Portfolio approach — multiple small bets, not one big bet
Build multiple small products instead of going all-in on one. Pieter Levels: 70+ projects, 3-4 active revenue sources. John Rush: 20+ products. Danny Postma: HeadshotPro + ProfilePicture.ai + others.
Why it works: diversified risk, cross-promotion, shared infrastructure. One hit funds experimentation on others. The average successful indie hacker tried 3-5 products before hitting one.
This IS the barbell strategy applied to products:
- 90% safe = consulting or day job (stable income)
- 10% experiments = portfolio of small products (each a limited-downside bet)
- One winner can become the 90%
Venture mindset: in 10 projects, 7 will fail. That’s expected. One $50K MRR product pays for all the $0 experiments. Reframe failure: each “failed” project = market research + reusable code.
Kill discipline required: the portfolio only works if you actually kill losers. $0 MRR after 3 months of active marketing → kill or major pivot. No emotional attachment. “You dread working on it” → sell or archive, life is short.
Code reuse multiplier: shared infrastructure (our stacks/) means each new product takes days, not months. Marc Lou’s ShipFast = his own boilerplate for every project.
- antifragile-life-design — portfolio IS the barbell for products
- kill-iterate-scale — portfolio requires disciplined kill criteria
- solopreneur-patterns-summary — origin: patterns 1, 3, 4, 5 combined
- one-pain-one-feature-launch — each portfolio item = one pain, one feature, shipped fast