Public, XaaS, Passion, Indie
☕ Good Morning!
Like David Perell, sharing your ongoing work and results is a method many Makers, NoCoders and OpenStartups employ. Anne-Laure Le Cunff from Ness Labs believes there are many benefits of working in public. These include developing your “metacognition” which will allow you to better reflect and plan your next steps, getting early feedback on what you’re building, increasing your creativity through the exchange of ideas and nurturing a network of people in a similar space. Learn more about how to work in public by reading her full post here.
🚀 Maker News
Another well researched report and resource by Dru Riley, this time on the “Anything as a Service” market. You may have read about this previously in posts I shared by Robin Vander Heyden around productised startups. The opportunities in this space are manifold, as many reoccurring problems a business may experience need human interaction to solve and as with SaaS, this can be done at a fixed price and scope. As always, Dru gives us an overview of the key players, predictions, opportunities as well as links for further reading. You can read the Trend Report here, or for more in-depth information you can purchase the Pro edition here.
🏗️ Build + Launch
Ben Smith from the New York Times, has written a great piece on how artists and writers are moving to find new business models, using services such as Patreon, Substack and Cameo. Growth has partly been driven by the recent hit to the media industry through the pandemic, but also by the desire for many to get “their work out of the shadow of an institution.” Li Jin, formerly at a16z, calls this new space the “passion economy” and believes these services will enable everyone to “monetise individuality”, allowing some to make living from just 100 true fans. Ben summarises, that these new trends “could pay for a new wave of powerful independent voices and offer steady work for people doing valuable work.” Read the full article here.
For Courtland Allen from Indie Hackers, indie originally meant “independence from jobs and 9-to-5 schedules, from bosses, from capped salaries, from offices in fixed locations, and from investors who try to dictate how we run our companies.” Now there are alternative funding options available to indie makers, which will allow them to grow without sacrificing these ideals. Investments are returned by revenue and not equity. Moreover, investors don't take board seats and don't push you to do subsequent funding rounds. Some have argued, that an indie maker should only be beholden to his customers and no one else. Read the full post and comments here, listing a number of investors in this space.
🖥️ NoCode
Nocode HQ interviews Quentin Villard, founder of NocodeEssentials and Nocode Mentors. Quentin was first introduced to NoCode when he discovered Carrd two years. After quickly realising the possibilities this opened to him as a Maker he went on to discover other platforms such as Bubble, Webflow, Glide and Airtable. He noticed, that having some basic knowledge of code is beneficial when starting out. One barrier still seems to be the transition from NoCode MVP to scalable tech, but he hopes that this will become easier as NoCode continues to grow. For anyone thinking of building their first product he recommends to find a problem to solve in a niche market, build while you learn, be public about your progress, grow your community and begin to build an email list as soon as possible. Read the full post here.
💭 Afterthought
To finish off, another great quote by James Clear, which I feel applies to much that is currently happening around us as well as to any Maker dreaming up a new project. Take care of each other and see you tomorrow!
You can also find me on Twitter if you’d like to follow my thoughts in real-time!