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Ranking #1 in Google with Lorem Ipsum and making a career out of scientific SEO - Kyle Roof

Jun 14th — Kyle Roof is the co-founder of High Voltage SEO, PageOptimizer Pro and Internet Marketing Gold. An agency, software and course business respectively which all focus on mastering SEO. I’ve spoken at length on the podcast before about how SEO can be such an effective tool for indie hackers to use, so Kyle is the perfect guest to talk to today. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 02:58 How Kyle learned SEO 04:31 Being Scientific with SEO 05:47 Why you should try paid ads 07:17 Ranking top of Google with Lorem Ipsum 10:15 Where do people start with SEO 12:13 Encouraging word of mouth growth 13:56 Recommendations My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Finding success with a QR code app after selling his previous indie business - Ramy Khuffash

May 31st — Ramy Khuffash is the founder of Hovercode , a QR code generator he’s working on full time. Previously, Ramy founded Page Flows, a library of inspiration videos for product designers that he sold last November. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:56 Email Octopus Sponsor 02:30 Page Flows Acquisition 05:03 What did Ramy buy after he sold his company 05:56 Starting Hovercode 08:05 Finding new business ideas 09:32 Growth for Hovercode 11:22 Working with a horizontal product 12:20 The perfect indie business 14:48 Ramy's future Recommendations Book: The Mom Test Podcast: Hidden Brain Indie Hacker: Laura Roeder , Amar Ghose My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

From Tweet Hunter's 8 figure exit, to starting all over again - Tibo Louis-Lucas

May 16th — Tibo Louis-Lucas is a serial founder, most well known for starting Tweet Hunter and Taplio in 2021, before selling the company in 2022 for 8 figures. Since then, Tibo has gone on to acquire an AI video creation tool, Typeframes, which he spun Revid.ai recently. He actually announced after recording this that he has left Tweethunter and is back to focusing on his early stage products, which we touch on in this episode. He’s also started a newsletter with over 50k subscribers and has over 115k Twitter followers. Tibo is a bit of a legend in the indie maker sphere right now. Tibo and I covered so much ground in this episode I couldn’t fit it all in, so the the full 40 minute conversation available on the Indie Bites membership for $60 a year. Head to indiebites.com/membership to get access. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:46 - Why failing is important for indie hackers 03:30 - 1 product every 2 weeks 05:16 - From $3 to $20k MRR with influencer partnership 06:41 - Selling Tweet Hunter to Lempire 08:40 - What did Tibo buy with his money 10:34 - Acquiring Typeframe 16:16 - Recommendations Recommendations Book: It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work Podcast: Acquired Indie Hacker: Marc Louvion ; Damon Chen My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Building a $200k MRR bootstrapped maid software for a price sensitive niche - Amar Ghose, ZenMaid

May 10th — Amar Ghose is the founder of ZenMaid, a Maid Service software that has just hit $200k MRR. Amar is a seasoned bootstrapped entrepreneur, having started ZenMaid back in 2013. Amar’s story shows the power of sticking with something through the hard times, and having an unsexy niche (aka not selling to other indie hackers) can lead to a phenomenal indie business. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 02:53 Scaling in the first 2 years 04:38 Growing an indie business in a price sensitive niche 06:54 Travelling while indie hacking 08:12 Losing 40% of revenue in 6 months 13:23 Hustle Porn - Should indie hackers work harder? 15:38 Recommendations Reccos Book: The Fish That Ate The Whale by Rich Cohen Podcast: exitfive by Dave Gerhardt Indie Hacker: Jesse Hanley My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Building WP Minute, a 5-figure side project without a huge audience - Matt Medeiros, WP Minute

Apr 25th — Matt Medeiros is the founder of WP Minute , a weekly podcast highlighting WordPress news in less than 5 minutes. He’s a podcasting expert, having previously worked as Director of Podcasting success at Castos and now hosts & produces Breakdown, a podcast by Gravity forms. This episode talks about how you can make a sustainable 5-figure side project, with a niche audience while working a full time job and increasing your opportunities as you do it. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:32 From the family car business to digital agency with his dad 03:35 Becoming a Wordpress Expert and Starting Matt Report 04:45 Using podcasting as a networking tool 05:56 From Matt Report to WP Minute 08:08 Monetizing WP Minute 09:36 Making money from a small audience 10:58 Having a profitable side project alongside a full time job 12:08 Does Matt want to sell WP Minute? 14:48 Recommendations Recommendations Podcast about Books: Six Pixels of Separation Podcast: Podcasting 2.0 Indie Hacker: Carl Hancock My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Building a $700k ARR newsletter - Manu Cinca, Stacked Marketer

Apr 10th — Manu Cinca is the founder of Stacked Marketer, a daily marketing newsletter he bootstrapped to $700k. In 2023, he acquired 2 newsletters to bring the subscriber count to 100k and raised a small 250k funding round to help boost growth.

Bootstrapping the 100DaysOfNoCode learning platform - Max Haining

Apr 3rd — Max Haining is the founder of 100DaysofNoCode and 100DaysofAI , which are bootcamps designed to help non-techies gain tech skills. Max wanted to be an entrepreneur from a young age and started 100DaysofNoCode as a challenge for himself to learn NoCode tools during covid, but as more people joined in, he realised he could bootstrap the challenge into a learning platform which he’s now working on full time. Follow Max: Twitter Timestamps 00:00 - Intro 01:28 - Max early life 03:31 - University student inspired by Zuck 04:59 - Discovering indie hacking 06:13 - Starting 100DaysofNoCode 09:45 - Turning 100DaysofNoCode from a challenge to a business 13:39 - What marketing tactics has Max used 15:09 - Recommendations Recommendations Book - Get Together Podcast - My First Million Indie Hacker - Marc Louvion My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Bouncing back from losing 70% revenue - Max Serrano, IGotAnOffer

Mar 27th — Max Serrano is the founder of IGotAnOffer , a bootstrapped coaching platform focused on helping people get jobs and progress their career. Initially starting out in consulting, Max started IGotAnOffer on the side, creating digital products to help people land consulting jobs, but pivoted to coaching after they lost 70% of their revenue in the tech hiring freeze, having to lay off the majority of his staff. Now, with a profit first mentality, they are on a growth trajectory again. Timestamps 00:00 - Intro 03:16 - What indie hackers can learn from management consulting 04:42 - The idea for IGotAnOffer 06:23 - Slicing pie method of splitting equity 07:39 - From side project to full time 08:29 - Fixing a revenue plateau 10:49 - Losing 70% of revenue 12:46 - Getting back to profitiability 13:49 - Pay yourself 14:46 - Recommendations Recommendations Book - Profit First Podcast - Startups for the Rest of Us Indie Hacker - Pete Codes My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

It passed the House! Now what?

Feb 1st — The tax deal that includes a retroactive fix for domestic R&D expensing through 2025 passed the House! Now what?

Building and monetizing an audience as a software engineer - Randall Kanna Franson

Jan 24th — Today I’m joined by Randall Kanna Franson. Randall is a senior software engineer who has written 3 books, including one published by O’Reilly and a self published one which made over $70k. She also created a course called Hack the Tech interview which made $20k in the first 24 hours and $50k in the first month. All of this has been through Randall’s efforts to share her learnings from almost a decade being a software engineer and growing her twitter audience to over 50,000 followers. She’s also dabbled in SaaS products, notably launching and growing CodeTutor which she sold after the birth of her first child. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:43 Randall's background 03:33 Coding bootcamp to senior software engineer 05:05 Getting a book published with O'Reilly 06:37 Going hard on side projects in 2020 08:01 Audience building and writing another book 10:04 Randall's course 11:42 Randalls advice to early stage entreprenuers 13:13 Why Randall hasn't started a successful SaaS 15:47 Recommendations Recommendations Book - The Dip Podcast - Software Social Indie Hacker - Kyle Gawley My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Can you really scale a No Code SaaS? - Kieran Ball, NoCodeLife

Jan 11th — Kieran Ball is the founder of NoCodeLife, a selection of case studies of those making successful businesses using NoCode. Kieran also has courses on how to become a NoCode SaaS founder, specifically using the Bubble platform. I wanted to get Kieran on the pod to discuss and challenge the NoCode movement and if you can actually create a scalable product using the tools available, or if NoCode serves a different purpose. Timestamps 00:00 108 - Kieran Ball 02:07 Failing to learn how to code 03:05 How Kieran discovered no code 04:28 Are no code apps hacky? 05:52 Who has been successful building no code tools? 06:57 No code for MVPs or for actual startups 09:28 Keiran's own blog, No Code Life 10:19 Improving your marketing skillset 12:49 Kieran's future with no code 15:48 Recommendations Recommendations Book - The SaaS playbook Podcast - The Bootstrapped Founder Indie Hacker - Hazel Lim @byhazelim My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

B2C vs B2B SaaS as an indie hacker - Val Sopi, Blogstatic

Jan 3rd — Today I’m joined by Val Sopi, the founder of Blogstatic, a lightweight blogging platform built to take on the likes of Ghost. Currently Val is sitting around $1k a month, but with a low-priced annual plans approach, he’s relying on new sign ups and plan upgrades instead of recurring subscriptions. So he’s at a crossroads of needing to pour fuel on the fire to grow his low-cost blogging platform, or attempt to build a B2B SaaS, which he believes is a much more sustainable option for an indie founder. Val has been hardened by business successes and failures, so I love his pragmatic approach to the decisions he’s making. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:39 Val's background - web design shop to failed SaaS 04:10 Learning to code and starting Claritask 04:53 Selling Claritask 05:52 Launching Blogstatic 06:42 Taking a loan to bet on himself 07:40 The crossroads of stagnating growth 08:39 Being a low cost alternative in a competitive market 12:30 Why Val won't take VC 14:06 Why Val is trying B2B instead of B2C 15:45 Recommendations Recommendations Book: The Inner Game of Tennis Podcast: Startups for the Rest of Us Indie Hacker: Joe Ashville My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

How VEED bootstrapped to $7m ARR - Sabba Keynejad, VEED.io (2020)

Dec 2023 — Today I'm revisiting one of my favourite episodes, from 2020, with Sabba Keynejad, co-founder and CEO of VEED.io , an online video editing platform. When I interviewed Sabba, VEED were at around $2m ARR, fully bootstrapped. Since this interview, they’ve gone on to bootstrap to about $7m ARR before raising a whopping $35m series A from Sequoi a. And when I first met Sabba, years before this interview, VEED was just a small product that wasn't generating any revenue. This episode is special to me because I’ve followed VEED’s journey from the start and it’s been inspiring to see. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 02:46 VEED origins 03:24 Differentiation 03:58 Picking a market 04:48 Hiring and learning new skills 06:16 Inflection points in growth 07:07 Quitting your job 07:45 Why you should find a cofounder 08:41 Getting the first users 09:47 Free vs paid 11:16 Growth tactics 12:04 Advice to other founders 13:01 Recommendations Recommendations Favourite indie hacker is Josh Pigford Best book for indie hackers; Traction Favourite podcast; How I Built This My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Lemon Squeezy CTO on why he still makes side projects - Gilbert Pellegrom

Dec 2023 — Gilbert Pellegrom, is co-founder and CTO of Lemon Squeezy , a platform for selling software and digital products online. Previously Gilbert created the Nivo Slider all in 2010, which grew to millions of users before selling it. He then went on to work with Orman Clark at ThemeZilla and Dunked, who he’s teamed up with again to build Lemon Squeezy. What’s interesting about Gilbert is that despite being the CTO of a rapidly scaling startup, he’s still making and shipping side projects, which we’ll talk about more on this episode. If you want to hear more about Lemon Squeezy, I actually co-host their podcast called Make Lemonade , where I speak with their CEO JR Farr about the behind the scenes of building a bootstrapped company making millions. Sign up to the Indie Bites membership for $60 a year to access the full conversation with Gilbert. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 03:57 Working with Orman Clark at Themezilla and Dunked 06:11 Delicious Brains 06:40 Starting Lemon Squeezy 07:52 Why Gilbert makes side projects 10:36 Should you charge money for your side projects 12:58 Selling side projects 14:59 Recommendations Recommendations Book - Atomic Habits Podcast - Yo! Indie Hacker - Marcel Pociot My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Scaling and exiting a $65k MRR with meal planning app - Jeffrey Bunn, Mealime & Clearful

Dec 2023 — Today I’m joined by Jeffrey Bunn , who is the co-founder of Clearful , a digital journal app he built with his wife, Maria. Previously they co-founded Mealime, a meal planning app which grew to a whopping $65k MRR before they exited in 2018. In this episode we cover the story of founding both apps, how they utilised the app stores for growth and why they started a B2C app in a crowded market. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:30 Starting Mealime 07:07 Pivot to mobile and reducing prices 08:36 Mealime Growth 09:46 Private Equity Exit 10:38 Life post-exit and learning to code 12:24 Starting Clearful 13:31 Clearful growth through the app store 14:50 Runway and future Recommendations Book - Range by David Epstein Podcast - Conversations with Tyler Indie Hacker - Maria Golikova , Sebastian Röhl My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

The slow and steady path to growth - Michael Christofides

Dec 2023 — Today I’m joined by Michael Christofides, who is the founder of PgMustard, a product which helps people speed up Postgres queries. Michael started out working for a Devtools company as a product manager and went on to run customer success at London based unicorn, GoCardless. Now, Michael might not be as well known and successful as other popular indie hackers, but he works on his own terms and has been committed to his project for years. In this episode I want to unpack why Michael stays committed to his product despite slow growth, his unique approach to the indie lifestyle and where he wants to go in future. Timestamps 00:00 - Intro 02:18 - Michael's early career 03:09 - The PGMustard idea 04:28 - Building for a market rather than scratching your own itch 06:23 - Launching PGMustard 08:15 - Going full time on PGMustard 09:47 - Leaving well paid jobs at $0 MRR 11:28 - Intentional slow growth 15:43 - Recommendations Recommendations Book - Small Giants Podcast - Panic Podcast Indie Hacker - Michael Koper My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Side Projects as Insurance Policies

Dec 2023 — Michele chats with Kevin Griffin about how she sees side projects not only as a way to earn extra money but as insurance policies against losing your job or other unexpected life events. Subscribe to Multithreaded Income !

Arvid Kahl on side projects, hobbies and making money as a founder

Nov 2023 — Arvid Kahl runs The Bootstrapped Founder , a podcast, newsletter and educational resource to help founders grow successful bootstrapped businesses. He’s also written two books, Zero to Sold and The Embedded Entreprenuer . Arvid is a returning guest, having previously been on the show almost 3 years ago, to talk about his exit from FeedbackPanda, which he grew to $55k MRR with his partner, Danielle. In this episode we talk about life as a creator and solopreneur, how Arvid is scratching his SaaS itch and how people can leave their jobs to work on their side projects. 👉 Get the full 55 minute conversation here. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:45 Turning hobbies into business 02:51 Structuring how you spend your time 05:14 Revenue for The Bootstrapped Founder 07:13 Why do consulting when you have runway 08:30 Scratching the coding itch 12:07 How to make a side project a main project 15:52 Recommendations Recommendations (Prev. the mom test, IH pod and Sergio Mattei) Book: The SaaS Playbook Podcast: The Greatest Generation Indie Hacker: Tony Dihn My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Quitting his job and taking a £20k loan to go full time indie - Harvey Carpenter, Growform

Nov 2023 — Harvey Carpenter is the founder of Growform , a form builder which is now around 7K MRR. It's a mixture of enterprise and some other clients, and he's tackling a product in a market that is extremely competitive and crowded, but he's trying to carve out his own little slice of that market. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:21 Harvey's life before Growform 01:35 Side projects as a 17 yr old 04:10 Getting a law degree 05:04 The idea for Growform 06:42 Benefits of picking a niche 09:12 Growth tactics 10:06 Quitting his job and taking a loan 13:16 Future goals 13:48 Taking recreation seriously Recommendations Book: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together Podcast: Diary of a CEO Indie Hacker: Jack Bridger My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

ADHD + Entrepreneurship: A Conversation with Jesse J. Anderson, aka ADHD Jesse

Nov 2023 — Michele chats with Jesse J. Anderson, aka ADHD Jesse, about finding out one has ADHD as an adult, entrepreneurship as people with ADHD, parenting an ADHD child, and more. Get Jesse's book "Extra Focus: The Quick-Start Guide to Adult ADHD" and join his newsletter: https://adhdjesse.com/ + Recommended book on parenting kids with ADHD: ADD Superparenting

How to get to ramen profitability - Charlie Ward, Ramen Club

Nov 2023 — Today is a special episode, because it marks 100 episodes of Indie Bites. And to mark the occasion, I’m bringing back my guest from episode 1 , Charlie Ward, founder of Ramen Club to talk about how he’s grown to community into the core of the London indie scene while scaling to £7k MRR in the process. Charlie has also been a long time supporter of the show, having sponsored well over 30 episodes and taking a bet on me early on. Timestamps 00:00 - Intro 01:40 - The impact Ramen Club has on other founders 03:08 - Rebranding to Ramen Club 04:56 - Advice for community building 06:27 - Advice to founders on ideas and growth 11:10 - Why you should be doing user research 14:35 - Recommendations Recommendations Book: $100m Offers Podcast: Lex Fridman Indie Hacker: Elston Baretto Other links Get Together book Continuous Discovery Habits book Rosieland Charlie's Twitter Ramen Club Podcast My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Bootstrapping EmailOctopus to $3m+ ARR - Jonathan Bull & Tom Evans

Nov 2023 — Today I’m joined by Tom Evans and Jonathan Bull from EmailOctopus, an email platform who have bootstrapped to over $3m ARR since they were founded in 2014. They’ve been battling in a crowded and competitive market, with some huge funded companies to contend with, but they’ve made it work in an indie way. In this episode we talk about how they lost 99% of their users overnight, why they’ve chosen to compete on price rather than in a niche and their reasoning behind staying bootstrapped for so long. Get the extended episode here: https://indiebites.com/membership 00:00 Intro 01:24 EmailOctopus Background 02:57 How long did EmailOctopus take to build? 03:09 Launching for free 05:45 Tom joining EmailOctopus 07:11 Growth 07:48 Building in a crowded market 08:55 Differentiating on price 11:30 Raising vs bootstrapping 12:58 Changing goals as a bootstrapper 15:07 Fulfilling the side project urge Recommendations Book: ReWork , Four Thousand Weeks Podcast: The Rest is Politics , Indie Bites Indie Hacker: Pieter Levels , Jeffrey Bunn Guest Links Jonathan's Twitter Tom's Twitter Blog post about their growth My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Building a financial engine for your indie business - Justin Jackson

Nov 2023 — In this episode I have a returning guest, someone who is a keystone of the bootstrapping community, it’s Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor, MegaMaker and more. Today we have an unstructured but very useful chat about building a financial engine for your business. This is a topic that has come up countless times in my indie journey and I think it’s something that a lot of indie businesses don’t address as early and seriously as they should. There a ton of actionable tips in this conversation about how to manage your finances, building a solid, profitable business and what to do when things aren’t going well. Get the extended episode here: https://indiebites.com/membership Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:45 James shocked by tax 02:31 Profit first 06:51 Building a financial engine 09:40 Things falling apart with depression 11:00 Desperation affects creativity 11:49 How to build your financial engine Recommendations (from prev ep) Book: Life Profitability Podcast: Software Social Indie Hacker: Derek Sivers Follow Justin Twitter Blog My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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

Rob Walling on multiple projects, why building an audience is dumb and other SaaS wisdom

Oct 2023 — Rob Walling is an absolute legend in the bootstrapping and indie scene. He’s a veteran entrepreneur with his most notable exit being Drip in 2016. Rob also founded MicroConf , started TinySeed and is the host of the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast, which has over 680 episodes having started in 2010. It doesn’t stop there for Rob, he’s also written 4 books, Start Small Stay Small, Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding, The Entrepreneurs Guide to Keeping Your Shit Together and most recently, The SaaS Playbook . Get the hour long episode here: https://indiebites.com/membership Timestamps 00:00 Intro / Sponsor 02:03 Why Rob wouldn't do SaaS again 03:43 What would an alternative reality look like for Rob 05:46 Founder retreats 07:40 Building an audience first approach is dumb for SaaS 10:29 Building a network 12:38 Portfolio of projects 15:26 Recommendations Recommendations Book: Founding Sales , Deploy Empathy Podcast: Comic Lab Indie Hacker: Ruben Gamez Follow Rob Twitter Website My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Growing an audience, making difficult decisions and launching screencasting.com - Aaron Francis

Oct 2023 — Aaron Francis is currently an Educator at Planet Scale, but you would have seen him all around the internet doing courses, YouTube videos, podcasts and more. Notably he was a founding member of the Hammerstone team, which he’s recently left, to focus his energy on doing something he loves. Most recently, Aaron has launched Screencasting.com , a course teaching you how to make better screencasts. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:25 Aaron's Background 02:10 Learning Software Engineering through books 03:24 Audience Building 05:51 Benefits of each content medium 08:07 Making time for everything 09:27 Having a full time job 10:23 Leaving Hammerstone 12:36 Launching Screencasting.com 14:33 How has the launch gone? 15:25 Recommendations Recommendations Book - Any textbook in your field Podcast - No Plans to Merge Indie Hacker - Jordan O’Connor My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

$20k MRR with Airtable app using YouTube and SEO for growth - Andy Cloke, Data Fetcher

Sep 2023 — Today I’m joined by a returning guest, Andy Cloke, who runs Data Fetcher. Data Fetcher is an API plugin for Airtable that he’s grown to 20k MRR. In our previous episode Andy was only at around £3k MRR, so in this conversation we talk about what he’s done to grow so rapidly, including investing in new marketing channels such as YouTube. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:58 Growing to 20k MRR 04:51 Building a machine 06:01 YouTube Strategy 09:09 Launching another product 11:38 Hiring and reinvesting into the business 13:07 Future of Data Fetcher Recommendations Book: Psychology of Money Podcast: Acquired Indie Hacker: Curtis Herbert Follow Andy Twitter My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Making $200k a year teaching Google Sheets - Andrew Kamphey

Sep 2023 — Today I’m joined by Andrew Kamphey, who is the founder of Better Sheets , a platform of tools and tutorials to get better at using Google Sheets, that has done well over $200k in revenue since he launched in 2020. He started out working as a tech on cruise ships, before moving to LA to work in the film industry, which is where he gained all of his Google Sheets prowess. From here he’s had a meandering life journey, working while travelling South East Asia, starting and selling an influencer newsletter, writing a book about charging and even launching a SaaS. Andrew has had his finger in piece of the indie hacking pie and has now settled on being the Google Sheets guy. At least for now. Timestamps 00:00 - Intro 02:08 - Failing to go full time 04:13 - Selling Influence Weekly 06:26 - Starting BetterSheets 09:32 - Turning Better Sheets into a full time income 11:53 - Reluctancy to become the "Google Sheets Guy" 13:37 - Recommendations Recommendations Book: Lying for Money Podcast: The Deep Life Indie Hacker: Jon Yongfook , Danny Postma , James & Danielle Follow Andrew Twitter My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Can the R&D Tax Credit Offset the Section 174 Changes?

Sep 2023 — The R&D Tax Credit still exists, and it might be able to help you offset the Section 174 changes. Michele talks to R&D Tax Credit expert Jonathan Cardella of Strike Tax Advisory to learn more. Learn more: What is the R&D Tax Credit? IRS R&D Tax Credit rules Please note: This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not tax advice. Talk to your tax preparer for advice about your specific situation.

Bootstrapping Ticket Tailor to £6m ARR, selling and repurchasing the company, losing motivation and more - Jonny White

Sep 2023 — Jonny White is the founder of Ticket Tailor , a platform for selling tickets online doing over £6m ARR and growing. Jonny founded Ticket Tailor in 2011, grew it to £2k MRR and then sold it to a company called TimeOut a short while later. After a few stagnant years at TimeOut, Jonny then bought the company back to make the lifestyle business he’d always wanted. After hitting all his goals, Jonny made the decision to build out a team and bootstrap the company to profitability and beyond. Now with a team of 20+ people, Jonny has a whole new set of challenges he’s dealing with, which we dig into in this episode. Get the hour long episode here: https://indiebites.com/membership Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:51 - Jonny's background 02:48 - The idea for Ticket Tailor 04:39 - Getting those first few customers 05:14 - Reaching £2k MRR and considering fundraising 06:34 - Selling the company 08:00 - Buying back Ticket Tailor 09:17 - Post buy back 11:13 - Hiring a team / going beyond a lifestyle biz 12:12 - COVID 13:59 - Losing motivation post-covid 15:45 - Recommendations Recommendations Book: Donut Economics Podcast: Missing Cryptoqueen Indie Hacker: Pietro Saccamani Follow Jonny Twitter My links Twitter Indie Bites Twitter Indie Bites YouTube Join the membership Personal Website 2 Hour Podcast Course PodPanda (hire me to edit your podcast) This Indie Life Podcast Sponsor - 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.

Carving a new life path with a newsletter about Workspaces - Ryan Gilbert, Workspaces

Aug 2023 — Ryan Gilbert is the creator of the Workspaces newsletter, which showcases the best workspaces in tech and beyond. He grew it to 6,000 subscribers and $2k per month with sponsors + affiliates, before being acquired by Loops (Founder Chris Frantz was on episode 61 ) and going on to be their first employee. In this episode we talk about how simplicity has been so important for growth of the newsletter, how he makes it appealing for guests to share and his reasoning for selling at such an early stage. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:26 Life before Workspaces 03:37 Did you have any side projects before workspaces? 04:47 Growth of the Workspaces newsletter 06:40 How long did each edition take? 07:45 The best workspaces 08:25 Monetizing the newsletter 10:22 Selling the newsletter 13:08 Imposter syndrome 13:57 Recommendations Recommendations Book - The Creative Act by Rick Rubin Podcast - Creator Science Indie Hacker - Brett Williams Sponsor - 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.