When it comes to software business, it’s not about the idea, it’s not about the feature set, it’s not even about marketing and sales. It’s about who you are.
A few years ago, an indie developer realized that LLMs are kind of good for summarization. So he made an LLM summary app. It was well-designed. He clearly spent a lot of time on the UI, down to the icon. It went nowhere because he’s not famous. Then other AI startups came out with the same idea, and a lot more money. He was Sherlocked by the whole industry.
The Iconfactory made a wallpaper app called Wallaroo. The Iconfactory is probably a top-3 famous indie development company. And the wallpapers are nicely crafted. Wallaroo went nowhere. Then MKBHD hired some people and made a wallpaper app. The app was not even good. The wallpapers were not even good. And it was expensive. And it got more attention than Wallaroo. Then it shut down.
A friend recently looked at my phone screen and noticed Things. He asked me if it’s new, and why I chose it instead of Notion. He’s not following the indie app market closely. Nobody is.
Even The Iconfactory. Even Cultured Code. They are famous in the indie circle, but the indie circle is too small. Most people simply don’t buy indie apps.
And how are they supposed to build an audience? Build-in-public has been taken over by AI bros shilling their ChatGPT wrappers. Open source tool makers are not famous1. No one wants to collaborate with you if you’re starting from zero. If you have zero reach, you stay at zero reach.
I’ve seen people try everything and fail. Multiple times. Over many years. I saw their Reddit posts that got 0 upvotes. Tweets that got 0 replies. Hacker News posts that got no attention. Product Hunt launches that went nowhere.
The paths to building an audience used to be blogs, then Twitter, now YouTube or TikTok. But everyone wants to be an influencer now. The platforms are full. The doors are closed, and nobody inside is going to open them for you.
-
Without looking it up, who maintains the Bash shell? ↩