Short, bite-sized conversations with indie hackers that have started small, profitable and bootstrapped businesses. You'll learn how they come up with ideas, what they do to validate, find those first customers and make a sustainable income.
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Arvid Kahl talks about starting and bootstrapping businesses, how to build an audience, and how to build in public.
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30 Minutes of Growth
Founders and marketers are always busy. While there are many marketing podcasts out there telling great stories, frustratingly few give real-life growth marketing tactics.
That’s what makes 30 Minutes of Growth different. Host Alex Garcia, of Marketing Examined, dives into his guest’s brain and pulls out actionable playbooks against the clock.
Every episode Alex pulls out not one, not two, but three growth marketing playbooks for you to instantly put into practice... before time runs out.
The countdown starts on March 14th, with new episodes every Tuesday. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
How to sell your indie business - Josh Peleg
Today I’m not actually joined by an indie hacker, but by someone who can help a lot of indies out there. Josh Peleg is the Head of Biz Dev for Mergers and Acquisitions at BlueThrone. Essentially, he knows all about how to sell a business from the buyer's side.In this episode we’re going to learn from Josh exactly what you need to know about selling your indie product. How you find an acquirer, what does the process look like and how you can get a deal over the line.I’ve spoken to some indie hackers who have gone through exits, such as Rob Walling, Ramy Khuffash, Tibo Louis Lucas and more, but not so much from the other side. Let’s find out what it takes.Timestamps00:00 Intro00:56 What is BlueThrone02:13 How to find a potential acquirer04:41 How to set up your business to be sold06:33 Acquirer red flags08:31 Acquirer green flags10:04 The type of exits and what to choose13:48 RecommendationsReccosBook - The Master and The MargaritaPodcast - 20VCMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.
Arvid Kahl on building a profitable SaaS (Podscan), calm funding and juggling a media business
Arvid Kahl is returning to the podcast for the third time. In 2019, he’d just sold Feedback Panda for a life changing amount of money and then wrote the book Zero to Sold. In 2023, he was in full-on creator mode with The Bootstrapped Founder and had just released The Embedded Entrepreneur. Now, he’s still producing the content but is also spending time on his SaaS Podscan, which is an extremely ambitious tool that transcribes every podcast and let’s you track mentions of your brand.Timestamps00:00 Intro01:27 Arvid's life as a SaaS founder02:48 Are people still building in public03:54 No longer being a solo founder05:24 Raising from Calm Fund09:17 Keeping The Bootstrapped Founder running12:10 Wins for 202413:36 Parting advice15:08 RecommendationsRecommendationsBook - A Court of Thorns and RosesPodcast - The Economics of Everyday ThingsIndie Hacker - Tyler TringasMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.
High Signal founder on the state of indie hacking and building in public in 2025 - Pete Codes
Recently I’ve been reviewing my catalogue of previous guests and have been intrigued to see where they are now, so expect to see a few more returning guests over the next few weeks.Today is a chap who was last on the podcast 3 years ago, and is still ever present in the indie community. Pete Codes is writes the High Signal newsletter, sharing all the best indie hacking news every week. He’s making his main living through Ghostwriting for Twitter, Bluesky and LinkedIn, but he’s still launching new projects and keeping his previous projects live.Timestamps00:00 Intro01:25 How Pete stays up to date with indie hacking news03:21 Twitter, Bluesky or LinkedIn04:36 Is building in public dead?07:30 Who is still building in public09:40 Big news stories of 2024 / who has been successful12:06 Pete's plan for his newsletter, High Signal12:48 Recommendations
How Podsqueeze grew to $16k MRR in 18 months - Tiago Ferreira
Tiago Ferreira is the co-founder of Podsqueeze, an AI podcast tool that helps automate your podcast content. The tool, that helps you create show notes, newsletters, social posts and more, is currently doing $16k MRR and growing. You might also know Tiago from his podcast Wannabe Entrepreneur, where he’s interviewed impressive founders including Pieter Levels.Timestamps00:00 - Intro120 - Tiago Ferreira01:06 - Tiago's background02:25 - Lessons from failures03:40 - Starting Podsqueeze - solving your own problem05:53 - How Podsqueeze had a successful launch06:40 - How to have a successful launch08:10 - Growth tactics for Podsqueeze - SEO13:03 - Future plans and exit14:28 - RecommendationsRecommendationsBook: SaaS Playbook by Rob WallingPodcast: Startups for the Rest of UsIndie Hacker: Elston BarettoMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.
How Buy Me A Coffee grew to millions of users - Jijo Sunny
Today I’m joined by Jijo Sunny, who is the co-founder of Buy Me A Coffee, one of the most popular donation and membership platforms on the internet. They’ve processed 10’s of millions for creators and have built a 26 strong team. Since founding Buy Me A Coffee, Jijo has dabbled in all sorts of projects, including a stint in YC with a podcasting app. Now though, Jijo is back building a new product, Voicenotes, a voice driven AI note taking app.👉 Listen to the full 1 hour conversation with Jijo here: indiebites.com/membershipTimestamps00:00 Intro01:48 Background02:27 Buy Me a Coffee Origin Story03:37 How did Buy Me A Coffee grow05:35 Jijo on multiple products06:35 Making products cheap to run09:21 Starting voicenotes.com14:02 Parting advice15:56 RecommendationsRecommendationsBook: Friendly Ambitious NerdPodcast: DitheringIndie Hacker: Danny PostmaMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.
How focusing on customer happiness led to success for KnowledgeOwl - Marybeth Alexander
Marybeth Alexander is the founder and Chief Executive Owl of KnowledgeOwl, a bootstrapped knowledge base software founded in 2015. Started as an idea within SurveyGizmo, where Marybeth was working at the time, the company has since flourished into a small, profitable, sustainable business ultimately being built to improve the lives of the founders, employees and customers. In this episode we talk about how Marybeth bought the company from her previous employers, how they grew through reviews and why more indie hackers should put customer happiness front and centre.Timestamps00:00 - Intro01:26 Founding story of KnowledgeOwl (prev Help Gizmo)06:54 Marketing and Growth08:58 How to have happy customers10:54 KnowledgeOwl's appraoch to product development13:35 How important is the KnowledgeOwl brand15:07 RecommendationsRecommendationsBook: Buy Back Your Time by Dan MartellPodcast: Startup to LastIndie Hacker/Entrepreneur: Ari Weinzweig - The Lapsed Anarchist's Approach to Being a Better LeaderMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.
Ranking #1 in Google with Lorem Ipsum and making a career out of scientific SEO - Kyle Roof
Kyle Roof is the co-founder of High Voltage SEO, PageOptimizer Pro and Internet Marketing Gold. An agency, software and course business respectively which all focus on mastering SEO. I’ve spoken at length on the podcast before about how SEO can be such an effective tool for indie hackers to use, so Kyle is the perfect guest to talk to today.Timestamps00:00 Intro02:58 How Kyle learned SEO04:31 Being Scientific with SEO05:47 Why you should try paid ads07:17 Ranking top of Google with Lorem Ipsum10:15 Where do people start with SEO12:13 Encouraging word of mouth growth13:56 RecommendationsMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.
Finding success with a QR code app after selling his previous indie business - Ramy Khuffash
Ramy Khuffash is the founder of Hovercode, a QR code generator he’s working on full time. Previously, Ramy founded Page Flows, a library of inspiration videos for product designers that he sold last November.Timestamps00:00 Intro00:56 Email Octopus Sponsor02:30 Page Flows Acquisition05:03 What did Ramy buy after he sold his company05:56 Starting Hovercode08:05 Finding new business ideas09:32 Growth for Hovercode11:22 Working with a horizontal product12:20 The perfect indie business14:48 Ramy's futureRecommendationsBook: The Mom TestPodcast: Hidden BrainIndie Hacker: Laura Roeder, Amar GhoseMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.
From Tweet Hunter's 8 figure exit, to starting all over again - Tibo Louis-Lucas
Tibo Louis-Lucas is a serial founder, most well known for starting Tweet Hunter and Taplio in 2021, before selling the company in 2022 for 8 figures. Since then, Tibo has gone on to acquire an AI video creation tool, Typeframes, which he spun Revid.ai recently. He actually announced after recording this that he has left Tweethunter and is back to focusing on his early stage products, which we touch on in this episode. He’s also started a newsletter with over 50k subscribers and has over 115k Twitter followers. Tibo is a bit of a legend in the indie maker sphere right now.Tibo and I covered so much ground in this episode I couldn’t fit it all in, so the the full 40 minute conversation available on the Indie Bites membership for $60 a year. Head to indiebites.com/membership to get access.Timestamps:00:00 - Intro01:46 - Why failing is important for indie hackers03:30 - 1 product every 2 weeks05:16 - From $3 to $20k MRR with influencer partnership06:41 - Selling Tweet Hunter to Lempire08:40 - What did Tibo buy with his money10:34 - Acquiring Typeframe16:16 - RecommendationsRecommendationsBook: It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at WorkPodcast: AcquiredIndie Hacker: Marc Louvion; Damon ChenMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.
Building a $200k MRR bootstrapped maid software for a price sensitive niche - Amar Ghose, ZenMaid
Amar Ghose is the founder of ZenMaid, a Maid Service software that has just hit $200k MRR. Amar is a seasoned bootstrapped entrepreneur, having started ZenMaid back in 2013. Amar’s story shows the power of sticking with something through the hard times, and having an unsexy niche (aka not selling to other indie hackers) can lead to a phenomenal indie business.Timestamps00:00 Intro02:53 Scaling in the first 2 years04:38 Growing an indie business in a price sensitive niche06:54 Travelling while indie hacking08:12 Losing 40% of revenue in 6 months13:23 Hustle Porn - Should indie hackers work harder?15:38 RecommendationsReccosBook: The Fish That Ate The Whale by Rich CohenPodcast: exitfive by Dave GerhardtIndie Hacker: Jesse HanleyMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.
Building WP Minute, a 5-figure side project without a huge audience - Matt Medeiros, WP Minute
Matt Medeiros is the founder of WP Minute, a weekly podcast highlighting WordPress news in less than 5 minutes. He’s a podcasting expert, having previously worked as Director of Podcasting success at Castos and now hosts & produces Breakdown, a podcast by Gravity forms. This episode talks about how you can make a sustainable 5-figure side project, with a niche audience while working a full time job and increasing your opportunities as you do it.Timestamps00:00 Intro01:32 From the family car business to digital agency with his dad03:35 Becoming a Wordpress Expert and Starting Matt Report04:45 Using podcasting as a networking tool05:56 From Matt Report to WP Minute08:08 Monetizing WP Minute09:36 Making money from a small audience10:58 Having a profitable side project alongside a full time job12:08 Does Matt want to sell WP Minute?14:48 RecommendationsRecommendationsPodcast about Books: Six Pixels of SeparationPodcast: Podcasting 2.0Indie Hacker: Carl HancockMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.
Building a $700k ARR newsletter - Manu Cinca, Stacked Marketer
Manu Cinca is the founder of Stacked Marketer, a daily marketing newsletter he bootstrapped to $700k. In 2023, he acquired 2 newsletters to bring the subscriber count to 100k and raised a small 250k funding round to help boost growth.
Bootstrapping the 100DaysOfNoCode learning platform - Max Haining
Max Haining is the founder of 100DaysofNoCode and 100DaysofAI, which are bootcamps designed to help non-techies gain tech skills. Max wanted to be an entrepreneur from a young age and started 100DaysofNoCode as a challenge for himself to learn NoCode tools during covid, but as more people joined in, he realised he could bootstrap the challenge into a learning platform which he’s now working on full time.Follow Max:TwitterTimestamps00:00 - Intro01:28 - Max early life03:31 - University student inspired by Zuck04:59 - Discovering indie hacking06:13 - Starting 100DaysofNoCode09:45 - Turning 100DaysofNoCode from a challenge to a business13:39 - What marketing tactics has Max used15:09 - RecommendationsRecommendationsBook - Get Together Podcast - My First MillionIndie Hacker - Marc LouvionMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.
Bouncing back from losing 70% revenue - Max Serrano, IGotAnOffer
Max Serrano is the founder of IGotAnOffer, a bootstrapped coaching platform focused on helping people get jobs and progress their career. Initially starting out in consulting, Max started IGotAnOffer on the side, creating digital products to help people land consulting jobs, but pivoted to coaching after they lost 70% of their revenue in the tech hiring freeze, having to lay off the majority of his staff. Now, with a profit first mentality, they are on a growth trajectory again.Timestamps00:00 - Intro03:16 - What indie hackers can learn from management consulting04:42 - The idea for IGotAnOffer06:23 - Slicing pie method of splitting equity07:39 - From side project to full time08:29 - Fixing a revenue plateau10:49 - Losing 70% of revenue12:46 - Getting back to profitiability13:49 - Pay yourself14:46 - RecommendationsRecommendationsBook - Profit FirstPodcast - Startups for the Rest of UsIndie Hacker - Pete CodesMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.
Building and monetizing an audience as a software engineer - Randall Kanna Franson
Today I’m joined by Randall Kanna Franson. Randall is a senior software engineer who has written 3 books, including one published by O’Reilly and a self published one which made over $70k. She also created a course called Hack the Tech interview which made $20k in the first 24 hours and $50k in the first month. All of this has been through Randall’s efforts to share her learnings from almost a decade being a software engineer and growing her twitter audience to over 50,000 followers. She’s also dabbled in SaaS products, notably launching and growing CodeTutor which she sold after the birth of her first child.Timestamps00:00 Intro01:43 Randall's background03:33 Coding bootcamp to senior software engineer05:05 Getting a book published with O'Reilly06:37 Going hard on side projects in 202008:01 Audience building and writing another book10:04 Randall's course11:42 Randalls advice to early stage entreprenuers13:13 Why Randall hasn't started a successful SaaS15:47 RecommendationsRecommendationsBook - The DipPodcast - Software SocialIndie Hacker - Kyle GawleyMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.