(2021-02-05) My Product Is My Garden

Herman Martinus: My product is my garden. I’ve been part of the internet startup scene for a while. There are so many different camps: the bootstrappers, the VC-backed tech-bros, the crypto “investors”, the people marketing their courses on marketing courses, the newsletter gurus, the micro-saas homeboys.

I have found my own analogy/ideology. My product is my garden. (cf digital garden)

During the early days of lockdown, my girlfriend got deep into gardening.

It was lovely to watch her coax tasty and nutritious food individually out of the ground. I can’t imagine full-scale farming being nearly as enjoyable.

That’s what I want from my products. I want to putter about, feel connected to the process, and have fun doing so. I want to make things that don’t scale. To see people tuck into them and enjoy them as people, not as stats. I

Something niche but valuable. Something I can spend time on because I want to.

to do this a product has to reach a basic threshold of profitability. This will differ depending on where you are. I live in Cape Town, South Africa where the cost of living is low (compared to the US and EU). I reached basic profitability, matching an average developer salary here, about 10 months ago, and since then I’ve been improving my projects.