Indie Hackers

Jen Yip (@lunchbag) is the founder of Lunch Money, a budgeting app that's going head-to-head with big names like Mint and YNAB. The catch? She's a solo founder, doing 100% of the work on her own. In this episode, Jen and I cover the wide breadth of experiences and skills she's gained in order to make this possible, her strategies for working hard enough to catch up with competitors but soft enough to avoid burning herself out, and why she's doing this all as a digital "snowmad" who works overseas during the winter.

Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/150-jen-yip-of-lunch-money

Greg Rog (@greg_rog) is one of the few indie hackers I know who's actually managed to build a passive income business. His website, LearnUX.io, makes over $10k per month, yet he spends less than a day each month updating the content and answering questions. His secret? A combination of hard work over a sustained period of time, obsessive focus on making a 10x better product, and embracing no-code tools to support automation despite knowing how to code himself. In this episode, Greg walks me through his story, his successes, and his failures, and we discuss why teaching what you know is an underrated path that anyone can embrace.

Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/149-greg-rog-of-learnux

Nathan Rosidi has bootstrapped his side project, Strata Scratch, to 2500 users and over $1,500 in monthly recurring revenue. In this episode we discuss the lessons he's learned from past failures, how to prioritize what to work on when you're getting ideas from so many different people, and why it's both a blessing and a curse to be able to take things slowly as an indie hacker.

Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/148-quick-chat-with-nathan-rosidi

Cory Zue (@czue) made over $26,000 in profit from multiple side projects in 2019, including a printable place card business and a Django-powered SaaS template. In this episode Cory explains how his journey began by taking a sabbatical from work, he lays out his plan to reach financial independence by 2023, and he shares some tips for ensuring your indie hacker journey is an enjoyable one the whole way through.

Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/147-cory-zue-of-place-card-me

Alexandria Procter (@alexprocter101) is the last person you would ever describe as timid. When the bureaucracy at her college in South Africa failed to address a massive student housing crisis, Alex taught took things into her own hands, learned to code, and created a startup to help. In this episode, Alex and I talk about the personality traits and the economic realities that drive people to take risks and solve problems. We attempt to answer the question, "What do founders in the developing world have that founders elsewhere do not, and vice versa?" Alex also shares the incredible story behind how her startup, DigsConnect, has grown to find over 70,000 beds for students in just two years.

Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/146-alex-procter-of-digsconnect

Jane Portman (@uibreakfast) is no stranger to making money online. Not only has she run a successful consultancy for nearly a decade, but she's also published 4 books and become a leading authority on UX and product design. So when Jane decided to start a SaaS company—Userlist— she was surprised to learn just slow and difficult the process can be. In this episode, Jane and I discuss the variables that makes companies faster or slower to grow, the importance of nailing your customer messaging so people understand what it is that you do, and her tips for how other founders can stick through the tough times to turn their side projects into successful SaaS businesses.

Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/145-jane-portman-of-userlist

Vlad Magdalin (@callmevlad) might just be the most principled founder I've had on the podcast. "When it came to making hard decisions, I've leaned more on my morality rather than my business sense. That's what I regret the least." Sticking to his heart has paid off. Not only has he built a company that's changing and improving lives by the millions, but he's also grown it to millions in revenue and 155 employees. In this episode Vlad and I talk about the ups and downs of raising money from investors, the impact of building something that empowers your customers to create, and the compounding benefits of focusing on people and relationships over profit and product.

Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/144-vlad-magdalin-of-webflow

Pete Macleod (@petecodes) didn't have a cushy fallback plan when he set out to become an indie hacker. Eight months ago he was unemployed, and a few months after that he was working a minimum wage job with dangerous clientele. He knew figured his best bet would be to strike out on his own: "I don't really have anything to lose at this point, so I suppose I'll just go for it." Today he runs No CS Degree, a profitable online business that helps aspiring software engineers who don't have the stereotypical credentials. In this episode, Pete and I discuss his remarkable ability to get help from others, his techniques for rapidly learning how to create a successful company, and the reasons it was crucial for him to solve a problem he was passionate about.

Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/143-pete-codes-of-no-cs-degree

When Dmitry Dragilev (@dragilev) looked at the personal lives of his business heroes, he didn't like what he found. "Horrible family lives. Just horrible personal relationships." He knew he wanted something different, so he made the conscious decision to prioritize his family life and build his business around that. In this episode, Dmitry and I talk about how he was able to bootstrap from $0 to $30,000/month in revenue working just 25 hours a week, as well as how his business JustReachOut.io helps indie hackers do PR with less time, effort, and money.

Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/142-dmitry-dragilev-of-just-reach-out

When Cesar Kuriyama (@cesarkuriyama) first got started, he had nothing but a dream of freedom, an app idea, and a rapidly declining bank account. When every dev shop in New York City turned him down, things looked dire. But through sheer persistence and a penchant to seize every opportunity in front of him, Cesar managed to create an experience that people loved, give a talk on the TED main stage, launch a successful Kickstarter campaign, bootstrap his app to millions of dollars in revenue, and even get it featured in a Jon Favreau movie. In this episode we break down Cesar's improbable path to success, and in the process discover why you should never give up as a founder.

Transcript, speaker information, and more: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/141-cesar-kuriyama-of-1-second-everyday