@syswarren Appreciate it! Coming up with ideas is hard, I don't think there's one definitive way to go about it. I personally do it in a variety of ways, some examples: - Think of something that I would use or make my life easier if it existed. That's how I came up with Jumpskip for example, since I absolutely hate jumpscares, and I wanted to find a way to not get scared all the time 👻 - Combine two ideas together, either two products or different concepts. For example, with Mapus I had the idea to combine a tool like Google Maps with the concept of real-time collaboration. I think I use this method a lot, it's pretty useful. - Just look for an existing product, and think how you can make it better. I did this with Screenity, seeing tools like Loom or Screencastify which had users complaining about limits on the free plan, so I built a better free screen recorder, plus with other features such as annotation or push to talk. - Complete randomness. Sometimes I don't know how I come up with ideas, they just come to me I guess. Like a while back I had the idea to build some sort of tool to be able to create platforming games in Figma, designing levels, enemies, etc. Super weird thing. As per actually executing, well, I think I just have a good work ethic and I commit myself to finish everything I start :) I don't want to let people down.

@ejsnowdon Thank you so much Emily! Honestly it's pretty hard, I think the only way I've been able to manage it is by making sure my products are mostly one-offs, and that I only have to deal with user feedback and questions. There's some that need more maintenance, such as Flowy and Screenity, where there's a lot of users who have questions about the product, or they want to make improvements to it. Unfortunately I can only take care of it every so on, usually a few times a month. As per your other question, I answered it pretty in depth over here :) https://www.producthunt.com/disc...

@product_at_producthunt Thank you so much! And yep, I tend to work on products that I'd personally use, that said I rarely build products only due to existing products having a poor UI/UX, I like to build things that are original and have unique features. I think I mostly do that when I see existing processes which could easily be simplified, one example could be with Animockup, an animated mockup editor I built a while back. I used to create teasers for my products using After Effects, with laptop mockups where I would put screen recordings of the product. This process would take me forever, After Effects takes ages to load, then I would need to position the mockup accordingly with the video, set the composition duration, and then wait a while for it to render. I also needed it to be in GIF format for Twitter, so I would have to use Handbrake to reduce the file size, and then use an MP4 to GIF converter to get the final file. So instead I built a product that would do all of this super easily, select the mockup, upload the video, change the background color, add text or images, and then export directly as a GIF. That easy :P

@5harath Hey Sharath :) It's hard to say, especially since one of the reasons I build products is specifically to come across challenges and learn new skills. I think the most challenging one is an unreleased one (WIP), a web-based motion graphics editor similar to After Effects. I had to figure out a million different things, such as keyframing for all sorts of properties, how to animate the canvas, how to group and nest animations, masking objects, and probably the hardest one of all, how to render effectively, without it taking ages or being super expensive (especially considering I am boostrapped, so I don't have a bunch of cash from investors :P). There's solutions such as the AWS Elastic Transcoder, but it costs roughly $0.015 per minute of video, which might get expensive with lots of users & long videos. I ended up figuring it out, with a lot of different hacks to render as fast as possible, and ending up with a total render cost of ~$0.0022/minute of video, which I'm pretty happy with.

@shahdeepa Hmm it's hard to say, maybe Screenity? I think one big reason is that unlike all my other products, instead of creating a totally original and creative product, I decided to build something that had been done before. I simply had to look at the competition, break down all their features (which I did here), look at user reviews, and build something that people wanted. Plus it was a fun challenge to develop the screen recorder overall, how to implement all the drawing tools, push to talk, embedding the camera, etc. The most enjoyable part of it was probably the launch, I think it was one of the most successful ones I had, getting to #1 on Product Hunt with over 1,500 upvotes and a ton of engagement on Twitter, I don't think I ever slept that night with notifications going crazy non-stop. Seeing it grow to over 70K users has been absolutely amazing.

@panphora Hey David, appreciate it :) There's a lot of struggles when it comes to making products as an indie maker for sure. I think the main one is simply having enough time and resources to pursue it, it definitely holds a lot of people back from becoming an indie maker, and it's certainly made it difficult for me. Having to find the time on weekends and around my full-time job has been tricky, and it's meant having less time to do other things, but I personally think it's worth it. And in terms of resources, I've obviously been limited in what I could make and I've had to be careful, I've avoided building products that could lead to very high expenses (e.g. for servers), or products that would require a lot of maintenance, since I don't have other people that could handle support or marketing or other duties. I think I've managed to work around it and adapt, but I do wonder the kinds of projects I could build if I had the same resources as companies do, and the time to pursue it (without having to rely on a full-time job for income). I've been able to build 3-4 products per year, so who knows, maybe 10, or maybe fewer but way more ambitious. That would be cool :)

@usama_khalid Well, the way I manage them is by making sure they're low maintenance, and trying to focus on building mostly one-off type of products, that I don't have to scale or keep growing. A day in my life differs depending if it's on the weekend or on a weekday :) During weekdays I've got my full-time job, I try to wake up early to get some work done on my projects, try to maximize the time by making simple meals and staying focused with music, and then after that I just do my job (which is later since I work remotely from the UK for a US company, so the timezones are different and I have to adapt :P). After my job I tend to just relax by watching a movie or some series, and then I go to bed. During weekends I basically just work 24/7 on my projects, taking short breaks from time to time to clear my mind, or to unleash my creativity as it can be easy to get blocked. I tend to stay up late which is probably not great 😅 Regarding burnout honestly it's hard, especially since I work all the time, and when I launch a project I already start working on the next one. I think it's mostly a matter of being constantly motivated, I do get a rush whenever I ship a product, wondering what will happen, what will people think, how many users will I get... So while developing projects I tend to keep that in mind a lot, it helps me keep going :) I also know when I have to stop, while I can work for a long time I notice there's times where my mind is blank and nothing is working, so I do something else for a while, take a shower, etc. and come back to it later.

@colinkiama That's a good question. I think I've always wanted to be an inventor, and building products has basically satisfied that urge for me :) It's also a way I can make an impact, solving all sorts of problems, I find it to be very rewarding. Making products has also helped me build up my portfolio and improved my skills in development and design, it's definitely opened a lot of doors.

@jai_verdancy I tend to have the same issue, honestly. I like to have a good plan beforehand, I make a Notion doc with a bunch of tasks for an MVP, and try my best not to add more tasks during the development of the product. Oftentimes I go through all the tasks during the development and I remove those that I feel aren't going to make a difference, sometimes I get obsessed over adding a small detail that most users aren't even going to notice. It's just a matter of finding a balance :)

@alyssaxuu Could you elaborate a little bit on what your thought process is for approaching the discovery process versus leap of faith balance in releasing your MVP? This is something our team is currently struggling with.

@eriks_k I think it's hard to say, for me it also helps showing my product to users and hearing their thoughts, I can easily see whether they get the product, if they have issues using it, if they find it lacking, if it's something they would use... It also comes down to whether there's time constraints. I've had several products that were taking longer than expected, and I ended up deciding to cut down on features. You can always add them later on anyway. Ultimately if you show it to users and they think it's fine, the lack of certain features / polish is unlikely to make or break the product. The most important part is to acquire those users, focus on marketing the product, and keep working on it and improving it post launch. I've had far too many products where I spent weeks on certain features that 99% of users didn't even notice or care about, they would have used the product regardless. Focus on marketable features, the acquisition part.

@alyssaxuu do you also update the products for security fixes or new feature?

@sushant_borse Honestly, I try not to, most of my products are one-off. But Screenity and Flowy specifically I do consistently maintain, releasing fixes and new updates from time to time. I just prefer to focus on shipping new products :P

@michaeljelly Hmm good question. I do enjoy making products by itself, it's certainly fun to get an idea and be able to execute it. But it's also a way for me to get more opportunities - I actually got my first job and subsequent ones thanks to my portfolio of products, plus it's been a great way for me to improve in design and development. I think the dream for me would be to be able to build all sorts of things full-time. I've had the chance in the past to turn several of my products into companies, but I don't want to dedicate myself to just 1 thing, I feel like it would be too limiting. And I don't just mean building websites, I also have an interest in mobile apps, native apps, and particularly game development, which I used to do a lot of years ago. I've been looking into ways to make that possible, trying to get an income from my creations, possibly starting a Youtube channel, writing a book, making courses, etc. It's still unfortunately more of a side thing :)

@philsoutside Thanks Phil! That's a good question. Usually I don't start building a new project unless I am 100% convinced I will be able to complete it. But sometimes I underestimate the effort, or I come across big blockers that I can't overcome. I think I had this issue with a specific project I was working on a few months back - I basically wanted to build a tool to create virtual worlds/MMORPGs (think Club Penguin, Habbo...) using Figma. I built a prototype where you could design rooms, items, avatars... in Figma, press a button, and it would automatically generate the world for you, and you could move around and chat and whatnot. Everything was going well, until I realized I could not complete it for a very simple reason, I'm not an artist. I spent a few weeks trying different artstyles, see if I could figure something out, but ultimately I dropped the project. I also felt it was a bit similar to another project of mine, a tool to create platforming games in Figma, and it might not be worth to launch anyway.

@msurguy Hmm I haven't come up with any idea I wouldn't be able to pull off. I suppose there's projects that are more ambitious than others, and would require a longer time to build, but so far it's all been possible :P Regarding collaborators, I wish I knew. I've only worked on a project together with someone else in the past, Carden with @anne_laure_le_cunff who is a friend of mine. I'd definitely love to do more collaborations, I think it helps build better products since you have more eyes on the product, and you have different perspectives. Hard to say what's the product I'm most proud of... I suppose talking about success specifically I'm most proud of Screenity, which has over 70K users, and has been translated in a lot of different languages. I've heard of teachers using it in schools, who personally thanked me for making it 100% free and open source, as they couldn't afford other paid alternatives. In terms of technical ability, it might be Sonuum, which is a real-time collaborative audio editor. Quite a challenging product to build, but definitely rewarding.

@scheuercharles Thank you so much! :) For Sonuum I first started with some prototypes for the 3D animation, then in Figma I designed what would go in each section. I then exported each image separately that I'd want to animate, and using jQuery I added breakpoints at different scroll positions to trigger different animations (e.g. scroll down a bit, do a CSS transform, then another one and show the next section, and so on).

@toshvelaga Honestly, nope, I haven't read the docs lol. I just looked specific things up for what I needed to do, for converting to GIF and MP4 specifically. Although honestly I still don't have it fully figured out, I realized the javascript version of FFMPEG does not support the OPUS audio format so it is unable to convert WEBM videos created client-side into MP4. Annoying stuff. Ended up having to do it in Node in AWS Lambda and it was a lot other headaches, tricky stuff. So yeah I can't really share any specific resources, I mostly just kept browsing all over the place and trying things out xP

@artem_smirnov1 Thanks! It depends - most of my projects are one-off, but I have a few projects that I keep maintaining, mostly my open source ones. So for example my flowcharting library Flowy, I look into issues and questions people have, make improvements from time to time, etc. Or my Screenity screen recorder. Ideally though I like to work on projects I don't have to maintain, since otherwise I don't have enough time to work on new stuff :P

@svenn_petter_maehle Depends on the objective really. I personally did it through trial and error as my goal was to be able to build my own products, maybe in a bit of a scrappy way, whatever means necessary. If the goal is to land a job, or to be very knowledgeable in coding, a course would definitely be the way to go, although it would take longer to actually be able to build products. Since I'm an indie hacker, I tend to choose the fastest implementation when developing products, when there's multiple ways to go about it :P Although for some projects (especially those which I plan on scaling and which aren't just a one-off thing) I try to future-proof them by writing clean and efficient code.

@huseyin_gayiran Interesting question. I think it's hard to say, there is a big push right now for web3, with decentralized apps, so I think we're going that direction. Maybe the browser will become a much more collaborative space, something like Figma in real-time, websites might be more connected instead of being completely independent, etc. Lots of cool things could happen :)

@ashugeo Thank you so much! If you're talking about formal studies, I didn't do any. I did go to university for a mix of software engineering and UX, but I dropped out on the first day, I figured I'd be able to learn on my own for free anyway, plus making money through a job. So yeah, just trial and error. Since I focus on web development specifically UI/UX and coding go a bit hand in hand, so I learnt both at the same time.

@pulljosh Staying motivated is hard, I think I've gotten better at it with practice (I've been doing this for a few years now!). The way I go about it is first of all making sure before starting to work on a project that I will be able to finish it. I make a plan, create a Notion doc with a task list of things to do to finish the MVP, and if it all looks good, then I commit to it. I have to stop myself from getting distracted and working on other stuff, since from experience that ends up killing projects. I think it's mainly a mentality thing, I know if I drop a project it won't be another month or two that I'll be able to build something else, and I always want to make sure I have things to share with my audience, sort of meeting expectations :) So in a way it's my responsibility, at least that's how I see it. Regarding marketing, honestly, up until last year I only shared my products on my Twitter account. I noticed people got notifications for my tweets (both through Twitter and email) if I went off for a couple of months and then I tweeted, so I followed that strategy for a while. It also helps I have a decent following on Twitter :) I've also been launching both on Product Hunt and Hacker News, and I make sure to tell everyone I know about it.

@alyssaxuu "... making sure before starting to work on a project that I will be able to finish it." This is precisely the kind of obvious-in-hindsight advice I needed to hear. I've never approached a project with the end (of the MVP) already in sight, but I will next time, and I bet it will help a lot.