Indie Bites

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

Peter Suhm is the co-founder of Reform, a tool that lets you easily create simple, brandable forms. Peter is also part of the Tiny Seed 1st batch, where he was working on a product called branch Branch. After that didn't work out, he went through a period of testing and validating ideas.One of those ideas was a investor update tool, where Peter discovered how convoluted creating a form with existing tools was. Using Twitter and a very early stage MVP, he validated the idea for Reform and got to work building.Since then he's had #1 Product of the Week on Product Hunt and is now working through the challenges of building features and growing revenue. You might have also heard Peter on the Out of Beta podcast, which he co-hosts with Matt Wensing.➡️ Get the uncut, 30 minute conversation with Peter on the Indie Bites membership here.What we covered in this episode:Coming up with the idea for ReformValidating the idea for ReformWhy build a product in such a competitive marketWhere form builders keep messing upGetting to #1 Product Hunt of the weekWhen is the right time to launch on PHMarketing and growth tests for Reform going forwardContinuing to try things that don't scaleWhere should founders start with marketing?Peter's approach to product developmentThe feedback loop of TwitterThe upsides of raising Tiny Seed moneyRecommendationsBook: Traction by Gabriel WeinbergPodcast: Tropical MBAIndie Hacker: Derrick ReimerFollow PeterTwitterPersonal SiteFollow 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

Brian Casel is a veteran of the bootstrapping game, having left his full-time job back in 2008. You might have heard him on the Boostrapped Web podcast where he shares his journey starting and building software products. Over the years Brian has pretty much done it all, built software businesses, courses, productized services and even sold some along the way. Most recently, Brian has been working on ZipMessage, a new way to communicate asynchronously.➡️ Get the uncut, 60 minute recording with Brian on the Indie Feast membership here.What we covered in this episode:Where did the idea of ZipMessage come from?How Brian validated ZipMessageBrian's unconventional approach to validationWhy Brian raised funding from Calm Company FundHow can people go from freelancer to productized serviceThe importance of building processes in productized servicesWhy Brian didn't follow his passion for musicRecommendationsBook: Shoe Dog by Phil KnightPodcast: SmartlessIndie Hacker: James McKinven (errm...)Follow BrianTwitterPersonal SiteFollow 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

In 2019 Daniel Vassallo left his $500k salaried job at Amazon to go indie. In the 2 years since he left Daniel has placed many small bets, something he's become known for. In particular Daniel has seen success from his Info Products and building his audience on Twitter, which has grown from 0 to 91k. He wrote a short book on the good parts of AWS, which has made $126,000, then following the Twitter growth, wrote a book called Everyone Can Build a Twitter Audience, which has made $244,000. He shares all of his revenue reports in his Profit and Loss community, which in itself has made over $30k in the past year. In total, and in just over 2 years, Daniel has made $570k in revenue and $306k in profit since leaving his job at Amazon. But he's gained something he didn't have while working for someone else, freedom.➡️ Get the uncut, 80 minute recording with Daniel on the Indie Feast membership here.What we covered in this episode:Leaving a $500k job at Amazon to go IndieThe trap of judging your life based on financial valueWhy the initial focusing on one product didn't work out for DanielWhere the small bets mindset originatedHow to deal with context switching with small betsDealing with an uncertain incomeWhy info products work well for a small bets strategyHow book publishers work and how we can apply their methodsThe importance of the "small" in small betsHow you can build a twitter audience like DanielWhy Daniel started making wooden cutting boardsHow he made $2,600 from one tweetRecommendationsBook: Anti Fragile by Nassim TalebPodcast: Indie HackersIndie Hacker: Peter AskewMore on DanielTwitterOn the IH podHis most popular articlesFollow 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