Indie Bites James McKinven

Today I’m joined by a returning guest, Andy Cloke, who runs Data Fetcher. Data Fetcher is an API plugin for Airtable that he’s grown to 20k MRR. In our previous episode Andy was only at around £3k MRR, so in this conversation we talk about what he’s done to grow so rapidly, including investing in new marketing channels such as YouTube.
Timestamps

00:00 Intro
01:58 Growing to 20k MRR
04:51 Building a machine
06:01 YouTube Strategy
09:09 Launching another product
11:38 Hiring and reinvesting into the business
13:07 Future of Data Fetcher
Recommendations

Book: Psychology of Money

Podcast: Acquired

Indie Hacker: Curtis Herbert

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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 Andrew Kamphey, who is the founder of Better Sheets, a platform of tools and tutorials to get better at using Google Sheets, that has done well over $200k in revenue since he launched in 2020. He started out working as a tech on cruise ships, before moving to LA to work in the film industry, which is where he gained all of his Google Sheets prowess. From here he’s had a meandering life journey, working while travelling South East Asia, starting and selling an influencer newsletter, writing a book about charging and even launching a SaaS. Andrew has had his finger in piece of the indie hacking pie and has now settled on being the Google Sheets guy. At least for now.
Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
02:08 - Failing to go full time
04:13 - Selling Influence Weekly
06:26 - Starting BetterSheets
09:32 - Turning Better Sheets into a full time income
11:53 - Reluctancy to become the "Google Sheets Guy"
13:37 - Recommendations
Recommendations

Book: Lying for Money

Podcast: The Deep Life

Indie Hacker: Jon Yongfook, Danny Postma, James & Danielle

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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.

Jonny White is the founder of Ticket Tailor, a platform for selling tickets online doing over £6m ARR and growing. Jonny founded Ticket Tailor in 2011, grew it to £2k MRR and then sold it to a company called TimeOut a short while later. After a few stagnant years at TimeOut, Jonny then bought the company back to make the lifestyle business he’d always wanted. After hitting all his goals, Jonny made the decision to build out a team and bootstrap the company to profitability and beyond. Now with a team of 20+ people, Jonny has a whole new set of challenges he’s dealing with, which we dig into in this episode.
Get the hour long episode here: https://indiebites.com/membership
Timestamps

00:00 Intro
01:51 - Jonny's background
02:48 - The idea for Ticket Tailor
04:39 - Getting those first few customers
05:14 - Reaching £2k MRR and considering fundraising
06:34 - Selling the company
08:00 - Buying back Ticket Tailor
09:17 - Post buy back
11:13 - Hiring a team / going beyond a lifestyle biz
12:12 - COVID
13:59 - Losing motivation post-covid
15:45 - Recommendations
Recommendations

Book: Donut Economics

Podcast: Missing Cryptoqueen

Indie Hacker: Pietro Saccamani

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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.

Ryan Gilbert is the creator of the Workspaces newsletter, which showcases the best workspaces in tech and beyond. He grew it to 6,000 subscribers and $2k per month with sponsors + affiliates, before being acquired by Loops (Founder Chris Frantz was on episode 61) and going on to be their first employee. In this episode we talk about how simplicity has been so important for growth of the newsletter, how he makes it appealing for guests to share and his reasoning for selling at such an early stage.
Timestamps

00:00 Intro
01:26 Life before Workspaces
03:37 Did you have any side projects before workspaces?
04:47 Growth of the Workspaces newsletter
06:40 How long did each edition take?
07:45 The best workspaces
08:25 Monetizing the newsletter
10:22 Selling the newsletter
13:08 Imposter syndrome
13:57 Recommendations
Recommendations

Book - The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
Podcast - Creator Science

Indie Hacker - Brett Williams

Sponsor - EmailOctopus 🐙
EmailOctopus is an independently owned email marketing platform, built to support other small growing businesses. With a focus on affordability and ease of use, EmailOctopus contains all of the features you need to reach and grow your audience. You can start today, with their industry leading free plan where you can contact up to 2,500 subscribers without paying a penny.

Tim Leland is the founder of T.LY, a link shortener with almost half a million users that he recently quit his job to pursue full time. Tim started out building chrome extensions, including a weather extension that grew to 200k users at it’s peak. He then capitalised on Google closing down their link URL shortener and tried to build his own competitor, which is where T.LY was born. Tim has gone for the high volume, low price option for his product, which often isn’t recommended as a good route for Indie Hackers, but Tim has made it work.

00:00 Intro
05:15 Building a portfolio of extensions
07:45 Starting T.LY
10:06 Being the low price option
11:49 Getting users for T.LY
12:51 Quitting his job
15:13 Reccos
Recommendations

Book - Atomic Habits

Podcast - My First Million

Indie Hacker - Rob Walling

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.

In this episode I’m joined by Colleen Schnettler, which a lot of you would have heard from through her Software Social podcast she co-hosts with Michele Hansen. Colleen has been on quite the journey over the past few years, going from years of contracting to launching her first product, Simple File Upload, then getting a large contracting gig with Hammerstone, landing a separate full-time job to then quit 3 weeks later to rejoin that Hammerstone as a co-founder. Now Colleen is working on a product called HelloQuery, a reporting tool for SQL queries which has been accepted into a recent TinySeed batch.
What we covered:

00:00 Intro
02:03 Why start the Software Social podcast?
02:59 Why start building products
04:04 Colleen's first product: Simple File Upload
05:07 Why they stopped the podcast
06:37 Joining Hammerstone
08:50 Being a solo founder
10:16 Hello Query
11:47 Closing down a successful product
13:50 Reccos
Reccomendations

Book: The Mom Test

Podcast: Boostrapped Web

Indie Hacker: Corey Haines

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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.