Indie Bites

Grey Baker is the co-founder of Dependabot, which is a bot that makes it easy for developers to keep the third party dependencies up to date, which grew to $14k MRR before being acquired by Github in 2019. Grey’s story is a long an interesting one, so there is an extended version of this podcast available on the indie feast membership. But the best bits are here about he started out at McKinsey, before being a pivotal early employee at London FinTech GoCardless, to then cycling around the world and then coming back to accidentally launch Dependabot.

👉 Extended version available on the Indie Feast membership here.

What we covered in this episode

• Landing a gig at consulting firm, McKinsey
• Learning how to code in 6 months
• Joining VC-backed GoCardless as employee 6
• Growing GoCardless to 100 employees
• Why Grey left after 4.5 years
• Cycling around the world
• Eating a petrol-ey snickers bar
• Starting Dependabot as a side project
• A failed launch
• Doing things that don't scale
• The growth inflection point - GitHub marketplace
• Advice for bootstrappers

Recommendations

• Book: The Design of Everyday Things
• Podcast: N/A
• Indie Hacker: Pete Hamilton

Follow Grey

• Twitter

Follow Me

👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.

• Twitter
• Indie Bites Twitter
• Personal Website
• Buy A Wallet
• 2 Hour Podcast Course
• PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)

Sponsor - Tiiny Host

Tiiny Host is the simplest way to host and share your web project online. It's loved by thousands of freelancers, agencies & developers across the world to quickly upload demos, landing pages or websites. Just drag & drop your web files or even a PDF to share it with the world in seconds. 

👉 Try it here

Ch Daniel is the co-founder of Legit Check, an app that authenticates luxury items, that grew to $6k MRR in just a few weeks. He’s also building simple.ink, which is a simple way to make a website from Notion, it got #1 product of the day and got 1,300 users in the first month. He’s also got his finger in many SaaS pies, running the r/SaaS subreddit where he arranges AMAs and facilitates discussions with some of the biggest SaaS founders out there. As for podcasting, Daniel’s dipped in there too, with his show The Usual SaaSpects an extension of his brand. Most recently, Dan acquired Emojics.com

What we covered in this episode:

• Making $200k with an authenticator business
• How does one fall into authenticating luxury items?
• How Legit Check became legit
• Turning a one-time purchase business to a subscription
• Taking over the r/SaaS community on Reddit
• Favourite AMA with Sabba and Tim from VEED
• The real reason he started his podcast, The Usual SaaSpects
  • James interview on The Usual SaaSpects
• Does the world need another Notion web builder?
• Pre-launching to build a list of 5,000
• Acuiring Emojics.com
• Should more indie hackers acquire businesses?

Recommendations

• Book: Power of Now
• Podcast: Prof G Show, Succession Pod
• Indie Hacker: CH David

Follow Daniel

• Twitter
• Personal site

Follow Me

👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.

• Twitter
• Indie Bites Twitter
• Personal Website
• Buy A Wallet
• 2 Hour Podcast Course
• PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)

Sponsor - Tiiny Host

Tiiny Host is the simplest way to host and share your web project online. It's loved by thousands of freelancers, agencies & developers across the world to quickly upload demos, landing pages or websites. Just drag & drop your web files or even a PDF to share it with the world in seconds. 

👉 Try it here

JR Farr is the co-founder of Make Lemonade, a product studio behind Lemon Squeezy (a platform to sell digital products), Dunked (to showcase your portfolio) and Iconic (a set of cracking looking apps). But this isn’t JR’s first foray into entrepreneurship. Back in 2008 he sold his first startup, College Connecting, before starting and selling another, MOJO marketplace back in 2012. From here he worked at the acquiring company for 5 years, before starting ANOTHER startup, called Weav, a product to help with customer retention. I could list out JR’s CV in more detail, but you can tell that this chap a seasoned entrepreneur.

What we covered in this episode:

• JR's entrepreneurship background
• Building Mojo (Wordpress marketplace)
• Mojo getting acquired in 2012
• Why JR stayed for 5 years in a big company
• Getting a mini MBA
• Spending $75k on a domain for a failed company
• Meeting the Make Lemonade folks
  • Orman Clark
  • Gilbert Pellegrom
  • Jason Schuller
• Should more founders band together?
• Building Lemon Squeezy
• Taking on the digital products space
• Going into a crowded market
• Advice for entreprenuers

Recommendations

• Book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things
• Podcast: My First Million
• Indie Hacker: Jon Yonfook

Follow JR

• Twitter
• Personal site
• Make Lemonade Podcast

Follow Me

👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.

• Twitter
• Indie Bites Twitter
• Personal Website
• Buy A Wallet
• 2 Hour Podcast Course
• PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)

Sponsor - Ramen Club

My favourite community has just got a significant upgrade as it rebrands to Ramen Club, the best community to help you get to Ramen Profitability.

Ramen club has 4 remote coworking sessions a week, masterminds, accountability calls, live AMAs, a fractional CFO, in-house VA, discounts and so much more. But most of all, the founder Charlie has done a wonderful job at cultivating a wonderfully friendly and supportive community.

To join the world's most supportive community for bootstrapped founders to reach ramen profitable and beyond, head to ramenclub.so and use code "INDIEBITES" to let Charlie know I sent you and get 50% off your first month.

Dru Riley is the founder of Trends.vc which at its core helps people discover new ideas and markets through expertly researched reports. Trends is a bootstrapped company that makes money through it’s Trends Pro reports and community.

In 2017, Dru took on a mini-retirement, sold a second home and set out with 3-5 years of savings to strike out on his own. After launching various newsletters, products and even book he eventually landed on Trends, which didn’t actually make any money for the first few months. But just 6 short months later, he was at over $20k MRR and growing fast.

Now, Dru is working through the challenges of scaling a rapidly growing business and even hiring people to take over that juicy core. The reports. Here's a link to the Indie Hackers episode he did where he talks more about what went into that growth.

What we covered in this episode:

• Hiring for the core competency of the business, the reports
• What Dru’s day-to-day looks like
• Challenges with context switching
• Starting Trends for fun
• The idea behind framework based research
• The first Trends report on cloud kitchens
• How does Dru decide on topics for Trends
• Choosing to persevere with Trends
• Launching a community
• How comfort challenges led to Trends success
• When to stop projects
• What Dru does for fun

Recommendations

• Book: Sapiens, Caste
• Podcast: Founders
• Indie Hacker: Pat Walls

Follow Dru

• Twitter
• Personal site

Follow Me

👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.

• Twitter
• Indie Bites Twitter
• Personal Website
• Buy A Wallet
• 2 Hour Podcast Course
• PodPanda (hire me to edit your 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/awt.

Monica Lent is a founder running 3 profitable indie businesses after leaving her full time job 2 years ago. She runs Affilimate, a SaaS product which allows you to manage and track affiliate commissions, the Blogging for Devs newsletter and paid community for developers looking to grow an audience and finally, Not a Nomad, a travel blog that accounted for almost 50% of Monica’s revenue last year, as she grew her portfolio of projects from $30k to over $100k.

What we covered in this episode:

• How Monica splits time between her projects
• Is it detrimental having split attention?
• Delegating and outsourcing as an indie hacker
• How content and SEO ties her projects together
• Benefits of a VA
• Starting a blog that makes thousands
• Having a travel blog during covid
• Starting a community for developers
• How to start your own successful blog
• The downsides of sharing revenue numbers
• Is Monica having fun?

Recommendations

• Book: Founding Sales
• Podcast: Tropical MBA
• Indie Hacker: Josh Ho

Follow Monica

• Twitter
• 2021 Retro on personal site
• SEO Course

Follow Me

👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.

• Twitter
• Indie Bites Twitter
• Personal Website
• Buy A Wallet
• 2 Hour Podcast Course
• PodPanda (hire me to edit your 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/awt.

Pierre De Wulf is the co-founder of ScrapingBee a web scraping API that grew to $1M ARR in 2 years. Before starting ScrapingBee, Pierre and his co-founder Kevin had quit their jobs to follow the indie dream. 9 months later, their product PricingBot couldn’t generate the traction they were hoping for so they sold the business and pivoted to ScrapingBee.

What we covered in this episode:

• Pierre's background; inspiration from his father
• Running a business within World of Warcraft
• Meeting his co-founder, Kevin
• Starting a project for his girlfriend
• Leaving his job to work on something for 9 months
• Knowing when to stop and move on
• Starting and selling PricingBot
• How to sell a failed company
• Using SEO as a marketing channel
• How to write SEO content effectively
• Starting ScrapingBee
• How ScrapingBee grew so quickly
• Taking TinySeed funding

Recommendations

• Book: Hello Startup
• Podcast: My First Million
• Indie Hacker: Matt Wensing

Follow Pierre

• Twitter
• Personal site

Follow Me

👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.

• Twitter
• Indie Bites Twitter
• Personal Website
• Buy A Wallet
• 2 Hour Podcast Course
• PodPanda (hire me to edit your 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/awt.

Damon Chen, who is the founder of Testimonial, a product that collects video testimonials that he launched back in December 2020, and has grown it to $13k MRR since then. Damon quit his stable job of 8 years at Cisco to pursue his dream of building a better life for himself as an indie hacker. This didn’t come easily for Damon, as he launched several products which made 0 revenue before hitting big with Testimonial. He’s also built some other fantastic products, such as embed.so and channel.so, as well as acquiring Supportman off fellow Indie Hacker Noah Bragg.

What we covered in this episode:

• Damon's failed startup attempts
• Why he builds for fun
• Quitting his job and pivoting to Testimonial
• Using code from other projects
• How he went from 0 to 3k in 3 days
• Damon's approach to validation
• Growth tactics used to get to $13k MRR
• Having other projects for fun (Embed and Channel)
• Acquiring Supportman
• Growing his Twitter to 30k

Recommendations

• Book: Getting Acquired
• Podcast: My First Million
• Indie Hacker: Pieter Levels

Follow Damon

• Twitter
• Damon's blog

Follow Me

👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.

• Twitter
• Indie Bites Twitter
• Personal Website
• Buy A Wallet
• 2 Hour Podcast Course

Sponsor - PodQueue

This podcast is brought to you by PodQueue. Don't you hate when you find something you just want to bookmark and listen to later as a podcast, but there's no easy way to do it? Try PodQueue, and you can save audio from anywhere around the web and easily listen to it later in the podcast app you already use. PodQueue works with links from YouTube, Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, NPR, the BBC, and more! There’s a 15-day free trial, and it’s just $5 per month afterwards, with no credit card required at signup. Use promo code “INDIEBITES” at signup to get an extra month free!

👉 Try it here

Dominic Monn is the founder of MentorCruise, a marketplace that connect mentors and mentees in Tech, which is currently doing $15k in monthly revenue and processed over $1m through the platform. Previously, Domm was a Machine Learning engineer at Doist, a job that he left in Feb '22 to pursue MentorCruise full time.

What we covered in this episode:

• Why Dom left his full-time job at Doist
• How going full-time has impacted MentorCruise
• What Dom’s day-to-day looks like
• Not feeling guilty about unproductive hobbies
• How Dom’s discovered mentorship through Udacity
• Taking 5 months to build an MVP
• Why validation wouldn’t work for MentorCruise
• How it took 3 months to get his first paying customer
• Why he decided to push through regardless
• How persistence pays off
• Why building a business is like building a muscle
• How programmatic SEO works

Recommendations

• Book: Built to Sell
• Podcast: My First Million
• Indie Hacker: Julian Canlas

Follow Dom

• Twitter
• Hire him as a mentor
• Personal site

Follow Me

👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.

• Twitter
• Indie Bites Twitter
• Personal Website
• Buy A Wallet
• 2 Hour Podcast Course

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/awt.

Today I’m joined by Spencer Fry, founder of Podia, a platform helping creators make a living online through selling courses, digital downloads, webinars and more. 7 years in, they have a 35 person team and have an awesome product for creators. But this isn’t Spencer’s first rodeo, bootstrapping and exiting 3 businesses between 2003 and 2014, notably Carbonmade and TypeFrag. What’s interesting about Spencer is that he's actually raised funding for Podia, and I wanted to find out why a seasoned bootstrapper like Spencer went down this route, and if it’s a an option that more indie hackers should consider.

👉 50 minute version of this conversation.

What we covered in this episode:

• Why Spencer raised funding for Podia
• Why you should look at funding as a tool
• Beer ≠ funding
• 3 interesting predictions on the creator economy
• Spencer’s article with those predictions
• Bonus: Spencer’s famous vodka pasta dish
• Opportunities to build in the creator economy
• Why entrepreneurs are different gravy
• Solo founder vs co-founder

Recommendations

• Book: Ben Horowitz Book 1 / Book 2
• Podcast: Axios Today / All In Pod
• Indie Hacker / entrepreneur: Tobi Lutke

Follow Spencer

• Twitter
• Personal Blog

Follow Me

👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.

• Twitter
• Indie Bites Twitter
• Personal Website
• Buy A Wallet
• 2 Hour Podcast Course

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/awt.

Dagobert Renouf is the founder of Logoloy, a logo and brand design service that he started with his wife, doing around $3k in monthly revenue. This is an awesome story. Dago started building Logoloy in September 2018, then completely failed the launch after building for almost 2 years. It wasn't until May 21 that Dago realised he actually needed to find a marketing channel that worked for him -which was Twitter. Dago went for 15 years chasing money, but then realised that wasn’t the course to happiness. So after a turbulent few years, he’s now in a place of fulfilment, with plenty of the journey to go.

👉 Extended episode here.

What we covered in this episode:

• Making his first internet money in high school
• Getting a cease and desist at 15 years old
• The dangers of being focused on money
• Finding the idea for Logology
• Taking 1.5 years to launch his startup
• Having a failed launch after 1.5 years of building
• Marketing when you don’t want to do marketing
• Discovering a distribution channel that works - Twitter
• Growing to $3k per month

Recommendations

• Book: Zero to One by Peter Thiel
• Podcast: Wannabe Entreprenuer
• Indie Hacker: Tony Dihn

Follow Dago

• Twitter
• Logology

Follow Me

👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.

• Twitter
• Indie Bites Twitter
• Personal Website
• Buy A Wallet
• 2 Hour Podcast Course

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/awt.