Today's Maker: Damon Chen - A solo founder on his way to $1M ARR by 2024

WHY HE'S FEATURED:

• Quit his job as Senior Software Engineer to pursue his dream of indiemaking

• His product Testimonial recently reached $100k ARR 😱 in Sept

• He's not stopping there, he's set a goal for himself of $1M ARR by Oct 2024

• Currently building and managing 4 products at once: http://testimonial.to, http://channel.so, http://embed.so and http://supportman.io 

• Builds in public and is constantly giving back to the community on his Twitter where he recently reached 20k followers

Damon is on a mission: get to $1M ARR by 2024 as a solo founder. That might sound crazy, but he's actually already more than 10% of the way there. All of this didn't happen over night though. Back in 2019, he was still "lurking" on indiehackers and not building anything of his own. Finally, in 2020, he decided to get in the game. He built 5 products in 2020 (most of which made $0), and then quit his job in 2021 when he saw some traction with his top product, Testimonial. He's following the tried and true indiemaking philosophy: start building, learn as you go, double down when something is working.

Damon is focused, ambitious, and determined. Quite the trifecta. So what habits are driving his process? Let's find out. 👇

3 Habits that changed Damon's trajectory:

• ⚡️ Take some risks - When Testimonial hit $1k MRR, I quit my 6-figure job. It's not even 10% of my salary, but I chose to take the risk. Going full-time on Testimonial gives me a lot of time to talk to customers, and helps speed up the development cycle.

• ✂️ Cut the big thing into small pieces - For big projects, instead of giving myself many days to finish, I'd like to split the big project into small pieces, and try to finish each small piece in 30-minutes to 1-hour timeframe. By doing this, I can clearly see I'm making progress, and it helps keep my momentum high.

• ⛰ Keep trying - I built many products, some failed, only a few looks promising. I tried to give myself a timebox, if things didn't work, just move to the next one. If something works, Testimonial in this case, I try to scale it. There are many things I can try, try to figure out my ideal customers, try to explore different pricing strategies, try to test out new features. Keeping trying is the easiest way to find evidence and helps me improve my product.

You can clearly see how these habits are powering the long-term game Damon is playing, and it's working. Without these habits, Damon might have stopped after his first $0 product. Instead, he kept trying, time-boxed his bets, and it looks like it's paying off! You can follow Damon on Twitter @damengchen to keep up with his progress towards $1M ARR and I highly recommend you check out Testimonial as well!

Thanks for reading!

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