Making a Lot of Stuff: The Case for Indie Hackers vs Entrepreneurs

When it comes to building things, there’s a big difference between the indie hacker mindset and the traditional entrepreneur approach. Indie hackers thrive on creating multiple products, sometimes just for fun, curiosity, or quick validation. In contrast, entrepreneurs tend to focus on scaling a single product with the goal of building a sustainable business. Both strategies have their merits, but it's important to understand when one mindset is better suited than the other.

The Indie Hacker Approach: Making a Lot of Things

Indie hackers love to build. They prototype, experiment, and ship fast. This approach is great for:

• Ideation and Prototyping: You're throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks. Building multiple products can help you discover what works and what doesn't, without committing too much to a single idea.
• Quick Learning: Every project teaches something new—about the market, technology, or even your own interests. Indie hackers can pivot quickly because they have no major attachment to any one idea.
• Low Risk, High Flexibility: Without the overhead of investors or large teams, indie hackers can stay nimble, change direction, or drop an idea altogether with minimal loss.

This mindset is fantastic for the early stages of product development. But it comes with a serious downside.

The Downside: Too Many Small Projects, Not Enough Income

The biggest trap for indie hackers is getting stuck making a lot of things that never make significant money. You might have five projects that each bring in a few hundred dollars a month—better than nothing, but still not enough to quit your day job or scale up your operations.

Here’s the hard truth: many small projects don’t add up to one big success. Spreading yourself too thin over multiple side projects can prevent any of them from gaining real traction. While it's a great strategy for learning and early testing, at some point, you need to pick a winner and double down. Otherwise, you're just stuck in perpetual "side-hustle" mode, which isn’t sustainable in the long term.

Entrepreneurs: Betting on a Single Horse

Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, usually take the opposite route: find a problem, build a solution, and scale it. This approach is high risk, high reward. The entrepreneur is less interested in building a lot of things and more focused on turning one thing into a scalable business.

The downside here is that entrepreneurs can take a lot longer to validate an idea. They may pour months or years into a project that ultimately fails. That’s why it’s important for traditional entrepreneurs to adopt some indie hacker tendencies, especially in the early phases, to rapidly test and prototype before committing fully.

Conclusion: Different Mindsets for Different Stages

The indie hacker’s “make a lot of stuff” mentality is perfect for the early stages of your entrepreneurial journey. It’s an excellent way to learn fast, test ideas, and discover what works. However, you can’t stay in this phase forever. Eventually, you need to focus on building one thing that can scale—the ultimate goal of any entrepreneur.

So, if you're just starting out, embrace the indie hacker mindset. But remember, you can’t make a living off of 10 half-baked projects. Once you find something with potential, it’s time to switch gears and go all-in.