INDIE AUDIO

When I reached out to  Charles Broskoski, co-founder of Are.na, it was largely because I kept hearing mention of the service he'd built increasingly entering the zeitgeist among young, creative technologists.

What I thought would be a conversation about the tension between creativity in technology ended up being a much more nuanced conversation.

Some takeaways —

Arena has been operating for 13 years and has taken a slow, steady approach to growth. Arena initially struggled with fundraising but found success through a crowdfunding campaign and charging for their product. They prioritized profitability and user feedback over rapid growth or chasing trends. That trade-off leaves potential money on the table, but allows the community to flourish into its own unique place.

More Artists should start businesses — entrepreneurship provides an endless stream of problems that need solving through creativity and ingenuity. Focus on genuine passion and interest rather than chasing what seems “cool” or trendy with investors. Charging users early to validate the product and gain meaningful feedback.

Charles & Are.na have long been critics of traditional social media, for better and for worse. They’re critical of algorithmic recommendations and AI implementations that remove human discovery and idiosyncrasy from products. He believes in maintaining a human relationship with topics and interests, rather than optimizing for efficiency.

Charles and I had crossed paths several times in years past as he and the team had been working to bring Are.na to life. With each interaction, I was impressed with his vision, earnestness, and commitment to serving a community he cares deeply about. 

The parts of this conversation I haven't been able to shake are the need for role models for creative technologists to follow and the trap that many fall into, chasing what's cool instead of creating something that's uniquely theirs to build. 

There's something in here for everyone. 

I hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed recording this one. 

As always, if you or someone you know is working on something that could be a fit for indie, don't hesitate to reach out. 

After wrapping this week’s conversation with published author and ReadySet’s CEO, Y-vonne Hutchinson, I stepped out of the studio, opened my phone, and X was ablaze. 

In the year of our Lord 2024, a startup had decided that an anti-woke marketing campaign was the best possible way for them to generate attention for their payroll software company. The culmination of this campaign was one of their sales affiliates posting a racist rant. The fallout from this was all over my timeline.  Even the most anti-woke of the tech set found themselves embarrassed and deeply uncomfortable with the direction and velocity the pendulum was swinging. 

Tech has a tortured relationship with DEI, race, and gender. The world is becoming increasingly diverse, yet the number of employees and funded startup founders from diverse backgrounds has remain unchanged, if not shrunk. Because the Me Too, George Floyd, and Black Lives Matter movements have left a bad taste in the mouths of many tech leaders, I fear we’re at risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water. 

At the heart of this uncomfortable conversation is something deeply important to company cultures specifically, and the future of tech broadly, so I invited my friend Y-vonne to talk about it. 

Y-vonne and her company ReadySet were part of the Indie v4 batch of companies. I have a deep respect for her, her work, and the company she’s building. A few takeaways from this conversation:

Historical Context of DEI Efforts
Progress in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) often follows a pattern of advancement followed by backlash and retrenchment. This has happened repeatedly throughout U.S. history. The recent pushback against DEI initiatives can be seen as part of this historical pattern, rather than an isolated event. DEI efforts sometimes focused too much on individual change rather than systemic issues, leading to fatigue.

DEI in the Tech Industry
The broad, nebulous nature of “DEI” as a concept allowed it to become a target for criticism. Some DEI initiatives were performative rather than substantive, causing disillusionment. The tech industry initially embraced DEI efforts, but economic pressures and changing market conditions led many companies to cut DEI programs and staff. Some tech leaders have used DEI as a “boogeyman” to justify cuts, even though the underlying issues of bias and lack of diversity remain unaddressed.

DEI as a Business Imperative
Y-Vonne argues that DEI should be seen as a tool to solve real business problems like attrition, market share, and product-market fit. Companies that ignore diversity issues risk building products that don’t serve increasingly diverse markets and user bases. Companies should aim for “healthy culture” that enables collaboration and innovation, rather than trying to mandate diversity, but the healthiest cultures are diverse.

Moving Forward
Work environments should avoid causing trauma, but shouldn’t be expected to heal past traumas - that’s not their purpose. While companies shouldn’t be responsible for “healing” employees, leaders can adopt a more trauma-informed approach to avoid causing additional harm. Broader social and political change is needed to address systemic issues, beyond what individual companies can accomplish.

The world, and its demographics, are shifting so quickly it would be a huge miss for companies not to be thinking about how their culture can reflect the broader universe or potential customers and users. 

This isn’t about quotas or raising or lowering bars, it’s about capturing opportunity. 

This was such an engaging and energizing conversation for both Y-conne and I. We hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed recording it.

Walking through Madison Square Park a year ago, @schlaf talked about transitions, something he knew a lot about.

I first met Steve when he was a junior investing partner at RRE, a venture capital firm in New York City. At the time, Schlaf had the NYC startup scene in a chokehold. He had a reputation for hustling hard and winning some of the hottest consumer deals in the city. He was charismatic, he was aggressive, and then, he was gone.

At first, he left RRE to do a firm of his own, then he joined Primary as a Venture Partner, then struck out on his own again to blend a CEO coaching practice he was developing with a new chapter as an angel investor.

In the park that day last year, he talked about a new evolution of his practice. He'd gone deep on the study of transitions. As someone who'd lived through many in his career, he felt a connection to the subject. As conversations and calls for help with career transitions flooded into his coaching practice, he felt a calling.

That calling is still taking shape, but the current iteration of it is Downshift, a cohort-based "decelerator" for high achievers in career transitions. Downshift gives these strivers a place and permission to slow down and take inventory before embarking on the next chapters of their careers.

Some takeaways from this conversation —

Steve left venture burnt out from the nonstop pace and transactional nature of venture. He wanted more authentic relationships not based on dealmaking. Venture can feel like a “legalized casino” focused on status and wealth generation rather than substance. Instead of constantly being in meetings and pitches, he needed to slow down and have space to think and process.

In hindsight, Steve would approach venture differently:
— Scheduling no meetings before noon to allow time for research and deep thinking.
— Partnering only with people who share similar values.
— Balancing effort and recovery to avoid burnout.
— Being more upfront and decisive with entrepreneurs, trusting his intuition.

As a coach, Steve helps clients navigate major life/career transitions and “ego deaths” as their identities and narratives break down. In practice, that looks like holding space with presence and empathy rather than driving them to specific outcomes, helping them see patterns and make decisions from a place of clarity and agency, not fear, and slowing down to allow emotions to be felt and processed. This method helps his clients reach a sustainable and ultimately stronger place.

The prompt to reach out to Steve was seeing his work show up outside of the usual startup circles, notably Bobby Kim, founder of the streetwear brand The Hundreds. Bobby wrote —

"Maybe it’s just me.

But I keep running into the same conversations around career crisis, purpose, and transitions. Several times a week, I’ll meet up for lunch, sink into a DM, or sift through a Telegram chat, and a friend will confide that they’re experiencing a tough time. When I comfort them, they are surprised that they’re not the only ones struggling with finances, that other industries aren’t immune to existential threats. They sigh relief when they realize that most everyone I know is confronted with formidable questions of their lives and futures."

He goes on to cite Steve's work and relate it to a wide range of industries with a similar theme. It felt like a good time to sit down with Schlaf to dive deep on his work and this current moment.

When I approached Schlaf about sitting down to talk about his journey, he had the vision of filming in Central Park. A daunting request, but one where teamwork really did make the dream work. The visuals were stunning, and the conversation clocked in at nearly 3hrs (don't worry, we edited it down to something much more manageable).

The park lent an incredible vibe. You'll hear notes from a nearby saxophone, people stopping to say hello, birds chirping, and general movement of the city. We really love how this one turned out, and hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed having it.

— Bryce

As always, if you or someone you know has a company that could be a fit for and investment from indie, don't hesitate to reach out. 

In April 2015, I read an article that elicited a reaction I’d only had a few other times prior. 

We had just closed applications for our first round of experimental indie investments and had made most of our selections. 

The article in question was titled Instagram’s TMZ, not exactly a title that would typically grab the attention of a Mormon dad in Utah. But I was captivated by the story and the mystery of the founder known only by her first name, Angie. By design, she was not the face of The Shade Room (TSR), that was a distinction for her large and growing audience of “Roommates” who kept the comments buzzing and the scoops flowing. 

Any fan of pop culture knows that it's largely downstream of Black culture. Control the headwaters of culture, and you can shape the conversation around it. That’s the opportunity that I saw in TSR, but the risk was that they would follow the playbook of the other modern media giants of their generation - Buzzfeed and Vice. Unlike the latter, who had built their own technology and properties from the ground up, TSR leveraged existing social channels to go directly to their audiences. This was as practical as it was counterintuitive and ultimately led to a meaningful part of the TSR success story, while Buzzfeed and Vice have drifted into obscurity and irrelevance. 

A few takeaways from this conversation:

The Shade Room's journey and growth:
Angie started The Shade Room in 2015 with a vision of it becoming influential and a cultural game-changer, despite having only a few thousand followers at the time. After indie's investment, Angie was able to take that confidence and has grown significantly since then. The Shade Room has become an integral part of Black culture and media, with a highly engaged community called "The Roommates".

Angie's approach to building The Shade Room:
Angie has purposefully kept the company bootstrapped, avoiding taking on additional investment in order to maintain ownership and control. She's turned down multiple 9-figure acquisition offers, driven by her long-term vision and purpose rather than financial gain. As a Black media company representing Black culture, The Shade Room faces increased scrutiny. Advertisers have undervalued The Shade Room's audience compared to other media outlets, like BuzzFeed and Vice. But because she kept her independence, the Shade Room was able to outlast those over-funded media companies.

Advice for those starting out:
If Angie was starting the Shade Room today, she'd follow these three pieces of advice —
1) Speak to yourself and your own interests.
2) Listen to your audience.
3) Truly know your audience.

Recording this conversation in Angie’s home was a beautiful contrast to when we first met. Her growth as a business builder and as a person has truly been highlight of my professional career. There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s much more runway ahead for her and TSR. Hopefully that can all happen without landing me in any more diss tracks…

We hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed recording this one. 

And as always, if you’re working on something that could be a fit for indie, or know someone who is, don’t hesitate to reach out.B

— Bryce

A few years back, I got a DM from a founder wanting to meet and swap stories about adventures in entrepreneurship. Despite being backed by some of the top VCs in the world, they were taking a very different approach from the classic VC blitzscaling playbook. As we sat on the back patio of a bar in Brooklyn, it was clear that how Jori and his founding team at Linear were building was very aligned with how we were encouraging founders to consider building through indie (note - we are, sadly, not investors in Linear).

Years and a Series B later, the Linear founders have continued building their company on their terms.

A few weeks back, I had the opportunity to sit down with Jori’s co-founder, Karri Saarinen, at his home in California for a wide-ranging talk. We covered everything from their time at some of the biggest hyperscalers of the last wave (think AirBnB, Coinbase, Uber), to net-negative lifetime burn rate (they’ve basically never spent the $52M they’ve raised), to their version of “Founder Mode”, to Finnish potato farming.

A few notable takeaways from this conversation:

Building a Different Kind of Company
Linear aims to build a company and product in a way that differs from typical Silicon Valley startups by focusing on product quality and craft rather than rapid scaling. By maintaining profitability and controlled growth instead of burning through venture capital, they’ve been able to build a venture-scale company without giving up optionality. The founders draw on their experiences at companies like Airbnb and Coinbase to avoid pitfalls they observed there, like culture dilution from hyper-growth. They’ve emphasized a small, high-quality team over rapid hiring.

Product and Growth Philosophy
Linear prioritizes product quality over growth hacks or aggressive marketing. By focusing on making the product so good that people naturally talk about it, they’ve been able to capitalize on word-of-mouth from satisfied users as a growth strategy.

Founder Approach
Karri emphasizes the importance of founders staying connected to the product and the craft. Because they care deeply about the output and quality of work, they can avoid creating unnecessary management layers or processes. Karri advocates for founders to think critically about standard startup advice and find their own path that aligns with their strengths and values.

Remote Work and Culture
Linear is fully remote, which they see as an advantage in maintaining focus and avoiding unnecessary distractions like office design. The company emphasizes clear communication and looks for employees with strong communication skills to thrive in a remote environment. Remote works if the founders want it to.

I really loved this conversation with Karri. 

It highlights for me that there really is a new wave of ultra ambitious founders who are finding a way to stay true to themselves and their visions by focusing on what matters, and putting themselves in a position to controlling their own destiny. Linear, Vanta, Zapier, Webflow, and so many others are validating that growth at all costs doesn’t have to cost you everything. 

I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation as much as we enjoyed recording it.

As always if you or someone you know are working on something that could be a fit for indie, don’t hesitate to reach out.  

In this conversation we unpack their journey of building a “lifestyle business”. Some takeaways:

— Chris and Brendan emphasize the importance of patience, focus, and long-term thinking in building a sustainable business. They challenge the notion that raising large amounts of venture capital is necessary for success by finding that being profitable allows for more long-term focus and creative risk-taking. Compounding growth over time can lead to significant results, even if initial growth rates seem modest compared to venture-backed peers.

— After the buyback, there was a shift in company culture towards greater ownership and cost-consciousness among employees. They introduced profit sharing and later reintroduced stock options to align incentives with long-term growth. They stress the importance of building a team you enjoy working with and taking risks on people with growth potential.

— Wistia focuses on solving big problems in large, growing markets rather than chasing short-term trends. They’ve learned to be patient with new product initiatives, looking for early qualitative feedback before expecting significant revenue. The company balances short-term metrics with long-term vision, understanding that meaningful growth often takes time.

— Shift in Funding Landscape:
There has been a significant shift in the funding landscape, with a decrease in year-over-year growth rates for SaaS companies. This change underscores the need for venture capitalists to adapt and explore different investment opportunities. We do our best to highlight the importance of diversifying investment strategies in venture capital, emphasizing the need for alternative paths and approaches that deviate from the conventional SaaS-focused model prevalent in the 2010s.

— Importance of Exceptional Founders:
The conversation points out that exceptional founders who want to do something differently are crucial. It emphasizes the value of supporting founders who are not just following the standard playbook but are instead looking to create something unique.

— Zigging When Others Zag:
Delian shares the strategy of investing in areas that are less popular or overlooked by the majority. This approach is not dissimilar to indie.

— The Need for Support Systems:
Whether it’s external support systems or family, founders need support systems to endure the grueling situations you encounter when building a generational company. Contrary to conventional wisdom, having children can allow you to get more done faster by clarifying the truly important over the urgent.

• Product-market fit requires both customers willing to pay and stay. It’s not just about initial sales, but also retention. Early-stage sales should focus on research and understanding customer problems rather than immediate revenue generation. Founders often skip this crucial research phase.
• Abstract solutions require focusing on specific problems rather than leading with the technology itself. To create urgency, you need to demonstrate how a problem is growing or intensifying for the customer. If a problem isn’t being measured or managed, it’s likely not a priority.
• Early adopters are often those early in their buying journey who are willing to experiment. They buy into the founder as a subject matter expert rather than expecting a fully-built product. Successful startups often start by focusing on a specific niche before expanding horizontally. Being highly specialized allows you to understand customer problems better than they do.
• Invalidation is a healthy part of the startup process. If you’re not invalidating assumptions, you’re likely not learning or going deep enough. Sales feedback is valuable for positioning and refinement, but product vision should come from founders or product leads. Salespeople should not drive product vision. Demonstrating expertise by setting boundaries on what your product does (and doesn’t do) can actually increase customer confidence.

— Capital has no insights
Eric argues that venture capital alone doesn’t solve business problems, and having more capital doesn’t necessarily lead to better outcomes.

— Compounding value vs. negative value
The importance of building companies that compound positive value over time, rather than scaling prematurely and compounding negative value. Funding should primarily be used for experimentation and scaling proven business models, not for scaling unproven ideas, because it’s easy to compound negative value if you’re not paying attention to the right things.

— Vanity metrics vs. intrinsic value
The industry often focuses on vanity metrics like growth rates and valuations, rather than building long-term intrinsic value and durable businesses. The venture capital industry’s incentive structures often encourage behavior that may not be in the best interest of building sustainable businesses. It’s important to maintain a long-term perspective on building value, rather than getting caught up in short-term growth or fundraising cycles. In many tech businesses, there are often diseconomies of scale rather than economies of scale as companies grow.

— Playing the game on your own terms
CEOs and founders are ultimately responsible for making disciplined decisions about resource allocation and scaling. While entrepreneurs can’t completely ignore the “game” of venture capital, they should focus on building value on their own terms rather than getting caught up in comparisons or unrealistic expectations.

Some takeaways:

— There’s a significant gap between the hype around AI and its actual implementation in businesses. Many companies are still in the experimental phase, with few AI solutions in production. The main barriers to AI adoptions are technical challenges, cost considerations, and lack of expertise. We’re still very early in realizing AI’s promise.

— AI adoption was slow, then immediate. In a pre-ChatGPT world, the focus was on convincing companies to care about data science and machine learning. Post-ChatGPT, there’s been an explosion in demand, with companies actively seeking AI solutions.

— Most companies are still in the proof-of-concept stage. There’re limited production-ready AI use cases, which hinders adoption. But with major cloud providers (Microsoft, Amazon, Google) aggressively pursuing AI strategies, that’s bound to change. There’s constant evolution in model performance and capabilities. Companies need to view AI as a continuous investment, similar to cloud infrastructure, rather than a one-time project.

— Tribe’s approach to AI implementation is what made it such an interesting investment for indie. Their focus on education to help companies understand AI's potential, and emphasis on quick, cost-effective proof of concepts to demonstrate value, means they’re positioned to continue rapidly growing. As a services business, they’re able to help companies balance cost with value creation, navigate rapidly evolving AI technologies, and future-proofing AI investments.