What's New: Nonprofit blogging platform Ghost hits $3.3M ARR

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

Ghost hit $3.3M ARR, up from $1.5M this time last year:

• The company has never received funding, and started memberships and subscriptions before it was trendy. Ghost founder John O'Nolan talks creator economy, decentralization, and why Medium is disingenuous and misleading.
• 87% of startup unicorns offer software products and have at least one technical founder onboard, according to a recent report. Best tip to lock in a technical cofounder? Beef up your own tech knowledge by creating your MVP yourself.
• This 22-year-old founder is making waves with his CSS browser extension, which just hit $100K in revenue. Giving users the option to "pay what you want" showed him exactly what they were willing to pay.

Want to share your ideas with nearly 70K indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

👻 Nonprofit Blogging Platform Ghost Hits $3.3M ARR

from the Deep Dive newsletter by Channing Allen

Nonprofit blogging platform Ghost is now doing $3M ARR. That's up from $1.5M this time last year, and the company's never received any funding. Ghost's founder, John O'Nolan, tells me his company has been arming creators with tools since before we were using the term "creators."

Here's John on the creator economy, doubling revenue, decentralization, and more.

On doubling revenue this year

Channing Allen: First and foremost, what is your revenue at this stage?

John O'Nolan: $3.3M ARR. It's growing quickly. I think at the moment we're the top verified-by-Stripe revenue product on Indie Hackers.

CA: You're at $3.3M now, but before the pandemic, where were you in terms of revenue? And did that get impacted for better or worse?

JO: Once the lockdown started, our growth doubled and hasn't stopped since. I think there are just a lot more people staying home, trying to start online businesses — obviously we help people with that now — and there's a lot more people in the maker community trying to do the same thing.

There's an increasing amount of people realizing a maker business doesn't always need to be programming or SaaS-based, and the no-code community is one part of that.

On the creator economy

CA: You're at the center of the creator economy at the exact time that everyone is talking about the creator economy. Do you have an idea of where you fit into all of that?

JO: Where to begin? We've been working on memberships and subscription since 2015 when it was not trendy or cool. It seemed like a little niche and we weren't sure if it was going to blow up or not. What we've always been good at as a small team is predicting where things are going to go and starting work on them early.

But being such a small team, it usually takes us two to three times as long as other competitors to get there. So we're always early but we're never first. We always arrive right with everyone else who started way later but was able to execute much more quickly thanks to VC money, and then they generally turn around and say we copied them.

I think platforms like Substack are trying to be the Amazon of this space, with a big marketplace and lots of people that exist under one brand. They want to be huge, and take on big media companies in a pretty aggressive way. Where we fit in is trying to be the Shopify of the space, with a long tail of thousands of publishers powered by a common set of technology. Nobody needs to know what Ghost is. I want people to know the creators that we power, instead.

On platform risk

CA: React to this thought: With the Ghosts and the Substacks and the Revues of the world, you really have a tension between two separate variables.

One of them is ownership. So, if you're a writer who wants to write for Ghost and get subscribers, you want to "own" those subscribers. You want to be able to export them if you want, or even import them.

But then on the other side, you want distribution. So, one: Am I thinking about that right? And, two: With Ghost, how do you think about distribution?

JO: Yeah. I think you're thinking about it exactly right. And that's the most compelling part of Twitter, is that path into the product.

When they announced the Revue acquisition I thought, "It'll be a year before we see anything." And the next week there was the start of new stuff, and it was like, "Wow, okay guys. What's going on? Cool."

The most disingenuous one to me, that I find actively repugnant to a lot of degrees, is Medium, which has deliberately gone out of its way to use language to mislead people and say, "Start your newsletter with Medium." But nowhere does it say, "Start an email newsletter with Medium." Because you don't actually get access to email addresses. They market it as a newsletter, but what it actually is is push notifications for followers. Like the YouTube bell icon. Nothing more.

The ownership angle is key, and the distribution is the muscle. Twitter has the strongest muscle for the distribution. What they end up doing with Revue on the ownership side, I don't know. We'll find out!

On decentralization

JO: Distribution is our next big thing to solve, and we've been thinking for a long time about how to leverage open standards like ActivityPub and potentially create a decentralized network of every Ghost instances that ends up being something that could look like Medium and work like Mastodon.

And the problem with Mastodon is it makes no sense.

It's always more difficult to build stuff decentralized than centralized because there's so many more moving parts, but that's where we're going to try and solve the distribution problem.

Check out the full interview here.

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Deep Dive for more.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

🏡 The first NFT home is now up for sale.

🧰 Zoom introduces new SDK to help developers utilize video services.

🍽 $9B startup Plant-Ag will help you trace your food directly to the field.

💵 Time Magazine is selling NFTs and will accept crypto payments soon.

👽 Upcoming US Pentagon report to detail "difficult to explain" UFO sightings.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

🤝 Your Guide to Finding a Technical Cofounder

By James Fleischmann

A recent report notes that 87% of startup unicorns offer software products, and have at least one technical founder onboard. Is it time for you to look for a technical cofounder? Here's a step-by-step approach to get you shaking (virtual) hands with the right person.

Are you ready for a technical cofounder?

Here are the bare bones of what you'll need to check off your list before even thinking about finding a technical cofounder:

1. A landing page: Check out One Page Love for some inspiration.
2. At least two very viable acquisition channels: Check out Growth Bites or User Acquisition Channels for some solid examples.
3. An audience: Spend at least a couple of weeks connecting with an audience.
4. Some form of validation: A solid waitlist is a huge plus here.
5. A minimum viable product (MVP): More on that later.

If you're already tech-savvy and you've got an MVP in your pocket, skip sections 2 and 3.

Get the ball rolling

If you haven't already, you should buy a domain name through a service like NameCheap, and set up a landing page using something like Launchrock (for a quick and dirty landing page) or Squarespace (for something a bit more robust).

Then, start getting the word out to grow your waitlist. Building in public is a great way to do this, and it can put you on the radars of potential cofounders. You should also start contributing to relevant forums and communities, particularly if these will become acquisition channels. Good options include Indie Hackers, reddit, and Facebook groups.

Then, (cue scary music) you'll need to get started on the MVP.

Learn to build your MVP

According to a popular meta-analysis, one of the most important things a non-technical cofounder can do to find a technical cofounder is to become more technically proficient.

Why? Because it means you won't be that non-technical cofounder demanding something in half the time it takes to do it, or suggesting a "minor" change that is actually a complete overhaul. These things matter. A lot.

The easiest way to become more technically proficient is to begin building your MVP. (Gulp! You can do it!)

You might be thinking: "But don't I need a technical cofounder to build an MVP?" Actually, no. You really don't.

Non-technical founders do it all the time. Not only will it give you some tech chops, it'll show them off to potential technical cofounders too. Even if you don't end up doing it yourself, having an MVP ready will at least show that you have experience working alongside developers.

If you aren't already convinced that you should get to work on your MVP, here's another thing to consider. If you do manage to convince someone to be your technical cofounder without an MVP, they may not be the caliber of programmer that you're seeking. A good candidate for a technical cofounder is someone who is likely busy already (talented and in-demand). That person may not be excited about starting from scratch on some random person's idea, likely for little pay.

I've seen MVPs made out of spreadsheets, so you really don't have to get fancy here.

One option that is becoming popular for non-technical founders is no-code:

• Bubble: One of the most robust nocode tools on the market.
• Glide: Allows you to build an app from a Google Sheet in five minutes, for free.
• Adalo: Similar to Glide but more of a drag-and-drop option.

If you're feeling adventurous, you can also learn how to code. You don't need to become a prodigy — you just need to learn enough to get the MVP done. Here are a few free resources to get you started:

• Code Academy
• BitDegree
• Youtubers like learncode.academy

Find a technical cofounder

When you’re ready to find your technical cofounder, friends, family, and acquaintances who code are probably your best bet. That's how I found mine.

While we're talking about humans that we know IRL, it's also worth looking at meetups, hackathons, conferences, and so forth.

For many of us, meeting cofounders online is going to be the way to go, especially now. Here’s a list of places you might want to check out.

• Indie Hackers and more specifically, the 16K member "Looking to Partner Up" group.
• CoFoundersLab is a free platform specifically designed for connecting entrepreneurs.
• Founders Nation is another free platform that connects people with cofounders.
• AngelList allows you to register as a recruiter and post a position.
• Reddit is a no-brainer. Check out r/cofounder for starters.
• Discord and Slack are both messengers with business channels that could help. In fact, Discord has a #cofounding channel in /r/startups.
• And of course, don’t underestimate the power of a good ol’ tweet.

To check out the remaining three tips, read the full post here.

Share your journey to finding a solid technical cofounder in the comments!

Discuss this story.

🤥 Marketing Lie: You Have to Send a Newsletter Every Week

from the Demand Curve newsletter by Julian Shapiro

The lie: You have to send a newsletter every week

The truth: Most newsletters shouldn't be sent weekly.

High cadences force newsletter writers to rush and publish lower-quality information.

Instead, consider only sending when you truly have value to add.

Discuss this story, or subscribe to Demand Curve for more.

🖱 My $100K Browser Extension Lets You Edit CSS

By Guilherme Rizzo

Hi! I’m Guilherme Rizzo, a 22 year old Brazilian currently living in Taiwan. I built CSS Scan, a browser extension that helps users check, copy and edit CSS.

I was always curious about the specs behind certain elements I'd see: Border-radius, box-shadow, font-family, etc. So, inspired by WhatFont?, I decided to create a tool that allows users to hover over any element and instantly copy its entire rules with a single click.
That was the initial idea: To create the the fastest and easiest way to check, copy and edit CSS, and say goodbye to Inspect Element.

It took me 50 hours to create the first version. You can check out the speed video here (inspired by @levelsio).

To validate the tool, I reached out to some Brazilian Developers Facebook groups, asking if they would pay $1 for this extension. The result was good enough, so I started coding.

It took about a month to create the first version, and I then launched on Product Hunt. Compared to my previous launches, it was a success!

In the beginning, the pricing model was Pay What You Want, with a minimum of $1.99. After seeing some people paying $5, $10, $25, I slowly raised the price. I eventually implemented the fixed price of $10. My wife suggested that I add license packages (2 licenses, 5 licenses, 10 licenses), and we kept raising the price. Now the extension costs $80 for a lifetime license.

Today, more than 7K people from 116 different countries use it, and it has made more than $100K in revenue.

I’m also trying subscription models with extensions (CSS Scan Pro, $20/month, $120/year), and have made another extension for web development: toast.log.

This year, I also launched beachguide.co, which is a crowdsourced database of the best beaches in the world.

If you have any questions about bootstrapped business, extensions revenue models, launch, etc., AMA!

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?

Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.

Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Nathalie Zwimpfer for the illustrations, and to Priyanka Vazirani, Darko G., Julian Shapiro, and Guilherme Rizzo for contributing posts. —Channing