What's New: Rise of the shopping bots
(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)
Indie hackers are becoming Santa's new helpers:
- Tools that help desperate parents buy popular holiday toys have soared in use since the start of the pandemic, amid some criticism. Here's why these small volume automation tools could be your next sleigh.
- The number of active DAOs has increased by 132% since last September, and the organizations are rising in significance. These new opportunities can get you in the game.
- Founder Dimitri Gielis's printing and reporting tool hit $1 million in annual revenue, after several other failed products. His secret weapon? Attending conferences.
Want to share something with nearly 85,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
🤖 Rise of the Shopping Bots
from the Growth & Acquisition Channels newsletter by Darko
Indie hackers are becoming Santa's new helpers. Shopping bots are exploding, creating new opportunities for founders in this space.
Shopping bots
The problem: Parents are becoming increasingly frustrated by empty store shelves, as they try to buy holiday gifts for their children.
Bot bout: According to The Wall Street Journal, dissatisfied parents are turning to shopping bots that track when sold out items are restocked. Some of them even place orders automatically.
Most of these tools are made by bootstrapped founders. One of them is Peter Ironside, the founder of SlapX, an automated checkout tool for in-demand items.
Cat and mouse games: Many retailers forbid customers from purchasing products using automated software. Despite the overall criticism of the practice (see the Stopping Grinch Bots Act of 2019), bots meant to secure small volume purchases, as opposed to reseller bots that purchase large quantities, are steadily gaining popularity.
The opportunity: Over the years, I've seen many software tools in "cat and mouse" markets where bootstrapped founders thrive. One of the primary reasons for this is that VCs will not enter these markets; they do not want to get involved in niches that may violate the terms of service of big sites.
Take Expandi, a LinkedIn automation tool that has bootstrapped to $3M in one year. I've also seen a bunch of shopping bot tools that make five or six figures being sold on premium brokerage sites like FEInternational.
Some of these software tools receive funding if they exist for long enough. Take Semrush, for example. Founded in 2008, the company received its first (public) funding 10 years later, in 2018. Investors probably took the plunge because it was safe to assume that Google hadn't bothered getting the search results scraped.
Buy now, pay later
The news: A few weeks ago, we covered Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) options for SaaS companies. Since then, Afterpay, one of the largest BNPL providers in the US, announced that it will allow all US customers to pay for subscriptions such as gym memberships, entertainment subscriptions, and online services in installments.
Why this is significant: The BNPL model has exploded in the e-commerce space. Klarna has 90M customers worldwide, for example.
BNPL has not yet caught fire in SaaS because almost no major BNPL provider (Klarna, Afterpay, Affirm) supported subscription and digital products. This is about to change, with Afterpay blazing the trail.
BNPL 101: A customer pays in (usually) four installments, and the BNPL provider gives the seller the money upfront. A recent study found that accepting payments through a BNPL provider can increase conversion rates by 20-30%.
The opportunity: Use BNPL to improve your conversion rate. For example, you could set up your annual plans so that people can pay in installments. If your annual plan costs $400, people will be able to use Afterpay and pay in four installments ($100) over a six week period. Sweet!
The largest Twitter Space of all time
The news: LADBible spoke with the creator of a Twitter Space that had 48K users at its peak.
What the Space is all about: Karaoke with a twist. "Sing Your Dialect" is a Space where you could sing a song in your dialect. President Barack Obama is among its listeners, and it is the biggest Space of all time (so far).
The opportunity: One of the main reasons why this Space is so popular is that it took a concept and added an interesting twist to it.
Can you do the same in your niche? I've been noticing this trend across all social media platforms. Pose a question in a way that gives your audience a chance to be creative. Examples:
- Name something that a lot of people like, but you can’t stand.
- How do academics with two or more kids get everything done (wrong answers only)?
The "Sing Your Dialect" is the Twitter Space version of the posts above.
Have you ever used a shopping bot? Let's chat below!
Discuss this story, or subscribe to Growth & Acquisition Channels for more.
📰 In the News
from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
💰 TikTok has added new features to help creators monetize content.
🛩 The first passenger flight powered by 100% sustainable fuel has taken off.
👀 SpaceX is facing bankruptcy, according to a leaked email.
📈 Omicron crypto has skyrocketed since the new COVID-19 variant got the same name.
💻 Over a third of the world's population has never used the internet.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
👥 Fractional Ownership and the Tao of DAOs
from the Hustle Newsletter by Julia Janks
The Signal: The number of active DAOs has increased by 132% since September 2020, and their combined assets under management have ballooned from $290M to over $14B today.
DAOs are organizations governed by computer-encoded rules and controlled by organization members, rather than a central government. They evolved out of blockchain technology, and are quickly rising in significance.
A group of crypto investors recently established a DAO to crowdfund enough money to buy one of the last surviving first edition copies of the US Constitution, which went on auction last week.
While the DAO lost out, it raised over $40M from 17K contributors in less than a week.
*Source: Twitter
The big picture: The ConstitutionDAO initiative is an interesting case study on the future of DAOs, and fractionalized ownership and governance more generally. Startups that facilitate fractionalized ownership of assets are receiving record funding, particularly in real estate. Pacaso, a company offering "a modern way to own a second home" through co-ownership, recently raised $75M at a $1B valuation.
*Source: Crunchbase
We see opportunities in four niches:
- Real estate: Fractional ownership has democratized second home ownership in ways beyond what Pacaso currently offers.
For example, startup Kocomo aims to modernize the timeshare model by using fractional ownership to open up cross-border vacation home ownership, with the added benefit to owners of being able to rent out their weeks. Kocomo's pricing model includes upfront and ongoing service fees.
*Source: Kocomo
Opportunities are not limited to residential properties. Founders could apply the model to commercial real estate (a concept which has already taken off in India) or even agricultural land. Farm Together allows investors to become fractional owners of agricultural land:
- Transportation: Co-ownership is not a new concept, especially when it comes to private jets (NetJets has been using the concept since the 1960s), but as technology makes the model more accessible, other opportunities in transportation will emerge.
Think yachts, boats, jet skis, motorbikes, super cars, bicycles, e-bikes, and even thoroughbred horses.
- Other collectibles and the culture economy: Companies like Masterworks and Otis are already enabling consumers to buy shares in fine art and other unique collectibles like comics, baseball cards, and sneakers.
There are more attractive collectibles that you could explore, many of which we wrote about last year:
Otis also offers fractional ownership in NFTs. They're not the first to pioneer this model; Belgium-based startup Wunder has been offering investors the opportunity to co-own digital artworks since 2017. Art owners earn income from their pieces when corporations and hotels display their digital art in lobbies.
As more real-world assets enter the digital realm (i.e. music, fashion, patents and intellectual rights, gaming moments and memorabilia, etc.), there will be more opportunities to help investors diversify their portfolios through fractional ownership of digital assets.
- Adjacent opportunities: A range of other opportunities will open up as the world becomes increasingly fractionalized, including:
- Lease-to-own models: Blockchain technology could be leveraged to facilitate lease-to-own purchases by allowing tenants to own fractions of their property as they pay rent or installments. The same model could be applied to other lease-to-own assets, like expensive equipment.
- Insurance: We could see the emergence of niche insurance products, which take into account the different risk profiles of multiple asset owners.
- Employee incentives: A company in Hong Kong is already using fractional real estate as part of its employee incentive scheme. Employees can convert points earned into perks like vouchers and hotel stays, or fractional ownership in the company's commercial property. The same model could be applied to other assets.
What are your thoughts on DAOs? Please share in the comments!
Discuss this story, or subscribe to the Hustle Newsletter for more.
🛠 Crafting Your Sales Page
The first thing the user sees is the first picture on your page. Grab their attention by immediately explaining the value you provide.
Discuss this story.
🖨 Dimitri Gielis Hit $1M ARR With a Printing and Reporting Tool
from the Deep Dive newsletter by Seth King
Founder: Dimitri Gielis.
Founded: United Codes.
ARR: $1M.
Sphere of genius: Persistence.
Dimitri Gielis knows about perseverance. His first indie hacking project, a real estate application, failed miserably. So did his second, which was a platform for clinical therapists. But his tenth idea, a reporting tool for Oracle Application Express (APEX), ended up working.
Between his agency's consulting work and its software, Dimitri's firm has reached $1M ARR. We caught up with him to chat about bootstrapping APEX tools, recovering from a $400K+ loss, and founding his own development agency.
What are some of your projects that failed?
The first app was a platform where people could easily find apartments or homes online. I typically come up with products based on my own problems, so the idea came to me when I was searching for a house, but struggled to find the right one online.
Once I built the project, there were a lot of challenges that I didn't anticipate. The main issue was that my target demographic, homebuyers, changed every six months. Homebuyers only search for a house for six months, maybe two years, and then they're gone.
I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars getting it off the ground, but my main loss was my time. My biggest issue with this project was building a product for people that I didn’t understand.
My family has long struggled with cancer, so I later decided to build a healthcare product. My plan was to build a platform specifically for occupational therapists. It was successful in a way, but the target group was small, and they were really slow in implementing technology. These doctors don't typically use technology to treat their patients; they actually prefer to not use it. I would guess that I lost around $300K on it in total.
What led you to building APEX products?
I was using Oracle APEX daily, and my customers wanted to print or export documents, but that wasn't possible with this technology. It was a real pain.
After five years, I was really tired of it. So, I decided to solve the issue. The first three to five years of the project, nobody believed in it. They kept pointing out that I had competition, even though none of my competitors were any good. Regardless of the hate, I kept going for three years. Then, suddenly, there was an uptick.
One of the first companies to use it was Marriott, and then NASA, and then Harvard University. The biggest growth the product experienced, though, was when Oracle itself started to use it. I think it worked because we had built a building block that others could use and leverage, whereas before, I had tried to build an entire platform.
What did I learn? Start from your own niche where you are really known, then keep moving and stay small.
What was your user acquisition strategy?
We had customers through our consultancy, people that I had met at conferences. Conferences are filled with people who want to learn and try new things. The benefit of conferences has always been networking at the bar or in the hallway, so it's been tough to sustain that with things going virtual. People try to recreate it with a virtual pub or something like that, but it's not the same.
Here's my advice: Go to a conference! Talk about even the smallest things you've discovered, and connect with people. That has been the best thing for me. You have to keep going, and whenever you have doubts, stay passionate about what you're doing.
Try to see the bigger picture. I really believe that. Try to keep going. That's the only thing.
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🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick
I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:
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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Darko, Priyanka Vazirani, Julia Janks, Ivan Romanovich, and Seth King for contributing posts. —Channing
Please pardon the self-promotion but it seems relevant here!
My service ExtensionPay can help you monetize any shopping bot browser extensions you might want to make. ExtensionPay lets you accept payments in extensions cross-browser with no recurring costs and without needing to build and run your own backend. It's open source and really easy to use. Cheers!
def relevant - thanks for sharing!