First, I want to thank everyone for their support over the past couple of weeks. I had a family emergency, but all is well, and we’re getting back on track. Your patience is beyond appreciated, and it has been a joy to engage with familiar faces again the past few days. Onwards and upwards.
— Daniel
Moving Forward
We’ve made an important decision… we’ve decided to sunset the forum and focus 100% of our efforts on the newsletter. I was bullish on the forum, but I must admit I was wrong about how valuable it would be. I still think forums are incredible, and there’s absolutely a place for them on the internet.
Here’s what I got wrong. I believed I needed to build a community on a separate platform outside of the ecosystems that already exist.
When I built the IndieThinkers.com forum, the main purpose was to create a space where people could connect, share ideas, and support each other’s work. That vision was sound. The forum itself worked beautifully and looked great.
But here’s the thing… very few people came consistently.
The problem wasn’t the execution. It was the fundamental premise. I was asking people to add another platform to their already overwhelming digital lives. To check yet another site. To split their attention. No matter how good the forum was, I was fighting an uphill battle against inertia and habit.
“Go where the people are” is an old axiom in community building, and I should have listened to it from the start.
I think I ignored this in part due to the fact that I have a complicated relationship with Substack. There are several things I genuinely love about it, and several things that are bat sh*t crazy. What do I hate? It’s a closed system. There aren’t any APIs I can leverage as a developer to build the kinds of tools and integrations that could make the experience even richer. That kind of platform lock-in has risk.
But I do love the ecosystem.
Ecosystems are so important and critical in the age we’re living in.
The network effects of having thousands of writers and readers all in one place, the cross-pollination of ideas, the serendipitous discoveries… you simply can’t replicate that when you’re building in isolation. Substack has created something rare, even with all the imperfections.
So we’ve decided to lean into this reality. Instead of fragmenting our energy between building out the forum and maintaining it as a separate community, we’re going to focus solely on the newsletter.
We’ll embrace the brilliant writers we’ve met on Substack and grow our community by engaging in comments, fostering dialogue, and prioritizing genuine interaction over platform building. Our guest lectures will be less fragmented and provide a more cohesive experience moving forward. Everything in one place, where you already are.
What’s Next
Our next guest lecture will be from
on Tuesday.Over the next month, I’m thrilled to share original essays from
, , , and .The support we’ve received from our community here on Substack has been incredible. It’s reminded me of something essential; the vision remains even if the form changes. We’re still committed to supporting writers on and off Substack. We’re not dogmatic about platforms. We’re not blind to the risks of putting all your eggs in one basket, and we don’t plan to do so long-term.
But for now, this is where we are. And I look forward to building more tools to help writers get more attention and more eyeballs on their work.
The Real Problem We’re Solving
Content discovery is the chief concern of our time for writers. We need to address it collectively. We don’t need to focus on scale for scale’s sake. Not vanity metrics.
I don’t think I need to say this again, but quality matters more than quantity.
To be a successful creator, you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.
— Kevin Kelly
It’s not about reaching 10,000 or 100,000 subscribers. It’s about finding the first 100 true fans, or even just a handful to start. It’s about discovering and nurturing a deep and rich community of people that you can collaborate with, people who genuinely admire your work, people who will support you even when there isn’t a paywall, even when there’s no transaction required. Those are the connections that matter. Those are the relationships that sustain creative work over the long haul.
That’s what we’re building here. That’s what we’re committed to.
Thank you for being part of this journey.
— Daniel