Play-driven development
jasonleow • 20 Aug 2023 •
A masterclass hidden in a long reply here by @levelsio, on how he got started with the whole AI game:
- started 11 months ago
- played with Stable Diffusion, realised it was good for generating beautiful architecture homes
- made thishousedoesnotexist.org, realised people used it for interior a lot
- pivoted to interiorai.com, it went viral and made $50k MRR
- realised can add pics of himself and made avatarai.me, made $100k
- realised avatars are a fad, pivoted to photo shoots and made photoai.com
Love this approach. There’s no masterplan, no vision (at least at the start). Every idea gave more ideas and led to the next breakthrough one. Everything is emergent, and all you need to do is to take the next step.
Start with curiosity.
Build one thing.
One thing leads to building another thing.
And another…
Profit!
And my favourite part of this is… it all started from curiosity, from just playing with something – a new technology, a new tool, or something shiny.
Get curious
Play, have fun
Ship something
Sense opportunity
Respond, pivot
Probably one of my top favourite way to start any product, through play!
It’s perfect timing of a message, as I’m trying to rest and play more first right now after my consulting season.
Play, and maybe something good will come out of it. If not, I still won because of the mental break I got.
Comments
Interesting that you mentioned this distinction between experts and beginners. Pieters Levels is probably an expert indie hacker at this point at sensing opportunities, shipping fast and doing viral marketing, and imagine combined with a beginner’s mind, that’s super powerful combo!
This reminds me of the difference between experts and beginners. Experts are good at recognizing known problems and applying their solutions. Beginners, however, are in exploration mode as they play within and probe the domain. With something so new, like AI, it helps to have a beginner’s mind.