Earlier this year, I started building my first commercial Mac app as an indiehacker. Previously, I was mainly focused on open source and was doing decent (2 projects with >1k stars, 2.2k followers on GitHub).

Open-source and entrepreneurship share many similarities, like ideation, execution, and all the tech stuff. I thought marketing was the major difference (of course). But I didn't realize that there's something bigger: the emotional cost.

Being the maintainer of an open-source project, you decide what you want to build, whom you build it for, and, most importantly, you don't owe your users; they owe you. Even if it goes viral and has thousands of users, there's no moral obligation that you have to do anything for them.

- "Have bugs? Sure, PR welcome"
- "Want this feature? Nah, it's not planned, find something else or make a PR yourself"

This is common in the open-source world, and is considered normal for good reasons; otherwise, the maintainers would soon burn out. But in entrepreneurship, things are completely different. Now, you owe your users because they paid for something you built.

I had a customer with whom we exchanged over forty emails back and forth, and still counting (which I do really appreciate!). Each time he reported a subtle issue, I felt I had failed his expectations, so I apologized to him and tried my best to fix it quickly. It's probably not the right reaction, but I don't know what is.

Other customers would request for more features. For those that align with my vision, even slightly, I always add them. For those that don't, I'd explain to them what the current plan is, why it does not fit, but still give them hope that this may be added in the future. Now, when someone messages me or a new email pops up, I'm like "oh no, there's something wrong". I need to calm myself down before I open the message.

Overall, it just feels so different. I know I might get used to it over time, but want to share the experience in case people have the same feelings or find it interesting.