Live data from Hacker News

Indie Hackers is indie again

indiehackers.com

31–40 of 81 posts

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#31

Indie Hackers is what led me down the road of building side projects. For me it was the inspiring interviews from people like Mike the founder of Park.io. How one person can build a business solo is amazing. Five years into the future, I am now working to grow T.LY URL Shortener to be the best way to create and manage short links. I have a long way to go but I have made a lot of progress in a "short" time. T.LY URL S…

Do you pronounce it "tee dot el why"? or "tee lee"?

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#32
post #16

As an avid follower of indiehackers.com since its early days, I have to say that I'm disappointed with the current state of the site. What used to be a vibrant community of indie founders sharing their struggles, learnings, and wins has devolved into a spammy showcase of "look how easy it is to make money/followers with this hack" posts. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for celebrating success. But the recent flood of sel…

> isn't pressed to make money

At $0 MRR, that's exactly what they are.

This is not a dig but the (current) reality of community sites.

At Stripe, they were probably being paid as marketers, not engineering managers. (No team, no direct reports.)

One problem is that indie hackers, by self selection, are not typically investable. If you're not looking to raise, the forum you spend your time on can't, say, buy equity in you or funnel you toward a batch-based accelerator program.

Maybe the Allens can do micro-investments, but again you have a selection problem at play.

They could choose advertising and decide to grow the base. Then they start competing with outlets like The Hustle, My First Million and Morning Brew.

The group of people who want to be indie hackers is much smaller than the group who enjoy “business news” (Morning Brew) or business entertainment (My First Million).

Whatever the Allens decide, I hope they succeed.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#33

Completely off-topic, but I was an avid IH user before I somehow lost my password. For some strange reason resetting the password doesn‘t work for me. It tells me it‘s going to sene a mail with instructions in a few minutes and then nothing ever arrives…

Reach of to Courtland. He helped me out with a similar situation.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#34

Indie Hackers is what led me down the road of building side projects. For me it was the inspiring interviews from people like Mike the founder of Park.io. How one person can build a business solo is amazing. Five years into the future, I am now working to grow T.LY URL Shortener to be the best way to create and manage short links. I have a long way to go but I have made a lot of progress in a "short" time. T.LY URL S…

That Park.io interview is one of my favourites too, I love his approach to "growth" and that it's not always a good thing for a company and he's just happy doing what he does.

Very inspiring for solo side-project people like myself :)

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#35
post #16

As an avid follower of indiehackers.com since its early days, I have to say that I'm disappointed with the current state of the site. What used to be a vibrant community of indie founders sharing their struggles, learnings, and wins has devolved into a spammy showcase of "look how easy it is to make money/followers with this hack" posts. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for celebrating success. But the recent flood of sel…

> isn't pressed to make money At $0 MRR, that's exactly what they are. This is not a dig but the (current) reality of community sites. At Stripe, they were probably being paid as marketers, not engineering managers. (No team, no direct reports.) One problem is that indie hackers, by self selection, are not typically investable. If you're not looking to raise, the forum you spend your time on can't, say, buy equity in…

I think this episode gives hint https://podcasts.apple.com/fi/podcast/270-exiting-for-millio... you almost hear how CSallen and ChanningAllen brains are ticking.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#36
post #8

Wow this is a big one! Congrats csallen@, what drove this change ?

The two founders/employees probably cost $600k/year and at this point, Stripe is so well established that IndieHackers sponsorship probably doesn't move the needle much on Stripe adoption anymore. They probably just mutually agreed to cut ties and the founders will have control over their own revenue / income.

$300k each sounds high. I don't believe they had reports. It was its own fiefdom. Probably closer to ~$200k. I don't believe they are Bay Area–based, either, where 300 might make more sense.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#37
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How what went down? If you mean Strip not owning it anymore, I think the post explains pretty much everything. They're on good terms and Strip is simply supporting rather than owning IH now

Doesn’t explain it at all, really. Presumably Stripe owned it before, now they don’t… or own some smaller portion (since it’s stated they’re an investor) Likely either founders bought back a portion of the company, or Stripe relinquished ownership out of goodwill. Perhaps it was worth very little, I’m not familiar with it

Maybe Stripe gave it back partly out of goodwill. For Stripe to do something without the brothers would be to spend a lot to reinvent it anew. Not worth the effort probably. Indiehackers always struck me as pretty small for something like Stripe to own. As if Microsoft had the one single coffee shop somewhere in Manitoba.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same question, but phrased as: how does it make money?

Perhaps indirectly driving people towards using Stripe's services?

That was explicitly stated at some point - more entrepreneurs, more Stripe customers. Lifting tide.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#39
Indiehackers is not the same resource it used to be. Since the acquisition it has devolved into a spam hub of little value, just like Product Hunt.

If you are looking for inspiration or case studies, try Starter Story. They pretty much picked up where Indiehackers left off.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#40
post #16

As an avid follower of indiehackers.com since its early days, I have to say that I'm disappointed with the current state of the site. What used to be a vibrant community of indie founders sharing their struggles, learnings, and wins has devolved into a spammy showcase of "look how easy it is to make money/followers with this hack" posts. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for celebrating success. But the recent flood of sel…

I also left because it sort of became a "buy my pamphlet on how to make money selling pamphlets" site. Hopefully this indicates a new direction.
Post reply on HN