Indie Bites

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.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Intro
• 03:16 - What indie hackers can learn from management consulting
• 04:42 - The idea for IGotAnOffer
• 06:23 - Slicing pie method of splitting equity
• 07:39 - From side project to full time
• 08:29 - Fixing a revenue plateau
• 10:49 - Losing 70% of revenue
• 12:46 - Getting back to profitiability
• 13:49 - Pay yourself
• 14:46 - Recommendations

Recommendations

• Book - Profit First
• Podcast - Startups for the Rest of Us
• Indie Hacker - Pete Codes

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.

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.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:43 Randall's background
• 03:33 Coding bootcamp to senior software engineer
• 05:05 Getting a book published with O'Reilly
• 06:37 Going hard on side projects in 2020
• 08:01 Audience building and writing another book
• 10:04 Randall's course
• 11:42 Randalls advice to early stage entreprenuers
• 13:13 Why Randall hasn't started a successful SaaS
• 15:47 Recommendations

Recommendations

• Book - The Dip
• Podcast - Software Social
• Indie Hacker - Kyle Gawley

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.

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.

Timestamps

• 00:00 108 - Kieran Ball
• 02:07 Failing to learn how to code
• 03:05 How Kieran discovered no code
• 04:28 Are no code apps hacky?
• 05:52 Who has been successful building no code tools?
• 06:57 No code for MVPs or for actual startups
• 09:28 Keiran's own blog, No Code Life
• 10:19 Improving your marketing skillset
• 12:49 Kieran's future with no code
• 15:48 Recommendations

Recommendations

• Book - The SaaS playbook
• Podcast - The Bootstrapped Founder
• Indie Hacker - Hazel Lim @byhazelim

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro
01:30 Starting Mealime
07:07 Pivot to mobile and reducing prices
08:36 Mealime Growth
09:46 Private Equity Exit
10:38 Life post-exit and learning to code
12:24 Starting Clearful
13:31 Clearful growth through the app store
14:50 Runway and future

Recommendations

• Book - Range by David Epstein
• Podcast - Conversations with Tyler
• Indie Hacker - Maria Golikova, Sebastian Röhl

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.

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 Koper

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 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.

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.