Aaron Francis is currently an Educator at Planet Scale, but you would have seen him all around the internet doing courses, YouTube videos, podcasts and more. Notably he was a founding member of the Hammerstone team, which he’s recently left, to focus his energy on doing something he loves. Most recently, Aaron has launched Screencasting.com , a course teaching you how to make better screencasts. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:25 Aaron's Background 02:10 Learning Software Engineering through books 03:...
Oct 05, 2023•17 min•Ep. 96
Today I’m joined by a returning guest, Andy Cloke, who runs Data Fetcher. Data Fetcher is an API plugin for Airtable that he’s grown to 20k MRR. In our previous episode Andy was only at around £3k MRR, so in this conversation we talk about what he’s done to grow so rapidly, including investing in new marketing channels such as YouTube. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:58 Growing to 20k MRR 04:51 Building a machine 06:01 YouTube Strategy 09:09 Launching another product 11:38 Hiring and reinvesting into ...
Sep 28, 2023•16 min•Ep. 95
Today I’m joined by Andrew Kamphey, who is the founder of Better Sheets , a platform of tools and tutorials to get better at using Google Sheets, that has done well over $200k in revenue since he launched in 2020. He started out working as a tech on cruise ships, before moving to LA to work in the film industry, which is where he gained all of his Google Sheets prowess. From here he’s had a meandering life journey, working while travelling South East Asia, starting and selling an influencer news...
Sep 21, 2023•15 min•Ep. 94
Jonny White is the founder of Ticket Tailor , a platform for selling tickets online doing over £6m ARR and growing. Jonny founded Ticket Tailor in 2011, grew it to £2k MRR and then sold it to a company called TimeOut a short while later. After a few stagnant years at TimeOut, Jonny then bought the company back to make the lifestyle business he’d always wanted. After hitting all his goals, Jonny made the decision to build out a team and bootstrap the company to profitability and beyond. Now with ...
Sep 04, 2023•17 min•Ep. 93
Ryan Gilbert is the creator of the Workspaces newsletter, which showcases the best workspaces in tech and beyond. He grew it to 6,000 subscribers and $2k per month with sponsors + affiliates, before being acquired by Loops (Founder Chris Frantz was on episode 61 ) and going on to be their first employee. In this episode we talk about how simplicity has been so important for growth of the newsletter, how he makes it appealing for guests to share and his reasoning for selling at such an early stag...
Aug 03, 2023•16 min•Ep. 92
Tim Leland is the founder of T.LY , a link shortener with almost half a million users that he recently quit his job to pursue full time. Tim started out building chrome extensions, including a weather extension that grew to 200k users at it’s peak. He then capitalised on Google closing down their link URL shortener and tried to build his own competitor, which is where T.LY was born. Tim has gone for the high volume, low price option for his product, which often isn’t recommended as a good route ...
Jul 21, 2023•16 min•Ep. 91
In this episode I’m joined by Colleen Schnettler, which a lot of you would have heard from through her Software Social podcast she co-hosts with Michele Hansen. Colleen has been on quite the journey over the past few years, going from years of contracting to launching her first product, Simple File Upload , then getting a large contracting gig with Hammerstone, landing a separate full-time job to then quit 3 weeks later to rejoin that Hammerstone as a co-founder. Now Colleen is working on a prod...
Jul 04, 2023•16 min•Ep. 90
Marc Louvion is an indie hacker with many many products. His tagline on his website is relatable for all “ I was fired everywhere so I had to work for myself (even Tai Lopez fired me...)”. If you go to Marc’s Indie Page you can see all his projects, including Habits Garden, Gamify List, Visualise Habit, Make Landing & more. Marc is living in Bali and on his way to $5k MRR across his projects. You might have seen Marc on Twitter with his hilarious launch videos and candid build in public upda...
Jun 14, 2023•16 min•Ep. 89
In this episode I’m bringing back a previous guest, Dom Monn, who is the founder of MentorCruise, which he’s now working full time on with a small team. I brought Dom back on to discuss something that has been on my mind, and has come up in twitter conversations recently which Dom has been involved in. Is indie hacking having an identity crisis? Is the indie label and mentality limiting success and holding many founders back? I think it could be and so we discuss why this might be happening and ...
Jun 01, 2023•16 min•Ep. 88
Today I’m joined by Bram Kanstein, who you might know from Startup Stash, which is the most upvoted product ever on Product Hunt. Bram also started the No Code MVP a course, which shows you how to launch an MVP without code. In this episode we focus a lot on how indie hackers can find ideas and launch them the right way. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 03:18 Startup Stash 05:56 No Code MVP 09:47 Finding ideas 12:22 Idea validation 15:00 Recommendations Recommendations Book - Untethered Soul by Michael Si...
May 27, 2023•16 min•Ep. 87
Matt Studdert is the founder of Frontend Mentor , which helps people level up their front-end coding skills by building projects. They have over 500,000 users and are hovering around $30k MRR. Matt didn’t start out wanting to run a SaaS, starting out playing poker, then became a personal trainer, before changing his career and learning to code when he was 28. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 02:16 Playing Poker full time 02:58 Becoming a personal trainer 04:24 Learning to code with General Assembly 06:33...
Apr 30, 2023•16 min•Ep. 86
Jordan O’Connor is the founder of Closet Tools, a bootstrapped app that helps people sell more stuff on Poshmark which has been in and around the $30-40k MRR mark. He’s found a lot of his growth through SEO, like many successful entrepreneurs, and now helps other founders do the same through his Rank to Sell power half hours. Listen to the full 90 minute chat with Jordan here -> Timestamps 00:00 Intro 03:29 Jordan being awful with money 04:30 Jordan's indie hacking journey 06:10 Launching and...
Apr 19, 2023•17 min•Ep. 85
Josh Ho is the founder and CEO of Referral Rock , a SaaS he founded in 2014 doing over $2m a year in revenue. Referral Rock helps businesses to design, launch and manage a customer referral program. Josh has had decades of experience as a founder, pouring his early entrepreneurship energy into a notes app that he ultimately couldn’t monetize. Timestamps 00:00 - Intro 01:24 - Josh's background 02:11 - Lessons from a failed startup 04:16 - Failed startup to new long term bet 05:41 - The idea for R...
Apr 12, 2023•17 min•Ep. 84
Jay Clouse is the founder of Creator Science , which is a membership, community, newsletter and podcast helping you become build a creator business, which he bootstrapped to over $40k a month towards the end of last year. His podcast is one of the best produced shows out there and it’s on my very short list of shows that I can listen to every episode and know it’s going to be killer. I think the creator business angle is interesting for indie hackers who haven’t quite found a product yet and wan...
Apr 05, 2023•17 min•Ep. 83
Justin Duke is the founder of Buttondown , a simple email newsletter tool without all the bloat. In December 2022 Buttondown was around $15k MRR. He also runs Spoonbill , which is a way to stay updated on what people change on their social profiles. At the time of recording this Justin was an engineering manager at Stripe so you’ll hear references to that, but he’s since left to go all in on being a founder. 👉 Join the Indie Bites membership here . Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:57 Origins of Button...
Apr 01, 2023•15 min•Ep. 82
Jack McDade is the creator of Statamic , a content management system for Laravel. What I love about Jack is how he approaches all of his projects, including Statamic, to just be different. There is so much cookie cutter content out there and everything just ends up looking the same - but not if Jack has anything to do with it. Just take a look at his personal website , his Radical Design course and Icons and you’ll see what I mean. I love it. 👉 Join the Indie Bites membership here . Timestamps:...
Mar 25, 2023•16 min•Ep. 81
Elston Baretto was last on the pod in March 2021 , when he’d just grown his tool, Tiiny.host , to $600 MRR and we recorded as part of my mission to share stories of unknown indie hackers with potential. Fast forward 2 years and Tiiny Host has grown to $10k MRR and Elston has just quit his job to become a full time indie hacker. 👉 My side project, Whitstable Craft Co . Topics covered: Hitting $10k MRR Why PDF hosting has been pivotal for growth Build what people search for Why SEO has been such ...
Mar 19, 2023•16 min•Ep. 80
Patrick Posner is the creator of a portfolio of Wordpress plugins which have been downloaded almost a million times collectively making him $12k p/m. Patrick went full time indie in 2020 and since then has both grown quickly and scaled back operations to build the best sort of life for him. I love these types of stories of relatively unknown indie hackers who are creating the dream life for themselves. What we covered in this episode: Building Wordpress plugins on the side of a day job Marketing...
Mar 15, 2023•16 min•Ep. 79
Alex MacCaw is the founder of Reflect , a note taking app which he’s grown to $20k MRR with a team of 4. Previously, he was the co-founder of Clearbit , a VC-backed company that scaled to $50m in revenue. After stepping down as CEO of Clearbit, he decided to focus on doing the stuff he enjoys. So he’s sailing around the world building an app that gets him excited every day. 👉 My side project, Whitstable Craft Co . What we covered in this episode: Why Alex dropped out of school Coding without a ...
Mar 10, 2023•17 min•Ep. 78
Craig Hewitt is the Founder and CEO of Castos , a bootstrapped podcast hosting and analytics platform with a services arm for podcast production. He’s been in podcasting almost a decade, having started his own show, Rogue Startups and his production service Podcast Motor (which he folded into Castos). Craig not only shares his ponderings on his show, but he also writes a weekly newsletter called Founder Insights . What we covered in this episode: Craig's background in sales Launching a podcastin...
Mar 08, 2023•17 min•Ep. 77
Today I’m joined by Dan Fayle, who is the co-founder of Chekkit , a company that’s he bootstrapped to almost $2.5m ARR and 20 employees. There’s a few interesting things about Dan’s story I know you’re going to like. This is his first company and he quit his job to go all-in with 3 co-founders, he got his early customers through, and I’m not kidding, door to door sales and finally he’s not changed the price of the product since it’s launch 6 years ago. What we covered in this episode: Dan’s back...
Mar 03, 2023•16 min•Ep. 76
Tim Soulo is the CMO at Ahrefs, one of the biggest and best SEO tools on the internet. Ahrefs are one of the clear success stories as a bootstrapped company, growing to be a an 8 figure brand over the past decade. Things really took off when Tim took over marketing for the company back in 2015, first focusing on growing the blog, before experimenting with different marketing channel to bring Ahrefs to its current size. In this episode Tim brings a mini SEO masterclass for SaaS founders, gives hi...
Mar 01, 2023•16 min•Ep. 75
Today I’m joined by Jared Maddern, the founder of Beamhouse Leather , a leather supply business he’s grown to £45k in sales in the past 2 years. Some of you might know I run a handmade leather wallet business on the side, called Whitstable Craft Co , and so this is a little look into the other part of my life. Although Jared doesn’t run an indie SaaS, I wanted to bring slightly different perspective of being an indie entreprenuer. We discuss how building a business in a growing market has and se...
Jan 17, 2023•17 min•Ep. 74
Louis Nicholls is the co-founder of SparkLoop , a product that helps newsletter operators grow through referral partnerships. Indie hackers might know Louis from his Sales for Founders course which he ran a few years ago, as well as his many other projects. What we covered in this episode: How Sparkloop Started How Louis met his cofounder Manuel Going Niche vs Broad Pursuing a growing market What is your unique competitive advantage? Avoiding shiny object syndrome Speaking to your customers How ...
Nov 15, 2022•17 min•Ep. 73
Kyle Gawley is the founder of Gravity , which he’s bootstrapped to over $25k p/m. In 2012, he scaled a vc-backed company, called Get Invited, to $5m in sales, before a near-death experience made him rethink how he lived his life. Now, Kyle is travelling the world building his bootstrapped SaaS. Let’s find out how he did it. Join the Indie Bites membership 👈 What we covered in this episode Starting out on the VC path What Kyle loved about working in VC Having a near death experience Listen to Ky...
Nov 08, 2022•16 min•Ep. 72
Sam King is the founder of Flick, a tool for managing and growing your social media, doing over $3.5m ARR fully bootstrapped. Sam has taken a unique path into bootstrapping, first being a YouTuber, then running an agency before flipping it into a SaaS with Flick. There is an hour long extended version of this show available on the Indie Bites membership, head to indiebites.com/membership to sub. What we covered in this episode: Starting out as a YouTuber Pivoting from YouTuber to starting an age...
Nov 02, 2022•15 min•Ep. 71
Michele Hansen is the co-founder of Geocodio , a SaaS business that provides geocoding and data matching for addresses, co-host of the fantastic podcast Software Social and author of the book Deploy Empathy , which is all about how to do great customer interviews. We cover a lot of ground in this short episode, including how to write a book, building in public and mental health as a founder. Along with some concrete tips on how exactly you can do customer research. What we covered in this episod...
Oct 26, 2022•16 min•Ep. 70
Macgill Davis and Will Goto are the founders of Rize , a time-tracking platform that helps you increase your productivity, started in August 2020. Will and Macgill met at a company called Peer, which then got acquired by Twitter, they then left Twitter and founded a company called Humble Dot, which they raised for but unfortunately had to shut down. Join the membership for extended conversations 👈 What we covered in this episode: Working on a side project while at Twitter Raising funding then l...
Oct 04, 2022•16 min•Ep. 69
Milly Tamati is not your usual founder. She lives on an remote island off Scotland with a population of just 170 people, previously co-owned a hostel in Thailand, co-founded a wine-tour in Australia and founded an illustration-agency in the UK. Now she’s working on a community called generalist.world , where’s she’s helping generalists like us indie hackers, find like minded individuals and jobs that fit us well. What we covered in this episode: Living on a remote island with 170 people Remote l...
Sep 27, 2022•16 min•Ep. 68
Today I’m joined by Dominik Sobe, the founder of Helpkit , a product he started last year that turns Notion pages into a professional help center, doing $4.5k MRR. In this episode we talk about Dom’s many failed projects, how he finally found something that worked with Helpkit and how he went from wanting to be a management consultant to being an indie hacker. What we covered in this episode: Dom’s previous projects Wanting to become a management consultant Management consultant to indie hacker ...
Sep 26, 2022•15 min•Ep. 67
