Jon Yongfook would know. In addition to attempting the well-known Indie Hackers challenge 12 Startups in 12 Months, he also went through 20-30 failed projects before striking the right product-market fit with Bannerbear, an image generation software.

In this episode of Ahrefs Podcast, Jon Yongfook lays out:

(0:00) Introduction

(01:33) The state of the Indie Hackers community

(03:19) Doing the 12 startups in 12 months challenge

(09:24) Coming up with the idea for Bannerbear

(14:06) Bannerbear design

(17:02) Marketing week/coding week

(19:44) Building in public

(30:48) The current Bannerbear marketing strategy

(34:18) Building free tools

(41:04) Creating vs and alternatives pages

(45:24) Modern growth hacking

(48:53) Building and using ChatGPT wrappers

(55:03) Using AI in marketing

(56:37) Posting spicy takes on Twitter

Where to find Jon Yongfook:

X: https://x.com/yongfook

Website: https://www.yongfook.com/

Where to find Tim:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/

X: https://x.com/timsoulo

Website: https://www.timsoulo.com/

Referenced:

Bannerbear: https://www.bannerbear.com/

Indie Hackers: https://www.indiehackers.com/

Pieter Levels: https://x.com/levelsio

Danny Postma: https://x.com/dannypostmaa

Ahrefs Backlink Checker: https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker