Indie Bites

In this episode I’ve got my first ever returning guest with Dianna Allen and first ever double act as we’re joined by her fiance Jeremy Blalock. I spoke to Dianna about a year ago after growing her handmade candle business from $100 to $50k in that year. Since then Dianna is still running TERRA and doubled the revenue in 2021, but has also co-founded Inventora which has just hit $5k MRR. Inventora is inventory tracking system for handmade businesses, solving Dianna’s own problem with TERRA.👉 Join the Indie Feast membership here.What we covered in this episode:How TERRA is goingHandmade business vs SaaS business. Which is better?Solving her own problem with TERRA to build InventoraSpreadsheet to SaaSAsking Jeremy (Dianna’s partner) to build the productGrowing without paying for adsLeveraging existing relationshipsChoosing to raise a small funding roundWhy raise money if you’re an indie hacker?Spending $25,000 on a domainTactics for growing to $5k MRRHiring a videographer to make a documentaryRecommendationsBooks: The Innovation Stack, The Gardeners AlmanackPodcasts: Acquired, The Product BossIndie Hackers: Elon Musk, Jon YongfookFollow Dianna & JeremyDianna's TwitterJeremy's TwitterInventora InstagramTERRA InstagramFollow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.TwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteBuy A Wallet2 Hour Podcast CourseSponsor - 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/awt.

Sahil Lavingia is the founder of Gumroad, the platform that allows creators to sell products online. The beating heart of the creator economy. You'll likely have heard Sahil's story about his failure to build a billion dollar company with an article that went viral, but let me summarise for those that haven't.Sahil founded Gumroad in 2011, aiming to build the next unicorn, leaving Pinterest where he was employee #2. He raised $1.1m from angels, then $7m more in 2012. Things started growing, then they didn't. Sahil laid off 75% of the company to keep the product alive, moved to Provo, Utah to figure where to take Gumroad from that point. Almost a decade later Gumroad is growing quicker than ever, making millions in revenue and helping creators make a living online.Sahil has just launched his book, The Minimalist Entrepreneur, where he shares a decade of learnings on how to build a profitable, sustainable business and how entrepreneurs can do more with less to make more impact on the world.👉 I'm giving away 5 copies of Sahil's book on Twitter, enter here.What we covered on this episode:Sahil’s approach to fundingBootstrapping vs VCWhy Gumroad runs so differently to most companiesWhy longevity has helped GumroadSahil’s book: The Minimalist EntrepreneurBuilding a project in a weekend: Verification LettersLivestream of building Verification LettersThe framework for starting a businessWhy you should start and then learnBarriers people have to starting their businessFear of failureImportance of writingRecommendationsBook: Predictably Irrational by Dan ArielyPodcast: All-In PodcastIndie Hacker: NavalFollow SahilTwitterWebsiteFollow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.TwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteBuy A Wallet2 Hour Podcast CourseSponsor - ilo AnalyticsSahil has 280k followers on Twitter and he sure knows the tweets that will engage his audience. If you too want to get a deeper understanding of what engages your followers on Twitter, you should check out ilo Analytics.ilo helps you easily see which kind of tweets get more impressions, likes, profile clicks and more so you can get grow your Twitter audience. ilo's has beautiful graphs for the most important metrics for both tweets and threads will be sure to help you build your following.Head to ilo.so or hit the link in the show notes and use the code INDIEBITES to get 25% off your ilo subscription for life.

Brett Williams is the founder of Designjoy, a one-man productised design service that is doing over $130k MRR, charging clients up to $5k a month for unlimited design. You indeed hear that right, Brett is running a million dollar business solo with over 40 clients.What we covered in this episode:$50k per year with a Tumblr blogDropping out of college and getting a regular jobHow Brett started DesignjoyBeing inspired by Design PickleLaunching DesignjoyTaking 3 years to get to $10k MRRNon-traditional marketing and growth methodsLaunching Scribbles, a side projectWhat does into a good landing page?Different routes to successWaiting till $80k to quit his jobShould entrepreneurs be more risk-adverse?How run a successful 1-man productised service?RecommendationsBook: Company of OnePodcast: The Dave Ramsey ShowIndie Hacker: SuhailFollow BrettTwitterInstagramFollow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.TwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteBuy A Wallet2 Hour Podcast CourseSponsor - 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/awt.

Val Hinov is the founder of Thankbox an online group card tool that grew to $20k p/m throughout lockdown. Now Val is facing the challenges of what to do when your product scales, what to do when the wave that brought you success starts to slow and when your product has one-time purchase pricing model.What we covered in this episode:Where the idea for Thankbox came from?Lessons learned from a failed startupHow he built Thankbox in 2 monthsHow he got his first users for ThankboxBuilding a virality modelUsing Google Ads to grow quicklyAdvice for people apprehensive of using adsWhy social ads didn’t workThe effect of a one-off purchase pricing modelHaving a big drop in usersIndie Hackers PodThe seasonality of online cardsOutsourcing vs soloWhen to go full-timeRecommendationsBook: Atomic HabitsPodcast: The Revolutions PodcastIndie Hacker: Andrea BosoniFollow ValTwitterPersonalSiteThankboxFollow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.TwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteBuy A Wallet2 Hour Podcast CourseSponsor - 4dayweek.ioAs indie hackers we’re always trying to squeeze extra hours in our day to work on our side projects. What about if you had a whole extra day to work on your projects, while still getting a full-time salary?4dayweek.io is the place to get a Software Job with a better work-life balance. All jobs have a 4 day work week contract and most are only 32 hours per week. Find the best remote tech jobs from companies with a great work-life balance at 4dayweek.io or hit the link in the show notes.👉 Try it here.

Che Sampat is an 18 year old Indie Hacker who built SuperPay in 2019 when he was 15 years old, an app that lets you generate easy payment links through Stripe and Square. Since then he's grown it to 5k users, $6k in revenue and processed a whopping $15m in payments. Che has also been working at some cool companies since he was young, recently joining the payments startup Fast to focus on his career, therefore stepping back from SuperPay.What we covered in this episodeHow Che got into codingBuilding his first app in year 9 computer scienceHow Che learnt to code with YouTubeThe story of building SuperPayStarting his first company at 15Balancing indie hacking and schoolSuccess without idea validationLaunching on Product Hunt with no planHow did Che get his first usersGrowing to $15m GMVDid Che buy himself anything nice?Getting in trouble with Stripe building SuperPortalChallenges of being an 18yr old indie hackerWhy Che got himself an engineering job instead of pursuing SuperPayRecommendationsBook: Clean CodePodcast: Software Engineering DailyIndie Hacker: Peter GrilletFollow CheTwitterFollow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.TwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteBuy A Wallet2 Hour Podcast CourseSponsor - Reel.soReel lets you create these short teaser videos (called audiograms), with animated subtitles, waveforms and a ton of beautiful templates to choose from. Save time and set your podcast clips aside from the rest by creating these sharable snippets that grab your audience's attention as they scroll through their feed. even without sound.I've used Reel myself for Indie Bites and it's been a game changer for me. If you want to give it a go for yourself, head to reel.so or click the link in your show notes and use the code INDIEBITES for 20% off.👉 Try it here.

In this episode we’re joined by Tom Ross, who is the founder of Design Cuts, a marketplace and community for creatives which he’s grown to a team of 20 over the past decade. Tom is also a seasoned podcaster, co-hosting The Honest Designer's Show and Biz Buds which have been downloaded millions of times.It's not all been plain sailing for Tom as he ran into severe burnout working 18 hour days, 7 days a week for 18 months, leading to him being hospitalised. In this episode we're going to find out more about Tom's story, some of his successes and failures in business, along advice he'd give to founders from his experiences.👉 Get the extended version of this podcast on membership, available for £4 a month.What we covered in this episode:Tom’s backstoryLink to pod episodeStarting an Interpol forumEarning more money at home at 16 than in his jobGrowing a design blog to 15 million visitorsGrowing Design Cuts in the early days10 years later, 20 employees, millions of revenueMental health and burnout as a founderLink to Tom’s burnout storyHow to build good routines to avoid burnoutHow community can help with your mental healthWhy community is so importantHow to build a communityRecommendationsBook: Thank You Economy by Gary VeePodcast: Diary of a CEOIndie Hacker: Rosie SherryFollow TomTwitterInstagramLinkedInWebsiteFollow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.TwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteBuy A Wallet2 Hour Podcast CourseSponsor - 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/awt.

Marie Martens the co-founder of Tally, an easy way to create forms online. She left her stable marketing job to start Tally with her partner in crime Filip and became an indie hacker. Since then they've grown Tally to over 16,000 users almost $10k MRR as they work towards becoming default alive. Through a mix of manual prospecting, a successful product hunt launch and product-led growth, they’ve turned Tally into an exceptional indie success story.-> Subscribe to my brand new podcast, No More Mondays, co-hosted with Dan Rowden here.What we covered in this episode:The origin story of TallyIndie Hackers episodeA failed startup, HotspotHow COVID crushed their first startupHow Tally got their first few usersDoing things that don’t scaleHow I became Tally’s first paying customerBiggest source of sign ups for tallyThe benefits of product-led growthHow to do an effective PH launchGoing from 3,000 - 12,000 users without paid adsWhy Marie quit her job to bootstrapWould she ever go back to a jobWhat it’s like building your dream startupRecommendationsBook: Intercom on MarketingPodcast: Indie HackersIndie Hacker: Davis BaerFollow MarieTwitterFollow MeTwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteBuy A Wallet2 Hour Podcast CourseSponsor - 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/awt.

Matt Ronge is the co-founder and CEO at Astropad, a product that turns your iPad into a second screen both on Windows and Mac, started back in 2015. Back in 2019, their business was almost destroyed when Apple launched a feature that almost made Astropad defunct. What did this lead Matt and his team to do? Pivot and find a new idea? Lay off the team? Absolutely not. They doubled down on their product. Through challenges with big tech, raising kickstarter funding and building physical products, Matt has been on quite the journey with Astropad and we’re going to dive into all of that today, along with a mini-masterclass on PR.What we covered in this episode:Origins of AstropadHaving two technical co-foundersHow they tackled marketing with no prior knowledgeMost useful books to learn the basics22 Immutable Laws of MarketingBurned Out Blogger's Guide to PRHow Matt leveraged PR in the early daysHow indie hackers can use PR for their projectsSize of Astropad in 2022Why they built a hardware productHow to get into building hardwareThe benefits of hardware productsHow Apple stole their productHow they saved their business after being crushed by AppleRecommendationsBook: Radical Candour, The Making of a ManagerPodcast: DitheringIndie Hacker: Monica LentFollow MattTwitterAstropad PodcastFollow MeTwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteBuy A Wallet2 Hour Podcast CourseSponsor - 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/awt.

Ben Orenstein is the founder of Tuple, a tool for remote pair programmers that has been steadily growing for the past few years. Now, Ben runs Tuple with a small team and is delving into what happens when your SaaS starts to hit scale. You might have also heard Ben's voice on the Art of Product podcast, which he co-hosts with Derrick Reimer, founder of SavvyCal, talking about the behind the scenes of running their respective SaaS companies.What we covered in this episode:Why Tuple is the most successful product he’s madeHow Ben’s approach to enterprise sales has changedHow much revenue comes from enterprise salesHow the enterprise product is differentiatedHow indie hackers can sell to bigger companiesWhere Tuple gets it’s customers fromWhat does Ben’s day-to-day look like?Has he just built himself a job?The benefits of making a podcastSome of Ben’s favourite previous productsRecommendationsBook: The Mom TestPodcast: Bootstrapped WebIndie Hacker: Adam WathanFollow BenTwitterBlogFollow MeTwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteBuy A Wallet2 Hour Podcast CourseSponsor - Fathom AnalyticsFor the longest time, website analytics software was seriously bad. It was hard to understand, time-consuming to use, and worse, it exploited visitor data for big tech to profit. I've spent countless hours in Google Analytics dashboards trying to figure even out the most basic metrics.This is exactly why I signed up for Fathom as soon as I heard Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis were building it.Fathom is simple website analytics that doesn't suck. It's easy to use and respectful of privacy laws, with no cookies following your users around the web. They're also a bootstrapped, sustainable business so I love supporting them. Yes, it might feel strange paying for analytics at first, but once you realise the real cost of free Google Analytics and realising how easy to use Fathom is, you won't go back. You can install the lightweight code on as many websites as you want and quickly see the performance of all your sites.Link → https://usefathom.com/bites

Today I’m joined by Kenneth Cassel the founder of Pointer.gg a product he pivoted from Slip.so, a course platform making it easy for developers to make high-quality interactive courses. He got inspiration for Slip when he built vim.so, a course made $10k in just one month with - his first internet money. It's not all been plain sailing for Kenneth, as he struggled with failing his way to eventual success, with 4 years building products with no revenue. Now with Slip, he's quit his job, been accepted to YC and gets to build a company he’s always wanted to have.What we covered in this episode:How buying a Raspberry Pi changed Kenneth's lifeGoing from maintenance man for a gas station to software engineerThe inspiration Kenneth took from his DadHow he learned programmingMaking $100 in 4 years of side projectsHow to stay motivated when things aren't going so wellGoing from 0-20k Twitter followersHow building in public impacted KennethEarning $10k in one month with Vim.soWhy he started Slip.soDealing with imposter syndromeRecommendationsBook: Hell Yeah or No by Derek SiversPodcast: My First MillionIndie Hacker: The Builder JRFollow KennethTwitterFollow MeTwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteBuy A Wallet2 Hour Podcast CourseSponsor - Fathom AnalyticsFor the longest time, website analytics software was seriously bad. It was hard to understand, time-consuming to use, and worse, it exploited visitor data for big tech to profit. I've spent countless hours in Google Analytics dashboards trying to figure even out the most basic metrics.This is exactly why I signed up for Fathom as soon as I heard Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis were building it.Fathom is simple website analytics that doesn't suck. It's easy to use and respectful of privacy laws, with no cookies following your users around the web. They're also a bootstrapped, sustainable business so I love supporting them. Yes, it might feel strange paying for analytics at first, but once you realise the real cost of free Google Analytics and realising how easy to use Fathom is, you won't go back. You can install the lightweight code on as many websites as you want and quickly see the performance of all your sites.Link → https://usefathom.com/bites