As I was poking around on the internet over the holiday, a book written by an indie hacker entrepreneur caught my eye. Traditional places like Amazon don’t sell the book. Instead, this entrepreneur is not only self-publishing but also self-distributing the book—the only place you can buy it is his website. I’ve seen this before, but it definitely piqued my interest.  

The founder does two things that made me lean in more (and want to purchase his book). First, he posts stats about book sales: total books sold since launch, total revenue generated, and number of books sold today were prominent. I hadn’t seen this before, and I loved it. I took it as his way of communicating how much value has been provided to others—in the aggregate and recently. And it’s more social proof.

Second, the book is never finished. He’s constantly updating it as he learns new things. He shows the last time he updated the content and the last time he published new book files. The book was written about five years ago, his last update was within the last twenty-four hours, and new files were published today (as of this writing). I like this approach because his book content stays current. I’ve never seen this before.

This entrepreneur is doing a great job of marketing his book, and he got me excited about it. I’m going to grab a copy and add it to my booklist.

I’ve been working on the next version of the “book library” MVP with a developer friend. Living the problem this past summer by reading, taking notes, blogging, podcasting, etc. is coming in handy. The insights are helping with feature prioritization and nuances around how it’s built.

One thing I didn’t expect that we’re encountering this week has to do with data. We’re finding errors and weird record relationships in book databases that we’d planned on using. My gut instinct is to create our own pristine database by aggregating and cleansing the data from various sources. But that’s a decent amount of work, and I’m not sure we need to do it for what I want to accomplish with the MVP. I’ll think about it some more over the next few days.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone has a great holiday!

A few weeks ago, I shared that I was going to start putting energy into better understanding marketing, or at least its concepts. Making a great solution isn’t enough—you must get it into the hands of people who can use it. That’s the important role marketing plays, and that’s why I want to understand it better.

Since that post, to understand the big concepts, I’ve been reading biographies of entrepreneurs who founded marketing agencies. I’ve also been consuming interviews on YouTube in which founders share recent growth strategies.

I still have a long way to go. Indeed, marketing will likely be something I study continually going forward. But I do have a much better understanding of marketing now. Reading biographies about entrepreneurs who deeply understood the craft of marketing and built businesses to help others market really helped make things click.

I’m excited about marketing now. Before, I didn’t understand it and was annoyed by it. But understanding it better has made me want to continue to learn about it, and I’m excited to try marketing my next idea!

This weekend, I was working on the “book library” MVP. I checked X, formerly Twitter, to see if others were experiencing the same pains around reading that I’ve experienced. I came across a thread from a notable CEO complaining about the same pain I’m trying to solve.

Because he’s well known, the thread got tons of exposure, which resulted in lots of replies. The replies were a gold mine. I learned about other founders who’ve built solutions to solve this problem. I started a list of competitors and added each of them to it. I also read every reply because people articulated their perspective on the problem and suggested solutions. I noted the suggestions and added some to a list of potential features.

My takeaway was that X is a pretty good tool for researching a problem, given the crowdsourced nature of the platform. Despite lots of noise and downsides, it quickly helped me find competitors I might not have known about otherwise and get candid thoughts on the problem from users I wouldn’t have had access to.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 38
• Total book digests created: 15
• Total blog posts published: 231
• Total audio recordings published: 103

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Book digests created: 0
• Blog posts published: 7
• Audio recordings published: 0

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read A Memo for the Children, a memoir by Samuel Newhouse Sr.
• Tested methods of storing parsed books in a database for my “book library” MVP

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography or autobiography
• Refine the sub-feature list for the “book library” MVP
• Define data views for the “book library” MVP
• Share taxonomy drafts with one person
• Create a list of competitors for the “book library” MVP

Asks:

• None

Week two hundred forty-three was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles this week  

What I learned:

• The last MVP for the “book library” didn’t meet the mark. The issue was that we couldn’t get the data from the book. We think we’ve figured that part out. Now, the focus has turned to how to make data from books useful.
• Breaking down what’s needed for the next version of the “book library” MVP was helpful. I created a prioritized list of features and sub-features that crystallized what problems need solving and what needs to be built to create a superior solution.
• Making use of what someone has read in books usually involves their notes and highlights. Extracting my notes from physical books has been a painful problem since I began this project. I haven’t found an acceptable solution. Solving that problem is the highest priority because it’s the most painful problem and the biggest hurdle.
• A workflow management system for learning from books could add value for serious learners.
• Thinking through taxonomy is difficult. I’ve played with a few drafts but still haven’t landed on the right taxonomy.
• Looking at highly rated applications solving similar problems using AI gave me some great feature ideas and creative solutions to problems I hadn’t considered. After watching a founder demo his AI solution on YouTube, I borrowed some of his team’s ideas for my feature list.

Those are my struggles and learnings from the week!

This week, I received a call from a founder. He’s in a disagreement with the other cofounder of his company. Disagreements between people who spend significant time together regularly are inevitable (e.g., family, romantic partners). So, they’re bound to happen between entrepreneurs, who often have stronger opinions than the average person.

Disagreements between founders can fracture the relationship beyond repair and seriously impact the company if they’re not resolved. Cofounder disagreements are one of the top reasons early-stage companies fail.

These two founders decided to get help from a neutral third party. They hired a counselor who specializes in helping founding teams work through disagreements. Through this process, they got to the root cause of the issues and are now trying to work through them.

I’m hopeful that they’ll be able to resolve their disagreement and the company can get back to focusing on customers.

This week, I chatted with the founder of a growing company. The business is doing well, but he’s uncertain about the future because the business is in a heavily regulated industry. This makes planning more challenging, especially since a new presidential administration will take over here in the U.S. in January.

The regulations he’s concerned about will determine what customers he can sell to. If the regulations are loose, the number of customers he can serve will be large. If they’re strict, the market of potential customers will shrink materially. There are lots of competitors in the market, so loose regulations mean plenty of business to go around for everyone. Strict regulations will lead to steep competition and, probably, price wars, which will reduce profit margins.

So, while he’s watching the regulatory environment, what he’s primarily worried about is the future size of his market. Markets can make or break a company. This founder hopes that regulation doesn’t shrink his market and put his company in a challenging situation.

Today, I chatted with an entrepreneur who owns a retail company about what can be done to grow sales. One of the projects mentioned was improving the functionality of its website. The entrepreneur views money spent that way as a cost and wants to spend as little as possible. This perspective got me thinking.

Entrepreneurs should keep a close eye on costs. The old saying, “If you watch the pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves,” is true. The best entrepreneurs keep costs under control.

However, expenses and investments are different. An expense is a cost to operate a business that generally covers only a year. Think insurance, taxes, rent, salary, etc. An investment creates an asset that produces revenue (and hopefully profits) for years. An investment should generate a return.

The entrepreneur I was talking with today was thinking of money spent on an ecommerce website as an expense, but I think it’s an investment. A website is an asset that, if properly built, can drive revenue and create a return on the money invested for years.

Entrepreneurs have a dual role. They should manage the costs of the company to ensure short-term profitability. But they’re also capital allocators who must invest profits in ways that will help the company grow long term. Treating investments as expenses will improve short-term profitability at the expense of long-term viability.