In just two years, Ben Tossell (@bentossell) grew Makerpad to over 10,000 users, $400,000 ARR and got bought by Zapier in a deal that became Zapier’s first acquisition. In this episode, I’m going to put Ben’s poker face to the test as I dig into the details of the deal and what it’s like for a founder to go through that process for the first time. Learn about no-code: https://www.makerpad.co/ Follow Ben on Twitter: https://twitter.com/@bentossell
Mar 24, 2021•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast David Perell (@david_perell) is someone whose own friends told him he wasn’t a good writer. By his own account, he was “horrible” at it. In this episode, we talk about why he decided to get really, really good at writing instead of just giving up and what specific techniques made it possible. Learn how to write online: https://writeofpassage.school/ Follow David on Twitter: https://twitter.com/@david_perell Listen to David’s podcast: https://perell.com/podcast/...
Mar 17, 2021•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sabba Keynejad (@sab8a) is the founder of one of the fastest growing companies that I've ever featured on the show. In this episode we get into exactly how he used YouTube, side project marketing, Reddit and even getting banned from Qoura to grow Veed.io. Edit videos using Veed: https://www.veed.io/ Follow Sabba on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sab8a
Mar 10, 2021•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast Kevin Lee (@kevinleeme) has run the premiere community for product managers online and is now working on something brand new, but it's not what you'd expect. He's working on noodles. Better, healthier, instant noodles. So in this episode, we just get really personal. We talk about our own health and wellness. We even talk about deathbed regrets and how to avoid them by working on the things that actually bring you joy. Shop healthy ramen: https://immieats.com/ Follow Kevin on Twitter: https://tw...
Mar 04, 2021•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jay Clouse (@jayclouse) first popped onto my radar when he posted on Indie Hackers that he sold his community to Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. You typically don't see communities get acquired because they're often built around a single individual and frequently they get worse as they grow instead if better. In this episode, we'll find out how Jay not only grows this thing, but also holds the ship together as it scales. Follow Jay on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jayclouse Jay's Web Site: h...
Mar 01, 2021•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast So many kids decide to become software engineers because they were captivated by video games at a young age, and they dreamed of crafting that magic themselves someday. More often than not, they end up working at Facebook or Google building web apps and selling ads. But not Dave Geddes. Dave (@geddski) followed his passion, quit his lucrative job, and is making a living creating games that teach people to code. In this episode, Dave and I talk about the moment that led to him leaving his high-pa...
Feb 23, 2021•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Yaro Bagriy (@yarobagriy) set to learn about paid newsletters, he was disappointed by what he found. So in true indie hacker fashion, he decided to create his own learning resource to teach others like him — Newsletter Crew: a podcast, blog, and community all about the paid newsletter ecosystem. In this episode, Yaro and I discuss some of the most inspiring stories from newsletter creators, Yaro's process for coming up with paid newsletter ideas, and why indie hackers building newsletter so...
Feb 15, 2021•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Li Jin (@ljin18) was young, she dreamed of going to school to pursue her passion in the arts. Instead she settled for little old Harvard, because common wisdom said there was no money in the passions. Today, the world has changed. The passion economy is stronger than ever, and Li is its patron saint. People are making millions of dollars on passion economy platforms like Shopify, Etsy, Teachable, TikTok, and Substack. And founders are creating millions of jobs by creating these platforms to...
Feb 09, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast When the founders of WhereBy.Us set out to connect people in their city, they weren't sure where to start. Holding events? Press conferences? Opening a bar? Local news? In this episode, Chris Sopher (@cksopher) and Bruce Pinchbeck (@BrucePinchbeck) share the story behind how they created local media brands in cities across the country, and then used their learnings to spin out a SaaS product for newsletters. The New Tropic: https://thenewtropic.com The Evergrey: https://theevergrey.com Letterhea...
Jan 27, 2021•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast Evan Britton (@Evan_Britton) runs a massive website focused on digital celebrities called Famous Birthdays. It gets multiple billions of pageviews a year, has dozens of employees, and he bootstrapped it to profitability without raising a dime from investors. They key to Evan's approach is his laser focus. He says no to almost everything, including the most obvious of opportunities. Instead he prefers to "stay in his lane." He'd rather make one thing great than do a mediocre job at 4 or 5 differe...
Jan 14, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast I hopped on the Run With It podcast with Chris and Eathan to share 3 business ideas for indie hackers to run with in 2021. Two are brand new, and one was inspired by my recent episode on bundling with Tyler King. Subscribe to Run With It: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/run-with-it-business-ideas-from-successful-entrepreneurs/id1477133536
Jan 08, 2021•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jordan O'Connor (@jdnoc) is one of the more impressive solo founders I've had on the podcast. Saddled with student loan debt and eager to take care of his growing family, Jordan embarked on a years-long journey to learn as much as he could and help everyone in his path. In this episode, we talk about how he developed the skills to build a $38,000/month SaaS business all on his own, and the importance of understanding that not only *can* your business help people, but it *has* to in order to succ...
Dec 31, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tyler King (@TylerMKing) and I discuss how indie hackers can take advantage of the current cycle of bundling and unbundling. What is bundling, anyway? Why does it present an opportunity for new business ideas? How can fledgling founders take part in what seems like a game for big companies? And who's already doing a good job of this? Startup To Last, Tyler's podcast about building lasting, profitable SaaS businesses: https://www.startuptolast.com @TylerMKing, follow Tyler on Twitter: https://twi...
Dec 24, 2020•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast I've been procrastinating sharing my own story on the Indie Hackers podcast for years now. But when Ben and David (the co-hosts of the Acquired podcast) asked if they could interview me, it was impossible to put it off any longer. They're among the best podcast storytellers I know, so before you do anything, search for "Acquired" in your podcast player and subscribe to their excellent show! In this episode, Ben and David walk through my entire startup history, including my early childhood and co...
Dec 17, 2020•2 hr 41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dan Pierson's (@DanPierson) first entrepreneurial experience was a walk in the park — he was making $10k/week as a 23-year-old college grad, thinking life was easy. But when his business came to a halt, it set Dan on a 5 year walk through the "entrepreneurial desert" to find a business that could work. In this episode, Dan and I talk persisting through hardship, new ideas for indie hackers to help shape the future of work, and how he made $60k in a week by selling services before products. Unset...
Dec 10, 2020•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Chris Oliver (@excid3) is a solo founder who recently passed $1M in revenue from his suite of projects targeted at Rails developers. He's had a wild journey, from being so broke he had to get a job, to getting to the point where he was literally living the 4-hour workweek while making a full-time salary. In this episode, Chris and I discuss the tradeoffs of different indie hacker business models, the right path for building and selling to an audience, and how to use combinations to come up with ...
Dec 02, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mubashar Iqbal (@mubashariqbal) is the most prolific indie hacker I know. He's got nearly 100 side projects under his belt, and more than a few of them are serving the burgeoning podcast space. In this episode, Mubs and I discuss opportunities for indie hackers to serve the podcasting market, what Mubs is working on in the space, and whether or not Spotify is building the Death Star. Pod Hunt, Product Hunt for podcasts: https://podhunt.app Podcast Ping, uptime monitoring built for podcasters: ht...
Nov 24, 2020•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast David Hsu (@dvdhsu) was able to grow Retool to almost a million dollars a year in revenue before making a single hire. Rather than stopping there and resting on their accomplishments, Retool set an even more ambitious goal: to literally change the way developers write code. In this episode, David and I discuss the benefits and the perils of deciding to "go big," the keys to finding product-market fit and word-of-mouth growth, and opportunities that founders can take advantage of in the low-code ...
Nov 19, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Transcript available on Metacast At some point, Tara Reed (@TaraReed_) decided that she didn't want to build a funded, scale-at-all-costs, move-fast-and-break-things type of business. The trouble was, by the time she realized this, she was already headed down that path with investors, employees, and high expectations. In this episode, I talk to Tara about quitting one business to pursue a new idea, bootstrapping her way to $5M in annual revenue, and what she's learned about the future of no-code from teaching others to build no...
Nov 11, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Traf (@traf) is a designer and a serial indie hacker. Just over a month ago, he made over $100,000 in a week. No, not by selling a course or a book to some email list he spent months growing. He did it by whipping up some icons and putting them online. It barely took him two hours. In this episode, Traf and I discuss how to get lucky by both spotting and capitalizing on opportunities, the importance of no-code tools and a clear schedule to help you execute quickly when the time is right, and the...
Nov 05, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rob Walling (@robwalling) and I discuss the state of SaaS in October 2020. What are the newest trends? Who's getting ahead right now, what kinds of companies are they starting, and what channels are they taking advantage of? Is SaaS too competitive, and if not, how do you pick the right niche when it all seems so saturated? Are info products, paid newsletters, and communities a better path for indie hackers than SaaS? And do you really need to listen to this constant advice to build an audience?...
Oct 27, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast BONUS EPISODE from the Run With It podcast: Restaurants have been hit hard during COVID-19. Listen to us brainstorm ways Lindsay and Alessandro can leverage their wine club and community to support their workforce and recover lost income. Subscribe here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/run-with-it-business-ideas-from-successful-entrepreneurs/id1477133536
Oct 23, 2020•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Daniel Vassallo (@dvassallo) quit his job to become an indie hacker, he was making over $500,000 per year. It could have been a disastrous choice. Instead, less than two years later, he's built a suite of products that most founders would envy. In this episode we discuss how Daniel minimizes risk by running multiple projects simultaneously, how he turns time into a friend instead of an enemy by lowering his costs, and how a lifestyle-first business mindset can make you both richer and happi...
Oct 20, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Transcript available on Metacast After raising money from VCs, Aleem Mawani (@aloo) chose a path that most VCs would consider a failure: to turn his company, Streak, into a large, profitable, and lasting software business. To do so, he'd have to pivot away from a failing idea, start charging customers who'd always been free, and bet everything on a risky platform controlled by another company. But today he's never been happier. In this episode, Aleem and I discuss when to work harder vs when to call it quits, how to pick the ri...
Oct 13, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast BONUS EPISODE from the Indie Bites podcast: "I first met Sabba at a pub in London when Veed was just an early beta product making $0. Fast forward a few years, Veed is now making over $100,000 a month and growing rapidly. It's well-executed product in a growing market, but that hasn't stopped Sabba and the team firing on all cylinders to grow the business. I talk with Sabba for 15 minutes about how they came up with the idea, how they've managed to grow so quickly and advice for indie hackers th...
Oct 07, 2020•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Przemek Chojecki ( @prz_chojecki ) had had enough of startup failure, he decided to interview successful founders to see what he could learn from them. But instead of doing it by hand, he built his own "A.I. journalist" to do it for him, and interviewed 1000 founders in under three months. That's just one of the many ways he's found to use cutting-edge A.I. to be more productive as a founder. The best part? Normal indie hackers can do this, too. In this episode, Przemek and I discuss the ex...
Sep 29, 2020•1 hr 27 min•Transcript available on Metacast What if you spent years growing your business to millions in revenue, then lost it all overnight? It's every founder's worst nightmare, but for Aline Lerner (@alinelernerLLC) it was reality. When COVID-19 hit and companies stopped hiring, Aline's business Interviewing.io suddenly lost its main source of revenue. She found herself "staring into the abyss" and looking bankruptcy in this face. In episode, Aline and I discuss what it's like to almost die as a company, how to be scrappy when the situ...
Sep 21, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Dru Riley (@DruRly) quit his job, he was more than ready for his mini retirement. Little did he know that it would take him over three years to make his first dollar as an indie hacker. In this episode, Dru and I discuss the difficulty of finding an idea with product-market-founder fit, the latest trends in new markets for indie hackers, and how he was able to grow his newsletter Trends.vc from nothing to $20,000/mo in under a year.
Sep 15, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast "Build an audience first" might be the most common advice given to indie hackers. But how do you build an audience at the highest levels? In other words, how do you build an actual media company? To find out, I needed to talk to a pro. Alex Wilhelm (@alex) the Senior Editor at TechCrunch. He's also built two news organizations from the ground up — Mattermark and Crunchbase News — the latter of which published thousands of articles and broke over a million monthly pageviews. These are numbers tha...
Sep 07, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nathan Latka (@NathanLatka) believes we've entered a new world where the most scarce thing any founder can compete for is not funding, but people's attention. So after selling his first business in 2015, Nathan made a surprising pivot from SaaS and started… a podcast. Then he wrote a book. And launched a magazine. In his eyes, nobody should be building SaaS products until they've built a media brand. In this episode, Nathan and I discuss how he's built up an audience, his tactics for earning mil...
Aug 31, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
