Indie Bites

Marc Louvion, an indie hacker with many products, discusses his journey from being fired to working for himself. He talks about moving to Bali, starting a glove business, and the challenges of gamification. He also shares insights on knowing when to quit a product, the debate between having a portfolio of projects vs single focus, and his process of making creative launch videos.

In this episode I’m bringing back a previous guest, Dom Monn, who is the founder of MentorCruise, which he’s now working full time on with a small team. I brought Dom back on to discuss something that has been on my mind, and has come up in twitter conversations recently which Dom has been involved in.Is indie hacking having an identity crisis? Is the indie label and mentality limiting success and holding many founders back? I think it could be and so we discuss why this might be happening and what we can do about it.Jason's tweet which inspired this conversationMike's responseDom's responseTimestamps00:00 Intro01:56 Indie hacker identity crisis03:42 How indie hacking has changed06:32 Why the indie label can be a limiter08:20 Accepting slow growth instead of fixing it10:33 Should we set bigger goals?12:10 We still love the indie hacker community13:50 RecommendationsRecommendationsBook - SprintPodcast - This Indie LifeIndie Hacker - Ramen ClubFollow DomTwitterHire him as a mentorPersonal siteMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.

Today I’m joined by Bram Kanstein, who you might know from Startup Stash, which is the most upvoted product ever on Product Hunt. Bram also started the No Code MVP a course, which shows you how to launch an MVP without code. In this episode we focus a lot on how indie hackers can find ideas and launch them the right way.Timestamps00:00 Intro03:18 Startup Stash05:56 No Code MVP09:47 Finding ideas12:22 Idea validation15:00 RecommendationsRecommendationsBook - Untethered Soul by Michael SingerPodcast(s) - Joe Rogan, HIBT, MFMIndie Hacker - Danny PostmaFollow BramTwitterMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.

Matt Studdert is the founder of Frontend Mentor, which helps people level up their front-end coding skills by building projects. They have over 500,000 users and are hovering around $30k MRR. Matt didn’t start out wanting to run a SaaS, starting out playing poker, then became a personal trainer, before changing his career and learning to code when he was 28.Timestamps:00:00 Intro02:16 Playing Poker full time02:58 Becoming a personal trainer04:24 Learning to code with General Assembly06:33 Front End Mentor08:33 Building a scrappy MVP11:29 Growth for Front End Mentor15:03 ReccosRecommendationsBook - badass make users awesomePodcast - AcquiredIndie Hacker - Arvid Kahl, Valentin WallynFollow MattTwitterMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.

Jordan O’Connor is the founder of Closet Tools, a bootstrapped app that helps people sell more stuff on Poshmark which has been in and around the $30-40k MRR mark. He’s found a lot of his growth through SEO, like many successful entrepreneurs, and now helps other founders do the same through his Rank to Sell power half hours.Listen to the full 90 minute chat with Jordan here ->Timestamps00:00 Intro03:29 Jordan being awful with money04:30 Jordan's indie hacking journey06:10 Launching and failing with different products07:06 Choosing SaaS08:31 Starting closet tools11:38 Pricing for Closet Tools12:35 Reverse stair stepping with Rank to Sell (consulting)16:08 ReccosRecommendationsBook - Deep WorkPodcast - Deep Questions by Cal NewportIndie Hacker - Pat WallsFollow JordanTwitterPersonal websiteMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.

Josh Ho is the founder and CEO of Referral Rock, a SaaS he founded in 2014 doing over $2m a year in revenue. Referral Rock helps businesses to design, launch and manage a customer referral program. Josh has had decades of experience as a founder, pouring his early entrepreneurship energy into a notes app that he ultimately couldn’t monetize.Timestamps00:00 - Intro01:24 - Josh's background02:11 - Lessons from a failed startup04:16 - Failed startup to new long term bet05:41 - The idea for Referral Rock06:59 - Pricing a B2C product08:33 - Marketing advice for indie hackers12:24 - Challenges along the way14:01 - Raising15:41 - RecommendationsRecommendationsBook - Extreme EntrepreneurshipPodcast - Don't Say ContentIndie Hacker - Monica LentFollow JoshTwitterJosh's SubstackMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.

Jay Clouse is the founder of Creator Science, which is a membership, community, newsletter and podcast helping you become build a creator business, which he bootstrapped to over $40k a month towards the end of last year. His podcast is one of the best produced shows out there and it’s on my very short list of shows that I can listen to every episode and know it’s going to be killer. I think the creator business angle is interesting for indie hackers who haven’t quite found a product yet and want to build something. Creating content and speaking to people in your niche, can help you find pain points and problems, while also building extra income for yourself.Timestamps01:55 The Creative Elements podcast (now Creator Science)04:45 How to have a point of differentiation06:11 Building a creator business08:23 Making $40k in one month11:03 Multiple projects and revenue streams13:10 How Jay spends his time14:02 How to start out as a creator15:19 RecommendationsRecommendationsBook - How to Win Friends and Influence PeoplePodcast - BandsplainIndie hacker / entrepreneur - Justin MooreFollow JayTwitterMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.

Justin Duke is the founder of Buttondown, a simple email newsletter tool without all the bloat. In December 2022 Buttondown was around $15k MRR. He also runs Spoonbill, which is a way to stay updated on what people change on their social profiles. At the time of recording this Justin was an engineering manager at Stripe so you’ll hear references to that, but he’s since left to go all in on being a founder.👉 Join the Indie Bites membership here.Timestamps00:00 Intro01:57 Origins of Buttondown03:25 Buttondown launch05:37 Keeping Buttondown as a side project07:47 A pricing conundrum09:26 Having a free plan10:20 Finding balance12:31 Are Stripe side-project friendly13:56 RecommendationsRecommendationsBook - The Great Beanie Baby BubblePodcast - MetamuseIndie Hacker - Amy HoyNewsletter - Matt Levine Money StuffFollow JustinTwitterPersonal siteMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - AhrefsThank 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/webmaster-tools

Jack McDade is the creator of Statamic, a content management system for Laravel. What I love about Jack is how he approaches all of his projects, including Statamic, to just be different. There is so much cookie cutter content out there and everything just ends up looking the same - but not if Jack has anything to do with it. Just take a look at his personal website, his Radical Design course and Icons and you’ll see what I mean. I love it.👉 Join the Indie Bites membership here.Timestamps:00:00 Intro01:27 Why Jack started Statamic02:58 Taking 6 years before going full time04:20 What would Jack have done differently?05:14 How to be different07:40 The unfair indie hacker advantage08:26 Radical Design Course12:45 Learning with Jack15:07 RecommendationsRecommendationsBook: Steal Like an Artist & Extreme OwnershipPodcast: Friendship Onion & Darknet DiarysIndie Hacker: Adam WathanFollow JackTwitterMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - AhrefsThank 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/webmaster-tools

Elston Baretto was last on the pod in March 2021, when he’d just grown his tool, Tiiny.host, to $600 MRR and we recorded as part of my mission to share stories of unknown indie hackers with potential. Fast forward 2 years and Tiiny Host has grown to $10k MRR and Elston has just quit his job to become a full time indie hacker.👉 My side project, Whitstable Craft Co.Topics covered:Hitting $10k MRRWhy PDF hosting has been pivotal for growthBuild what people search forWhy SEO has been such a huge growth driverHow to do SEOGoing full timeWhen is the right time to quit your job?How much to pay yourselfLaunching before it's perfectPressure of growthHow to keep indie hacking enjoyableRecommendationsBook: The New New ThingPodcast: Postgres.fmIndie Hacker: Vetted Founders (tbc)Follow ElstonTwitterTiiny HostMy linksTwitterIndie Bites TwitterIndie Bites YouTubeJoin the membershipPersonal Website2 Hour Podcast CoursePodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast)This Indie Life PodcastSponsor - AhrefsThank 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/webmaster-tools