#58: Courtland Allen – Building (and selling!) a business creating community for Indie Hackers
May 25, 2021
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Courtland Allen, creator of the thriving Indie Hackers community and a Y Combinator alum, shares his journey from MIT graduate to successful entrepreneur. He discusses why he doesn't recommend quitting your job prematurely and the importance of community for indie hackers. Courtland reflects on the lessons learned from his early failures and the role of customer engagement in shaping Indie Hackers. He also explores how AI is transforming online businesses and expresses optimism for the future of entrepreneurship in a technology-driven world.
Courtland Allen is the creator of Indie Hackers, the largest online community of startup founders. He created the site in August 2016 and it was acquired by Stripe in April 2017.
He is an MIT graduate, Y Combinator alum, full-stack web developer, and professional designer.
Today, Courtland continues to run the Indie Hackers team at Stripe and hosts the Indie Hackers podcast.
In this episode we talk about how Courtland learned web design, why he doesn’t recommend quitting your job, selling Indie Hackers to Stripe, trends he’s seeing in indie hacking, and why he’s Optimistic about the future of online business.