Over the last few years, the indie SaaS landscape has changed drastically.<p>While there are still success stories—like Fathom Analytics, Plausible, Posthog, Bannerbear, levelsio with PhotoAI and NomadList, many indie hackers are finding it harder than ever to gain traction.<p>Customer acquisition has become significantly more challenging. Paid ads are prohibitively expensive, SEO is increasingly competitive, and organic growth takes much longer than it used to.<p>At the same time, AI is commoditizing many types of software. What once required months of custom development can now be spun up in days using AI tools, making it much harder to build a defensible product.<p>User expectations have also skyrocketed. Customers now expect polished, feature-rich products from day one.<p>Is indie SaaS still a viable path for bootstrapped founders, or is the golden era behind us?
> Paid ads are prohibitively expensive
I've had some success with them. There are tricks, you just need to look for them.<p>Unfortunately my product (<a href="https://nuenki.app" rel="nofollow">https://nuenki.app</a>) is very low margin so it doesn't quite work out, but I wouldn't write them off entirely.<p>AI just means that you need something other than your code to be the product. Also, both from pg's essay and my own experience, marketing matters more.<p>BTW you write like an LLM. I don't think you are one, but mind that.
I don’t see signs of this yet. We’re still seeing the same level of companies with traction come through each time we run an application process for TinySeed (accelerator focused on bootstrapped SaaS).<p>But realistically, there are a couple camps in bootstrapped SaaS. Folks who want to build an audience (often by “building in public” on social media), then hope they can monetize it. And folks who focus on non-audience-driven marketing and sales.<p>We only fund the latter, so take my comment with that context.