the time was scarce. It was the year 2008/2009, such marketplaces did not exist yet and our idea was met with a positive response. Although the idea was based on our own experience and supported by the opinion of other customers, we were too quick to go to market with it. It was said that customers can not yet be found on the Internet.

(Side note: now I also know that we could use a third person. Three is, in my opinion, the optimal number of founders and contributed experience)

Honaro allowed us though to start a new business. The idea for BOWWE was based not only on our own experience but also on the experience and cooperation with Honaro's clients and then many conversations we had.

At the time, we were running our Honaro startup and helping small&medium companies grow. Many clients came to us with WordPress sites asking to develop and maintain them; at the beginning, we did. We ran a few additional projects for them, optimizing, updating and designing portfolios, vouchers, etc. These brought them effects, and they expected more.

On top of that, I had many interactions with international clients and talked with people. I realized the tools I've been using weren't efficient enough for the growth of the customers.

Back in 2013, when the idea for BOWWE came up, there weren't many website builders. And the ones existing on the market were undeveloped, limited, and allowed designers to have very little originality and flexibility with their projects.

We started with the preparation of the project. When it was ready, I started organizing meetings with company owners. I was always listening to their problems, taking notes of their capabilities and verifying their needs.

We started from a very simple product. We made a simple MVP and named it HMS (from Hoanro +CMS).

Combining growth booster + site builder.

This project had the very same mission as Honaro, and probably one that was always my primary mission in life. We wanted to create something that would enable businesses to grow. To express themselves and attract potential customers and focus not only on the design of the site but also on the growth of the business. So we came up with our solution and created BOWWE - a website builder with great SEO where users can create a website, Landing and Micro Page, portfolio, or CV. (Today I also know that most of the builders contradict my mission)

What we thought was a simple project, turned out to be a project for years.

After working hard on the product development and launching BOWWE on the market, the users came. The first 10 months brought the first 10 customers, and within the next 6 months, we had 100 registered users!

We decided, the best option for us and the tool would be to ask the clients what they expected from it. We then temporarily ceased the sales and chose to cooperate with existing users to prepare BOWWE for future activities and create it as people want it to be.

For past years, we've been developing our product further with suggestions from people, taking notes on their thoughts and experience with the tool to introduce valuable features.

We also created a roadmap (https://app.loopedin.io/bowwe), where anybody can follow and suggest and follow our plans for the future.

Now BOWWE is advanced yet simple-in-use, clean code - developer's like, an efficient tool without the usual limitations of web builders (ones then and now) perfectly integrated with other applications. BOWWE users can build even the most advanced websites without restrictions, with pixel-perfect technology and developer quality.

Conclusion?

Create the solution to a problem you've witnessed and/or experienced. Always listen to people and validate your idea based on their insights. Develop it as people need it and want it, and users will come and stay with you.

Our tool and team are growing - the idea got proven, which is something I think each Indie Hacker dreams of.

My suggestion for all Indie Hackers is to look behind the stories and problems of others, talk to people, be passionate and believe in your idea. Keep working on it!

Best,
Karol

PS. I hope this wasn't too long, I tried to share as many insights in the process behind the idea of my business.

You can follow BOWWE on Twitter @bowwe_com and see any updates here.