Indiehacker

My name is John, and I’m an Indiehacker.

Well - let’s just say I’m on my way. Sort of. I’m not Indie (thanks, warm and cozy day job) and I’m not really a hacker either - unless you count my 35 hours of learning coding in a course which is only 50% done.

I’m a member of Ramen Club, where I cheer others on, make snarky comments, and try to summon up the courage to make my ideas come to life. You see, I want to be independent. I did freelancing for a bit, and it was wonderful - then the lethal combination of no marketing and a worldwide pandemic took my vision and flushed it. Now I am slowly learning to code and build apps, even more slowly writing a guide to writing tenders - more on that in another post - and occasionally cobbling together little projects with the help of ChatGPT.

There are a couple of big problems that exist, though.

Problem number 1 is my age and relative ‘settled down-ness’. I’m in my fifties, have a comfortable day job that doesn’t challenge or ask much of me, but is never going to make me a millionaire. Thanks to previous poor decisions I’m not your average mid fifties man who has a comfortable nest egg, a boat, and children going off to university soon - instead I am very happily married with a ten year old child and a mortgage with 17 years left on it. That implies responsibilities and a large portion of risk aversion.

I can’t quit my job and move to Bali. Well, my wife might have something to say about it if I tried. I can’t move in with my parents and eat ramen noodles. Many of the avenues open to my more courageous younger peers are simply closed to me, though I’ll admit that is more a limit of practicality rather than impossibility.

Problem number 2, quite the opposite of Problem number 1, is the risk that I am exposed to every day. Sure, my day job is lovely, but it’s a single source of income. If it disappeared tomorrow i would be screwed. Freelancing solved that problem in the past, but I was fortunate to jump straight into a freelance gig from a previous day job. I won’t be that lucky a second time around.

So rather than moan about my position, I’m going to do something about it. I have ideas - thanks to the inspiration I gathered from fellow ramen club members - I have a plan to make those ideas reality, and I have a path which I know is going to be slow and painful but the potential upside is endless.

I’m not going to do this alone. I’m dragging you along for the ride. I haven’t heard of another bloke in his fifties who documented his way into indiehacking, so I’m going to do just that. Be prepared for frustration and massive amounts of fear, uncertainty, and doubt while I shake off the habits of 38 years of employment and comfort, and stick my aging toes into the water.

I think the kids say “LFG”. So let’s do that.

Next i’ll explain my big project and the concept of 900 minutes.