Starting a Product Portfolio

Mar 15, 2021 5-minute read

I may have (finally) settled on a strategy on how to start building a portfolio of products.

Over the past week, I’ve spent a lot of time reading up on articles across indie hacker (IH) and related spaces, plus various posts linked from those sites. And the ever-deepening tree of content that branches off from those.
Quite frankly, it’s mind boggling how much material is out there to distract myself from, you know, actually building things.

My handicap

It doesn’t help that I’m prone to analysis paralysis. And while I am aware of that, it still is a battle for me to not fall right into that trap (as I keep telling myself while I click on the next link to find out just a little bit more).
To make things harder, I also have a great knack for foreseeing potential problems a few miles down the road.

Granted, the latter has been valuable when working on longer term projects during regular employment. However, it is less than ideal if you just need to get a few small wins, as in “complete something that works, no need to be perfect”. Problems down the road mean nothing when I haven’t even started the engine yet.

But I digress. The above is just me warning myself to be mindful of my tendencies.

Strategy shift

As I left my cushy, well-paid job, I had my sights set on the holy grail for the budding technical solopreneur: The glorious SaaS.
I wanted to code up a veritable farm of those. Like a llama farm, but with code. And less wool scraps to clean out, I suppose.

There’s only one hitch, though. My research tells me these are bloody hard to get right. Particularly as newbie. (I won’t list all the reasons why it is hard here. Check out the link in the next paragraph - it describes some of the gnarly pieces in play from experience - something I simply do not have.)

So, as much as I give myself a hard time fo reading rather than doing, I am grateful for coming across “The Stair Step Approach to Bootstrapping” by Rob Walling. While it’s from 2015, I think it has aged extremely well.
It basically puts the mighty SaaS venture in perspective when compared to simpler, easier-to-build products such as add-ons or plugins.

Putting the article above together with this tweet from Damon Cheng, I eventually had a bit of a lightbulb moment.

Those two pieces were the right content at the right time for me.

Finally, the penny dropped for me that it is perfectly acceptable to start with something small. And it’s okay if it doesn’t sell. In fact, chances are high of landing a big fat zero for my first product attempts.
And even if I did beat the odds and my first try does sell, it probably won’t put me in a position to lean back in my hammock and watch the passive income roll in while lazily sipping a piña colada with a colorful mini umbrella atop right next to a slice of pineapple sculpted into something vaguely resembling a seashell.

I also realized that I have explicit permission from others to not succeed. And as long as I focus on something small that can be built in a reasonably short amount of time it simply is no big deal if it doesn’t make money.

My advantage

To be fair, I am in an enviable position among peers who are starting this journey. My wife and I are financially stable enough that the loss of my income doesn’t pose a terminal risk to our future.
In fact, that may just be my biggest edge: I don’t need to hustle for contracts, or keep working a day job and try to find the energy to build things at night. My wife puts no pressure on me to immediately replace my sweet income of the past. She has patience.

And since I now finally understood that I have permission to fail, it is up to me to find that first project, and execute. Maybe I should order a t-shirt: Build first, build hard, no mercy.
Or maybe I should start building something instead of scouring the internet for a good deal on custom slogan t-shirts. Just this once, please.

Next steps

So, what’s next?
Step 1: Find an idea. That’s it, really.

Previously I would have thought that is the hardest part. But since success is not required, almost any reasonable idea will do as long as I can build it fairly quickly.

To be brutally honest, I’m still not quite sure where exactly to go hunting for ideas. My best-guess approach is to pick a marketplace for a platform with a low barrier to entry. Even better if:

  • I have used the platform before (and can create a free instance to play around with),
  • The platform has a reasonable API to integrate addons/plugins with,
  • It has a public feedback section, or a public feature wishlist where I can see which challenges users encounter for the platform.

I’m sure there are several nuggets out there.

I’ll report back once I’ve decided on something that I believe I can build in a reasonable amount of time.
And to summarize: For the first try I won’t try and guess/analyze if the product will make money. I just need to make sure I won’t burn money to keep it running.