[Part 1] The Indie Hackers World Championship
Is it a crazy idea?
Introduction: How the idea came
Everything started by a controversial tweet sent to levels.io that collected a few likes and also some critics.
I will not write a lot about the interest of this idea: it is pretty obvious. The idea of a big contest with experimented or beginner hackers building a new product without leveraging their community or their past products should raise the interest of most of us.
Of course, some projects have been successful without leveraging the community of the owner, as noted by levels.io for his project interiorAI.com.
But I think there is still a doubt for many successful projects. Obviously having more than 100k followers does not hurt, and can be used for an “excuse of failure” by many beginners: “I don’t have 100k followers, I cannot succeed”.
This is why I think a “fair-contest” would be welcomed to show that everyone can succeed, and to dismiss the idea that building a community is the only way to succeed.
Setting every competitors at the same level in terms of money, popularity, and community is the only way to detect new talents or to confirm existing talentuous entrepreneurs without any doubt.
It will be also a nice format to see the energy-level required to achieve something interesting. As it would be time-limited (2 months?), entrepreneurs would need to be fast and straight to the point.
Following this idea, I quickly drafted some basic rules on Twitter:
Then I posted this image, made in 10 minutes with Canva.
In this first post, I detail what would be the benefits to build such a contest and how I would do it. It’s shared to the community to get their feedback and eventual proposals. I don’t know yet if this is realistic, and I don’t even know if this initiative could really raise the interest of Indie Hackers.
I am just tasting the water.
In all cases, thinking about this idea (under my shower) let me think that it’s really doable.
A fruitful social event
One week ago, I have been invited to a reception, with high-level people (mostly french). It was the opportunity to exchange with various peoples: CEOs or Vice Presidents of big companies, Entrepreneurs, Human Resources Directors, etc.
French wines, petits fours, just near the Champs-Elysées avenue. You see what I mean. Honestly, such a social event is not my favorite game — I felt so small — but finally it has been surprisingly interesting and useful.
During this event, something struck me: “Indie Hacker” is not a known-word. Worse: it’s not even a known concept.
It’s obvious, on Twitter there are many tweets of people joking on the difficulty to explain to others what they are doing. But it’s even worse: all wording alternatives are doomed to fail.
- A “startup” does not design correctly what we are doing, people will think “investment” and “team”;
- “Independent entrepreneur” is associated with Freelancing
- Entrepreneurship is still perceived (at least in France) as a “small company with an office and some employees”.
“Indie Hacker” seems to be a good word for us. But nobody knows it, especially older people (you know, those who have responsibilities, money, and the address book :-))
So, we need to democratize the concept of “Indie Hacker”. We need to hit hard, we need to disrupt the “big economic players” to let them know we exist.
Why? Because they can help us. Better: they would be happy to help us.
Older people (50 to 70 years old) are not what we may think: they welcome the change, and they support the next generation, knowing perfectly that the current system has its own limits.
It may sounds strange, but I am perfectly sure that there is a ton of money ready to be injected by big players into the Indie Hackers community.
This is what I perceived during this social event. I even had the feeling that they would expect more “originality”, more audacity from the next generation.
Do something, present me a project, send me concrete material, I will help you
Several persons told me that during this evening. This is the way for them to “pass the baton”. And I know these proposals were extremely serious, not something you say without engagement after 5 drinks of wine.
Targeting medias to initiate the virtuous circle
Using the words “World Championship” is provocative. I think this is a good approach but I am not 100% sure.
- Pros: Medias like clarity and information ready-to-digest. A “World Championship” is self-explanatory, no need to explain.
- Cons: Might be pretentious or not professional enough.
What is clear is that the title of this contest plays a great part of the media strategy.
If you say in front of a journalist: “We are organizing the Indie Hackers World Championship”, the next question will be: “what are Indie Hackers?”.
But if you say: “We are organizing the Indie Hackers Great Contest event” (for instance), the next question might be: “What are Indie Hackers and what kind of contest it is?”.
I prefer the first question.
In all cases, one clear goal of such an event would be to quickly target medias to initiate the virtuous circle.
Once you start to be publicized, sponsors are coming. Once sponsors are coming, money is flowing. Once money is flowing, other medias are coming.
Targeting medias with such a project is not that hard. You just have to be serious, to find one or two sponsors, and to open some address books. The initial traction to do it can be started with a single short press article in an economic magazine. Then, everyone will follow. With medias, the main obstacle is the first press article, and for this, you need to know some people trusted by some well-placed journalists. This is my case.
The interest for the participants of this Championship
For the community, the interest to participate to such an event is at two different levels:
- First, financially. Depending of the number of sponsors, it’s obvious that the prize pool should be enough to attract Indie Hackers. $30.000 is a bare minimum I think. $200.000 and above might be ideal to attract “big names”, eg those winning more than 10k$ / month with their current startup.
- Secondly — and most importantly — the winner(s) would have a great media coverage for their startup. Being the winner would be something that you want to write on your Linkedin or Twitter profile, and it would be easy to get some interviews from medias.
To put things in perspective: in 2004, the European Poker Tour has been created, with a first tournament at Barcelone. The first price was 80 000 €. Ten years later, in 2014 at Barcelone, the prize pool was more than 7 millions €, and the winner got 794 000€. This is now one of the famous tournaments in the world.
Starting with an equivalent amount, a prize pool between $30.000 and $200.000 would not be a shame, while remaining achievable at the sponsor level.
The interest for the sponsors
That’s obvious: “Digital” and “Agility” are permanent buzz-words. All companies want to show they are at the forefront of this. Sponsoring such an event would be beneficial for their image.
As an example, each year there is a big event for entrepreneurs organized in Paris called “Go entrepreneurs”. They have many sponsors, even from companies not directly linked to entrepreneurship. And this is “only” a 5-days purely french event.
The interest is clear: even if you are a Indie Hackers, at one point you’ll have to own your company. You will have an accountant and a business bank account. Boom, this will immediately raise the interest of some sponsors (banking, accounting).
Also, it’s likely that such an event may attract some big successful SaaS. I am not saying that Notion.so would be sponsor, but it can be attempted.
Sponsors are attracting themselves, it’s a virtuous circle to build to attract new ones and so increase the prize pool.
The interest for the “subscribers”
Many would want to follow the championship without being participant. If you have 100 participants, the “subscribers” would receive at the end the full detailed “logbook” of 100 startups: from the idea to the execution. It’s invaluable in itself as it will clearly show what worked in “real-life conditions” or what has failed.
At the end of the contest, subscribers would receive:
- The mapping between the real identity and the fake identity of the participants
- The full log book of each startup: each action detailed and their result, commented by the participant and by the reviewers
- An interview of the participants
- The tools and techniques used,
- The full-disclosure of emails, tweets, private messages sent,
- etc.
I guess such a package could be sold for $40 or $50. Personally, I would buy it, even for $90, as it is a unique opportunity to see *really* what an entrepreneur did to be successful without leveraging his popularity.
There was a TV show on this thematic
Interestingly, there was an American TV show called “Undercover billionaire” that exploited this idea. This is a great TV show, with a good concept.
The Indie Hackers World Championship would rely on the same principle: participants will start again from 0, under a fake identity only known by the organizers.
What’s next?
The main technical issue to allow such a contest to exist, is the question of fairness. What would prevent a participant to leverage his network to win the competition?
In the next part, I will put on paper some ideas to ensure the fairness of the contest. I will also detail how it may be organized concretely, by whom, how, under which legal framework, and how we could structure things practically if this idea is supported.
