Indie Hackers

Rob Walling (@robwalling) and I discuss the state of SaaS in October 2020. What are the newest trends? Who's getting ahead right now, what kinds of companies are they starting, and what channels are they taking advantage of? Is SaaS too competitive, and if not, how do you pick the right niche when it all seems so saturated? Are info products, paid newsletters, and communities a better path for indie hackers than SaaS? And do you really need to listen to this constant advice to build an audience?

BONUS EPISODE from the Run With It podcast: Restaurants have been hit hard during COVID-19. Listen to us brainstorm ways Lindsay and Alessandro can leverage their wine club and community to support their workforce and recover lost income.

Subscribe here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/run-with-it-business-ideas-from-successful-entrepreneurs/id1477133536

When Daniel Vassallo (@dvassallo) quit his job to become an indie hacker, he was making over $500,000 per year. It could have been a disastrous choice. Instead, less than two years later, he's built a suite of products that most founders would envy. In this episode we discuss how Daniel minimizes risk by running multiple projects simultaneously, how he turns time into a friend instead of an enemy by lowering his costs, and how a lifestyle-first business mindset can make you both richer and happier.

• The Good Parts of AWS, Daniel's eBook: https://dvassallo.gumroad.com/#MsVlG
• Everyone Can Build a Twitter Audience, Daniel's video course: https://dvassallo.gumroad.com/#PBkrO
• Userbase, Daniel's platform for building end-to-end encrypted web apps: https://userbase.com
• Follow Daniel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dvassallo

After raising money from VCs, Aleem Mawani (@aloo) chose a path that most VCs would consider a failure: to turn his company, Streak, into a large, profitable, and lasting software business. To do so, he'd have to pivot away from a failing idea, start charging customers who'd always been free, and bet everything on a risky platform controlled by another company. But today he's never been happier. In this episode, Aleem and I discuss when to work harder vs when to call it quits, how to pick the right community to surround yourself with, and how he chose a SaaS idea that scaled to millions in revenue.

• Streak, Aleem's CRM for Gmail: https://www.streak.com
• Follow Aleem on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aloo

BONUS EPISODE from the Indie Bites podcast: "I first met Sabba at a pub in London when Veed was just an early beta product making $0. Fast forward a few years, Veed is now making over $100,000 a month and growing rapidly. It's well-executed product in a growing market, but that hasn't stopped Sabba and the team firing on all cylinders to grow the business. I talk with Sabba for 15 minutes about how they came up with the idea, how they've managed to grow so quickly and advice for indie hackers that are looking to go full-time on their business."

Subscribe here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/indie-bites/id1530577069

When Przemek Chojecki (@prz_chojecki) had had enough of startup failure, he decided to interview successful founders to see what he could learn from them. But instead of doing it by hand, he built his own "A.I. journalist" to do it for him, and interviewed 1000 founders in under three months. That's just one of the many ways he's found to use cutting-edge A.I. to be more productive as a founder. The best part? Normal indie hackers can do this, too. In this episode, Przemek and I discuss the explosion of accessible A.I. tech, how indie hackers can use it to accomplish more with fewer people, and how Przemek himself is using it to earn thousands of dollars per month.

• Contentize, Przemek's platform to turn raw data into marketing content via AI: https://contentyze.com
• PetaCrunch, Przemek's AI-powered media company: https://petacrunch.com
• follow Przemek on Twitter: https://twitter.com/prz_chojecki

What if you spent years growing your business to millions in revenue, then lost it all overnight? It's every founder's worst nightmare, but for Aline Lerner (@alinelernerLLC) it was reality. When COVID-19 hit and companies stopped hiring, Aline's business Interviewing.io suddenly lost its main source of revenue. She found herself "staring into the abyss" and looking bankruptcy in this face. In episode, Aline and I discuss what it's like to almost die as a company, how to be scrappy when the situation calls for it, and the brilliant new business model that brought her company back from the brink against all odds.

• Aline's website: https://interviewing.io
• Listeners can get $30 off their first practice interview on Interviewing.io by using code IIO2020.
• Follow Aline on Twitter: @alinelernerLLC

When Dru Riley (@DruRly) quit his job, he was more than ready for his mini retirement. Little did he know that it would take him over three years to make his first dollar as an indie hacker. In this episode, Dru and I discuss the difficulty of finding an idea with product-market-founder fit, the latest trends in new markets for indie hackers, and how he was able to grow his newsletter Trends.vc from nothing to $20,000/mo in under a year.

"Build an audience first" might be the most common advice given to indie hackers. But how do you build an audience at the highest levels? In other words, how do you build an actual media company? To find out, I needed to talk to a pro. Alex Wilhelm (@alex) the Senior Editor at TechCrunch. He's also built two news organizations from the ground up — Mattermark and Crunchbase News — the latter of which published thousands of articles and broke over a million monthly pageviews. These are numbers that could easily turn a mediocre indie hacker business into a successful one. In this episode, Alex and I discuss the strategies and principles that differentiate successful media companies from half-hearted content marketing efforts, and drive millions of pageviews in the process.

Nathan Latka (@NathanLatka) believes we've entered a new world where the most scarce thing any founder can compete for is not funding, but people's attention. So after selling his first business in 2015, Nathan made a surprising pivot from SaaS and started… a podcast. Then he wrote a book. And launched a magazine. In his eyes, nobody should be building SaaS products until they've built a media brand. In this episode, Nathan and I discuss how he's built up an audience, his tactics for earning millions of dollars in sponsorship revenue, and how he's capitalizing on the attention he's earned with his new product Founderpath.