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IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

1000 points by ploggingdev 9y ago

brianwawok 9y ago
That was fast
- ptrptr 9y ago
  Indeed, more like an acquihire at this stage.
georgiecasey 9y ago
didn't see this one coming! major congrats to Courtland. just a thought on the power of Hacker News to get noticed by 'players'. surely Patrick Collison heard of Courtland/Indiehackers and Patrick McKenzie through browsing Hacker News? so it's not all procrastination posting here
- chatmasta 9y ago
  It's definitely not procrastination posting. I've formed valuable relationships from people who have reached out after a comment I wrote. Aside from that, commenting on HN is a great way to practice my writing skills, which I rarely get to use since my day-to-day work consists largely of programming. The community here is invaluable in that it provides an audience for your writing, so long as you are willing to fit your arguments into an intellectually rigorous framework and provide sources when necessary. It's much easier to hone your writing ability when you have an audience, and I am very grateful to HN for providing one. I hope the community can avoid a "eternal September" problem and continue providing a valuable service.
  - georgiecasey 9y ago
    Yeah, i hope it doesn't turn out like wickedfire!
    - deleted 9y ago
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  - mezod 9y ago
    i just wanted to say that this was so well written it hurts
kevinwang 9y ago
Wow, congrats!
alistproducer2 9y ago
Does this mean IndieHackers become the propaganda arm for Stripe's customers? Or is this a goodwill purchase? Maybe it's cheaper than a national ad buy targeted directly at potential new customers?
- SmellTheGlove 9y ago
  IndieHackers' founder got really good at getting startups to provide detailed information, and then also on publicizing the crap out of IH itself. If I had to guess, Stripe wants that skillset in marketing (or "growth hacking" or whatever else the cool kids call it now). All of that can feed Stripe's customer pipeline.
- csallen 9y ago
  There's a lot of alignment between what I want to see (personally) and encourage (via Indie Hackers) and what Stripe's mission is: more people starting companies and finding success. It goes much further than simply advertising. If Indie Hackers and other efforts to inspire + educate + empower entrepreneurs can grow to have sufficient impact, then it will materially improve Stripe's bottom line. And of course, Indie Hackers stands to have a much higher chance of accomplishing this with some actual support from Stripe.
  - alistproducer2 9y ago
    Congrats on building something real and I hope the acquisition works out well for you and the company in the long run. I've enjoyed, and been inspired by, a number of IH articles.
minimaxir 9y ago
While going from a blog-to-acquisition in less than a year is an impressive feat, there have been suspicious circumstances around IndieHackers submissions to Hacker News including clickbait titles that are frequently fixed by HN mods, and in one case, explicit voting manipulation with an attempt to bypass the voting ring detector via linking to /newest: http://i.imgur.com/08pAFOw.jpg http://i.imgur.com/08pAFOw.jpg This acquisition sends a disappointing message that growth hacking works.
- canistr 9y ago
  I do recall this submission and commenting on the ridiculous nature of it. But I wouldn't say it was voting manipulation so much as people who may not be familiar with markets voting up something they saw that used neural nets. The disappointing part was that Allen chose to be defensive instead of admitting a mistake on his submission vetting process.
- ag_47 9y ago
  Interesting. Don't hate the player, hate game, though. welcome to the jungle.
  - throwaway88743 9y ago
    As long as Stripe knows what they bought. The way I see it, they didn't buy a popular website, but a determined person willing to do anything to get what he wants.
    - sanswork 9y ago
      You make it sound like he's murdering people to get ahead not that he is targeting a social network with content that is generally relevant and popular. The anything in this case is focused promotion.
      - throwaway88744 9y ago
        > You make it sound like he's murdering people You are putting words into my mouth. He clearly wrote: > I've made a ton of submissions in the past 8 months and experimented with various combinations of stories/titles that the HN audience might like, without always being successful. (Probably one out of every 4-5 submissions turned into an angry mob haha) 20%-25% of his submissions made readers angry. Nevertheless he kept going and tried, by his own admission, to micro-optimise his submissions to get visibility. Maybe my sense of ethics is different than yours, but please don't put words in my mouth.
sebleon 9y ago
w00t w00t, congrats Courtland, this is awesome! Indiehackers has tons of great content that can seriously help companies using Stripe Atlas. Together, IH+Stripe could helps companies go all the way from incorporation to profitability ;)
aresant 9y ago
I bet the total acquisition price is less than Stripe would wind up paying a content agency for fees, placement, etc. over a couple of fiscal years for similar exposure. And they're getting all the goodwill & talent alongside of it as the cherry on top. Brilliant move @stripe and congrats to the founders.
- maerF0x0 9y ago
  Wouldnt that imply not so brilliant move for the founders? The way you've worded it, it sounds like the founders could have got a lot more?
  - hoschicz 9y ago
    No, he's just implying that it's a smart move for Stripe. He doesn't even know the cost of the transaction.
  - georgiecasey 9y ago
    but the founder's alternative was hustling every month to get more advertisers, for probably less money than the Stripe deal. the best deals are where both sides benefit, this sounds like one
  - nugget 9y ago
    Could the site have continued to grow massively month over month for the next few years? If so, the founder probably would have earned more money independently. The HN audience is large, but it's not infinite, so growth could have stalled at some point. That's risk and reward; who knows? And who knows if maximizing profit was even his sole goal. Perhaps it was exposure, or building a real community to help folks start new businesses. Wherever the site was headed independently, I'm willing to bet Stripe can accelerate the process significantly, and that counts for a lot.
zimlu 9y ago
Awesome, Looking forward to seeing what the deal was worth! Would be a real shame if this was hidden behind an NDA or what not.
- giarc 9y ago
  I hope it is hidden. The site owner shouldn't have his/her finances broadcast on the internet. Friends come from the woodwork when they find out you just made $x million (not speaking from experience unfortunately).
philip1209 9y ago
Congratulations, Courtland! Your work has challenged silicon valley attitudes that success is measured by funding. It's refreshing to read about how achievable a profitable, lifestyle-supporting business can be. Good luck at Stripe!
gigatexal 9y ago
Awesome! See, sometimes good things happen to good people.
kenferry 9y ago
Maybe I'm too cynical. This just seems like corporate largesse on Stripe's part, which is kind of neat, except for what happens to things like IndieHackers when that largesse runs out. I guess nice to know Stripe's doing so well they can fund random stuff… ?
ploggingdev 9y ago
First of all, congrats to csallen, I have been following your journey from the day you launched on HN and it was fascinating to follow along. If you haven't read his month in review posts, highly recommended. I hope it's not taboo to speculate on the acquisition price, so here's my take : * extrapolating a $5k/month revenue to a year = $60k/year * acquisition price is roughly 2-4x yearly revenue so $120k to $240k * Plus a full time salary at roughly $120k/year Really cool stuff man, congrats again! One of the things I dislike about advertising on IH was that it was distracting. I see multiple adverts while reading an interview along with links to tweet pull quotes, not a fan of both those aspects. Glad to know that the advertisements will be removed. Can't wait to see how IndieHackers grows, especially the community.
- nugget 9y ago
  Your numbers are low. They didn't buy a suburban lawn care business. I'd ballpark >$1m up front and >$250k annual comp with upside going forward, in some mix of cash and stock. Great move by Stripe. Congrats to Courtland for the exit and what seems like a win-win for both parties.
  - petercooper 9y ago
    I'm not so sure. I haven't seen the higher big ticket multiples scale down to smaller businesses very well (only in the small biz media negotiations I've been involved in or tipped off about - so I am no expert!). I'd certainly take a 16x revenue multiple any day of the week though :-D
    - zazpowered 9y ago
      They didn't buy the site really for the revenue so it's hard to go off of that when estimating acquisition price
    - nugget 9y ago
      16x mature revenue, sure. But if revenue is growing 20% month over month, then what? I see pure talent acquisitions (no tech, no site, no brand) once a month for >$500k/head. Here the founder is a course 6 (CS) MIT grad, obviously smart and talented, able to act as an evangelist to broader communities, with a pre-built launchpad in place. There's real value to that. If the stock component vests over some period of years, it could easily run into the millions, and still be a steal by Stripe. I'll echo another comment downstream: it's interesting to think about whether, in the spirit of the site, they will (or should) reveal the economics of the deal.
kd22 9y ago
Congratulations, Courtland! Really happy to hear this! Keep up the awesome work!
pc 9y ago
Patrick from Stripe here. I wanted to quickly chime in to emphasize that our goal in acquiring Indie Hackers is to simply ensure that the site becomes as successful as possible. The Stripe upside we're hoping for is that more companies get started and that they're more successful. We already see a very large fraction of new internet companies choose Stripe; we're mainly hoping that Indie Hackers can help us grow the overall number rather than to grow our fraction. (Our product has to do the latter part.) Also: congrats to Courtland on building an awesome site! I've been enjoying the interviews on it since it launched. It's very refreshing to hear from so many people who are quietly building real businesses with real revenues.
- brilliantcode 9y ago
  What do see on your acquisition list in 2017/2018?
  - pc 9y ago
    It's very hard to know upfront -- what made us interested in Indie Hackers wasn't just the idea per se (we'd thought about it before and looked at other sites in the past), but rather the fact that it was executed so well. There are tons of things that we'd in principle be open to acquiring if the right company existed. In general, we look for small, highly-effective technical teams with a very high bar for execution quality. (Indie Hackers, which was pretty much just Courtland operating solo, cleared this threshold by a significant margin: https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/851851923502268416 https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/851851923502268416) To the extent that the team really understands either developer tools or startups, that's a bonus.
    - austenallred 9y ago
      > Indie Hackers is one of those things that came out of nowhere with super high quality everything. I love that notion. To come out of nowhere with super high quality everything.
- nitam 9y ago
  You can help us help you by a) becoming available in more countries b) Atlas LLC
brilliantcode 9y ago
2 months ago, HN was ripping apart IH: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591182 But at HN, it seems we have short memories and money triumphs morality.
- tobltobs 9y ago
  The thread you link to is about a story which was published on IH. Sure, publishing this story wasn't a highlight for IH, but starting two swing the morality hammer is a bit much.
  - brilliantcode 9y ago
    read it again, they were ripping IH for letting dubious submissions through without proper vetting. 2017 Feb: "I'm never using IH again" 2017 April: "I love IH"
    - cdelsolar 9y ago
      It's almost as if HN is made of a community of different people with different personalities and motivations.
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- alva 9y ago
  I was one of those who was ripping into the specific IH submission. I did so because the quality of IH is usually so high and I wanted to see that continue. This one example fell short. I am very happy for Courtland and hope IH keeps it up! Congratulations!
nydrewreynolds 9y ago
Didn't see this one coming! Congrats @csallen on the acquisition and congrats to Stripe for recognizing the great value IH has been providing since launch!
ezekg 9y ago
Congrats, Courtland! If I were to be acquired by any company, I'd want it to be Stripe!
skynode 9y ago
Wow! Congratulations Courtland! I've followed IH from day zero and it's been such a great learning experience. Really happy for you man! All the best at Stripe!
makkesk8 9y ago
Now indie hackers should be interviewed on indie hackers :O
- csallen 9y ago
  Check out the timeline! I've written quite a lot about Indie Hackers from the beginning: https://www.indiehackers.com/timeline https://www.indiehackers.com/timeline. The meat of the content is in the monthly review posts.
sly010 9y ago
Will you change the name to mainstreamhackers.com?
dollaholla 9y ago
So in the spirit of what IH actually is, will the financial details be shared?
- csallen 9y ago
  As much as I would personally love to share, there are of course other employees working at Stripe and other acquisitions that Stripe will make in the future, which complicates things. What I will do is try to be as transparent as I possibly can about what's going on behind-the-scenes, traffic numbers, product and growth strategy, etc. I've always thought it was cool that I got to talk about growing Indie Hackers itself at the same time that I've been talking to other entrepreneurs.
  - dollaholla 9y ago
    Somehow I had a feeling that we wouldn't get the juicy trivia :x Congrats!
  - SmellTheGlove 9y ago
    "No" would have been sufficient :) Congrats though. That's huge. Any idea what will change yet as a result of the acquisition?
  - econner 9y ago
    Why do those factors prevent you from sharing? Transparency is difficult, but isn't that the whole point of Indie Hackers?
    - smacktoward 9y ago
      The logical assumption would be that they gave IH a very sweet deal, much sweeter than they'd generally offer an acquisition target with similar financials. So if they release the details, future acquisition targets will expect similarly sweet deals, which Stripe has no interest in seeing.
      - 9y ago
searchhn 9y ago
Congrats! I have always loved and been inspired by the stories at IndieHackers.
superasn 9y ago
One of my favorite sites that provided real value. I guess IndieHackers did a lot of things right which created such fast growth with a quick exit. 1) Great design. Really professional feel (even though it just a wordpress blog) 2) Regular updated content to keep visitors coming back. 3) Highly targeted to hacker community / product creators - no wonder it was featured over and over again on the front page 4) In built SEO and traffic. People who are featured on it link back to it. People link to it for inspiration (great social signals). What else? Anyone else wanna chime in?
- chpmrc 9y ago
  I'm not sure it's wordpress, from the source code it looks like a custom Ember app but I might be wrong.
  - superasn 9y ago
    You are right. I checked the source code and found "Wordpress" a bunch of times but it looks like it's because "Kanban for WordPress" featured on the homepage. Regardless their design is really slick (especially the sorting and filtering on top) which definitely helps increase the site interaction and usability.
- Zaheer 9y ago
  He mentioned he actually uses Ember and built it in a week - really impressive: https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/launching-to-300000-pageviews https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/launching-to-300000-pagevi...
- manigandham 9y ago
  It's a custom built app. The about section has the details: https://www.indiehackers.com/about https://www.indiehackers.com/about > Indie Hackers is an Ember.js app on the front-end. On the back-end, I'm using Ember FastBoot for server-side rendering. The app runs on a Node.js server managed by AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Most pages are cached via CloudFront. I did all the design myself. I built the blog from scratch. I built the forum from scratch, too, and I use Firebase to store the data and accounts. All of the blog and interview content is stored in JSON and Markdown files that I host on S3.
wanqu 9y ago
Congrats to Courtland! Happy to be one of your interviewees!
pnathan 9y ago
Super cool & congratulations.
fpgaminer 9y ago
Congrats to csallen. This makes me ... feel weird. Not sure what it is exactly. Let me explain. I'm an aspiring indie hacker. Currently soaking in the relaxation of a much needed sabbatical following my previous 8 year long employment (what a ride that was). When I'm ready, I'm going switch gears and devote myself to starting a bunch of small "indie hacker" type projects. I've been on HN for quite awhile now and I always enjoy reading about startups and being engrossed in the YCombinator community. My previous job was a startup, but I was purely in technical roles. I think it's time to get my feet wet on the business side. So I've followed IndieHackers.com intently. I went so far as to read almost all their interviews and breakdown my analysis in a blog post (https://hackernoon.com/indie-startups-the-ingredients-of-success-74531fe3a019 https://hackernoon.com/indie-startups-the-ingredients-of-suc...). After awhile I really started to dig the whole "indie hacker movement". The idea that SV type startups aren't the only game in town. You don't have to build a rocket ship. You can built a fighter jet. You may not make it into space, but fighter jets a cool too. I didn't start digging it just because it sounded cool, though. The idea that these kinds of one or few developer teams could start consuming the lower hanging fruit that SV startups won't touch because they aren't explosive growth opportunities? It just makes sense. Yeah, in some way it's just small business reinvented. But Courtland said something that stuck in my mind. The vast explosion of developer tools, libraries, SaaS, cloud computer, APIS, etc over the past few years has laid the foundation for single person teams to tackle problems they never could have managed alone in the past. It reeks of opportunity. So, with all that background, this acquisition makes me feel weird. On the one hand, I'm totally happy for csallen. What a great thing to happen. I don't mean to down play that at all. On the other ... it's sad to see his indie business die. Perhaps he doesn't see it that way; dying I mean. Obviously this is a great opportunity for him and his brother to focus on what's important for the site. That's a good thing. But it does mean IndieHackers.com is no longer an indie hacker business itself. That's why I feel weird about it. I'm of course concerned about Stripe's intentions. IndieHackers is a great resource, and it'd be a shame to see it consumed by typical corporate greed and manipulations. I don't mean to imply that's Stripe's MO. But I think I'm not the only one afraid of that, founded or unfounded. Plenty of people here are already calling foul on IndieHackers for their past behavior. At the end of the day I'll get over the fact that IndieHackers is no longer an indie hacker. But I really do truly hope that it stays true to its core mission: to provide a platform for us to share our stories, unfiltered and transparent. Congrats, and thank you csallen.
tixocloud 9y ago
Congratulations on a wonderful and inspirational site!
Jpoechill 9y ago
Kudos!
sremani 9y ago
IndieHackers is an awesome sight, and with Stripe Atlas, I see a good vertical developing. IndieHacker is an inspiring high quality source. Definitely, agree with Patrick of Stripe, the execution was stellar.
cableshaft 9y ago
Just wanted to say congratulations to Courtland! I've seen you share the progress of your business since it was introduced, and to see it grow and become so successful is very inspiring. You earned this! Hopefully it motivates others as well. I think it might have motivated me.
newsat13 9y ago
Wow, 6k in ad revenue per month sounds a lot. How many page hits are required to get this kind of ad revenue?
- csallen 9y ago
  Not as many as you might think. It's more about having a specific and valuable audience and doing sales. I've written about it a bit in some of my monthly review posts: https://www.indiehackers.com/timeline https://www.indiehackers.com/timeline
  - newsat13 9y ago
    Oh, thanks for the link. This is quite incredible. Where are the ads btw? I don't see a single ad on your website :-) Or did you remove them post-acquisition?
    - deleted 9y ago
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mankash666 9y ago
IH is a refreshing flip side to the VC/YC narrative that's become canonical in the startup world! As againsit VC valuations, and pressure of growth at all costs (mostly profitability), IH companies prioritize organic, sustainable growth without loss of founder control. Many of them end up financially successful, which is inspiring to aspiring entrepreneurs. Well done Courtland Allen! Without IH, this flip-side view of startups wouldn't have a platform.
LukasRos 9y ago
That's a really unexpected announcement, but congratulations! Hope this changes the site for the better, not the worse.
- ChanningAllen 9y ago
  Take heart: it means we'll spend less time managing ads and experimenting with business models, and more time cultivating the community and improving the interviews and podcast!
king_kerr 9y ago
This is dope. Salute to Courtland and Stripe.
avip 9y ago
Congrats to the involved parties, great job, etc. IH is/was, unfortunately, full of unsubstantiated stories and made up numbers, presented by owners trying to upsell their business, without any verification or "hard questions" by the site owner. As we see, this worked. I'm not sure what's the lesson here. Fact-checking is for losers maybe?
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- WA 9y ago
  > full of unsubstantiated stories and made up numbers Possibly, but how would you know? And what would some good hard questions be? Edit: Okay maybe because of this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591182
jitendrac 9y ago
congratulations, that is a great new.
skdotdan 9y ago
That's incredible. Congratulations!
5_minutes 9y ago
Nice to see your hard work paid off!
kkt262 9y ago
Courtland, this is absolutely fantastic. Congrats man! I'm wondering how this works out for you as an entrepreneur. Obviously now you're working for a larger corporation, but does your long-term vision align? For example, is your deal structured in a way that growing indie hackers also personally grows your income? Or is it now just a strict employee-employer relationship with a bonus (acquisition offer) upfront?
- tianlins 9y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, I think the deal benefits stripe as it acquires a good (and growing) user base.
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kabuay 9y ago
Congrats to getting acquired for such a simple site and idea that provides great value. Inspiring
musha68k 9y ago
Congrats to csallen – I have recommended IndieHackers to many a fellow developer, it's a great project!
imafish 9y ago
Transparency is what makes IH great. I don't see this sell as a good move, if Stripe cannot appreciate that, and allow you to disclose how much you get from the deal.
daveheq 9y ago
Hacker: "a person who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to data." This word is not a good connotation, and a company that's an online/mobile payment gateway buying a company with "hacker" in its name that doesn't seem to understand the definition of the word "hacker" doesn't look good. It wouldn't matter to me what IndieHackers did, I would have passed them up just because they use a nefarious word in their name without understanding how it's used.
- kasbah 9y ago
  Whom are you quoting? It's really confusing as I thought you must be quoting the article. Surely if you are commenting on a site called Hacker News you know there is more than one definition of "Hacker".
- trcollinson 9y ago
  You do realize you are posting this comment on a site called Hacker News? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hacker https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hacker Also just to be thorough there is the dictionary definition of hacker. Your definition came in at 4th place.
- eon1 9y ago
  Technically such a person should be called a cracker, no? A hacker is just someone who hacks on things. Where is this pop definition from?
- edem 9y ago
  I don't know where did you get that quote from but it describes "crackers". This is what hackers are all about: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
- deleted 9y ago
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- dmingoddd 9y ago
  troll level extreme is all I can think about.. If thats not the case then clueless is the only other way to describe this.
hsod 9y ago
I've been reading HN for 5 or 6 years and this feels very strange to me. From the comments in here by the principles it kind of seems like Stripe is doing IH a favor. A few things that stick in my craw: 1. This seems like it would be damaging to IH's brand image (since it will now be perceived as a PR arm of Stripe, and it's all about independence) 2. Stripe's stated goal here is simply to ensure the success of IH in order to drive more people to start companies. That's not exactly compelling on it's own, and with (1), even less so. 3. IH was apparently very big on financial transparency, yet the principles are being decidedly opaque about financials in this thread. Are these types of deals common? Does Stripe own any other media companies? [note: these are just my thoughts. i don't think i'm entitled to any further explanation nor do i think anything nefarious is going on.]
- fratlas 9y ago
  Re: point 2; I can see why Stripe would believe this. I personally have read/been inspired by IndieHackers, and I'm looking at starting a SaaS and Stripe is definitely my billing software of choice.
- searchhn 9y ago
  2) IH has been a source of inspiration and motivation for me. Atlas and Stripe are on my list services that I look forward to use in the near future.
- pharrlax 9y ago
  >IH was apparently very big on financial transparency, yet the principles are being decidedly opaque about financials in this thread. Financial transparency about profit from a bootstrapped startup is a different from financial transparency about a contract between two parties. Secrecy around the latter is a little more understandable.
  - econner 9y ago
    Why?
    - 9y ago
mattbgates 9y ago
This is really amazing! Very helpful site and a wonderful thing that makes me confident in the reasons why I use Stripe for my payment processing needs! :)
itwy 9y ago
Isn't it ironic the details of the acquisition isn't being transparently shared? From Indie Hackers site: "Anyone with a business or side project that's generating at least $300/mo in revenue. There's no upper limit. Of course, you have to be willing to share your revenue — the point of this site is transparency!" Source: https://www.indiehackers.com/submit https://www.indiehackers.com/submit I think we have the "right" to know what the transaction entailed; how much the owner was exactly paid, that is.
- willbw 9y ago
  Why do you think you have that right? Honestly curious.
  - itwy 9y ago
    The product took off thanks to the HN community. Hence the "right". He is simply a hypocrite if he doesn't share that.
- wingerlang 9y ago
  The selling price seems very different from 'revenue per month' though.
  - kluck 9y ago
    Revenue is about $6000 per month and the costs for running the site are probaly quite low, minus the costs for the owner himself, so maybe monthly profit is around $4000? So given the formula for non-internet companies which are valued around 2-3 times the annual profit, the company would be worth around $120000. Additionally consider these facts: the site is quite popular and has gained some traction but is still primarily interesting for a specific niche (startup founders). I would say the price for acquisition is at least $500000 and may very well be around or above 1 million which is even more likely because the owner has agreed to continue work on the site and growing it even more.
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hasanzuav 9y ago
What a brilliant site, definitely an inspiration! Congrats!
kirso 9y ago
And yet here is what is wrong with the tech world, people start speculating on acquisition price and how much other people made even though news are about an awesome product and community joining another awesome product to make even more amazing stuff. Btw. the best growth hacking is building an amazing product which sells itself. Click-bait articles, well ok you need some eyeballs but interviewes always reflected my expectations unlike BuzzFeed stuff. Big congrats!
gcatalfamo 9y ago
I know it is a useless comment for HN, just wanted to say congrats because I think it is really well-deserved.
aryamaan 9y ago
Guess we need one post about IH on IH.

1000 points by ploggingdev 9y ago

brianwawok 9y ago

That was fast

ptrptr 9y ago
Indeed, more like an acquihire at this stage.

georgiecasey 9y ago

didn't see this one coming! major congrats to Courtland. just a thought on the power of Hacker News to get noticed by 'players'. surely Patrick Collison heard of Courtland/Indiehackers and Patrick McKenzie through browsing Hacker News? so it's not all procrastination posting here

chatmasta 9y ago
It's definitely not procrastination posting. I've formed valuable relationships from people who have reached out after a comment I wrote. Aside from that, commenting on HN is a great way to practice my writing skills, which I rarely get to use since my day-to-day work consists largely of programming. The community here is invaluable in that it provides an audience for your writing, so long as you are willing to fit your arguments into an intellectually rigorous framework and provide sources when necessary. It's much easier to hone your writing ability when you have an audience, and I am very grateful to HN for providing one. I hope the community can avoid a "eternal September" problem and continue providing a valuable service.
- georgiecasey 9y ago
  Yeah, i hope it doesn't turn out like wickedfire!
  - deleted 9y ago
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- mezod 9y ago
  i just wanted to say that this was so well written it hurts

kevinwang 9y ago

Wow, congrats!

alistproducer2 9y ago

Does this mean IndieHackers become the propaganda arm for Stripe's customers? Or is this a goodwill purchase? Maybe it's cheaper than a national ad buy targeted directly at potential new customers?

SmellTheGlove 9y ago
IndieHackers' founder got really good at getting startups to provide detailed information, and then also on publicizing the crap out of IH itself. If I had to guess, Stripe wants that skillset in marketing (or "growth hacking" or whatever else the cool kids call it now). All of that can feed Stripe's customer pipeline.
csallen 9y ago
There's a lot of alignment between what I want to see (personally) and encourage (via Indie Hackers) and what Stripe's mission is: more people starting companies and finding success. It goes much further than simply advertising. If Indie Hackers and other efforts to inspire + educate + empower entrepreneurs can grow to have sufficient impact, then it will materially improve Stripe's bottom line. And of course, Indie Hackers stands to have a much higher chance of accomplishing this with some actual support from Stripe.
- alistproducer2 9y ago
  Congrats on building something real and I hope the acquisition works out well for you and the company in the long run. I've enjoyed, and been inspired by, a number of IH articles.

minimaxir 9y ago

While going from a blog-to-acquisition in less than a year is an impressive feat, there have been suspicious circumstances around IndieHackers submissions to Hacker News including clickbait titles that are frequently fixed by HN mods, and in one case, explicit voting manipulation with an attempt to bypass the voting ring detector via linking to /newest: http://i.imgur.com/08pAFOw.jpg http://i.imgur.com/08pAFOw.jpg This acquisition sends a disappointing message that growth hacking works.

canistr 9y ago
I do recall this submission and commenting on the ridiculous nature of it. But I wouldn't say it was voting manipulation so much as people who may not be familiar with markets voting up something they saw that used neural nets. The disappointing part was that Allen chose to be defensive instead of admitting a mistake on his submission vetting process.
ag_47 9y ago
Interesting. Don't hate the player, hate game, though. welcome to the jungle.
- throwaway88743 9y ago
  As long as Stripe knows what they bought. The way I see it, they didn't buy a popular website, but a determined person willing to do anything to get what he wants.
  - sanswork 9y ago
    You make it sound like he's murdering people to get ahead not that he is targeting a social network with content that is generally relevant and popular. The anything in this case is focused promotion.
    - throwaway88744 9y ago
      > You make it sound like he's murdering people You are putting words into my mouth. He clearly wrote: > I've made a ton of submissions in the past 8 months and experimented with various combinations of stories/titles that the HN audience might like, without always being successful. (Probably one out of every 4-5 submissions turned into an angry mob haha) 20%-25% of his submissions made readers angry. Nevertheless he kept going and tried, by his own admission, to micro-optimise his submissions to get visibility. Maybe my sense of ethics is different than yours, but please don't put words in my mouth.

sebleon 9y ago

w00t w00t, congrats Courtland, this is awesome! Indiehackers has tons of great content that can seriously help companies using Stripe Atlas. Together, IH+Stripe could helps companies go all the way from incorporation to profitability ;)

aresant 9y ago

I bet the total acquisition price is less than Stripe would wind up paying a content agency for fees, placement, etc. over a couple of fiscal years for similar exposure. And they're getting all the goodwill & talent alongside of it as the cherry on top. Brilliant move @stripe and congrats to the founders.

maerF0x0 9y ago
Wouldnt that imply not so brilliant move for the founders? The way you've worded it, it sounds like the founders could have got a lot more?
- hoschicz 9y ago
  No, he's just implying that it's a smart move for Stripe. He doesn't even know the cost of the transaction.
- georgiecasey 9y ago
  but the founder's alternative was hustling every month to get more advertisers, for probably less money than the Stripe deal. the best deals are where both sides benefit, this sounds like one
- nugget 9y ago
  Could the site have continued to grow massively month over month for the next few years? If so, the founder probably would have earned more money independently. The HN audience is large, but it's not infinite, so growth could have stalled at some point. That's risk and reward; who knows? And who knows if maximizing profit was even his sole goal. Perhaps it was exposure, or building a real community to help folks start new businesses. Wherever the site was headed independently, I'm willing to bet Stripe can accelerate the process significantly, and that counts for a lot.

zimlu 9y ago

Awesome, Looking forward to seeing what the deal was worth! Would be a real shame if this was hidden behind an NDA or what not.

giarc 9y ago
I hope it is hidden. The site owner shouldn't have his/her finances broadcast on the internet. Friends come from the woodwork when they find out you just made $x million (not speaking from experience unfortunately).

philip1209 9y ago

Congratulations, Courtland! Your work has challenged silicon valley attitudes that success is measured by funding. It's refreshing to read about how achievable a profitable, lifestyle-supporting business can be. Good luck at Stripe!

gigatexal 9y ago

Awesome! See, sometimes good things happen to good people.

kenferry 9y ago

Maybe I'm too cynical. This just seems like corporate largesse on Stripe's part, which is kind of neat, except for what happens to things like IndieHackers when that largesse runs out. I guess nice to know Stripe's doing so well they can fund random stuff… ?

ploggingdev 9y ago

First of all, congrats to csallen, I have been following your journey from the day you launched on HN and it was fascinating to follow along. If you haven't read his month in review posts, highly recommended. I hope it's not taboo to speculate on the acquisition price, so here's my take : * extrapolating a $5k/month revenue to a year = $60k/year * acquisition price is roughly 2-4x yearly revenue so $120k to $240k * Plus a full time salary at roughly $120k/year Really cool stuff man, congrats again! One of the things I dislike about advertising on IH was that it was distracting. I see multiple adverts while reading an interview along with links to tweet pull quotes, not a fan of both those aspects. Glad to know that the advertisements will be removed. Can't wait to see how IndieHackers grows, especially the community.

nugget 9y ago
Your numbers are low. They didn't buy a suburban lawn care business. I'd ballpark >$1m up front and >$250k annual comp with upside going forward, in some mix of cash and stock. Great move by Stripe. Congrats to Courtland for the exit and what seems like a win-win for both parties.
- petercooper 9y ago
  I'm not so sure. I haven't seen the higher big ticket multiples scale down to smaller businesses very well (only in the small biz media negotiations I've been involved in or tipped off about - so I am no expert!). I'd certainly take a 16x revenue multiple any day of the week though :-D
  - zazpowered 9y ago
    They didn't buy the site really for the revenue so it's hard to go off of that when estimating acquisition price
  - nugget 9y ago
    16x mature revenue, sure. But if revenue is growing 20% month over month, then what? I see pure talent acquisitions (no tech, no site, no brand) once a month for >$500k/head. Here the founder is a course 6 (CS) MIT grad, obviously smart and talented, able to act as an evangelist to broader communities, with a pre-built launchpad in place. There's real value to that. If the stock component vests over some period of years, it could easily run into the millions, and still be a steal by Stripe. I'll echo another comment downstream: it's interesting to think about whether, in the spirit of the site, they will (or should) reveal the economics of the deal.

kd22 9y ago

Congratulations, Courtland! Really happy to hear this! Keep up the awesome work!

pc 9y ago

Patrick from Stripe here. I wanted to quickly chime in to emphasize that our goal in acquiring Indie Hackers is to simply ensure that the site becomes as successful as possible. The Stripe upside we're hoping for is that more companies get started and that they're more successful. We already see a very large fraction of new internet companies choose Stripe; we're mainly hoping that Indie Hackers can help us grow the overall number rather than to grow our fraction. (Our product has to do the latter part.) Also: congrats to Courtland on building an awesome site! I've been enjoying the interviews on it since it launched. It's very refreshing to hear from so many people who are quietly building real businesses with real revenues.

brilliantcode 9y ago
What do see on your acquisition list in 2017/2018?
- pc 9y ago
  It's very hard to know upfront -- what made us interested in Indie Hackers wasn't just the idea per se (we'd thought about it before and looked at other sites in the past), but rather the fact that it was executed so well. There are tons of things that we'd in principle be open to acquiring if the right company existed. In general, we look for small, highly-effective technical teams with a very high bar for execution quality. (Indie Hackers, which was pretty much just Courtland operating solo, cleared this threshold by a significant margin: https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/851851923502268416 https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/851851923502268416) To the extent that the team really understands either developer tools or startups, that's a bonus.
  - austenallred 9y ago
    > Indie Hackers is one of those things that came out of nowhere with super high quality everything. I love that notion. To come out of nowhere with super high quality everything.
nitam 9y ago
You can help us help you by a) becoming available in more countries b) Atlas LLC

brilliantcode 9y ago

2 months ago, HN was ripping apart IH: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591182 But at HN, it seems we have short memories and money triumphs morality.

tobltobs 9y ago
The thread you link to is about a story which was published on IH. Sure, publishing this story wasn't a highlight for IH, but starting two swing the morality hammer is a bit much.
- brilliantcode 9y ago
  read it again, they were ripping IH for letting dubious submissions through without proper vetting. 2017 Feb: "I'm never using IH again" 2017 April: "I love IH"
  - cdelsolar 9y ago
    It's almost as if HN is made of a community of different people with different personalities and motivations.
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alva 9y ago
I was one of those who was ripping into the specific IH submission. I did so because the quality of IH is usually so high and I wanted to see that continue. This one example fell short. I am very happy for Courtland and hope IH keeps it up! Congratulations!

nydrewreynolds 9y ago

Didn't see this one coming! Congrats @csallen on the acquisition and congrats to Stripe for recognizing the great value IH has been providing since launch!

ezekg 9y ago

Congrats, Courtland! If I were to be acquired by any company, I'd want it to be Stripe!

skynode 9y ago

Wow! Congratulations Courtland! I've followed IH from day zero and it's been such a great learning experience. Really happy for you man! All the best at Stripe!

makkesk8 9y ago

Now indie hackers should be interviewed on indie hackers :O

csallen 9y ago
Check out the timeline! I've written quite a lot about Indie Hackers from the beginning: https://www.indiehackers.com/timeline https://www.indiehackers.com/timeline. The meat of the content is in the monthly review posts.

sly010 9y ago

Will you change the name to mainstreamhackers.com?

dollaholla 9y ago

So in the spirit of what IH actually is, will the financial details be shared?

csallen 9y ago
As much as I would personally love to share, there are of course other employees working at Stripe and other acquisitions that Stripe will make in the future, which complicates things. What I will do is try to be as transparent as I possibly can about what's going on behind-the-scenes, traffic numbers, product and growth strategy, etc. I've always thought it was cool that I got to talk about growing Indie Hackers itself at the same time that I've been talking to other entrepreneurs.
- dollaholla 9y ago
  Somehow I had a feeling that we wouldn't get the juicy trivia :x Congrats!
- SmellTheGlove 9y ago
  "No" would have been sufficient :) Congrats though. That's huge. Any idea what will change yet as a result of the acquisition?
- econner 9y ago
  Why do those factors prevent you from sharing? Transparency is difficult, but isn't that the whole point of Indie Hackers?
  - smacktoward 9y ago
    The logical assumption would be that they gave IH a very sweet deal, much sweeter than they'd generally offer an acquisition target with similar financials. So if they release the details, future acquisition targets will expect similarly sweet deals, which Stripe has no interest in seeing.
    - 9y ago

searchhn 9y ago

Congrats! I have always loved and been inspired by the stories at IndieHackers.

superasn 9y ago

One of my favorite sites that provided real value. I guess IndieHackers did a lot of things right which created such fast growth with a quick exit. 1) Great design. Really professional feel (even though it just a wordpress blog) 2) Regular updated content to keep visitors coming back. 3) Highly targeted to hacker community / product creators - no wonder it was featured over and over again on the front page 4) In built SEO and traffic. People who are featured on it link back to it. People link to it for inspiration (great social signals). What else? Anyone else wanna chime in?

chpmrc 9y ago
I'm not sure it's wordpress, from the source code it looks like a custom Ember app but I might be wrong.
- superasn 9y ago
  You are right. I checked the source code and found "Wordpress" a bunch of times but it looks like it's because "Kanban for WordPress" featured on the homepage. Regardless their design is really slick (especially the sorting and filtering on top) which definitely helps increase the site interaction and usability.
Zaheer 9y ago
He mentioned he actually uses Ember and built it in a week - really impressive: https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/launching-to-300000-pageviews https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/launching-to-300000-pagevi...
manigandham 9y ago
It's a custom built app. The about section has the details: https://www.indiehackers.com/about https://www.indiehackers.com/about > Indie Hackers is an Ember.js app on the front-end. On the back-end, I'm using Ember FastBoot for server-side rendering. The app runs on a Node.js server managed by AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Most pages are cached via CloudFront. I did all the design myself. I built the blog from scratch. I built the forum from scratch, too, and I use Firebase to store the data and accounts. All of the blog and interview content is stored in JSON and Markdown files that I host on S3.

wanqu 9y ago

Congrats to Courtland! Happy to be one of your interviewees!

pnathan 9y ago

Super cool & congratulations.

fpgaminer 9y ago

Congrats to csallen. This makes me ... feel weird. Not sure what it is exactly. Let me explain. I'm an aspiring indie hacker. Currently soaking in the relaxation of a much needed sabbatical following my previous 8 year long employment (what a ride that was). When I'm ready, I'm going switch gears and devote myself to starting a bunch of small "indie hacker" type projects. I've been on HN for quite awhile now and I always enjoy reading about startups and being engrossed in the YCombinator community. My previous job was a startup, but I was purely in technical roles. I think it's time to get my feet wet on the business side. So I've followed IndieHackers.com intently. I went so far as to read almost all their interviews and breakdown my analysis in a blog post (https://hackernoon.com/indie-startups-the-ingredients-of-success-74531fe3a019 https://hackernoon.com/indie-startups-the-ingredients-of-suc...). After awhile I really started to dig the whole "indie hacker movement". The idea that SV type startups aren't the only game in town. You don't have to build a rocket ship. You can built a fighter jet. You may not make it into space, but fighter jets a cool too. I didn't start digging it just because it sounded cool, though. The idea that these kinds of one or few developer teams could start consuming the lower hanging fruit that SV startups won't touch because they aren't explosive growth opportunities? It just makes sense. Yeah, in some way it's just small business reinvented. But Courtland said something that stuck in my mind. The vast explosion of developer tools, libraries, SaaS, cloud computer, APIS, etc over the past few years has laid the foundation for single person teams to tackle problems they never could have managed alone in the past. It reeks of opportunity. So, with all that background, this acquisition makes me feel weird. On the one hand, I'm totally happy for csallen. What a great thing to happen. I don't mean to down play that at all. On the other ... it's sad to see his indie business die. Perhaps he doesn't see it that way; dying I mean. Obviously this is a great opportunity for him and his brother to focus on what's important for the site. That's a good thing. But it does mean IndieHackers.com is no longer an indie hacker business itself. That's why I feel weird about it. I'm of course concerned about Stripe's intentions. IndieHackers is a great resource, and it'd be a shame to see it consumed by typical corporate greed and manipulations. I don't mean to imply that's Stripe's MO. But I think I'm not the only one afraid of that, founded or unfounded. Plenty of people here are already calling foul on IndieHackers for their past behavior. At the end of the day I'll get over the fact that IndieHackers is no longer an indie hacker. But I really do truly hope that it stays true to its core mission: to provide a platform for us to share our stories, unfiltered and transparent. Congrats, and thank you csallen.

tixocloud 9y ago

Congratulations on a wonderful and inspirational site!

Jpoechill 9y ago

Kudos!

sremani 9y ago

IndieHackers is an awesome sight, and with Stripe Atlas, I see a good vertical developing. IndieHacker is an inspiring high quality source. Definitely, agree with Patrick of Stripe, the execution was stellar.

cableshaft 9y ago

Just wanted to say congratulations to Courtland! I've seen you share the progress of your business since it was introduced, and to see it grow and become so successful is very inspiring. You earned this! Hopefully it motivates others as well. I think it might have motivated me.

newsat13 9y ago

Wow, 6k in ad revenue per month sounds a lot. How many page hits are required to get this kind of ad revenue?

csallen 9y ago
Not as many as you might think. It's more about having a specific and valuable audience and doing sales. I've written about it a bit in some of my monthly review posts: https://www.indiehackers.com/timeline https://www.indiehackers.com/timeline
- newsat13 9y ago
  Oh, thanks for the link. This is quite incredible. Where are the ads btw? I don't see a single ad on your website :-) Or did you remove them post-acquisition?
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mankash666 9y ago

IH is a refreshing flip side to the VC/YC narrative that's become canonical in the startup world! As againsit VC valuations, and pressure of growth at all costs (mostly profitability), IH companies prioritize organic, sustainable growth without loss of founder control. Many of them end up financially successful, which is inspiring to aspiring entrepreneurs. Well done Courtland Allen! Without IH, this flip-side view of startups wouldn't have a platform.

LukasRos 9y ago

That's a really unexpected announcement, but congratulations! Hope this changes the site for the better, not the worse.

ChanningAllen 9y ago
Take heart: it means we'll spend less time managing ads and experimenting with business models, and more time cultivating the community and improving the interviews and podcast!

king_kerr 9y ago

This is dope. Salute to Courtland and Stripe.

avip 9y ago

Congrats to the involved parties, great job, etc. IH is/was, unfortunately, full of unsubstantiated stories and made up numbers, presented by owners trying to upsell their business, without any verification or "hard questions" by the site owner. As we see, this worked. I'm not sure what's the lesson here. Fact-checking is for losers maybe?

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WA 9y ago
> full of unsubstantiated stories and made up numbers Possibly, but how would you know? And what would some good hard questions be? Edit: Okay maybe because of this one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13591182

jitendrac 9y ago

congratulations, that is a great new.

skdotdan 9y ago

That's incredible. Congratulations!

5_minutes 9y ago

Nice to see your hard work paid off!

kkt262 9y ago

Courtland, this is absolutely fantastic. Congrats man! I'm wondering how this works out for you as an entrepreneur. Obviously now you're working for a larger corporation, but does your long-term vision align? For example, is your deal structured in a way that growing indie hackers also personally grows your income? Or is it now just a strict employee-employer relationship with a bonus (acquisition offer) upfront?

tianlins 9y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, I think the deal benefits stripe as it acquires a good (and growing) user base.

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kabuay 9y ago

Congrats to getting acquired for such a simple site and idea that provides great value. Inspiring

musha68k 9y ago

Congrats to csallen – I have recommended IndieHackers to many a fellow developer, it's a great project!

imafish 9y ago

Transparency is what makes IH great. I don't see this sell as a good move, if Stripe cannot appreciate that, and allow you to disclose how much you get from the deal.

daveheq 9y ago

Hacker: "a person who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to data." This word is not a good connotation, and a company that's an online/mobile payment gateway buying a company with "hacker" in its name that doesn't seem to understand the definition of the word "hacker" doesn't look good. It wouldn't matter to me what IndieHackers did, I would have passed them up just because they use a nefarious word in their name without understanding how it's used.

kasbah 9y ago
Whom are you quoting? It's really confusing as I thought you must be quoting the article. Surely if you are commenting on a site called Hacker News you know there is more than one definition of "Hacker".
trcollinson 9y ago
You do realize you are posting this comment on a site called Hacker News? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hacker https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hacker Also just to be thorough there is the dictionary definition of hacker. Your definition came in at 4th place.
eon1 9y ago
Technically such a person should be called a cracker, no? A hacker is just someone who hacks on things. Where is this pop definition from?
edem 9y ago
I don't know where did you get that quote from but it describes "crackers". This is what hackers are all about: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
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dmingoddd 9y ago
troll level extreme is all I can think about.. If thats not the case then clueless is the only other way to describe this.

hsod 9y ago

I've been reading HN for 5 or 6 years and this feels very strange to me. From the comments in here by the principles it kind of seems like Stripe is doing IH a favor. A few things that stick in my craw: 1. This seems like it would be damaging to IH's brand image (since it will now be perceived as a PR arm of Stripe, and it's all about independence) 2. Stripe's stated goal here is simply to ensure the success of IH in order to drive more people to start companies. That's not exactly compelling on it's own, and with (1), even less so. 3. IH was apparently very big on financial transparency, yet the principles are being decidedly opaque about financials in this thread. Are these types of deals common? Does Stripe own any other media companies? [note: these are just my thoughts. i don't think i'm entitled to any further explanation nor do i think anything nefarious is going on.]

fratlas 9y ago
Re: point 2; I can see why Stripe would believe this. I personally have read/been inspired by IndieHackers, and I'm looking at starting a SaaS and Stripe is definitely my billing software of choice.
searchhn 9y ago
2) IH has been a source of inspiration and motivation for me. Atlas and Stripe are on my list services that I look forward to use in the near future.
pharrlax 9y ago
>IH was apparently very big on financial transparency, yet the principles are being decidedly opaque about financials in this thread. Financial transparency about profit from a bootstrapped startup is a different from financial transparency about a contract between two parties. Secrecy around the latter is a little more understandable.
- econner 9y ago
  Why?
  - 9y ago

mattbgates 9y ago

This is really amazing! Very helpful site and a wonderful thing that makes me confident in the reasons why I use Stripe for my payment processing needs! :)

itwy 9y ago

Isn't it ironic the details of the acquisition isn't being transparently shared? From Indie Hackers site: "Anyone with a business or side project that's generating at least $300/mo in revenue. There's no upper limit. Of course, you have to be willing to share your revenue — the point of this site is transparency!" Source: https://www.indiehackers.com/submit https://www.indiehackers.com/submit I think we have the "right" to know what the transaction entailed; how much the owner was exactly paid, that is.

willbw 9y ago
Why do you think you have that right? Honestly curious.
- itwy 9y ago
  The product took off thanks to the HN community. Hence the "right". He is simply a hypocrite if he doesn't share that.
wingerlang 9y ago
The selling price seems very different from 'revenue per month' though.
- kluck 9y ago
  Revenue is about $6000 per month and the costs for running the site are probaly quite low, minus the costs for the owner himself, so maybe monthly profit is around $4000? So given the formula for non-internet companies which are valued around 2-3 times the annual profit, the company would be worth around $120000. Additionally consider these facts: the site is quite popular and has gained some traction but is still primarily interesting for a specific niche (startup founders). I would say the price for acquisition is at least $500000 and may very well be around or above 1 million which is even more likely because the owner has agreed to continue work on the site and growing it even more.

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hasanzuav 9y ago

What a brilliant site, definitely an inspiration! Congrats!

kirso 9y ago

And yet here is what is wrong with the tech world, people start speculating on acquisition price and how much other people made even though news are about an awesome product and community joining another awesome product to make even more amazing stuff. Btw. the best growth hacking is building an amazing product which sells itself. Click-bait articles, well ok you need some eyeballs but interviewes always reflected my expectations unlike BuzzFeed stuff. Big congrats!

gcatalfamo 9y ago

I know it is a useless comment for HN, just wanted to say congrats because I think it is really well-deserved.

aryamaan 9y ago

Guess we need one post about IH on IH.