#274 – Indie Hackers is indie again!
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We're out doing is over any actors is officially independent again, where our own company, we owe IT and we are no longer own by stripe.

Here, here's IT out loud. IT is like feels different. But how do you feel? Do you actually feel any different?

Yeah, I feel great. I mean, obviously this is not like a this is we just made yesterday. This has been months and the making, but now it's actually real.

Like that means we no longer get our awesome packs anymore. We no longer have an awesome because he monthly budget in my last paycheck at my account last friday, and that's IT. We now have a business that does zero dollars in revenue, that's burning party ten thousand dollars a month, not even including our salaries.

But on the flip, we no longer of a boss. We have a company, a delivery city corp, to be exact. And uh, we can do whatever how we want with IT. We are officially andy hackers for the first time in six years. So i'm excited .

the hackers founders have actually become the hackers again. Yeah do you like it's only you say like um you know we no longer have the cushy paycheck come in in and I honestly I don't know if you I don't know how you feel about this, but it's just my personality. Do I love that I wrote a post on any hackers like I don't know, a couple.

Like a month ago, I think I was titled hunt before you eat. Like, I love the idea of having real intrinsic motivation to do things. I don't want to be out in the street.

but I don't know if I can say that I love not getting paid. I actually quite like getting paid, but I like earning IT. I like knowing that is coming for my own efforts, knowing that nobody can take that away from me.

And we are now in the position that every end, hackers and where we have to do that. And we've been here before, when I started the actions in two thousand sixteen, we weren't owned by anybody and we're making ad revenue. And I think we've up to like eight, nine thousand dollars a month in a revenue and the first eight months before getting acquired and then promptly cut IT down to zero. So it's been a long time since we've actually been an entrepreneur.

John purdy came here kind of call this out, just set on.

but little than you know we are already way ahead of him because we've been negotiating and doing paperwork and talking to lawyers and like making this stripe diversity thing happen, sense november .

ahead of ahead of him and information not ahead of him and like dollars may or very, very behind uh.

you worried about not having a paycheck. Are you like, are there things in your life that are going to have to change? You know, you stop, stop shopping at holds .

lifestyle SE. Maybe I buy like slightly fewer books. I mean, because I buy literally two books every week.

almost your main learning, main expenditure. My food.

food, food, food. I do cook unity. I do like this, like subscription new boxes.

Don't have to even think about IT do? I don't spend. I don't spend any money.

Honestly, I do. I got to eat on weekends. I treat my .

a frugal spender. I'm a big spender. I'd live extravagant.

I, B, apartment, two bathroom even though I live by myself and the hard to seattle, I can stand at the space needed outside my window. I throw a huge events for my friends. I just have like a birthday party for myself.

I was like a luxury. Airbnb last weekend cost thousands of dollars. And but I have got just opposition.

by the way, that drugs oppostion an was hilarious because I had like a quiet evening nately like my friend, like James brought his baby like like we couldn't even, we couldn't even speak in adult voices. And you are like just you pup in the base like doing karoo.

I can't even say what happened to my birthday party already. So we are very different, very different lives. But I am not cutting down all in like I am drastically upping the amount that I am going to work.

I'm going to work out harder. I'm a way more excited about life in general. I think I feel I ever purpose again like I have like my drive.

You know, I got my mojo back just to say being a tripe was bad, you know, enjoy being a stripe and any hack just is found around them. But now, uh, I don't know. Man, I feel a wolf, right? I ve got to go out.

I ve got to eat. I'd got to find like a nice uc. deer. And like, the hunt is exciting.

There is a another funny, like way that we reacted to working at stripe that was very different, which is like you is a legitimate question. Have you ever had a salary? Just I don't think you have. You've only done contract work.

I was my first ever full time job.

See, you've never had a Better job like you are you like, obviously you worked hard.

especially i've made IT myself.

put of this wave to me. IT was pretty obvious that this was like you being a complete fish out of water, or like a shark dropped over the sahara desert. Like like you got something and you ve got like power in some ferocious but like not in this context.

Yeah but you've never like you've had full time draws, but he never seemed like that that you've like to do. You've always want to be on your own. You wanted to be a writer, you wanted to be independent, like you are like, I mean, you are not the kind of person I think of, I think of a salary employee.

The way that I approach salary jobs was I had a destination in mind that was me no longer working there. But in order for me to like work my like, I had like earn my way out, right? So I started with sales, was make a thirty eight thousand dollars a year with like commissions. And I like, two years later, I work my ass off and got to graduate out of sales until, like a software engineer job that I like, work my ass off there. So yes, I didn't want to be there, but that actually meant that I work my ass off while.

yes, there it's like tars answering from one vine to the next, right. So let's think about what we learned from this process, uh from the process of, uh, going through a diverse ment I D of a lot of people getting acquired. I have not met that many people whose companies got acquired and then they got the company back and now own IT.

So that holds divestment process is crazy and even know that was possible. And then also, like what we learned from six years of being an acquired company, they allowed people consider getting bot you was like a know I in the sky dream in the future. But what does that actually feel like to be bought by? In many ways? I got dream company.

Like, can you imagine any company that would have been Better to acquire any hackers? And stripe? I mean, stripe was literally, yes, I was the one as the best choice.

And I was only eight months after we started. So any actions can be no existence. In August twenty sixteen, you joined a bit later and then read after that stripes like Patrick, stripes like cake when you buy, and hackers.

And we said, OK. And less than a month past, when he sent me an email to the point where we became official strike employees, which is literally, I think, exactly six years ago to the day that this episode will come out. April faith two thousand seventeen doesn't feel like six .

years that let let me let me give one thought on six years at stripe. It's that that first year was a grand like that first year was like I felt like a freshman at college. I felt like a fresh man man at high school and know if remember being there. But you're you're going from my school go to high school. You're like, i'm enjoying the big leagues, right?

Everyone is so big. I know everyone is like of college. I played lot of aircrafts and Normal .

human being knows what i'm talking about. And it's not necessarily that I like when we went in to stripe, I felt like you everyone here is is a lead and like they're smarter like I didn't feel like high school it's slightly and imperfect analogy but what I did feel like was like we got ta be on like I Better for and prove myself right like we got acquired. You know, we weren't like making hundreds of millions in revenue.

We weren't like a Normal financial acquisition. There are a lot of there a lot of reasons to be like you guys just had a fuck and blog like why? Why are you here is my .

favorite question is like, why? Why does strike by hackers? And how much money killing? right? A thousand dollars a month is just small stakes. know? We've got up my company that I think types are nine billion dollars at the time we joined in two thousand seven.

yeah. And I was interesting because when we got acquired by stripe, the hackers was like was bang and man that was like on hacker news almost every every week like we were kind of like the ant media company. When we went into stripe, I kind of felt famous. Honestly, I don't know how you felt but like yeah talking to so unch .

I member like the very first day is getting like twelve slack messages from people who are listening to the post who were so excited that we join stripe and I kind of know the acquisition was in the works for like a week or two um so yeah it's like a join a cold you know but instead of like coming in IT like you know the ground floor and we came in like is like already a point of the elected leaders in a way yeah yeah and that .

is very different .

than being in any hacker like every big company is， to sum degree, a cult. Everybody has got the shared mission. Everybody has the same leader.

They look up to everybody sort of online even with their equity uh, versus us. We were just like this, like just one walls, right? Had we had nothing, but I just just us. And so yeah, I just feel very, very validating.

I feel like the first year we were a lot more like connected to the internal workings of stripe. We did what we had like two months, almost like stripe school, like I like flew in from new york city to seven for csco. We like went through. We had like the class of whatever you know yeah stripe on boarding IT was like very intensive and then we can just like got loose. And then the rest of the whatever five years that we work there, for the most part, it's like we would just talk to Patrick ls indirectly.

Here's what I learned from that process. We were extremely independent at stripe. There were no ropes. There were no. Chains holding us down. We did not have to um enter face with the rest of stripe to any degree that we didn't want to ourselves.

And this is like a nightmare story here from a lots of other friends have gone through acquisitions, you know like the second day join um they are not cut loose. They are held down and restricted and they become just like another cogan 的 whether did not happen what。 And that tells me that like it's quite possible for a lots of companies to do acquisitions this way.

And I was an awesome. We got to do exactly what we wanted. We have to determine our own future.

We just had the added benefit of like this, extra press and financial support and employees support from, like all of these people at strike. We are basically just like, hey, we're here if you need us. And I guess I could not have asked for a Better deal.

There is no. Like, how could I possibly have been structured Better than that? Like, I think they .

really hoped this up gon have been structured Better. We came in. We were like this hot start up. We got autonomy and Patrick and like a few different friday meetings would like hold us up, pulled our team up as like the shining beacon on a hill of like getting things done, like shipping products without like kind of going through the internals.

if you like. Look, they have got you know product from my idea every week at the into the week, you going to send you enough to just, you know, because like I am like felt like, no, wasn't even like that.

I just felt weird being like if we had acquired, but like like is anyone going to provide us or does anyone even want to know what we do? You know like you are on your own? Uh, and so I just would at the end of every friday, it's time to make a list all the that you did, all the that I did and I would be so much stuff that would be like literally like fifty bullet points and like five sections and then like I think one of the managers to strike message me like a month after is like, hey, man, a good job of all the after I step up, I just send this to Patrick and he turns out he's been like forwarding that email to all the managers to be like, hey, look what that these two guys are doing what does your teams do this week? And so in a way I was like, we were like, famous and insight strike but also we were like, probably make a lot of other people's jobs way i'm surprised .

you never got a dm that was like, hey, man, if you just like, I can cut that this one half like in your next friday report like trade this thousand dollars before like how .

about you stop sitting the emails? Um but I think the other thing that happened in her first year was that IT was like the most starrie ambitious year that we had. IT was like, the world is our oyster, the first like two weeks to just know with the bunch of people.

And we just talked about big ideas that what could only had at its biggest. And I remember the jack opposition between, like being andy, remember our conversations when we really like on our own, or just like how do we make an extra thousand dollars a mount in ad revenue this month? We know, and we would like do that and would be like the most exciting thing on earth first is we joined stripe and everyone that stripes, like, how do you change the world of entrepreneurship forever until the .

end of time specifically? Remember Patty eleven, you like, we were like, we are having like sidebar conversations with people at stripe like pati eleven. And you are like, you know, how should we like pitch? What kind of impact we want to have while working with the company.

And you said something that was like hard core, like small scale stuff. You are like, you know we just want to grow tinos. We want to be like, you know, you name some company like we want to be like a bigger version of this media company and he's like the way is like you want to like change.

I have internet scale impact. Like you need to frame IT. You need to like think away big.

You think way too small. I think that, that was really exciting on one end because if you have this huge goal like IT increases yourself belief, suddenly you start thinking about ways that you can hit that all and you realize it's kind of possible whether you don't have big goals, you don't even think about this stuff. You don't make big moves if you don't have big goals.

And so I remember just thinking, like all the different things we could do that we are just never considered. And we tried some stuff. We're like, okay, why don't we remember we try to do any hackers is a publishing company and we were like.

OK mecom.

Yeah like we can just take someone who was like mi famous and we like get their art con and the hackers and blow that was our plane but like in the back, my mind, I was I could I don't I don't think we could. Why could we do that? Just some rain and website, we can blow someone up.

And then we tried IT. And I remember some people might like recommended their friends who will have pretty sizable twitter followings, and they post on any hackers. And they did blow up. We got people literally hundreds of thousands of page views from our news letter .

and spin tak news and I mean our top post ever is lenni your friend posting what we were doing that um and like we had her write her story like feature like on the top of at all media site.

She's not top post over by the way she's number seven so she's Allen. He is Allen. Yeah, I changed. You argue them to make IT so SHE felso take that specifically.

specifically. And only that is all. There is no other logic .

to IT anyway to go back to like learning. I think the I don't know how you feel about these big audi a schools. I don't have you live your life having these huge goals, but is a double as sort man.

Because on one hand, and I actors grew tremendously, especially at first two to three years at strike. Like I think our newsletter had like you know four thousand people on IT when we joined stripe. Now it's like well over hundred thousand hundred and fifty thousand. I think I think uh, our community forum wasn't even on the front page of the website. IT was tiny.

Half the accounts were still just like you and me try are the people to post uh you know I was like a couple hundred people get sense going to like hundreds of thousands um page will use same thing like podcast like we released, I think like three epo des of the podcast IT had you know barely a couple hundred downloads and episode now it's like twenty thirty thousand dollars never said and just the first few years is strike like we crushed IT and became like literally dozens of times speaker as a company. But on the flip side, like that failed and compares into the goals that we said, like we aren't like, hey, that how do we get three times bigger? Really like, hey, how do we get like a million times bigger but I think after spending years working really hard and not necessarily making like really significant progress, a huge goal like that, it's pretty motivating.

It's very much um kind of like what what's the point, right? It's easy. I think there's a point at which I started to feel like I am a failure.

I failed. We had a goal. We wanted to hit IT. We are super optimistic about wanting to hit and everyone supporting us.

And you know when you have a company, you and your customers, possibly a lots of customers, but when you get acquired, you have investors, you kind of like in a way feel be hold into like a very small number of people, right? Like the person who box for company, the people who invested. And so now just feel like like you're like you're letting down your dad or something.

You know like you feel like, oh, there's like a couple people that I really wanted to impress, and i'm not sure I did that. And I think that's something that i'd never really felt because I never read bunch of money before gotten acquire before I get always some more accountable to my customers. So I didn't like the idea of having these huge goals that lasted for years and years and years and not being able necessarily hit them.

But then the other piece that sort of didn't feel good because I felt too good was the fact that like even when we sort of we're just having tepid growth, the paycheck still kept coming, right? IT just isn't very entrepreneurial and and IT has an interesting impact on your motivation when like you get fed and way that aren't connected to like you doing work that you find like impressive and that you're proud of. And I think we found ourselves.

So I was like a two pronged attack against like my motivation, right? Number one, we weren't making like cute strides toward like those really big milestones. So we wanted to hit of growth and like impact.

But then also it's like, yeah, do we were just like too fat from not doing stuff? Yeah I wonder if there's like some arrangement where they could have been like you're kind of like a many entrepreneur like you can launched little like revenue generating products. So like you don't have like an internal strike corporate bonus structure. Instead you have like you make IT like you like bring an extra revenue and like that goes into your back account, baby. Yeah like I feel like that might have give me some sort of I get signal to the I think so.

I think so I think there's something to be said for that. I mean, so right now, part of the deal we can go into, like antonis specifics, but like stripe as a seed investor in ni hackers right now, theoretically strike could have been a seed investor in ni hacker six years ago, right? We didn't have to be acquired. We didn't have to because the day we got acquired, we just literally shut down all over advertising, shut on all over phillip marketing.

We went for making a 8 months to zero dollars a month revenue group does not the point。 Shrike makes infinitely more money than ni actors going to make, even if, if will work on this for now twenty years, we should focus more on the growth of other things, the growth of our traffic, the growth of our brand, the growth of the impact and influence, who can have other people starting businesses like our core metric? Is that okay? How many people have started company.

Because of many hackers who otherwise wouldn't have started one, right? That's a that's a pretty bad as metric, but that is not revenue, right? It's hard to even measure what what .

that leads to is not revenue. And also like we had to like find the side window way to represent that through like Frankly, vanity metrics. Like right.

Because like we had to try to like get at that underlying outcome through, like, okay, how many downloads as the podcast to have? How many you know sort of, yes, how many page views do we have to the site? How many, you know, sort of a subscribers do you have newsletter? And like this algorithm .

ads to multiply by the percentage of people who sign up for any hackers and take her yeah they defended to would not start company if not for x episode post on the form or not .

that verses like you did a thing and someone paid you money into your backing out. Like the relative motivational value is like a little bit of connection.

If you want to get good feedback loops to improve that anything, you need a direct connection between the input and the outcomes. You need to feel pain when you get stung by a bee. You need to feel a cheering of a crowd when you score a goal.

And I mean, this is theoretical. This is theoretically why entrepreneurs likes to be entrepreneurs, because they want to be rewarded commentor with what they put in. And if you go to a bit company, that's hard to make happen. We got ta had A A stripe, I can think a good system set up, but it's just really hard to keep that going.

Um that word five and five years and the idea comes up, uh hey, you know what you guys would you guys think about taking and the hackers, andy, again, remember when I came up those like november um twenty twenty two, like november last year and we'd never really thought about that. I got to know if you know this. But like during the initial acquisition, I know idea what I was doing and I was talking to Patrick, I was asking, okay, you know, like this whole thing goes south.

We don't like working together. Like can I like maybe like, buy in the actors back from you and he just like, no, just one more. That's not how these things they go.

Okay, okay, okay. OK just just wonder. Uh, but now here we had this opportunity. Like, hey, we can make andy hackers.

And again, uh, and I think, well, that was four months ago, five months ago that we had to decide like, okay, do we want to do that versus continuing to say strike? But that's a cool option we've never even considered before. And then we decided we did.

But then we're like, what does that look like? And just having the conversation of like what we would want things look like going forth that happened and what's stripe. I want things. So going forward actually turn in to like a pretty intense like negotiation, which was a cool, very cool. I think I think that I was like the more fun, less stressful part of all this.

And then we got to a point where all of us were happy, everybody felt create and the last, like just a little while, has been nothing but add work talking lawyers, having the lawyers, such other lawyers of paperwork um and you know setting up a new nd hackers inc. Delivered t coron, getting like all the basic payroll and book keeping and taxes set up for that kind of the stuff. So we are now officially out, but it's been a track.

It's been a track. I usually find amin work like to be the most stressful type of work, but I had to say with the adman work on the heels of the negotiation, which of course went really well. But IT was stressful enough that now I almost feel like i'm dealing with a walk .

in the park and which is high stakes. Like how many big negotiations do you really do in your life? You know, like buy in a house, maybe sound your company.

get that your job like very few people have like, you know hardly any right? Well.

that was the we can go to too much detail about like the actual result of IT. But the result of IT is like stripe as a seed investor and andy hackers, which is cool and everyone's happy, but like the process to get to like terms to remote enjoy IT IT. I mean like, I mean like what what in is a diversity at right? IT is stripe owns andy hackers out, right? And how stripe is an investor and andy hackers, and we primarily on andy hackers.

That is like a whole process that for at least a brief men in time I can sentence aren't necessarily aligned. You have to talk about IT and that's what becomes the negotiation. And we are negotiating with like someone at strike, like literally as bottles sold companies for a living, like he's on this hundreds of times.

We've done IT one time. You know I don't even know what a deinvesting ment was until like november of las, you can do that. And so we just had to learn a lot in order, like I think do well and get to a point where everybody would be happy and the deal, if makes sense .

for everybody because they just here to compared to the original negotiation of strike, getting acquired, most recent divestment experience, what would you say was your biggest learning was i've leone.

a bunch of things I don't know, probably like six things that I learned. I think originally, one of the things they learned and i've talked about this before, is keep your chats and formal. So when andy hacker is joining strike, Patrick, I talked a lot on WhatsApp, which was awesome.

You know, if you talk over email, every email seems like is the highest stakes thing you ever going to send in your life. Feel like sweating over like the structure of like one sentence for like an hour. If you talk in person, then that meeting is kind of feels the same way.

But they were like rifting off the cuff and you're not prepared and you feel if you kind of like study, like you're going in to like a job in your view or something. But if you talk about a text or what's up or something, it's like very light, harder drawn or phone. You can send E O, G S, which is nice. You, you know, trying to be friendly. You are engaging with somebody that you consider friend, but like you're also trying to ask what you want, which is very .

uncomfortable. I don't I don't know if I am misremembering, but i'm pretty sure I remember even when about you originally he used like lower case letters, like he took his formal medium and he made IT even more informal. I think that's smart.

I think the other thing is patrol kinsey, also known as party eleven, one of our fellow uh stripes, he wrote like the guy to salary negotiation, especially for tank workers, just google patoo evens out negotiation and there's some really good points that are just like ever Green, always true basics like number one you yet I was the right mindset like this is not necessarily a friendly conversation like you need to ask what you want if you're not uncomfortable that means you either done to one hundred times or you're not doing IT enough.

Um and I think that a lot of people probably leave hundreds of thousands of dollars, not millions of dollars, on the table throughout the course of their life by not really pushing hard enough negotiations and feeling scared or uncomfortable to ask what they want because you're afraid of going to offend the other person where as in reality, other person like this is their job literally negotiate and to decide what to pay. And it's like usually not even there are money they're spending. And so h IT turns out like there are usually not really offended if you ask what you want.

So think I was really good point from that guide. Another two point from that guide. Uh, research, research, research is super important.

You need to know what you want, right? Like we had to a down and figure like what do we really want? What does the other party want? You know what of other deals like this look like if you don't do? Your research is really hard to figure out what even to propose that would make everybody happy.

And I think that was our goal and shape school everybody being happy like one of anyone else be unhappy. A third point is like, you know, never say and never first also very uncomfortable. And I think beyond that of my own sort of learning from negotiation, I think one of the most important things in negotiation and is just framing what analogy do you use right?

If you're saying, like I want to get a job here, um you should hire me and you say the going rate for senior engineers as x so you should pay me x times you know plus ten percent because i'm a slightly Better team engineer that's one type of framing, right? Or if you say, hey, i'm a frame this says, I know exactly how do you know make your systems ten times efficient and that's gonna ve you at million dollars years you should pay me five hundred thousand dollars a year. That's a total different framing. And you're still a senior engineer and slightly Better senior engineer. But you frame .

things differently, right? If you frame if you frame IT as like, hey, i'm an engineer, the comparison that people make is like, okay, what is the going salary for a senior engineer? Maybe we're talking about like extra fifty thousand dollars year ah. But if you frame IT to know in terms of like the savings are going to create for their business now, they're thinking depending on the .

size their business maybe on the order of many much. Are you good frame things in a lots of different great ways can do this even for getting a job and that also like having leverage, right?

Like before you even get to the negotiation table, like are you sort of like one of a million, right, if things don't work out with you or there are like nine hundred and nine nine thousand, nine hundred and nine nine other people they could just go to and get a Better deal because if that's the case, like you don't have a lot of average, right? So you want to be unique, you want to be kind of one of a kind, and then you want to understand what they want and what you want. So you can ask for the right things and create the right frame.

And so you're there. We vote to this. And I was very stressed, but also really heart warming at the end. And I think it's just like go through the stressful process that seems uncomfortable and then also realize everybodys on the same time everybody loves each other.

And now we have like pretty good terms like stripe is a seed invest in any hackers and they're happy with that and we're happy with that. So now we've got our company. We're independent and we're we're done relevant.

Everybody's happy. So the big question is, what now, right? The world aren't whist ter. We could do literally anything.

I mean, what we got.

we got to deliver c corp. And that bunchy make money. I was making a grand a month of ads when our podcast was tiny, when our news letter was tiny, when our website is tiny. Everything today is like thirty, forty, fifty times bigger than a wise back. So I feel like the first step process to turn on the ad revenue.

were you were you monitise ing the news letter at that point?

Yeah, yeah. We had news letter ads.

Remember now, like the breakdown between mentor ships for the podcast and IT was .

totally random. Every single deal was individual, right? IT was all just sales. Get on the phone call, people. Open up your box, email people. And what I found back then was like selling the people who had no money sucked the worst customer.

The worst customer is thought the tiny companies who really wanted to advertise, we didn't have much of a budget and they would micro manage. Every single thing like that has got to exactly that's no change. You had to that, no changing to that.

Like how many clicks to get well, how many, how many, how many opens that email IT? Because they were super stress because every dollar they spent, they needed to see the return on IT. Where is the biggest companies? I think Spark post advertised and N D actions back in the day probably added still on the podcast.

They are a super chill. You know, I remember talking to a woman there who was running something in marketing, and I was in cape town on vacation, and SHE was on vacation. We were doing this deal and he just wanted talk about her kids in her vacation and and SHE just me a checked seven, eight thousand dollars and was like, takes mans in the these letter .

in the pocket. And then I did IT and there was like, no red tape. And I took, like five, how?

yeah. Because IT wasn't her money and he had a huge budget and just didn't. And I goes, that moment, oes go.

Maybe enterprise sales is Better than selling tiny companies. Like that was way easier. I made ten times more money, even on the small to customers. So I think this time around, we should do the same thing.

We should always to talk to some friends who've done this before, who have big news letters and monodist them, and figure out who we should talk to and what the best way to go about IT is. Because like, the downside of selling ads is not that fun. Nobody listening to this podcast 的 thinks， you know what export cast needs ad.

Like, nobody wants ad. And like, that's like the business model I want to rely on forever. So I think that should be like a stop gap while we do more interesting things.

I don't even think of IT as a to up. I think of IT almost like as a turnout. Like I see IT as we are weird as bleeding money for the next whatever a few months.

And let's just do the other this thing, get some, get some like revenue coming in to the newsletter, gets some revenue coming into the podcast. Not sexy. It's not fun. I'm not going to enjoy doing IT, but I will be happy I to like break even and then that's one for me. The interesting like stuff is going to start yeah and I think .

we're at a place that a lot of the act or at which is like, okay, we have a new company do right? And this is the point, right? Think all of your decisions are worth a thousand times more than your later decisions.

Like these are the heavy hit decisions where once you started going in a certain direction, it's really hard to setback. So you want to get to write. I wrote this post on ni hackers years ago was called questions to ask yourself before starting.

I think there's like fifty questions in here and there's just like a round m list of example questions not like this, just want to be the defensive questions, but there's some good stuff on here, right? Like what kinds of things have you enjoyed working on in the past? Really simple question, right?

If you going to start a business and you kind of have a lifetime of experience knowing what you like to work on, like is your business within that will also is something totally different. So for you, you know, I know that's like writing. I know that's productivity.

I know that you tend to like working alone, right? I know for me, I love coating. I love creating products. I love designing. I love being proud of what I build. I love working on a really small things that I can ship and released and be done with IT and then move on to the next thing. And so whatever we do with and the hackers, like ideally I wanted to involve a lot .

of that yeah look and to that point, like all match your post to with the post that I made on the hacker is called infinite entrepreneurship. And in a lot of ways, this is what I think of when I think about andy hackers, which is infinite entrepreneurship is when you set up the Operations of your business and like the kinds of products you work on in a way where you're focus a lot more on enjoying the process instead of only trying to like worry about the proceeds, only trying to worry about like whether you're going to make a certain amount of revenue at the end of the year, only worrying about if you're going to build something that you can like exit for, like life changing among the money.

So what's the process you want like, what's like your everyday life that you find amazing and what you want that to be?

I would say, number one, I look at IT from like the unit of the day, like you just said. And then I also like looking at IT at the unit of the month, like I would say that the main thing is I want to enjoy building stuff. What IT means? I want to build a lot of things like I don't want to have our biggest product has been the form. I don't want to have a product that like i'm just doing this like slow compounding work on over many.

many years. You don't G I .

want a long log. I want faster packages. Yeah I want faster feedback loops. So probably small products um I one comes to generate revenue yeah I want to code. I I also want to ear a faster, Better programmer than I am. And so I I wanted do code work, but I think i'm going to have to slowly familiarized myself with the code. But yeah, I want to do that.

So that's a big you just learning, right? Like for me, this stuff I want to learn and I want to have a an excuse to learn those things like we were talking a few weeks ago about you just doing abstract learning. But like the second we get into like product ideas and okay, like A I is big. There are very obvious ways we can use officer intelligence to improve some of like our solutions to proms really solve. But I got to learn a lot like I got learn a ship.

what to do that and I want it's always, it's funny because you want to learn. And I think there are opportunities where we can learn. But IT almost might be a like requirement, you know, uh, A I machine learning, th Epace o f a ccelerated u h, advancement and in that field is almost going to force our hand in a lot of ways, which is a cool position to be in is true.

It's like I think the landscape for andy hacker is not the company, but like as a people, as a community, as like a profession. Um our career is completely boosted by artistic intelligence because essentially like the whole idea of the any hacker woman is that we've reached the dressmaker.

The average individual can basically create their own company without any help, right? Like you're so empowered with like extremely efficient high level programing tools, amazing products and services out there that make IT super easy to create a business, to accept payments online, to advertise IT seta that you're prety much as limited by your own creativity and you don't need like a team of like fifty people just still like put a website up, but you do in the nineties. And so A I I think it's just like the latest technology in that trend.

We're okay when I was one person. You can do way more right. Do you like at writing yesterday? Guess what like today you're greater writing.

You're at least the possible writing because you have gp t four, right? Um did you suck at brain storming? Like guess what today like you are pretty decent brain storm because like you've got this almost A I cofounder that can be at your side and help you do everything. And so I think pretty much every ny hackers is going out to consider reinventing themselves. And if you're not, you know, in the next three or four years, you're going to be replaced by people who have run a place where I think, like what we should be doing is probably providing tools to help any actors do this, right, to get Better at being andy hackers. And so I want to build lots of tools for that too.

If you think about all of the things that both you and I seem to want, I mean, we want to build products frequently. So we don't want to have like you big hawking, slow feed backlog products. We want to learn a lot.

Obviously, we want to serve like our natural customer base, which is he going to be other andy hackers, other entrepreneur s um so like that's another constraint. We need to probably build tools that help other people build. And a lot of ways, I think that we have a good idea of like some of the cool things were going to build and we've actually started too, right? Like.

yeah, we've got a lot of ideas, right? And the way we've been working is we've provided everything we do into what we call projects. I've got a table on notion with like a dozen projects that were work on right now, but mostly there's internal stuff divaina from stripe.

That's the project reducing our costs, that's reducing our burn. That's the project um setting up a new company and setting up yul, whatever that's a project. Um but as we go on, obviously, we're gonna like sort of finish these internal projects and move more toward like user facing revenue generating, like actual products verses internal projects.

And what do we just go to some of our ideas here? We don't have A A ton of stuff we started working on now, but we've got like a list of like fifteen or so ran of ideas at a popt to our heads. Maybe like thirteen in of them are terrible.

Maybe one or two them could be really good. So let just let's go through some of these ideas. Um what's on here are an AI website companion.

So you know how you go to a website and y've got that little underground chap bub in the bottle right where you can check with the customer. And you know how like a lot of other website will also have like on boarding. So like when you sign up to walk you through a flow and as I O click over here to do this, click over here do that right?

It's going to teach you you how to use the website as if this is powered by artificial intelligence. IT could essentially ask you questions or worried about you, and then give you a customized tour of the website, right? Different people want to know about different features, want to use different features, and they don't just want to do IT when they're on boarding.

They want to do IT the entire time they're using a rap, right? And so this tool were no things like, one was last time, as usual, log in. And maybe even things like, how are they using their mouth, right? Do they seem like a compete computer user? Or do they see a little bit slow, right?

Um and just like essentially help anyone use your website a much more efficient way that's Better for them and more liquids for you as a basis, center, I think could be a dubs product. I don't know how much is on a wheelright. Like how much is that a thing that like helps andy hackers, but I could be because any andy hacker who has a website might want to have a product like that, that helps our customers do a Better job using their websites.

So yeah, I mean, I think IT could be big. We had someone on the pocket just a few months ago who spoke about how much of a boost they had to their conversions by just actually being Better about support like customer support.

And I had to say like that, one of the few things that the hackers tend to really hate, like you maybe marketing and like customer support, right? Like ideally they like to just build a really cool product, have to be as automated as possible and that's what's going on here, right? Kind of getting that off your hands.

right. So another one um I think you saw sam pr launched his new business is called hampton think it's an exclusive club for hi that word of successful founders to come and join a master mind of similar founders and pay did you say how much money IT costs to join him? I think it's probably thousands of dollars a year. So the Price ah extreme I think it's .

forty thousand. So well.

we have like the other end of the market, right? We have dozens of meet ups every month among people who are just getting started and they want to meet other people in person in their cities or maybe just online on zoom calls and talk to them. But we've never done anything formal like that. And that is not something that I think is going to be replaced by A I anytime soon because it's talking to other people who like you, right, sort of following each other stories. And so we could build something more formal to help match up and the hackers and mastermind groups in the local horse and actually help them help each other, much Better than, you know, making a post on the form.

So what you think about the Price point though, I immediately that is a call back to you trying to sell ads to broke, right? So it's like, well, in this situation, we're trying to like, you know, pair together broke in the hackers, some of whom marketing broke. But I mean, a huge amount of of indie hackers are inspiring.

But I like the idea of having IT behind up. That is something people aspire to, right? I want like the average and I hacker comes in to have milestones and goals and may be they want to be big enough to the point where they could get in to these master mind groups.

So I don't know. Maybe it's like once you ve hit ten K M R R, five K M R R, maybe one K M R R. At some point you you have qualified enough to be you know well on your way to be like a year.

There's like sub groups on the forum that you can access unless you have like an a hacker's product that has like stripe verified revenue of X, Y, Z, right. Then you get invited to these like super secret swingy metus .

yeah how do you feel about all that? Like the the sort of status baid stuff, right? Like exam called this thing hampton because it's like IT sounds luxurious, right? And it's like extremely exclusive and is how every other club is on earth.

Two that's like that super successful, like harvard, very exclusive. It's hard to get in and that increases the value of, however, because they get to select for the best people and everybody wants to go there. Um why commented? Same thing right? Like very exclusive, very hard to get in the associate, big names, successful people. And so I like raises your status sort be a part of IT.

I feel like I have come to terms with that. I mean, the idea that you're getting out is that you know the superficial the cover story is, hey, the value of coming here is that you're going to get this like really functional benefits. If you join this mastermind, you are going to make more money.

But like, let's be honest, a huge part of the value proposition is like you want status. You want to be part of this super exclusive group and then you might feel like, well, that's kind of a bulls shit value prop. But if you actually know yourself, if yourself aware, you realize like we like status.

We like being part of groups. It's part of the human experience. I don't really think it's bullshit as long as you have like .

ice wide open about IT. There's a good quote from gradual Marks says I refused to be part of any club that would have me as a member and I think that's a kind of you like a shit if it's like it's good enough for me to get animal, maybe it's not good enough. I don't know.

I also know that that's kind of at odds with our culture, right? Any other has always been built on transparency. IT has always been built on kind of helping people get started.

And so like that is a business idea that I don't think drives with. It's not the one that we would be the best ad that would be like the most can grow up with like the rest of our cultural and what we do. And so it's an interesting one.

but i'm not sure about IT. At the same time though, i'll say one word on IT is like a huge cohorn people that listen to us that are just getting started or super happy.

But then a lot of people who are like further down have made a lot more revenue and they're dealing with problems of like you bigger growth phases of of companies like they get kind of turned off by IT and then likewise in reverse, right? And so I kind of like the idea of like if we were to have something like this where there is almost like a growth based cohort model that I think it's is not necessarily against like the ethos of vini hackers. It's it's almost like a way of segmenting the information that we delivered .

to different. So some other ideas on this list, let's go. Some of the crazy ones are a custom podcast player. The idea is very simple. There's a bunch of any hackers and people on our space who have podcasts that help people with business and marketing and sales hiring and all the star copywriting service media growth.

And if we could create some of the best podcast episodes, best podcast shows, put them in to one APP, when you can essentially live as an any hacker, when we can do a lot of cool stuff, will be in marketing channel. Anybody in the space you had a podcast would want to be featured on this APP. IT will be good for consumption if you're going on to run or going to chores.

And I mean, any hacker and I know I want to listen to something productive ah I don't have to do a tony discovery, right? I just open up the india pocket APP, and I know this is gonna good episode to the top of that. And we could also tied into our community right now.

Podcasts are very stale. It's very hard to get feedback on them because most pogis players don't support things like update or comments or emAiling the people who are behind IT. So we could make that into the APP two off the back of all the other code. We have the powers our community and essentially make IT so that anybody with an nd hacer account can, like socially participate .

in this pocket medium, which this reminds me of a cunt y role. And until I thought about that, I didn't really underside this idea too much. But cruncher all you love, anemia and funeral.

You probably can do a Better job of explain that that I can. But it's a like one stop shop for people who love different enemies to go and like see all of their shows kind of in one place. Now there's of a community around IT.

It's a streaming service, right? Like any streaming service, whether it's netflix or disney plus or hou or crunchy roll, like you create a bunch of shows, you put them all together, you charge the subscription fee, and then people go there and you talk to each other and watch the same shows. And I think that, that is sorely missing a little podcasting.

I'm not sure I could work right because I think people, when they are powders, sting is a very different medium in video. They are not you at the couch and comfortable. They usually standing up there on the go. They're doing chores, are driving and they gone for a run. I get that a poll once where I ask people, you know, what do you do in this still podcast and I think like one percent of people said like nothing I just sit there and listen to my house cast like a psycho like, no no, what does that and so um i'm not sure about the service to work.

But I could limit back this up slightly and say, like when I think about like a podcast that just has a bunch of any hackers type episodes in that feed and I go, what problem is a solving I think a lot about like, oh, you know, sort of Normally when I go when I seek podcast, I go to like you know google podcast or apple podcast or just the entire list of all of the different options I like, you know, what i'm looking for is entrepreneurship content.

Then going to these like universal feeds, creates all of this extra friction, like there are so many more decisions that I need to make. Or as if I go to cranch y that com, it's curated, right? Like it's like this is the stuff I want, like narrow down the decision making for me.

Like help me get the like specifically. Like help me find find out what's gone on in the world of enemy. And so in a sense.

so the problem that that helps us discovery, right? The discovery is, hey, if I go on itunes, it's going to be shady. They have, like the business category.

How do I know this appeals to me verses OK. If I going to the hackers this podcast APP, I can discovering he shows reliably well, because it's created and crafted by people who are like me. You know what I want specifically for me, right? And we do a bunch more stuff where we actually listen to shows, review the shows.

I how many times on twitter do you see? Like, hey, i'm i'm an entrepreneur. Like, how many? Yeah, how many?

Like, good podcasts are there? Like four entrepreneurs, right? And like people give like a list of like seven episodes.

but doesn't you make a small project? This isn't something that we build on A A couple months and set and forget IT like just growing that and maintaining IT is a huge business that will take forever and the numbers might not be there.

There might not be yeah like the rest to reward ratio isn't really super thrilling on that one to me. Like just the time and like again, like time to try to grow IT, to build IT, to recruit people to like share their podcast on IT or you know you .

do not really slow like you be very unambitious at first. Like here is a an act just for the ni hackers podcast. And if like the other podcast, you come in here, you see our episode, you can comment on them and that.

And then we had a second podcast and a third and a fourth, and just grow super slowly, gradually at features. Again, I thought like a month log project, but it's like something that can be slow and like a little bit unassuming and get bigger. And so really, I think the biggest concern is like, is there enough to man on the consumer side to actually want an apple like this?

Number one, the demand might not be there. But then even if there is a demand are not confident enough and ways to model ze IT.

Most streaming service is charge of description fee. What are people going to pay like ten or fifteen bux a month for something like this? Like maybe not right. Maybe we are a premium.

Maybe it's like, okay, when you're the moment pop shop, when you're the little guy, you can afford to be cheap, being cheap as a luxury of having economies of scale and being a huge business. We just have maybe make a premium service. You could also think about charging the people who are on the network that has enough usage and enough advertizing.

I if I was an N I hacker, sort of my own podcast for other and I hackers, I might pay a hundred box a month to get IT in front of other people have recommended it's basically advertising. And so you know it's a marketplace. You're bringing people together with content. There's a possibility there. But what do you pick an idea from from a big pick of year?

Uh, how about this? How about the social token? Because we talked about this a couple years ago.

This is another one who are like trying to figure out how to do IT would require a lot of learning. But essentially, I just really like the idea of social tokens, which like almost like a crypto version of disney dollars, right? You got to disney and they give you disney dollars, and you can use disney dollars to buy things at a discount compared to Normal dollars.

And IT works because lot of who will don't spend their disney dollars, right? They keep them as commemorate tokens s they take them home. And so even if disney cells, a thousand dollars with the disney dollars, maybe two hundred of that just goes on with people never get spent on anything um and the rest you know yeah they can still have at a discount because that subsidies when how many die dollars don't get spent.

And so I like the day of having a close community and having our own sort of currency or token that's like know the andy hackers coin. And people could use that to do things like boost your post to the top of ani hackers are by ads or support each other projects or products, maybe even investigate for these products um but it's all done through the crypto token. And what's ool about cypher token is unlike a disney dollar like nobody going to take at home and frame IT and give me to the kids as souvenir.

But like you got have invest in IT, you can kind of speculate on. You can go to hold IT and watch the Price increase as the value in the popularity of the community increases. So you could buy a whole watch of ini hacker's dollars because you believe in any hackers as a community and then seldom later on for more as other people believe that the Price goes up.

Now the chAllenge with this is that it's like very tRicky from a legal perspective. What you're doing is you're issuing a security. Your security like you need to file out of like the C A lot of people have have gone trouble for not doing as well, but it's actually possible to dep.

I mean, you can file a register security c and I think some people have done out for their tokens and it's perfectly legal and then it's fine. And there's also a lot of exceptions to whether or not you might not need to file like you place certain limitations on what you're going to do that you only allow certain number of people to buy your security or whatever you apply for an exception. So I think it's a fun idea.

I think I be cool. I think I be really cool as to let andy actors invest in each other companies and I might be easier to do with crapo than with dollars. Um and so that's one of the crazy idea is out there.

I don't know, never going to do IT. You know it's too hard. It's not a reputational risk you want like release going the tanks and everybody was their money. But I think that we have an a real asset, which is an actual community that's not just some dom discord check.

That's that's the thing. That's the thing because we have so many things on our site where we can actually have this like currency, be exchange for real forms of value. You know, if you have a certain amount of token and you get more points or know your posts get like get booted more when you make them or like if you have a product page on the directory, that page like gets um promoted more like you know get a signal boost when post a miles on to IT. You can invest in other people's products or whatever.

We can give IT actual functionality that is useful. IT doesn't have to the speculate thing .

that people just if there was all greater faltered, I would be like, let's mix this in .

the bottom of an alternative. Reit has reit gold essentially, and up somebody is in. You can basically, I think, by redit gold for them.

And when they have redit gold, they can use IT to get like extra privileges. They get some special subset. cool.

It's a cool I to show that you appreciate people of functionality to you know that by buying IT, you're supporting reit so we could do something like that, right? There's nothing to do. A cypher is nothing to do with issuing security and nobody y's investing to stay away from all that stuff.

But people still can support the site. But I do really like the idea of like having an actual token that people can can use to sort of death to invest in any hackers. And so that's a one of the crazy ideas on the list. And I think if we did a lot of the other ideas, there will be more functionality that like a token that could be used for if we had a mmd groups, you could know, maybe use tokens to be able to speak first or to be able to find your own matter mongers. But to get a discount, the types of things and so ah there might be something .

we do like last what else is appear so we've got substantial tidor .

yeah we only have to have that we already that you can create a series on any actors, which essentially is a fani word for news letter. And you can write, post on the actors that go out to the people who subscribe to you. And when they see your post theyll have a little prompt subscribed to your news letter.

And so we already have a few dozen people who've had the series on in the hackers or how long like two years. It's kind of an idea that we kind of started but we awarded but um it's cool. I mean, we could even convert people's followers and to emails scribers. We need to paying their followers and say, hey, you want to be EMS describers. I have something like two hundred thousand followers on in the acres like more than I have on twitter like i'll be a pretty bad s newsletter for me to have right out of the gate OK dozens of other people in some situations.

But then talk about like the revenue side, like how much sub stack isn't like a revenue generating machine is that we see got, uh, I had a revenue of only nine million and twenty twenty one sky high value valuation. One of the like most often talked about issues that subset has with trying to monitor ze as obviously, they have a very small number of their writers who bring in a lion share of their overall revenue.

And yet when a writer on sub stack starts to really, really grow the subscriber base and become like a hit, they start going like, wait, why am I elsewhere? Yeah, why am I like giving all my given twenty twelve percent whatever IT is a so in terms of like this being like a good business. But you know, then taking a step back, how much money would we really need IT to make?

There's a theory that was proposed a while back to everything in business is either bungling or unbundled ling, right? bungling. You are combining a bunch different things together like a warm marner and amazon, and putting in all in one place for a convenience.

Or unbundled ling, you're taking something that was all set together, are pulling IT out of making IT more specific monish, right? And so all talking about is like essentially unbundled ling substate. Hey, subject cool.

You can find any newsletter on any topic there. But what if you want a newsletters specifically in this ni hacker's entrepreneurship tech business niche, right? We can create a Better selection of news letter there.

And create a Better selection of readers for people who want to write that content. So in a way, it's like unbundling sub second in the same way that people unbundled read IT by creating entire businesses based on, you know a single submit. Uh, the question that you're asking is, is substate a big and substantial one of business to be worth on boundary, right? Like you typically want unbundle huge things. So if you take off a little piece of that, you could build something .

pretty big yourself. But to do a slice of a slice is what?

exactly? exactly. I don't know about you, but I have kind of a number in mind of how much money I want to make for my own projects. My number is three million dollars year. It's just sort of a pie in this guy goal to ae towards I don't care that much about hitting.

I like worked up over hit IT because that I want to feel bad if i'm not making progress, but I do want to make entrements tal progress towards getting there over the next five or ten or twenty years and how long IT takes. And IT doesn't need to come from one place. Do you don't have .

any deadline? Like that is .

the whole point for me. The point is to make a long term. When I first got into entrepreneurship, I D A very, very, very goal of, like, I want to be a success. What the hell does that mean?

I don't know that meant that wasn't specific, but I knew that, like, I would know that when I got IT right, I want to sell a company or started in pack for company. I want to make a lot of money when people around me to be like corlin set out to do a thing and he did IT right. And so there's a vegal being a success.

And IT turns out, like as you said earlier in your post about infinite entrepreneurship, right, it's not really about the destination is really about the journey. But the father away your destination is the longer you to go on your journey. And so for me, the point isn't to like I need to hit something next year and then levers active, get to the next level because I don't have any grand ambition by that. Like every kind of accomplished my mango, I just want to have a good excuse to do the things that I love on a data basis, and then something to look forward to, some goal that I can incrementally enter my way towards because I like watching numbers go up and is a little as that.

I think I like growth. So I mean, look, my goal is a dollar. I want to make a dollar. We don't we make zero currently.

Um I want to get like our ad engine turning and going and but I don't want to do that by like two years from now. I want to do that probably by the end of the month. Like I want to feel like you see some revenue coming in.

And then when I get there, i'm going to push the goal post back, right? I'm going to think about the next thing in the move, yeah, i'm going to think about like one of our products that we're already working on, making real money, making subscription money, right? And then i'm going to take stock war I and then I probably going to raise the bar from there.

Yeah so you want to go on command, not necessarily have a grand plan, right? You want to sort of fall into the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. I like that too.

I think as people we Carry around a lot of package, right? If you think about like a cave man, like how much baggage like you, an ancient, no matter human, have, right? You really only have like what you could Carry with you.

You didn't have a mortgage, you didn't have a car, you didn't have a million possessions. And so your minds always kind of light, and you kind of felt free, and you kind of felt on. And comfort is today, like all of us have a million things.

We've million worries of million concerns, got a million things to do. We got a whole to do this in my mind that are not even conciousness wear, but it's like shit that's on my plate and a calendar of full of things that just scheduled out end of the future. And I think that's like that kind of life, modern life, so to speak, just ends up having a background of just being ambient's stressful because we have so much.

And so I like the idea of having a business in doing exactly what you say, where it's like, yeah, maybe we have this giant grab bag of ideas, but we don't have some master planned to step one, step two, step three in the whole next ten years mapped out. Hey, we're working on today. And you know, next month we're done with this will look in the grab bag and figure the next thing to work on. And we're never really encountered because we're always working on this one thing at this one time, I think sounds really peaceful and really attractive.

I never want a week to show up and to think, oh, fuck this week I have to do like X, Y, Z, like we have to like, you know, hit a certain revenue bar or we like you. It's a tuesday. Oh, shit, on tuesday.

I have to do this thing. I like the idea of getting away from that and through one lens that almost looks like, I don't want to work hard, but I work really hard. I just tend to work the hardest and be the most fulfilled when I feel like i'm the one pushing you know, the the work forward as opposed to being pulled by external requirements that are placed on me. I think the easier way to fall into that is to sort of arbitrary place a bunch of deadlines on your head that aren't connected. Danny real.

so what can people expect from andy hackers going forward now, andy, we're outside the stripe. Obviously, we don't make any money, so we have to make money. And we also have been sent of two because the sky limit. How's that going to change any hackers, such people.

people expect we're going to be building in public. We're going to a be transparent. We're going to be like sharing what how we're doing and how much money we make. We're going to be like experiment in public.

We're going to be working on a lot of small projects and that will be publishing our revenue numbers are going to be sharing one rap to you, hopefully will talk about everything anybody do. I'm excited. A happy record and episode, maybe the more episode since now we a lot of our own have to talk about that's like a little bit more transparently and ambitious and that just doing all interviews to I like.

I like to into the swell. We're chill. It's almost more electric than meetings that we .

have on a daily basis. Exactly, exactly. Aren't you go talking and let's I can do IT.

Let's go. Let's do IT.