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.
From $50m VC-backed to $20k MRR notes app - Alex MacCaw, Reflect (prev. Clearbit)
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 CS degree
- Being unemployable
- Starting Clearbit
- Stepping down as CEO of Clearbit
- Boostrapping Reflect
- Why another note taking app?
- Building what you enjoy
- Growing to 20k MRR
- Getting the first users for your product
- Sailing around the world
Recommendations
- Book: Isaac Asimov's Guide to Earth and Space
- Podcast: In Our Time
- Indie Hacker: Adam Wathan
Follow Alex
My links
- 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 - Ahrefs
Thank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring Indie Bites. Ahrefs is the most complete and valuable SEO tool on the market. Bootstrapped companies such as VEED and Transistor have used Ahrefs extensively to understand how to craft their SEO strategies, which have been such a pivotal part of their growth.
If you want to get more traffic from Google on your side-project, I’d recommend first trying out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools for free. You’ll see what keywords your pages are ranking for, understand how Google sees your content and discover what changes you need to improve your search ranking. You should also check out their YouTube channel to understand both the basics of SEO and some more advanced techniques.
To try out Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, head to ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools