Road to 10k MRR, Dec 17 2023
First update on my journey growing a product to 10k in monthly revenue
You say the hill’s too steep to climb
You say you’d like to see me try
You pick the place and I’ll choose the time
And I will climb that hill in my own way
-- Pink Floyd, "Fearless"
I've been full-time indie hacking for most of 2023, other than some semi-professional poker. One project - Live Poker Theory - has been much better received than my other projects, and so for the next few months, growing and monetizing it will likely be my biggest focus.
#1 on Reddit /r/poker with 334 upvotes
I've repeatedly been able to get to #1 on the poker subreddit, including this last week when I wrote The 9 Dimensions of Poker Greatness, which flew to the top of the subreddit on Thursday and stayed there until late Friday evening. The post got 334 upvotes, 50k views, dozens of replies complimented my writing and thanked me for contributing such an engaging piece of content.
In the post I argue that instead of discussing who the best poker players ever are, it's more informative to break down poker skill into 9 dimensions: fearlessness, instincts, analytic skills, game theory fundamentals, work ethic, table talk, live reads, game selection, and intangibles.
Many of those dimensions can map directly to entrepreneurship, especially if you think about things like "table talk" and "live reads" as sales, and "game selection" as a good idea filter.
What I love about poker as a bootstrapper niche is that it feels big enough to feel relevant but still small enough I can consistently get to #1 on the subreddit. Compare that to reaching a developer audience on a site like Hacker News or reach gamers on a subreddit like /r/gaming, where getting to #1 is an extremely high bar that requires a combination of great content and great luck.
...but 20x less impactful than a post with 4 upvotes
But here's the big twist - the post did not convert to that many users for my product. I got ten people to join the Discord - respectable - but only 1 person to sign up for my product. Bummer.
However, 2 days later someone made a post on /r/poker_theory asking what tools besides GTO Wizard people are using, and what books they recommend. GTO Wizard is my big, elephant-in-the-room competitor, but also something I'm glad exists since it validates there's a big market of people willing to pay for this product category. I replied and said,
"Hey, I'm working on my own training tool, here's how my vision is different from GTO Wizard, here's a link, and here's a one sentence review of each of my top 5 poker strategy books".
That post ended up generating twenty signups for my product!
In a way, it's not surprising. Someone responded to 9 Dimensions post that they like following the "sport" of poker and watching it on television, but they don't play it themselves. So while it was good for brand awareness, I wasn't reaching as many people actively looking for study tools as I was in a tiny thread in /r/poker_theory where people were specifically looking for something similar to what I was building.
Getting my product in front of a few people who are very interested in my app is far more impactful than getting it in front of lots of people who are slightly interested or indifferent.
This makes me feel better about being bad at "the big launch". While certainly there's massive benefits to getting #1 on Product Hunt or Hacker News, I do think that being able to consistently find those day-to-day people looking for your product can be even more valuable. And part of the reason I want to double down on Live Poker Theory is how reliably I've been able to do that.
50% Month/Month December Growth Already Achieved
While I'm not trying to raise money from venture firms like YCombinator, I still value their advice. According to their "How Not To Fail" article, they say:
If you have a good growth rate, which in a startup means at least 10% per month, you're on the right track.
It's only December 12, but so far Live Poker Theory, the product, has grown from 60 registered users to 90 registered users. The Discord has grown at about a similar rate. That's a 50% increase only 1/3 of the way through the month. I'm crossing my fingers this is an early sign of potential Product Market Fit.
I know it's still a huge jump from "registered user" to "paid user", and I plan to prioritize monetizing it as soon as January. Technically it’s made a little money from some paywalled articles, but I decided to focus on the trainer to get off the “content treadmill” and paused the few subscribers I had for the paid articles. Either way, I'm trying to celebrate small wins as I get them and I'm optimistic that I'll be able to monetize since people pay for similar products.
If you takeaway one thing , remember this:
1. Getting a product in front of a few people who are very interested is far more impactful than getting it in front of lots of people who are slightly interested or indifferent.
Thanks to Catia Prin,
, , and for reviewing this draft