A same-day review after hearing a founder speak: two traits shared by successful people, how to remove social distractions, a 70/20/10 time split, lessons from an unmanaged subscription and cash planning, and three recent insights.
Today I listened to a founder’s talk. Along with reflecting on my progress recently, I organized the day’s observations and thoughts into this review.
The speaker made an observation: whether someone sells products online and seems “unsophisticated”, makes Douyin content and seems “lowbrow”, or works in any other direction—including indie development—people who ultimately get things done mainly share two traits:
Diligence means strong execution and enough attempts. Opportunities are not waited for; they are “bumped into” through a large number of attempts. Only with a large enough base rate can you catch the opportunities that truly matter.
Courage means being willing to enter the arena and put something in front of the market, instead of remaining in preparation and observation.
These two words sound plain, but that is precisely why they are easy to overlook. How respectable a direction or market looks is not important; what matters is doing these two things in your own direction.
Besides diligence and courage, the speaker shared how to run fast experiments after becoming an indie developer.
He said programmers often make one mistake—they assume they must rely on free traffic. He did things differently from the start: once the product was finished, he tried paid traffic directly.
His view of paid acquisition is that everyone has time cost and opportunity cost. Instead of waiting slowly for free traffic to validate the idea, spend a little money to quickly verify whether your direction and product work.
What surprised me more was the specific approach: start with only $5 a day; if it produces one order, you have already “won big”—because what it validates is not that day’s profit, but that the direction is worth continuing.
I had always assumed paid acquisition was expensive. I did not realize it could start at such a small amount. This turns “buying traffic” from a marketing tactic into a low-cost validation tool.
Reviewing my recent progress, I think the main reason I have not achieved results is interference.
Specifically, interference from people in communities. Some people appear to share and help others, but are really probing the core of other people’s profitable businesses while sharing only harmless technical material themselves. The deeper you engage with such people, the more passive you become.
My problem is that when someone only shows off results and hides the essential parts, my mindset is easily affected. I start wondering whether I am doing the right thing.
By contrast, today’s speaker handled it well—he would tell you directly, “This is something I do not share.” Setting boundaries plainly earns respect. I have also met people who use your information gap and ignorance to leave you unable to understand the situation.
The conclusion is clear: remove the interference from these people and stay firm in doing your own work.
To address the problem that I have not worked enough and have not followed information well, I set myself this time-allocation framework:
Secure the absolute majority for doing the work before discussing anything else.
Something else happened today: I failed to manage Lenny’s Product Pass (the bundled package) and it renewed automatically.
The lesson is that from now on, whether it is a subscription or anything else, everything should be recorded: what I subscribed to, how much it costs, and when it renews. Decide actively before expiry instead of passively waiting for a charge notification.
I also took stock of my cards: my foreign-currency card is basically unusable, so I applied for a new one; my ZA Bank card has no money in it either.
So the immediate priority is very clear: really get the business growing. The North Star metric is revenue.
After the business grows and revenue rises, the cash plan is:
First generate revenue, then discuss allocation.
To close: diligence guarantees the volume of attempts, courage guarantees the number of times you enter the arena, and focus keeps you from being led off course. Next, live solidly according to 70/20/10.