Indie Bites

In this episode I’m joined by Colleen Schnettler, which a lot of you would have heard from through her Software Social podcast she co-hosts with Michele Hansen. Colleen has been on quite the journey over the past few years, going from years of contracting to launching her first product, Simple File Upload, then getting a large contracting gig with Hammerstone, landing a separate full-time job to then quit 3 weeks later to rejoin that Hammerstone as a co-founder. Now Colleen is working on a product called HelloQuery, a reporting tool for SQL queries which has been accepted into a recent TinySeed batch.

What we covered:

• 00:00 Intro
• 02:03 Why start the Software Social podcast?
• 02:59 Why start building products
• 04:04 Colleen's first product: Simple File Upload
• 05:07 Why they stopped the podcast
• 06:37 Joining Hammerstone
• 08:50 Being a solo founder
• 10:16 Hello Query
• 11:47 Closing down a successful product
• 13:50 Reccos

Reccomendations

• Book: The Mom Test
• Podcast: Boostrapped Web
• Indie Hacker: Corey Haines

Follow Colleen

• Twitter

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.

Marc Louvion is an indie hacker with many many products. His tagline on his website is relatable for all “I was fired everywhere so I had to work for myself (even Tai Lopez fired me...)”. If you go to Marc’s Indie Page you can see all his projects, including Habits Garden, Gamify List, Visualise Habit, Make Landing & more. Marc is living in Bali and on his way to $5k MRR across his projects. You might have seen Marc on Twitter with his hilarious launch videos and candid build in public updates.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:32 Marc's indie hacker journey
• 03:07 Moving to Bali
• 03:39 Starting a glove business
• 05:52 Gamification
• 07:41 Challenges with gamification
• 08:29 Knowing when to quit a product
• 10:32 Portfolio of projects vs single focus
• 11:46 Marc's day to day
• 12:53 Building an AI product
• 14:00 Creative launch videos
• 15:14 Reccos

Recommendations

• Book: Why We Sleep
• Podcast: Indie Hackers
• Indie Hacker: Danny Postma

Follow Marc

• Twitter
• Explore Marc's products

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.

In this episode I’m bringing back a previous guest, Dom Monn, who is the founder of MentorCruise, which he’s now working full time on with a small team. I brought Dom back on to discuss something that has been on my mind, and has come up in twitter conversations recently which Dom has been involved in.

Is indie hacking having an identity crisis? Is the indie label and mentality limiting success and holding many founders back? I think it could be and so we discuss why this might be happening and what we can do about it.

• Jason's tweet which inspired this conversation
• Mike's response
• Dom's response

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:56 Indie hacker identity crisis
• 03:42 How indie hacking has changed
• 06:32 Why the indie label can be a limiter
• 08:20 Accepting slow growth instead of fixing it
• 10:33 Should we set bigger goals?
• 12:10 We still love the indie hacker community
• 13:50 Recommendations

Recommendations

• Book - Sprint
• Podcast - This Indie Life
• Indie Hacker - Ramen Club

Follow Dom

• Twitter
• Hire him as a mentor
• Personal site

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 Bram Kanstein, who you might know from Startup Stash, which is the most upvoted product ever on Product Hunt. Bram also started the No Code MVP a course, which shows you how to launch an MVP without code. In this episode we focus a lot on how indie hackers can find ideas and launch them the right way.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro
• 03:18 Startup Stash
• 05:56 No Code MVP
• 09:47 Finding ideas
• 12:22 Idea validation
• 15:00 Recommendations

Recommendations

• Book - Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
• Podcast(s) - Joe Rogan, HIBT, MFM
• Indie Hacker - Danny Postma

Follow Bram

• Twitter

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.

Matt Studdert is the founder of Frontend Mentor, which helps people level up their front-end coding skills by building projects. They have over 500,000 users and are hovering around $30k MRR. Matt didn’t start out wanting to run a SaaS, starting out playing poker, then became a personal trainer, before changing his career and learning to code when he was 28.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Intro
• 02:16 Playing Poker full time
• 02:58 Becoming a personal trainer
• 04:24 Learning to code with General Assembly
• 06:33 Front End Mentor
• 08:33 Building a scrappy MVP
• 11:29 Growth for Front End Mentor
• 15:03 Reccos

Recommendations

• Book - badass make users awesome
• Podcast - Acquired
• Indie Hacker - Arvid Kahl, Valentin Wallyn

Follow Matt

• Twitter

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.

Jordan O’Connor is the founder of Closet Tools, a bootstrapped app that helps people sell more stuff on Poshmark which has been in and around the $30-40k MRR mark. He’s found a lot of his growth through SEO, like many successful entrepreneurs, and now helps other founders do the same through his Rank to Sell power half hours.

Listen to the full 90 minute chat with Jordan here ->

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro
• 03:29 Jordan being awful with money
• 04:30 Jordan's indie hacking journey
• 06:10 Launching and failing with different products
• 07:06 Choosing SaaS
• 08:31 Starting closet tools
• 11:38 Pricing for Closet Tools
• 12:35 Reverse stair stepping with Rank to Sell (consulting)
• 16:08 Reccos

Recommendations

• Book - Deep Work
• Podcast - Deep Questions by Cal Newport
• Indie Hacker - Pat Walls

Follow Jordan

• Twitter
• Personal 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.

Josh Ho is the founder and CEO of Referral Rock, a SaaS he founded in 2014 doing over $2m a year in revenue. Referral Rock helps businesses to design, launch and manage a customer referral program. Josh has had decades of experience as a founder, pouring his early entrepreneurship energy into a notes app that he ultimately couldn’t monetize.

Timestamps
00:00 - Intro
01:24 - Josh's background
02:11 - Lessons from a failed startup
04:16 - Failed startup to new long term bet
05:41 - The idea for Referral Rock
06:59 - Pricing a B2C product
08:33 - Marketing advice for indie hackers
12:24 - Challenges along the way
14:01 - Raising
15:41 - Recommendations

Recommendations

• Book - Extreme Entrepreneurship
• Podcast - Don't Say Content
• Indie Hacker - Monica Lent

Follow Josh

• Twitter
• Josh's Substack

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.

Jay Clouse is the founder of Creator Science, which is a membership, community, newsletter and podcast helping you become build a creator business, which he bootstrapped to over $40k a month towards the end of last year. His podcast is one of the best produced shows out there and it’s on my very short list of shows that I can listen to every episode and know it’s going to be killer. I think the creator business angle is interesting for indie hackers who haven’t quite found a product yet and want to build something. Creating content and speaking to people in your niche, can help you find pain points and problems, while also building extra income for yourself.

Timestamps

• 01:55 The Creative Elements podcast (now Creator Science)
• 04:45 How to have a point of differentiation
• 06:11 Building a creator business
• 08:23 Making $40k in one month
• 11:03 Multiple projects and revenue streams
• 13:10 How Jay spends his time
• 14:02 How to start out as a creator
• 15:19 Recommendations

Recommendations

• Book - How to Win Friends and Influence People
• Podcast - Bandsplain
• Indie hacker / entrepreneur - Justin Moore

Follow Jay

• Twitter

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.

Justin Duke is the founder of Buttondown, a simple email newsletter tool without all the bloat. In December 2022 Buttondown was around $15k MRR. He also runs Spoonbill, which is a way to stay updated on what people change on their social profiles. At the time of recording this Justin was an engineering manager at Stripe so you’ll hear references to that, but he’s since left to go all in on being a founder.

👉 Join the Indie Bites membership here.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:57 Origins of Buttondown
• 03:25 Buttondown launch
• 05:37 Keeping Buttondown as a side project
• 07:47 A pricing conundrum
• 09:26 Having a free plan
• 10:20 Finding balance
• 12:31 Are Stripe side-project friendly
• 13:56 Recommendations

Recommendations

• Book - The Great Beanie Baby Bubble
• Podcast - Metamuse
• Indie Hacker - Amy Hoy
• Newsletter - Matt Levine Money Stuff

Follow Justin

• Twitter
• Personal site

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 - 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

Jack McDade is the creator of Statamic, a content management system for Laravel. What I love about Jack is how he approaches all of his projects, including Statamic, to just be different. There is so much cookie cutter content out there and everything just ends up looking the same - but not if Jack has anything to do with it. Just take a look at his personal website, his Radical Design course and Icons and you’ll see what I mean. I love it.

👉 Join the Indie Bites membership here.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:27 Why Jack started Statamic
• 02:58 Taking 6 years before going full time
• 04:20 What would Jack have done differently?
• 05:14 How to be different
• 07:40 The unfair indie hacker advantage
• 08:26 Radical Design Course
• 12:45 Learning with Jack
• 15:07 Recommendations

Recommendations

• Book: Steal Like an Artist & Extreme Ownership
• Podcast: Friendship Onion & Darknet Diarys
• Indie Hacker: Adam Wathan

Follow Jack

• Twitter

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 - 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