Why I hate the indie hackers community on Twitter

I agree with a lot of this. Especially the part where it's all about products for other indie hackers or techies.
In my day job as a developer I work in all sorts of domains: banking, energy certificates, debt advisers, companies who sell 1 warehouse sized machine a year, currently im doing something for a sciency company that I don't even understand yet, something about the way light breaks idk lol ¯\(ツ)/¯, a company who fixes and maintains manholes.
Point being its all over the place.

Most the projects I read about here are for developers, seo, newsletters, email marketing. It seems very incestuous.
It also shows in the common advice like "go to where customers are" "build in public" etc. It doesn't work when you customers are nurses, roofers or accountants. They're not hanging out on discord or slack.

I have a suspicion that the people building a product for nurses are probably busy running their business.

Hey,

I'm part of these guys that you "hate", we talked several times on Twitter already.

It will surprised you but I agree with you for most of your point.

• Yes, it's a bubble and, yes, it's sometimes toxic. This bubble is responsible of a LOT of fails in the IH ecosystem.

• Yes, we act as community managers, planning and retweeting our content every day

• Yes, some (most?) tweets are low quality.

But, what you don't talk about is all the BRIGHT side of it. I've been on Twitter for a long time and I've make a lot of friends, I've receive support like anywhere else and I learned a TON of stuff there.

I get that you're mad about bad content, but the answer is pretty simple: unfollow the people you don't like. Or tell them what you dislike, as you did with me several times.
It helped me rethink my strategy amd adapt my content.

Last point about us acting as CM: the twitter algorithm is responsible of this a lot. If you're not posting constantly nobody see your tweets (even the good ones ☺️).
I realized months ago that "influencers" are like hamster in a wheel: they need to post constantly if they want to appear in other's timeline.

The twitter algorithm changed lately, engagement dropped drastically, and "influencers" are moving to other platforms.

Hopefully it'll get better !

Hate is a strong feeling, save it for the truly hateful things in this life. :)

Cheers

I think you nailed it.

What these folks are selling, ultimately, is a dream, a dream to other indie hackers.

It’s just as with other social media influencers, you need to project this aura of being a guru and having something that other indie hackers need. I agree that it’s mostly fakery.

The real ones, to me, are the ones who aren’t building things for indie hackers. At least you can read their tweets knowing you aren’t being sold to directly.

If a product is for lawyers, one would market to lawyers. Since you are an IndieHacker, it makes sense that you see marketing for IndieHackers rather than lawyers.

Perfectly summed up. Some indie hackers who actually have build and sold great products to people in other communities also are proponent of this idea that you don't need a huge following to be a success.

Your customers most probably are not on Product Hunt. I don't know why is PH launch such a big thing. That's just to let other builders what are you building. And if you don't already have customer base, then you might simply be giving your ideas out. Go where your actual customers are.

I've been in slack workspaces and whatsapp groups myself where people ask other builders to upvote their products on PH just to get high rank as they are in the same "team" aka the slack/whatsapp group. Other builders can definitely help you with landing pages, copywriting, perfecting your offering, etc. but that's all they can do. Unless they are your customers. Getting fake upvotes is so not the right way to get feedback or validation.

Thanks for writing this. Resonate with all the points.

Not just twitter, you will find such on IH too! One has to be careful...all the time. Successful businessmen rarely have time to sell advices, courses, cohorts etc. Aren't they occupied with their business?!

Oh my god, that's it! Thank you!

I just find an interesting person with an interesting project, and reposts reposts reposts... all the same + dozens per minute. This is some way to show your importance among the same indie hackers. "Look at my activity, so many makers repost me!!!" (c)

That's why I stop using the "build in public" term. Now, this is a red flag.

Latest Ponzi schemers in the line, are the people selling bubble courses. They are duping gullible people in thinking that bubble is the ultimate no code tools, and they can build whatever SaaS product they can without ever touching code. And Finally, becoming a bubble developer who can compete with real-code developers.

You pretty much summarized Indiehackers as a whole, and this is not exclusive to the Twitter community.

I've written a post earlier and the word I chose was "depressing".

I barely see any actual products that are used outside of Indiehackers on here.

And watching people desperatly try to sell to each other AND motivate each other to "not give up" depresses the hell out of me to say the least.

Some indie hackers try to solve the made-up problems of other indie hackers. But in fact, these are not real problems. The former want to be as successful and popular as the latter. They try to imitate without thinking about the problem itself.

There will always be a warrior forum, somewhere ;-)

Well put. So many posers in the community. Or those who self-aggrandize to the max with no restraint. Having lived thru a couple of bubbles, it's easy to see the charlatans from a long ways away.

Very solid post. Not mad at this perspective at all.
Self-help culture is kind of eating itself.

I wrote a self-help book detailing how I changed my life but I literally never released it because I know the industry is super repetitive and predatory.

I agree with you and understand your point. I think many people who have been for enough time in that bubble do understand the rules of the game.

Perceive it as a sandbox for entrepreneurs like real ones for kids. Or call it creator economy. There is no wrong or right. It doesn't matter if people don't cheat, don't scam, and don't steal. I mean, until it is not a real Ponzi scheme, who cares?

I wouldn't say it is a closed system. Selling to other indie hackers is B2B. Some sell only inside "the bubble," and some sell outside of "the bubble".

You build a Twitter tool that helps a person to develop and manage an audience in his area of expertise, and that area might be outside of "the indie bubble". That's how the bubble sucks money from the outside.

By the way, isn't the overall economy a Ponzi scheme on a grander scale? I believe you can find such bubbles in many industries, including the overall economy.

We are just monkeys exchanging products and services with printed money by governments.

While your post is good and helped me to perceive the industry from one additional angle, life is too short. So, let's build a screenshot editing app!

A guy called Jakob Greenfield nailed it. It's "insight porn"

"Here’s how anyone can make six figures:
Offer a service for a business, something marketing or sales related, get 10 clients for $1000 per month and BOOM, you’re making six figures in a year. Easy right?"

Or in other words, it's mostly about engagement and the hope to go viral.

Just stay away from Twitter and focus on building. Or Tweet only really valuable things.

I even have logged in to write, damn this is so true. These are the reason exactly why I don't like community on Twitter

I don't agree with your post. Most of the IndieHackers are building SaaS products and targeted users for Saas is well you can guess - other indiehackers.
What do you mean by this statement - "But I think it will not last, it's already a very closed system where most of the discussions are about entrepreneur tools, success and personal development."
If we not talk about entrepreneur tools, success and personal development than what should we talk about? Kardashians, Justin Bieber, Dogecoin?
IndieHackers community is a gem. Pure gem.

Yeah, to some extent I know what you mean. And the whole build in public thing seems to always show the same sort of content... i wish there were more people showing the earlier stages that don't "look" as exciting on social media

The big problem with this is not the creators side but consumers side. I think creators are doing because there is a consumer market who likes that shit :)

I am neither supporting nor hating what's happening but this is common in all industries. Look at Twitter influencer market - Thread bois who thinks they are making it easier for readers to read but rather they simply collect tweets from others and to create engagement they tag those authors. How likely people are reading those threads? I guess less than 10% its because those tweets are not optimized for reading experience, yet those thread bois get 100k followers. Again its not the problem on the thread bois side, it is their followers.

Sometimes I feel the sam, Nico. I am currently trying to do exactly that, selling a tool to people like me. But it definitely feels weird.

I think this is already present in low intensity for b2b in general (the actual value provided is to help other people provide more value or the same value at lower cost).

While providing a product for your own community is probably the way to go, the entrepreneur / solo founder / indie hacker community is massively saturated since none of the people are NOT building something.

It seems to be the easiest to find something for your own niche, but while we all share being indie hackers, we also are part of other communities. I encourage people to explore their friends' and family's occupation and talk about their problems :) Currently I am also having conversations with singing teachers (my SO is a singer).

And boy can I tell you, you definitely don't have to compete against so many people and especially so few free solutions!

I noticed this too and I easily figured it out. You can't keep selling to the same group of people everytime... Although I feel most indiehackers are trying to go B2B and the Indiehacker community is the easiest place to start.
Personally I cope by ignoring those ones that seem artificial and genuinely follow the ones that are real...
Running a business is difficult, I try not to make it more difficult by comparing myself to others. You will be very surprised to know they are alot of indiehackers that are not on twitter or IH platform.

I have the similar feelings just don't know how to write them down like you.

I think after indie hackers communication turn into an ecosystem, someone try to get "food" from others, like scavenger, rather than finding some real "food".

I personally think it's too harsh to refer to other peoples' stuff as shitty, but overall I agree with your criticism. When I first discovered Indie Hackers, I was surprised by the amount of people building similar products, like many variations of note-taking apps, task managers, habit trackers, etc. Nothing against that, I use tools like this myself, but it's a very narrow and competitive space, so the odds of success are slim.

I think this happens because it's easier to have ideas for problems that you personally have, and since most people here are 'builders', they will come up with stuff for builders. Meanwhile, there must be tons of people in other fields with unique ideas for massive problems, but no expertise on coding, marketing, etc. There are places you can find them online, but it's not here.

About personal development, I don't have a problem with that tbh, as long the advice is specific and actionable vs something like "challenge yourself everyday". There's a lot of obvious advice that people keep not following, so I don't mind hearing it over and over. What really annoys me is when people recommend some "life changing" thing that they've only been doing for two days and will prob stop after a week. I think it's a human urge we have when we're really hoping something will work.

PS the comment about people running twitter like "community manager" it's too funny and accurate lol

I had a thought about this whole selling shovels thing a while back in relation to Thrive Theme's (just as an example, it could be ANY tool that targets bootstrapped entrepreneurs, as long as it's not easy to apply a before/after metric to it anyway), which was...

"it really doesn't matter, if I, or any of their customer's are successful or not digging for gold, as long as we keep digging, and we need shovels".

Point being, as long as people want 'gold' it pay to encourage the digging, whether or not they actually find any or not.

There is a reason this business model endures and while it could be argued, the shovel sellers are the smart ones.

I'm not sure that applies to Indihackers users, but it might apply to Indihackers founders. ;)

I can see clearly now the rain has gone. You probably just saved me months of time-wasting bullshit. Thank you @nico3233

🙌🏾Thanks for writing this...I'll be co-hosting an online Indie meetup tomorrow and this will be discussed during the roundtable session.

Here is the meetup link + details for anyone who is interested → Indie Worldwide Meetup

It's definitely true that the more time you spend on indiehackers and interacting with the indie hackers community on Twitter, the more your mind will revolve around ideas that are primarily useful for fellow indie hackers.

So true!
There are still so many interesting B2B niches whose life you could make a lot easier with modern software solutions.
Just start in your local region and pick up the phone, it will do wonders.

Wait, are you trying to tell me that scheduling 16 "here's some popular thing that people use" + "but people don't know how to use it correctly" + "here's some tops tips to get the most of it" tweets a day for the next 3 months doesn't lead to interesting content?

Well, it's a big problem with Twitter.

If you don't have 5,000 followers there, you're fighting algorithm first instead of writing for people.

If you have more - well, you can write anything and get the necessary amount of likes/replies for your tweet to become more or less wide-spreading.

P.S. And it's really hard to get followers there with the last updates. So if you're new on Twitter - just spend the same time trying something else.

I'm also feeling a bit underwhelmed...I feel that most founders on twitter are mainly building for other founders, and it's hard to get a lot of good advice for products in other markets...there are some guys there who are really great!

Completely agree. On the surface it sounds good. But once you look closer, it's pretty meh

I just instantly unfollow or mute the people you describe here in your post. Next time you see something you don't like just go ahead and unfollow. If another person you follow retweets something you don't like, unfollow.

I always do this and my feed is pretty good now. I'm still in the IH bubble, but the good one 😁

You are not alone:)

Diversity is what we want, but speech is increasingly dominated and controlled by a few. I totally agree with your point of view.

I agree with this!

That`s how life is! You can always un-follow.

We are a self organized subculture, there is nothing wrong with it.

Your example with Levels has nothing to do with reality. He was at the right time, at the right place and now he can do whatever he wants, he is sort of a Guru.

If someone w/o a Guru status starts to tweet about random spontaneous things, no one will follow this person.

Can you guys recommend me/us some good IH twitter account like @levelsio? A list would be a good followup for this post

While you raise some good points I think you can have a successful business selling to any group you like. As long as you make money who cares, it's successful.

Selling shovels in a gold rush works. Why should anyone else define success?

As for those sharing content as a 'successful' founder, it really doesn't matter if they succeed in a single aspect but fail at others. If their insight into that topic is useful and helpful that's a good thing to share.

Having said all that, if you can filter out the bullshit then fair play. (I have no inclination to build an audience, so I'm not listening to that type of advice)

Actually I disagree that most products are around indie hackers. Just check the products submitted on the Indie Lottery. Most of them are not directly targeting indie makers ....
But even if they were I don't see a problem in that! The goal of any entrepreneur is to become profitable and therefore we often follow what makes us money. I tried multiple products and the one that makes money is the WBE space. I did not plan to target indie hackers, it just followed that path organically.
Besides that the indie hackers community is the most supportive and good vibe community I know!

Agree 100%

100% agree with that