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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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.
Building a financial engine for your indie business - Justin Jackson
In this episode I have a returning guest, someone who is a keystone of the bootstrapping community, it’s Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor, MegaMaker and more. Today we have an unstructured but very useful chat about building a financial engine for your business. This is a topic that has come up countless times in my indie journey and I think it’s something that a lot of indie businesses don’t address as early and seriously as they should. There a ton of actionable tips in this conversation about how to manage your finances, building a solid, profitable business and what to do when things aren’t going well.Get the extended episode here: https://indiebites.com/membershipTimestamps 00:00 Intro 01:45 James shocked by tax 02:31 Profit first 06:51 Building a financial engine 09:40 Things falling apart with depression 11:00 Desperation affects creativity 11:49 How to build your financial engine Recommendations (from prev ep) Book: Life Profitability Podcast: Software Social Indie Hacker: Derek Sivers Follow Justin Twitter Blog 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
Rob Walling on multiple projects, why building an audience is dumb and other SaaS wisdom
Rob Walling is an absolute legend in the bootstrapping and indie scene. He’s a veteran entrepreneur with his most notable exit being Drip in 2016. Rob also founded MicroConf, started TinySeed and is the host of the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast, which has over 680 episodes having started in 2010. It doesn’t stop there for Rob, he’s also written 4 books, Start Small Stay Small, Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding, The Entrepreneurs Guide to Keeping Your Shit Together and most recently, The SaaS Playbook.Get the hour long episode here: https://indiebites.com/membershipTimestamps 00:00 Intro / Sponsor 02:03 Why Rob wouldn't do SaaS again 03:43 What would an alternative reality look like for Rob 05:46 Founder retreats 07:40 Building an audience first approach is dumb for SaaS 10:29 Building a network 12:38 Portfolio of projects 15:26 Recommendations Recommendations Book: Founding Sales, Deploy Empathy Podcast: Comic Lab Indie Hacker: Ruben Gamez Follow Rob Twitter Website 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.
Growing an audience, making difficult decisions and launching screencasting.com - Aaron Francis
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 03:24 Audience Building 05:51 Benefits of each content medium 08:07 Making time for everything 09:27 Having a full time job 10:23 Leaving Hammerstone 12:36 Launching Screencasting.com 14:33 How has the launch gone? 15:25 Recommendations Recommendations Book - Any textbook in your field Podcast - No Plans to Merge Indie Hacker - Jordan O’Connor 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.
$20k MRR with Airtable app using YouTube and SEO for growth - Andy Cloke, Data Fetcher
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 the business 13:07 Future of Data Fetcher Recommendations Book: Psychology of Money Podcast: Acquired Indie Hacker: Curtis Herbert Follow AndyTwitterMy 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.
Making $200k a year teaching Google Sheets - Andrew Kamphey
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 newsletter, writing a book about charging and even launching a SaaS. Andrew has had his finger in piece of the indie hacking pie and has now settled on being the Google Sheets guy. At least for now.Timestamps 00:00 - Intro 02:08 - Failing to go full time 04:13 - Selling Influence Weekly 06:26 - Starting BetterSheets 09:32 - Turning Better Sheets into a full time income 11:53 - Reluctancy to become the "Google Sheets Guy" 13:37 - Recommendations Recommendations Book: Lying for Money Podcast: The Deep Life Indie Hacker: Jon Yongfook, Danny Postma, James & Danielle Follow AndrewTwitterMy 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 Ticket Tailor to £6m ARR, selling and repurchasing the company, losing motivation and more - Jonny White
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 a team of 20+ people, Jonny has a whole new set of challenges he’s dealing with, which we dig into in this episode.Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:51 - Jonny's background 02:48 - The idea for Ticket Tailor 04:39 - Getting those first few customers 05:14 - Reaching £2k MRR and considering fundraising 06:34 - Selling the company 08:00 - Buying back Ticket Tailor 09:17 - Post buy back 11:13 - Hiring a team / going beyond a lifestyle biz 12:12 - COVID 13:59 - Losing motivation post-covid 15:45 - Recommendations Recommendations Book: Donut Economics Podcast: Missing Cryptoqueen Indie Hacker: Pietro Saccamani Follow JonnyTwitterMy 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.
Carving a new life path with a newsletter about Workspaces - Ryan Gilbert, Workspaces
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 stage.Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:26 Life before Workspaces 03:37 Did you have any side projects before workspaces? 04:47 Growth of the Workspaces newsletter 06:40 How long did each edition take? 07:45 The best workspaces 08:25 Monetizing the newsletter 10:22 Selling the newsletter 13:08 Imposter syndrome 13:57 Recommendations Recommendations Book - The Creative Act by Rick Rubin Podcast - Creator Science Indie Hacker - Brett Williams
Taking on Bit.ly bootstrapped - Tim Leland, T.LY
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 for Indie Hackers, but Tim has made it work. 00:00 Intro 05:15 Building a portfolio of extensions 07:45 Starting T.LY 10:06 Being the low price option 11:49 Getting users for T.LY 12:51 Quitting his job 15:13 Reccos Recommendations Book - Atomic Habits Podcast - My First Million Indie Hacker - Rob Walling