Indie Bites

Mubashar 'Mubs' Iqbal is a prolific maker who has started over 90 projects. Currently Mubs is building Founderpath with Nathan Latka, and on One Hour SaaS where he spends one hour every day working on SaaS businesses.In this episode we talked about:How Mubs got into starting side-projectsHow he comes up with ideas and decides what to work onWhy some of his projects run on auto-pilotHow much it costs to run those that are on auto-pilotHow to sell side-projectsHow to build side-projects quicklyWhat Mubs most successful project has beenHow did Founderpath come aboutWhy Mubs started One Hour SaaSRecommendationsBook: Built to SellPodcast: Indie HackersIndie Hacker: Ben TossellFollow MubsTwitterOne Hour SaaSMubs' projects portfolioFounderpathFollow MeTwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteThanks to Mugshot Bot for sponsoring Indie Bites.Mugshot Bot automatically generates unique, beautifully designed images for every page on your website or blog so you don’t have to worry about them. This means you can focus on what matters: building your product and creating great content.Mugshot Bot is a tool that I use personally and made by another indie hacker, Joe Masilotti. To level up your link previews, go to mugshotbot.com/indiebites, link in the show notes, to create an image for your site, completely free.

Rosie Sherry is a community builder, indie hacker and founder. She currently runs the Indie Hackers community and also a weekly newsletter where she talks about building communities. Previously, Rosie founded Ministry of Testing.In this episode we talked about:Rosie's background as an indie hackerGoing full time on Ministry of Testing, growing that into a £1m+ businessWhat it's like running the Indie Hackers communityWhat makes a good Indie Hackers postHow to make the most out of the platformWhy Rosie started Rosieland, her paid newsletterWhat goes into building a communityHow we can be a more inclusive communityRecommendationsBook: Anything from Derek SiversPodcast: Indie HackersIndie Hacker: Monica LentFollow RosieTwitterRosielandFollow MeTwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteThanks to Weekend Club for sponsoring Indie Bites.‘I absolutely love being part of Weekend Club.’‘Huge fan of Weekend Club and I love being part of it.’‘Absolutely love this community.’These are real testimonials for Weekend Club - the internet’s most helpful community for bootstrappers. If you’ve ever struggled meeting other solo founders and staying accountable, then this is for you.We offer weekly Saturday deep working sessions with up to 30 bootstrappers, such as the founders of Simple Poll and VEED, an active Slack community and over 100 software discounts.Go to weekendclub.co and enter a very limited promo code ‘Indie Bites’ for 50% off your first month.

Corey Haines is the founder of Swipe Files, he also runs refactoring growth, mental models for marketing, hey marketers and he was previously the head of growth at Baremetrics. I've been a follower of Corey for a while and impressed by the level and consistency of everything he produces.In this episode we talked about:What projects Corey is currently working onWhy he left BaremetricsWhat it's like leaving a stable, full-time job to be an indie hackerHow he manages his time between projectsHow much revenue he makesHow to build things quicklyDeciding on what ideas to focus onAdvice for indie hackers wanting to live the dreamRecommendationsBook: Atomic HabitsPodcast: AkimboIndie Hacker: David PerrellFollow CoreyTwitterSwipe FilesMental Models for MarketingRefactoring GrowthHey MarketersFollow MeTwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteThanks to Weekend Club for sponsoring Indie Bites.‘I absolutely love being part of Weekend Club.’‘Huge fan of Weekend Club and I love being part of it.’‘Absolutely love this community.’These are real testimonials for Weekend Club - the internet’s most helpful community for bootstrappers. If you’ve ever struggled meeting other solo founders and staying accountable, then this is for you.We offer weekly Saturday deep working sessions with up to 30 bootstrappers, such as the founders of Simple Poll and VEED, an active Slack community and over 100 software discounts.Go to weekendclub.co and enter a very limited promo code ‘Indie Bites’ for 50% off your first month.Full TranscriptJames: You've got a lot going on. Tell me a little bit more about your various side projects, where your main focus is right now.Corey: Yeah. So I don't know, maybe I just caught the entrepreneurial bug or have an itch to create stuff. But, about two years ago I started just making stuff on the side. I started with a newsletter actually that ended up shutting down later, but it was called the TLDR on SaaS marketing. And that was like my first entry point into creating something and sharing it online and it's actually the reason why I created my Twitter account in the first place. and then, yeah, it's just been through a little bit of. serendipity and connection between projects.um, you know, I was talking with a Baremetrics customer, actually. And he's like, Hey, where do I find someone like you? where would you post a job if you were hiring yourself? And I was like, actually, I don't know. There isn't really like a job board for marketers. So I went out and built it. Later on I was talking about different mental models and frameworks that I've found really helpful for my work at Baremetrics.Other people were asking for the Notion doc and you know where to learn more about it. So I figured out why don't I just package this up into a course, same thing with B2B SaaS marketing, with what we've done at Baremetrics is figuring out how to create this new course too. Now Swipe Files, I would swipe something and I would write some notes, some bullet points about here's, what I think is great about it and then I noticed this is actually pretty useful because there's a few sites out there, like swipefile.com and Swipe Worthy, or I think it's swiped.co, which are fantastic sources of inspiration, but you still have to do the work to figure out what you want to glean from it.So Swipe Files is my attempt to build a library of content where I will tell you and show you what it is you can take away from it instead of having to deduce it for yourself. And now I've got a bunch of other things I'll do in the future, but, yesterday went full time as a creator on my own stuff.James: Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about that. So previously you head of growth at Baremetrics. How long were you there for and, what went into making decision that now is the right time to leave?Corey: I was there for almost two years and had a fantastic time, experimented with a ton. We grew about 30% which was  great for a bootstrapped company. I really changed a lot and I was all over the place with, trying to find different channels and breakthroughs, and really what we came to was that company wasn't at the right spot to really support a growth role with the budget and the engineering time that was needed to really push the ball forward and so just decided to part ways. And I was already the place that I wanted to go full time and my own stuff anyways I think coincidentally, a little bit serendipitously was perfectly the timing for me to start working on my own stuff full time and, head on to this new chapter of my life.James: So with your various side projects, or they're not side projects now that you're full time projects, How do they each look in terms of revenue what's making the most for you? Corey: Yeah  right now the breadwinner are the courses, refactoring growth and mental models for marketing and I've done about 36,000 in the last 10 months. I couldn't do what I'm doing today without that revenue on the side, to be able to, fund myself into going full time as a creator. The other one, now that I'm trying to build into becoming the breadwinner is Swipe Files. And to date I actually, I couldn't tell you the revenue that has done, I think it's probably done a couple thousand in revenue because it's split between monthly annual in lifetimes.It's a little bit more difficult for me to... I didn't go through Stripe and do the math beforehand. but, um, it does about like the MRR today is about a thousand dollars.  and then, Hey Marketers, to be honest, I've started to neglected for the last year. I launched it and then I spent a good four or five months working really hard on it. And then figured I would outsource it to my nephew, who is a poor college student and, and needs some cheap, manual labor.It still does $100 to $300 a month, maybe. And it's a pay what you want model too. So sometimes I'll get a job posting for one dollar and sometimes I'll get a job posting for a hundred bucks. But it depends. James: so you've got all of these projects so much going on now.  How do you squeeze it all in? And how did you manage your time before? I guess this week?Corey: The answer is I didn't, and I'm going to figure it out now. When I was with Baremetrics full time, I was very much working in these sprints. With Hey Marketers; I created the job for within three weekends and then I would just work here and there nights and weekends, especia...

Sabba Keynejad is the co-founder and CEO of VEED - an online video editing platform. VEED is a fully-fledged collaborative video editing product used by many influencers, coaches and businesses for adding subtitles, captions, text, merging videos, making meme videos, turning podcasts to videos and much more.What we covered in this episode:On VeedWhat is Veed?Where did you come up with the idea?What is your current revenue?Had you started and failed with anything before?What made Veed work out?Many indie hackers are solo. You have a co-founder split 50/50 on the business, do you think it's worth indie hackers going out to find a co-founder?There are many online video editing tools out there. Wavve, Headliner, Kapwing. What makes Veed different and how has that fed into your growth?On growth and marketingVeed has grown super quickly, but how did you get your first 100 users?Then how did you convert them to paying customers?Your marketing strategy. What did you do at the start for your growth?When you started generating revenue, you hired content creators. Why?What are your tips for marketing without budget?Biggest mistakes / advice you'd give to foundersRecommendationsFavourite indie hacker is Josh Pigford.Best book for indie hackers; Traction.Favourite podcast; How I Built This.Follow SabbaTwitterFollow MeTwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteThanks to Weekend Club for sponsoring Indie Bites.‘I absolutely love being part of Weekend Club.’‘Huge fan of Weekend Club and I love being part of it.’‘Absolutely love this community.’These are real testimonials for Weekend Club - the internet’s most helpful community for bootstrappers. If you’ve ever struggled meeting other solo founders and staying accountable, then this is for you.We offer weekly Saturday deep working sessions with up to 30 bootstrappers, such as the founders of Simple Poll and VEED, an active Slack community and over 100 software discounts.Go to weekendclub.co and enter a very limited promo code ‘Indie Bites’ for 50% off your first month.Full transcript coming soon.

Courtland Allen founded Indie Hackers in 2016, grew the business $8k MRR with sponsors, and then sold to Stripe 9 months later. An inspirational story that doesn't end there. Courtland has now been working from within Stripe for the past 4 years, where he continues to build on the platform and produce the excellent Indie Hackers podcast. He's a fountain of knowledge and I think you'll love this episode.What we covered in this episode:On Indie Hackers:Why did Courtland start IH?What is an 'indie hacker'?What are the pros and cons of building within Stripe?Does he have goals for IH set by Stripe?Does he have any other side projects, aside from IH?On indie hacking:Where should new indie hackers start?How do you stay motivated as a one-person team?The growth of communitiesThe growth of paid newslettersThe current state of bootstrappingQuick fireFavourite indie hackers are; Lynne Tye, Rosie Sherry, Amy Hoy, Natalie Nagele.Best book for indie hackers; Thinking, Fast and Slow, Sapiens, Hooked.Favourite podcast; Conversations with Tyler.Follow CourtlandTwitterFollow MeTwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteThanks to Weekend Club for sponsoring Indie Bites.‘I absolutely love being part of Weekend Club.’‘Huge fan of Weekend Club and I love being part of it.’‘Absolutely love this community.’These are real testimonials for Weekend Club - the internet’s most helpful community for bootstrappers. If you’ve ever struggled meeting other solo founders and staying accountable, then this is for you.We offer weekly Saturday deep working sessions with up to 30 bootstrappers, such as the founders of Simple Poll and VEED, an active Slack community and over 100 software discounts.Go to weekendclub.co and enter a very limited promo code ‘Indie Bites’ for 50% off your first month.Full TranscriptJames: Courtland has inspired so many of us to build our profitable internet businesses. Let's talk to him to find out what's important as an indie hacker in 2020. Courtland, welcome to the podcast. How are you?Courtland: Excellent James. Thanks for having me.James:  To set the scene and for those that might not know, tell me a little bit more about what Indie Hackers is and why you started the website?Courtland: Yeah. So I moved to the Bay Area when I was like 23. I wanted to start a very stereotypical high growth tech startup. I wanted to be a unicorn company. I wanted to make billions and be world famous. After seven or so years of that struggle, I was just tired of it. I got tired of the VC funded software world.And so I took time off work. I was doing a lot of contract development and I just started searching for other examples of people who've done the same thing. And it turns out there wasn't really a good way to learn how to do this. Everybody online was doing the same thing I was doing; just like looking for comments left by Pieter Levels or like tweets where some people would share some tidbit of their story, but like we couldn't find anything great. And so I kind of just solved my own problem and said, you know, I should build the thing that helps people do this. I was surprised it didn't exist. And here we are 4 years later, somewhat ironically, I decided that I wanted to be a bootstrapper. I decided that I wanted to get out of the high growth startup game.And within a year, starting Indie Hackers, it was acquired by Stripe and fulfilled one of the goals of a lot of people in the high growth startup game want to. So that's how we got to where we are today.James:  What is your definition of an indie hacker?Courtland: I think Tyler Tringas actually put it well recently. He said that "the new American dream is to build a profitable, sustainable, remote software business that you can run from home ". You can run from wherever you want work with wherever you want, that scales nicely, and that prints money for you. And I think an indie hacker is somebody who's trying to achieve that. Someone who doesn't like the status quo, someone who doesn't want to work for the man for the rest of their life.There's no problem with doing that. I think jobs provide a lot of stability for people, a lot of predictability, but if you're like me, you just don't want to have a boss. You don't want there to be a cap on your salary. You don't want somebody else telling you what to work on. You want to control your own life and you're an indie hacker.James:  What are the challenges and benefits of building Indie Hackers from within Stripe?Courtland: I don't have to get on the phone with advertisers anymore. Indie Hackers makes $0. It's a hundred percent just me focusing on making the community good and helping it grow. I think probably the one challenge is that I'm someone who puts a lot of pressure on my shoulders to, I think, perform well for others. And at Stripe, Patrick Collison is my boss. He went out on a limb and acquired Indie Hackers, and I feel a lot of pressure to make sure that any hackers, is a success.And at Stripe, like I'm extremely autonomous.  I talk to Patrick and the team there once every three months, once every six months, sometimes,  and it's almost always just check-ins; how are you doing? Do you need anything? What can we help with et cetera? It's like the ideal working situation. I can't imagine having a job under any other kind of framework.James: Are you tied to any goals within  Stripe? Do they set any targets for you that you have to reach, such as traffic numbers or engagement? Courtland: There isn't any sort of like you have to reach X number or the axe will fall. I think what's cool about the fact that I joined Stripe is that my goals are very much aligned with theirs. And I think if you ever work with any sort of partner or you acquire anyone or you get acquired, you should always try to make sure your goals are aligned because if there's even a one degree difference between where you want to go and where they go, at first that's very small, but after a number of years, that gap has widened into something that's like very hard to fix. And so I just want Indie Hackers to be like as big and as meaningful and useful as possible. I think about that religiously every single day. And that's what Stripe wants to ultimately they want more people starting companies...

Anne-Laure Le Cunff, founder of Ness Labs and a neuroscience part-time student at King's College, discusses the journey of creating a platform for mindful productivity. The podcast covers topics such as growing membership, writing articles on neuroscience, building in public, and the importance of self-care in staying motivated as indie hackers.

Helen Ryles is a prolific indie hacker, having launched over 40 projects in the last 10 years, selling a few of them along the way. Helen is a proponent of the no code movement, advocating for the tools that allow non-technical folks, like me, create amazing projects. To tie in with this, she also runs the community at Makerpad, the no-code education and community platform.Thanks to Weekend Club for sponsoring Indie Bites.‘I absolutely love being part of Weekend Club.’‘Huge fan of Weekend Club and I love being part of it.’‘Absolutely love this community.’These are real testimonials for Weekend Club - the internet’s most helpful community for bootstrappers. If you’ve ever struggled meeting other solo founders and staying accountable, then this is for you.We offer weekly Saturday deep working sessions with up to 30 bootstrappers, such as the founders of Simple Poll and VEED, an active Slack community and over 100 software discounts.Go to weekendclub.co and enter a very limited promo code ‘Indie Bites’ for 50% off your first month.Here's what we covered in this episodeOn side projectsHow did you start indie hacking?What are you currently working on?Where do you come up with ideas?How do you define a side-project?Having launched so many, what is your process for getting an idea up and running, validated and then deciding how long you run with it before it gets sold / canned?You wrote a great thread on selling side projects. How do you know when it's time to sell?How do you sell a side project?!On no-codeYou joined Makerpad last month to help run their community. Tell me a little bit more about what Makerpad is and what your role will be there.What is no-code and why do you think it's important?What are some of the most exciting things you've seen people do with no-code?What are the non-obvious benefits of no-code?What are the best no-code tools?RecommendationsBook: AuthorityPodcast: Side Hustle SchoolIndie Hacker: Michael GillFollow HelenTwitterFollow MeTwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal Website[Full transcription coming soon]

Harry Dry is the founder of Marketing Examples, a fast-growing showcase of successful startup marketing stories. When I first spoke to Harry on the Marketing Mashup about a year ago, he was on 5,000 subscribers and £1k revenue. Now, he has 6x that amount with 30,000 subscribers and 50,000 Twitter followers. An incredible growth story from a smart marketer.In 2022, Harry also created Copywriting Examples, the site for anyone writing new copy. Here's what we covered in this episode:On Marketing ExamplesI've given a little summary of Marketing Examples, how would you describe it?Where did you come up with the idea?How is your revenue shaping up with the audience you have?If you could choose one case study as your favourite, which one would it be?On Audience BuildingWhen you first started Marketing Examples, how did you get your first 100 subscribers?You're an expert on Twitter, now with 50k followers. What did it take to grow a Twitter audience so large, so quickly?What's been the biggest struggle building Marketing Examples?What advice would you give to other indie hackers trying to build an audience?Talk me through your decision to add a new personal touch to Marketing Examples?Tell me the Kanye Story in 30 secondsRecommendationsBook: Man's Search for MeaningPodcast: IFL TVIndie Hacker: Pat WallsLinksFollow Harry on TwitterMarketing ExamplesMarketing Examples TwitterFollow MeTwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteThanks to Weekend Club for sponsoring Indie Bites.‘I absolutely love being part of Weekend Club.’‘Huge fan of Weekend Club and I love being part of it.’‘Absolutely love this community.’These are real testimonials for Weekend Club - the internet’s most helpful community for bootstrappers. If you’ve ever struggled meeting other solo founders and staying accountable, then this is for you.We offer weekly Saturday deep working sessions with up to 30 bootstrappers, such as the founders of Simple Poll and VEED, an active Slack community and over 100 software discounts.Go to weekendclub.co and enter a very limited promo code ‘Indie Bites’ for 50% off your first month.

In this episode we discuss:On Ramen Club (formerly Weekend Club)How would you describe Ramen Club?Where did you come up with the idea for Ramen Club & IndieBeers?What was your initial plan for making revenue with Ramen Club?What's your revenue now?What have you done specifically to grow those first few users?On Community BuildingYou've cultivated quite the community in London, why did you choose to build the community here?What does it take to build an active community? Is it as simple as just setting up a Slack and a Stripe account and away you go?What's been the biggest struggle building the community?What advice would you give to other indie hackers trying to build a community?RecommendationsBook: InfluencePodcast: The Knowledge ProjectIndie Hacker: Wilhelm KloppLinksFollow Charlie on TwitterRamen Club (formerly Weekend Club)Indie LondonIndie BeersFollow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.TwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteBuy A Wallet2 Hour Podcast Course

I'm your host James McKinven, I'm the founder of a podcasting company called Striqo and passionate indie hacker.Now I love long podcasts and what Courtland Allen has done with the Indie Hackers show, but this podcast will just supplement that. With less commuting, we now have less time to listen to podcasts and those long, albeit interesting, backstories. I'll aim to cut to the chase and find out what it really takes to build a sustainable, profitable business on the side.I'm James, I run a podcast company called Striqo and I love hearing about the ups and downs of what it takes to be an indie hacker.I'm a fellow indie hacker and side-project-starter and I love hearing the stories of other makers who have started their businesses while working a full-time job.Whether that's a small little earner on the side or something that has grown into tens of thousands of ££ income that means you could quit your job.Having started many of my own side-projects I know how hard it is to get it off the ground and generate revenue. I wouldn't have been able to make progress on any of my projects if it wasn't for the kindness and support I've received from everyone in the Indie Hackers community.Everyone has a story to tell, advice they can give and lessons to teach - I want to share them with as many people as I can.I hope you can join me for this podcast talking to our favourite indie hackers.If you like the sound of this, please subscribe to the podcast and tweet me which indie hacker you'd like me to feature.