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.
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.
Can you really scale a No Code SaaS? - Kieran Ball, NoCodeLife
Kieran Ball is the founder of NoCodeLife, a selection of case studies of those making successful businesses using NoCode. Kieran also has courses on how to become a NoCode SaaS founder, specifically using the Bubble platform. I wanted to get Kieran on the pod to discuss and challenge the NoCode movement and if you can actually create a scalable product using the tools available, or if NoCode serves a different purpose.Timestamps00:00 108 - Kieran Ball02:07 Failing to learn how to code03:05 How Kieran discovered no code04:28 Are no code apps hacky?05:52 Who has been successful building no code tools?06:57 No code for MVPs or for actual startups09:28 Keiran's own blog, No Code Life10:19 Improving your marketing skillset12:49 Kieran's future with no code15:48 RecommendationsRecommendationsBook - The SaaS playbookPodcast - The Bootstrapped FounderIndie Hacker - Hazel Lim @byhazelimMy 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.
B2C vs B2B SaaS as an indie hacker - Val Sopi, Blogstatic
Today I’m joined by Val Sopi, the founder of Blogstatic, a lightweight blogging platform built to take on the likes of Ghost. Currently Val is sitting around $1k a month, but with a low-priced annual plans approach, he’s relying on new sign ups and plan upgrades instead of recurring subscriptions. So he’s at a crossroads of needing to pour fuel on the fire to grow his low-cost blogging platform, or attempt to build a B2B SaaS, which he believes is a much more sustainable option for an indie founder. Val has been hardened by business successes and failures, so I love his pragmatic approach to the decisions he’s making.Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:39 Val's background - web design shop to failed SaaS 04:10 Learning to code and starting Claritask 04:53 Selling Claritask 05:52 Launching Blogstatic 06:42 Taking a loan to bet on himself 07:40 The crossroads of stagnating growth 08:39 Being a low cost alternative in a competitive market 12:30 Why Val won't take VC 14:06 Why Val is trying B2B instead of B2C 15:45 Recommendations Recommendations Book: The Inner Game of Tennis Podcast: Startups for the Rest of Us Indie Hacker: Joe Ashville My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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 VEED bootstrapped to $7m ARR - Sabba Keynejad, VEED.io (2020)
Today I'm revisiting one of my favourite episodes, from 2020, with Sabba Keynejad, co-founder and CEO of VEED.io, an online video editing platform. When I interviewed Sabba, VEED were at around $2m ARR, fully bootstrapped. Since this interview, they’ve gone on to bootstrap to about $7m ARR before raising a whopping $35m series A from Sequoia. And when I first met Sabba, years before this interview, VEED was just a small product that wasn't generating any revenue. This episode is special to me because I’ve followed VEED’s journey from the start and it’s been inspiring to see. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 02:46 VEED origins 03:24 Differentiation 03:58 Picking a market 04:48 Hiring and learning new skills 06:16 Inflection points in growth 07:07 Quitting your job 07:45 Why you should find a cofounder 08:41 Getting the first users 09:47 Free vs paid 11:16 Growth tactics 12:04 Advice to other founders 13:01 Recommendations Recommendations Favourite indie hacker is Josh Pigford Best book for indie hackers; Traction Favourite podcast; How I Built This My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.
Lemon Squeezy CTO on why he still makes side projects - Gilbert Pellegrom
Gilbert Pellegrom, is co-founder and CTO of Lemon Squeezy, a platform for selling software and digital products online. Previously Gilbert created the Nivo Slider all in 2010, which grew to millions of users before selling it. He then went on to work with Orman Clark at ThemeZilla and Dunked, who he’s teamed up with again to build Lemon Squeezy. What’s interesting about Gilbert is that despite being the CTO of a rapidly scaling startup, he’s still making and shipping side projects, which we’ll talk about more on this episode.If you want to hear more about Lemon Squeezy, I actually co-host their podcast called Make Lemonade, where I speak with their CEO JR Farr about the behind the scenes of building a bootstrapped company making millions.Sign up to the Indie Bites membership for $60 a year to access the full conversation with Gilbert.Timestamps 00:00 Intro 03:57 Working with Orman Clark at Themezilla and Dunked 06:11 Delicious Brains 06:40 Starting Lemon Squeezy 07:52 Why Gilbert makes side projects 10:36 Should you charge money for your side projects 12:58 Selling side projects 14:59 Recommendations Recommendations Book - Atomic Habits Podcast - Yo! Indie Hacker - Marcel Pociot My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.
Scaling and exiting a $65k MRR with meal planning app - Jeffrey Bunn, Mealime & Clearful
Today I’m joined by Jeffrey Bunn, who is the co-founder of Clearful, a digital journal app he built with his wife, Maria. Previously they co-founded Mealime, a meal planning app which grew to a whopping $65k MRR before they exited in 2018. In this episode we cover the story of founding both apps, how they utilised the app stores for growth and why they started a B2C app in a crowded market.Timestamps00:00 Intro01:30 Starting Mealime07:07 Pivot to mobile and reducing prices08:36 Mealime Growth09:46 Private Equity Exit10:38 Life post-exit and learning to code12:24 Starting Clearful13:31 Clearful growth through the app store14:50 Runway and futureRecommendations Book - Range by David Epstein Podcast - Conversations with Tyler Indie Hacker - Maria Golikova My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.
The slow and steady path to growth - Michael Christofides
Today I’m joined by Michael Christofides, who is the founder of PgMustard, a product which helps people speed up Postgres queries. Michael started out working for a Devtools company as a product manager and went on to run customer success at London based unicorn, GoCardless. Now, Michael might not be as well known and successful as other popular indie hackers, but he works on his own terms and has been committed to his project for years.In this episode I want to unpack why Michael stays committed to his product despite slow growth, his unique approach to the indie lifestyle and where he wants to go in future.Timestamps 00:00 - Intro 02:18 - Michael's early career 03:09 - The PGMustard idea 04:28 - Building for a market rather than scratching your own itch 06:23 - Launching PGMustard 08:15 - Going full time on PGMustard 09:47 - Leaving well paid jobs at $0 MRR 11:28 - Intentional slow growth 15:43 - Recommendations Recommendations Book - Small Giants Podcast - Panic Podcast Indie Hacker - Michael Copa? My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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 side projects, hobbies and making money as a founder
Arvid Kahl runs The Bootstrapped Founder, a podcast, newsletter and educational resource to help founders grow successful bootstrapped businesses. He’s also written two books, Zero to Sold and The Embedded Entreprenuer. Arvid is a returning guest, having previously been on the show almost 3 years ago, to talk about his exit from FeedbackPanda, which he grew to $55k MRR with his partner, Danielle.In this episode we talk about life as a creator and solopreneur, how Arvid is scratching his SaaS itch and how people can leave their jobs to work on their side projects.👉 Get the full 55 minute conversation here.Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:45 Turning hobbies into business 02:51 Structuring how you spend your time 05:14 Revenue for The Bootstrapped Founder 07:13 Why do consulting when you have runway 08:30 Scratching the coding itch 12:07 How to make a side project a main project 15:52 Recommendations Recommendations(Prev. the mom test, IH pod and Sergio Mattei) Book: The SaaS Playbook Podcast: The Greatest Generation Indie Hacker: Tony Dihn My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.
Quitting his job and taking a £20k loan to go full time indie - Harvey Carpenter, Growform
Harvey Carpenter is the founder of Growform, a form builder which is now around 7K MRR. It's a mixture of enterprise and some other clients, and he's tackling a product in a market that is extremely competitive and crowded, but he's trying to carve out his own little slice of that market.Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:21 Harvey's life before Growform 01:35 Side projects as a 17 yr old 04:10 Getting a law degree 05:04 The idea for Growform 06:42 Benefits of picking a niche 09:12 Growth tactics 10:06 Quitting his job and taking a loan 13:16 Future goals 13:48 Taking recreation seriously Recommendations Book: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together Podcast: Diary of a CEO Indie Hacker: Jack Bridger My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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 to get to ramen profitability - Charlie Ward, Ramen Club
Today is a special episode, because it marks 100 episodes of Indie Bites. And to mark the occasion, I’m bringing back my guest from episode 1, Charlie Ward, founder of Ramen Club to talk about how he’s grown to community into the core of the London indie scene while scaling to £7k MRR in the process. Charlie has also been a long time supporter of the show, having sponsored well over 30 episodes and taking a bet on me early on.Timestamps 00:00 - Intro 01:40 - The impact Ramen Club has on other founders 03:08 - Rebranding to Ramen Club 04:56 - Advice for community building 06:27 - Advice to founders on ideas and growth 11:10 - Why you should be doing user research 14:35 - Recommendations Recommendations Book: $100m Offers Podcast: Lex Fridman Indie Hacker: Elston Baretto Other links Get Together book Continuous Discovery Habits book Rosieland Charlie's Twitter Ramen Club Podcast My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.
Bootstrapping EmailOctopus to $3m+ ARR - Jonathan Bull & Tom Evans
Today I’m joined by Tom Evans and Jonathan Bull from EmailOctopus, an email platform who have bootstrapped to over $3m ARR since they were founded in 2014. They’ve been battling in a crowded and competitive market, with some huge funded companies to contend with, but they’ve made it work in an indie way. In this episode we talk about how they lost 99% of their users overnight, why they’ve chosen to compete on price rather than in a niche and their reasoning behind staying bootstrapped for so long.Get the extended episode here: https://indiebites.com/membership 00:00 Intro 01:24 EmailOctopus Background 02:57 How long did EmailOctopus take to build? 03:09 Launching for free 05:45 Tom joining EmailOctopus 07:11 Growth 07:48 Building in a crowded market 08:55 Differentiating on price 11:30 Raising vs bootstrapping 12:58 Changing goals as a bootstrapper 15:07 Fulfilling the side project urge Recommendations Book: ReWork, Four Thousand Weeks Podcast: The Rest is Politics, Indie Bites Indie Hacker: Pieter Levels, Jeffrey Bunn Guest Links Jonathan's Twitter Tom's Twitter Blog post about their growth My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.