Why the hell am I not building software?

Can a marketer become an indie hacker?

Author

Jason Levin
April 21, 2024

Every time I go to San Francisco it’s like I’m bit with a bug to start a SaaS.

Maybe it’s the fact that I see startup ads on every building or the fact 1 founder asked me when I’m building some SaaS or maybe it’s just the fact that I meet a lot of SaaS founders and I realize they’re not that much smarter than myself.

Or maybe it’s the fact I work at Product Hunt where I see new SaaS apps launch everyday. Or maybe it’s just the fact that thanks to AI and no-code tools, we now live in the age where basically anybody can hack together software or even just an MVP to maybe raise some money on.

So why the hell wasn’t I building software???

Last weekend was my bachelor party—or should I say hackathon.

Because I caught the SaaS bug and my bachelor weekend was full of dudes with the same spiritual affliction, we turned the weekend into a hackathon.

On Friday night in the middle of the woods in upstate New York, Shane from Turbo Design and I stayed up until 4:30 AM drinking Red Bull, building a front-end for this app idea, and syncing it with Stripe APIs. Then on Saturday night, we recruited Jared from PromptLayer to hook up the OpenAI APIs. In a matter of a weekend, we had an actual MVP working.

Fast forward a week to yesterday. In the morning I filmed street interviews for a few brands (both of them software of course). Then in the afternoon, Shane and I hopped on a video call to work on the app.

Because neither of us are trained engineers (I have a bit of data engineering experience but that’s useless here), we’re fuddling around like bafoons, but are figuring it out with some Googling and a lot of tedious work. Now we’re getting closer and closer to launching this thing.

That’s when my marketing comes out to shine. For the last 3 years, I’ve been doing marketing for SaaS startups. And I guess it’s finally time I’m building my own mini ones. And I don’t think I’m the only marketer making the jump now that it’s getting easier and easier to launch a SaaS.

Marketers are perfectly suited to building software.

“Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business.”

Peter Thiel, Zero to One

For most software companies, getting distribution is the main challenge.

That’s why they hire marketing maniacs like me to help out with everything from ghostwriting to viral stunts to TikToks to throwing events. So if you know how to do the marketing and now it’s getting easier and easier to build software, why not try to start a software company?

I know 1 non-technical founder who bootstrapped a $1M ARR startup off no-code, purely Bubble and Twitter/LinkedIn marketing. I know 3 others who raised a few million in funding off no-code apps. Hell, even my video editor Alex is running a $40k/month SaaS on the side that he bootstrapped with TikTok/Twitter marketing.

Tbh I always thought I was too dumb to build SaaS, but thanks to AI and no-code now even dumbasses like me can build SaaS. Now that’s technological progress baby! So fuck it, I guess I’m building some SaaS.

Stay tuned, nerds.

There’s gonna be some cool software launches coming your way very soon.

💡 Wanna jam on viral marketing together? Join my weekly strategy calls.

🗽 NYC nerds: I’m co-hosting an All-In Meetup April 24 and a Product Hunt Meetup May 1st. Come through and say what’s up!

🧡 I interviewed Product Hunt’s CEO Rajiv Ayyangar about how to launch on Product Hunt (and how his launch landed a $7.5M seed round).

📘 I just finished up Ghosts in the Wires, a cyberpunk autobiography about the most-wanted hacker in the world in the 80s and 90s.

Memes of the Week:

Let’s blow up the internet together.

Thanks for reading nerds.

Jason “The Memelord” Levin

Head of Growth @ Product Hunt, Author of Memes Make Millions