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Indie Hackers is indie again

indiehackers.com

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Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#71

Post by NiagaraThistle »

kelipso wrote: post #56
nl wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an... odd.. (ok.. wrong) interpretation. Stripe previously completely bought them out. So Stripe had complete ownership. A company firing you and then giving you ownership of a company they had previously bought seems unlikely.

They have $0 MRR, so presumably Stripe was paying them to work on something that makes no money. If Stripe didn't want to do that anymore and didn't want to generate community ill will from shutting down Indie Hackers, this would be the scenario.

It was never bought by stripe to have MRR. The initial acquisition by Stripe was to allow Courtland (and Channeing) to continue just inspiring people to become business founders. No revenue generation, no MRR for IndieHackers. Just continue inspiring people to start businesses by sharing advice and success stories.

The goal was to increase the number of independent online businesses directly or indirectly and by doing so hopefully increase the number of online businesses that used Stripe.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#72

Post by NiagaraThistle »

enumjorge wrote: post #10
ingend88 wrote: post #8

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

If I had to hazard a guess this might be a cost-cutting measure on Stripe's part similar to cuts on content marketing that other companies have done. DigitalOcean divested from CSS Tricks [0], and there was an article earlier today about Amazon shutting down DPReviews [1]. Maybe the Stripe founders gave the IndieHackers folks a chance to spin it off again as opposed to shutting down. [0] https://geoffgraham.me/goodby…

Without an actual clear response from COurtland or Channing, this is the first reason that I've sen that makes sense.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#73

Post by mactunes »

dhruvkar wrote: post #33
mactunes wrote: post #24

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.

I did but never got a response unfortunately.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#74

Post by reducesuffering »

lispybanana wrote: post #36
reducesuffering wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A stripe software engineer in the US is easily making $300k, including equity, unless they’re a new grad. Add another 10-15% for their benefits and total cost to Stripe.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#75

Post by gardenhedge »

nl wrote: post #30
gardenhedge wrote: post #19

Wow this is a pretty big spin. To me it sounds like they basically got fired or let go and/or lost their main investor.

That's an... odd.. (ok.. wrong) interpretation. Stripe previously completely bought them out. So Stripe had complete ownership. A company firing you and then giving you ownership of a company they had previously bought seems unlikely.

It's not odd or wrong. It's clearly based on the information presented.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#76

Post by gardenhedge »

openplatypus wrote: post #42
gardenhedge wrote: post #19

Wow this is a pretty big spin. To me it sounds like they basically got fired or let go and/or lost their main investor.

FTA: > This has been about four months in the making. Branching out on our own is something we mutually decided on with Stripe, and we're excited about it! Do you have reason not to trust @csallen?

There's not enough info. Who brought it up and why?

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#77

Post by gardenhedge »

NiagaraThistle wrote: post #71
kelipso wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have $0 MRR, so presumably Stripe was paying them to work on something that makes no money. If Stripe didn't want to do that anymore and didn't want to generate community ill will from shutting down Indie Hackers, this would be the scenario.

It was never bought by stripe to have MRR. The initial acquisition by Stripe was to allow Courtland (and Channeing) to continue just inspiring people to become business founders. No revenue generation, no MRR for IndieHackers. Just continue inspiring people to start businesses by sharing advice and success stories. The goal was to increase the number of independent online businesses directly or indirectly and by doin…

What has changed?

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#78

Post by xwdv »

NiagaraThistle wrote: post #70
xwdv wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or… they could just run the site for free. It’s not expensive if they make everything static files.

They aren't going to run the site for free. They need to earn revenue from it to stay afloat and earn a living. They will monetize it somehow - ads, subscriptions of some sort, some other manner. Maybe they will sell it outright and move on to some new venture. But they will find a way to monetize it now they are not getting salaries from Stripe.

They can draw salaries from somewhere else and use a portion of that to run the site for free.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#79

Post by NiagaraThistle »

gardenhedge wrote: post #77
NiagaraThistle wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was never bought by stripe to have MRR. The initial acquisition by Stripe was to allow Courtland (and Channeing) to continue just inspiring people to become business founders. No revenue generation, no MRR for IndieHackers. Just continue inspiring people to start businesses by sharing advice and success stories. The goal was to increase the number of independent online businesses directly or indirectly and by doin…

What has changed?

I hope Courtland and/or Channing does a podcast to explain this.

Re: Indie Hackers is indie again

#80

Post by lispybanana »

reducesuffering wrote: post #74
lispybanana wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

A stripe software engineer in the US is easily making $300k, including equity, unless they’re a new grad. Add another 10-15% for their benefits and total cost to Stripe.

Yes, but my argument is they were not engineering the payments infrastructure.

Do you think the Allens had commit privileges to the Stripe codebase? That seems unlikely.

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