You’ve likely heard the advice: “Start with your own needs”. This approach ensures authenticity, reduces risk, and allows you to build something you genuinely care about. But for indie developers1 whose customers are fellow techies, this approach may not always be ideal.

Software developers as customers

Software developers are a unique group with specialized requirements and habits. They’re used to primitive interfaces like the command line and file-based configurations—interfaces that provide agility at the cost of ease of use. When you become a developer, it takes effort to get back to the perspective of a non-technical user.

It’s easy to find an open-source project that solves a problem, but it might not be easy to set it up and use it for everyone, because those projects usually assume users are also developers and are familiar with setting up development environments for programming languages, adjusting configurations based on your environment, and compiling code. Only after all these steps might one start to use it. While these steps can be essential in software development, they could build a major barrier for non-technical users—the general public usually cannot and has no interest in any of them, they only want it to work.

Due to such factors, developers are likely to cultivate specialized and diverse tastes in their interactions with digital products.

Software developers create software with software, they’re painters who also manufacture brushes and pigments, chiefs who grow their own ingredients. This level of expertise means they often grow their own solutions tailored to specific problems, and work perfectly for them but rarely for others. This is a double-edged sword, while it allows them to create highly customized solutions, it also makes them picky and less likely to adopt off-the-shelf products. Selling software to developers is like selling art supplies to professional painters—they’ve got high standards and might not pay for something that doesn’t perfectly fit their craft2.

This dynamic creates a trap for indie developers. While building products you use personally has many genuine advantages, it often leads to targeting a group of customers who are a minority (comparing to the general public), have high standards, and are unwilling to pay for solutions that don’t perfectly meet their needs.

Final thoughts

I’m not suggesting avoiding the developer market entirely, indie developers should carefully consider whether targeting other developers aligns with their goals. While it’s not impossible to succeed in this niche market, it requires a deep understanding of the audience and willingness to navigate a niche market with unique demands. If you’re an indie developer, you might want to explore alternative approaches or start by solving problems for less specialized audiences before tackling the challenges of creating products for fellow techies.

  1. I intentionally avoided the term “indie hackers” in this post because that will include creators that don’t involve software engineering, though I guess this applies to some of them as well, but not all. ↩

  2. The ability to leverage imperfect tools is a valuable trait among developers—one that requires deliberate practice and a pragmatic mindset. ↩