I can relate to a lot of this. The customer emails in particular. I was experiencing flashbacks while reading the article.
Back in 2014-2015 I created a platform for building crypto trading bots in the browser with Python scripts. You could write a bot, backtest it and trade live on multiple exchanges. It was a lot of fun to build, initially. I kind of stumbled onto the idea without any trading background.
It got some early traction. So I raised $100k of funding and went all in on the idea. I worked like mad.
But I slowly realised that all of my customers were "technical analysis" bros. Basically horoscopes for trading. I received endless support requests for exotic new indicators and obscure features.
I added a marketplace that let you sell your bots to others. It quickly jumped up to $10k/mo in commission after the fee I took. That seemed bananas to me as a 24 year old.
But the bots being sold were pure snake oil. I distinctly remember that the guy who sold the most didn't even run his bot with his own money.
I felt like was running a gambling site. After 14 months of this I was completely burned out. I quit and I wasn't able to work at all for four months.
They're in the business of encouraging users to post content to get more eyeballs and therefore more ad revenue. So commoditising a way of generating a lot more content is in their interests.
This. I recall in their earnings report, they gave a similar answer, I.e the more this technology is made accessible, the better the content put on social media becomes. They also pointed out that any improvements made can be incorporated into their stack like what happened with open compute and PyTorch.
While I agree in general, people who are candidates for ASV have to be screened first by a cardiologist. Certain traits can lead to a much higher risk of death while using one.
Right now, no, but you can claim* your newsletter and soon I'll add the ability to edit your listing.
The current pricing is the cheapest it will ever be! I'm aiming this at businesses and agencies. I have a similar and quite successful app for podcasts that starts at $99/mo.
Sorry to hear that. How long were you trying for? A lot of these guys were at it for years and years before they found success. It can be brutal in the beginning.
I think it's unfair to characterise the "digital nomad influencers" on Twitter as making it seem easy. I know a few of them personally and they work incredibly hard. You can tell by the speed at which they ship new products. They work a lot.
That said, building a Twitter audience of indie hacker types is massively overrated. It's a huge amount of work and the space is utterly saturated. These people generally don't buy stuff and if you try a lot of different ideas then the chances are that many of them are not in your target market.
When you know you know. It's like the difference between pushing a boulder uphill and downhill. Very hard to predict ahead of time - you just have to keep shipping stuff.
Back in 2014-2015 I created a platform for building crypto trading bots in the browser with Python scripts. You could write a bot, backtest it and trade live on multiple exchanges. It was a lot of fun to build, initially. I kind of stumbled onto the idea without any trading background.
It got some early traction. So I raised $100k of funding and went all in on the idea. I worked like mad.
But I slowly realised that all of my customers were "technical analysis" bros. Basically horoscopes for trading. I received endless support requests for exotic new indicators and obscure features.
I added a marketplace that let you sell your bots to others. It quickly jumped up to $10k/mo in commission after the fee I took. That seemed bananas to me as a 24 year old.
But the bots being sold were pure snake oil. I distinctly remember that the guy who sold the most didn't even run his bot with his own money.
I felt like was running a gambling site. After 14 months of this I was completely burned out. I quit and I wasn't able to work at all for four months.
Glad to see you figured out a smarter solution.