Indie Bites

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Sequoia. 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.