Opposite side of the same question, but how can I better approach solo devs to help with marketing? I have led marketing at several startups/companies (3 acquisitions, 1 current unicorn, and 1 public company). Most developers are rightfully cautious bc of being either burned by marketing types in the past or just don't like the overall vibe (I don't blame them). I work best 1-on-1 with a builders and would like to do this more to get out of the bureaucracy of larger companies, but have mostly spun my wheels.
I’ve been thinking about setting something like this up. Marketing and sales for indie hackers who have decent ideas but don’t know how to sell/get feedback.
AMA question: I've never personally been through this process, but I assume go-to-market DD is typically part of the process. Are there specialized firms that handle that side of the equation?
RevenueCat is an API that makes it easy to sell subscriptions in your mobile app. We launched as part of Y Combinator's summer 2018 batch and today are handling subscriptions for more than 5 million mobile subscribers, and are the subscription infrastructure for thousands of apps. We believe that a direct, consumer relationship between developers and their users will make the world a better place. We offer market-rate pay, equity, benefits, and we’re 100% remote.
Came here to say this. Just finished reading it and there are so many parallels between the book and our current trajectory. Namely, as technology continues to abstract struggle from our daily lives and entertainment becomes more of an immersive escape, the motivation to solve true personal and societal problems slowly disappears.
The way Apple paints this is that it's them vs. evil Facebook. Don't get me wrong, Facebook has certainly overstepped several times in their data mining practices, but a lot of these changes will almost exclusively hurt small and medium sized businesses that have been able to inexpensively reach target customers for niche and/or local products.
Just because you built a business on technologies and techniques that cause social harm, doesn’t mean you have the right to continue using those technologies and techniques after society has decided they no longer wish suffer the harm they cause.
Certainly some business will die, but I suspect the vast majority will find other inexpensive avenues of reaching their customers, without having to step on their privacy.
First and foremost, no company should benefit from this kind of lopsided non-arrangement to spy/ track me. I don't care if it's Facebook or Bob the window washer, they shouldn't be tracking me this way without permission.
Also, I don't agree that this is going to broadly affect small businesses. I accept that it's possible a few businesses in some places will be hit, but there isn't a ton of evidence that it's going to have a broad impact. Facebook still has massive profiles of users to provide a broad set of ad targeting tools.
The hair dresser down the corner isn't going to lose sleep over this. Nor is my favorite taqueria or sandwich shop.
A family friend explained it in a way that stuck with me, paraphrasing:
"When you were in school, you only compared yourself to peers at your school and maybe one school over. Now me and my friends compare our looks, accomplishments, and follower counts to everyone within 10 years of us on Instagram"
It will be interesting to see what the terms of the deal are. I've used Revue to publish a paid newsletter and it works great. Not quite as polished as Substack, but the lower take rate will certainly be enough for some customers to switch imo.
RevenueCat is an API that makes selling subscriptions in your mobile app easy. We launched as part of Y Combinator's summer 2018 batch and today are handling subscriptions for more than 5 million mobile subscribers, and are the subscription infrastructure for thousands of apps. We are a mission driven, remote-first company that is building for the long term.
Going from 2 days to 1 day has always felt more like a luxury to me – and one I am willing to pay for when needed. For 95% of the purchases I make 2 day shipping is more than quick enough.
fwiw: Many of us dinosaurs remember when you ordered things on Amazon, and it took a week and cost shipping. Prime, and 2-day shipping, felt like a luxury you don't need. (And many of us thought long and hard if we should spend, and then it turned out to be really convenient...)
And those of us from the Triassic period even remember the days before Amazon, where you went to a bookstore, and you hoped they had a book that you needed, and if not, oh well, we can get it in 4-6 weeks. And then Amazon popped up, and you could just order online, and it felt like a luxury to have things in a week, and then we paid for it. We didn't need those books within a week, mind. It was the Triassic,
we moved slowly, and 4-6 weeks for a rare book seemed just fine. (Because, amongst other things, it gave you an excuse to spend the next 4-6 weeks browsing what other books the store had ;)
I'm fairly certain the same will happen to 1-day. It'll feel like a luxury. It'll turn out to be convenient. It'll take a year or so, and then we'll all happily pay for it.
> And those of us from the Triassic period even remember the days before Amazon, where you went to a bookstore, and you hoped they had a book that you needed, and if not, oh well, we can get it in 4-6 weeks.
And that's if you knew it existed. If you were looking for an esoteric subject it was not trivial to discover what books on the topic were in print.
I'm a happy non-Prime Amazon customer. I buy plenty of things from them, and I basically never need anything faster than their free shipping (which I'm pretty sure they deliberately slow down, holding back dispatching in order to incentivize customers to get Prime). I could easily afford a Prime subscription, but I don't see how it's more worth the money than a hundred other things I could drop ~£100/year on.
Are there really so few other people who feel that way?
I dropped Prime a few years ago for all the reasons that have been hashed over many times. I've reduced my Amazon purchases drastically and not having Prime helps.
As far as the deliberate slow down is concerned, I'm positive that they are doing that because they tell me. About half my orders from them come 1 or 2 day shipping after a 5 day delay from the time I submit the order. I get an email telling me that the item has shipped and will arrive tomorrow or the next day. Then the transaction hits my credit card. It's super annoying and I'm sure they want it that way.
Luxuries have a way of becoming the norm. iPhone was a luxury, where Ballmer infamously laughed at its sky high price. [1]
1 day seems unnecessary sometimes, but more often it is fighting back trips to local retail for me. I.e. Terro Ant Bait with the recent change in weather in Portland.
Manifold is helping developers break free from the closed ecosystems of the cloud and into a more open, standards based community of services and APIs. Our marketplace connects applications, wherever they are hosted, to independent cloud services made by developers who care.
Our partially distributed team is fun-loving, knowledgeable, and extremely productive. We're organized to let you explore and grow a variety of skills and capabilities, with many chances to create a significant impact. Many of us have strong ties to the open-source world, and have experience building tools at companies like Heroku, Red Hat, LinkedIn, and Canonical.
We're currently hiring for multiple positions including: Front-end Developers (React), Backend Developers (Go), Developer Advocate, Product Marketing Manager, and Product Designer.
