Podcast Guru LogoPodcast Guru LogosearchSearchDiscoverMy Podcasts
Apple App Store BadgeGoogle Play Badge
sign-inSign In
menu
close
sign-inSign In
Discover
My Podcasts
Apple App Store Badge
Google Play Badge
Indie Bites
Indie Bites

Indie Bites

James McKinven

Overview
Episodes

Details

Short, bite-sized conversations with indie hackers that have started small, profitable and bootstrapped businesses. You'll learn how they come up with ideas, what they do to validate, find those first customers and make a sustainable income. Episodes every Tuesday.

Recent Episodes

Typeshare's $34k MRR bootstrapped journey - Sam Shore
MAR 5, 2025
Typeshare's $34k MRR bootstrapped journey - Sam Shore

Sam Shore is the co-founder of Typeshare, a writing platform made to create and publish text across the internet. Typeshare has made over $1m in revenue since it was started in 2021, with over 80,000 user, currently $34k MRR I’m speaking to Sam to find out how he started Typeshare as the first of 12 startups he was planning to build, and what made this stick.

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 01:10 Sam's entrepreneurial background
  • 02:03 Failed past projects
  • 03:31 12 startups in 12 months
  • 04:16 The idea for Typeshare
  • 05:38 Getting traction with Typeshare
  • 06:50 Getting to $15k MRR in 1 year with infuential partnerships
  • 09:52 How is Sam making sure he has fun with the business
  • 12:18 How to get better at writing online
  • 14:09 Recommendations

Recommendations

My links

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.

play-circle
15 MIN
How Justin Duke is building Buttondown into the perfect bootstrapped business
FEB 7, 2025
How Justin Duke is building Buttondown into the perfect bootstrapped business

Justin Duke is the founder of Buttondown, a simple email tool he launched in 2017. Justin was last on the podcast 2 years ago when he’d hit $15k MRR and just left his role at Stripe to focus on Buttondown. I was struck by Justin’s well thought through approach to building. He makes calculated risks and shares a lot of his learnings on his blog, Applied Cartography (which is an essential read for any indie hackers).

This episode I catch up with Justin to hear how he’s grown the team to 8 people and his approach to building a company he loves. This is a cut down version of an hour long catch up I had with Justin available on the Indie Bites membership which is available at indiebites.com/membership, where we discuss his personal blog, how he structures his time as a new parent and we go deeper into hiring high agency unicorns.

Timestamps

  • 00:00 - Intro
  • 01:58 - Buttondown growth
  • 03:40 - How to build a company you don't hate
  • 07:16 - Marketing and positioning Buttondown
  • 11:17 - Buttondown's unique home page approach
  • 13:45 - Building a business you enjoy
  • 15:32 - Recommendations

My links

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.

play-circle
17 MIN
How to sell your indie business - Josh Peleg
JAN 22, 2025
How to sell your indie business - Josh Peleg

Today I’m not actually joined by an indie hacker, but by someone who can help a lot of indies out there. Josh Peleg is the Head of Biz Dev and Mergers and Acquisitions at BlueThrone. Essentially, he knows all about how to sell a business from the buyer's side.

In this episode we’re going to learn from Josh exactly what you need to know about selling your indie product. How you find an acquirer, what does the process look like and how you can get a deal over the line.

I’ve spoken to some indie hackers who have gone through exits, such as Rob Walling, Ramy Khuffash, Tibo Louis Lucas and more, but not so much from the other side. Let’s find out what it takes.

Timestamps

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 00:56 What is BlueThrone
  • 02:13 How to find a potential acquirer
  • 04:41 How to set up your business to be sold
  • 06:33 Acquirer red flags
  • 08:31 Acquirer green flags
  • 10:04 The type of exits and what to choose
  • 13:48 Recommendations

Reccos

  • Book - The Master and The Margarita
  • Podcast - 20VC

My links

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.

play-circle
15 MIN
Arvid Kahl on building a profitable SaaS (Podscan), calm funding and juggling a media business
JAN 15, 2025
Arvid Kahl on building a profitable SaaS (Podscan), calm funding and juggling a media business

Arvid Kahl is returning to the podcast for the third time. In 2019, he’d just sold Feedback Panda for a life changing amount of money and then wrote the book Zero to Sold. In 2023, he was in full-on creator mode with The Bootstrapped Founder and had just released The Embedded Entrepreneur. Now, he’s still producing the content but is also spending time on his SaaS Podscan, which is an extremely ambitious tool that transcribes every podcast and let’s you track mentions of your brand.

Timestamps

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 01:27 Arvid's life as a SaaS founder
  • 02:48 Are people still building in public
  • 03:54 No longer being a solo founder
  • 05:24 Raising from Calm Fund
  • 09:17 Keeping The Bootstrapped Founder running
  • 12:10 Wins for 2024
  • 13:36 Parting advice
  • 15:08 Recommendations

Recommendations

My links

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.

play-circle
16 MIN
High Signal founder on the state of indie hacking and building in public in 2025 - Pete Codes
JAN 8, 2025
High Signal founder on the state of indie hacking and building in public in 2025 - Pete Codes

Recently I’ve been reviewing my catalogue of previous guests and have been intrigued to see where they are now, so expect to see a few more returning guests over the next few weeks.

Today is a chap who was last on the podcast 3 years ago, and is still ever present in the indie community. Pete Codes is writes the High Signal newsletter, sharing all the best indie hacking news every week. He’s making his main living through Ghostwriting for Twitter, Bluesky and LinkedIn, but he’s still launching new projects and keeping his previous projects live.

Timestamps

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 01:25 How Pete stays up to date with indie hacking news
  • 03:21 Twitter, Bluesky or LinkedIn
  • 04:36 Is building in public dead?
  • 07:30 Who is still building in public
  • 09:40 Big news stories of 2024 / who has been successful
  • 12:06 Pete's plan for his newsletter, High Signal
  • 12:48 Recommendations

My links

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.

play-circle
14 MIN