Indie Hacking Reading List

up:: Indie Hacking

Stuff I read and found valuable

Books

• The 12 Week Year
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
• Company of One (to a lesser degree)

Online

• Deadline-driven vs. product-driven
  • “Many makers let the product drive the planning when working on a product.”, instead: “start with the launch date in mind.”
• Good advice: https://tamerlan.dev/ive-been-indie-hacking-for-a-few-months-heres-what-i-learned/
  • 50/50 rule: one week on marketing, one week on development
• Monetization is validation
  • https://jakobgreenfeld.com/make-levels
• https://jakobgreenfeld.com/free
  • The benefits of making your product paid
• You need to neglect mostly everything to win big
  • Only optimise the one thing that matters – why people buy from you
• How I created a #2 Product of the Day in 90 minutes
  • Runs through a super simple tech stack
• I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea
  • Something that creates value for me and for the customer.
    • ”To succeed, an offering must create value for all entities involved in the exchange—target customers, the company, and its collaborators.”
• The Sport of Indie Hacking
  • ”The best part of being an indie hacker is that your income is completely decoupled from your efforts. 🏖️ The worst part of being an indie hacker is that your income is completely decoupled from your efforts. 😅“
• Stay in the user mindset – Hardik Pandya
  • Builders spend 40+ hours in a product, users 4 minutes.
  • Users want consistency and reliability, not change.
• ”MVP” is dead! Long live “FPC”.
  • “Sit down with a literal physical person and convince them to give you money for something.”
• https://jakobgreenfeld.com/tight-aggresive/
  • Do some Expected Value calculations before taking on a project

To read

• Turning side projects into profitable startups
• How I Choose What to Work On

Jakob Greenfield’s list:

• MAKE by Pieter Levels, General Overview
• The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick, Ideation
• Generating Product Ideas by Artiom Dashinsky, Ideation
• The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber, Management
• The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman, Economics
• Dotcom Secrets by Russell Brunson, Marketing
• Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl, Software Development
• The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ deMarco, Mindset
• Keys to Great Writing by Stephen Wilbers, Marketing