3 ms·

the word is "betrayed". And you are not alone in feeling in such way. IH outright lost its essence and what gave sense to it.

by mezod 10y ago

fpgaminer 10y ago
I don't feel betrayed, no. There are plenty of companies interviewed on IndieHackers.com that started as small shops and eventually got acquired. I've got nothing against that, obviously. It's a great opportunity to cash out and do something else fun. It's just weird to have IndieHackers.com, which I sort of viewed as a bastion of the movement, suddenly no longer part of it. At the end of the day ... I'd probably do the same thing as csallen, if I were in the same position. He talked several times about how time consuming it was to find sponsors for the site and podcast. As a consumer of the site, I started noticing more and more ads showing up and interrupting the content. Hopefully Stripe will help reduce that. It wasn't clear from the OP if they intend to do away with all sponsorship. That would be really nice!
- csallen 10y ago
  Thanks fpgaminer for following along and being one of the few crazy people (including myself) to have read so many interviews! Totally understand your view about the acquisition... but I wouldn't say Indie Hackers is no longer part of the movement. I'm not cashing out and doing something else. Rather, I'm going back to spending all of my time improving the site itself and trying to make it more useful to more people. Yes, Stripe is helping me do away with all sponsorships!
  - sah2ed 10y ago
    > I'm not cashing out and doing something else. I get that the cash infusion from Stripe allows you to not have to worry about sponsorships but if you are not "cashing out" in some way, why go the acquisition route? I think parent is right. Indie Hackers is now Stripe's baby and it is normal that after a few years, you'll get bored and move on to more exciting things. Anyway, I hope the timely release of the weekly podcasts is now a forgone conclusion. Congratulations on the acquisition Courtland!
  - fpgaminer 10y ago
    Thanks for the reply, csallen. I hope my comments don't detract in any way from how awesome this is for IndieHackers.com and yourself, and the potential good it could do. Let me clarify what I mean by IndieHackers no longer being part of the movement. Obviously IndieHackers.com is still an invaluable resource for small businesses to share and learn. The difference now is that you, and IndieHackers.com, are no longer in the same position as those participating in the community. You won't feel the same pain. That struggle to find sponsorships and keep the cash flowing is in many ways the beating heart of every small business. That's the major pain that everyone feels. You no longer experience that. Obviously that's a great relief to yourself, and obviously that frees you to work more exclusively on the content, which is the soul of your business. So that's in many ways a great thing! But since you yourself won't be experiencing that pain anymore, you may, in time, end up introducing bias into the content. That's my fear and concern. That you'll forget how difficult it is for small businesses to keep the cash flowing, and so color your interviews, tending to focus on other aspects of business. In particular your recent podcasts have enabled you to interject your own thoughts and struggles into the conversations (compared to the website interviews which are 100% focused on the interviewee's story). That's been great; you've always had something interesting to say. But that means that, going forward, since you won't be struggling with cash flow, what you interject won't be perfectly aligned with the kinds of things other entrepreneurs will be struggling with or need to hear. I hope that makes more sense? Put another way ... it's like rap. Rap is most often about the struggles that young, improvised people face on a day to day basis. But ... most of the rap those people are going to hear is from successful rappers ... who have a ton of money and live lavish life styles. It's a bit ... weird. That's not _necessarily_ a bad thing. In many ways that gives people hope, that they too could crawl their way out of poverty and become successful doing something they love. But sometimes it can leave the rappers disconnected. (I'm speaking more about rap from 10 or more years ago. Nowadays I feel like rappers just said "fuck it" and rap about their current lifestyles. Smokin' reefer, bangin' hookers, and hanging with Avicii ... stuff people can really relate to!)

the word is "betrayed". And you are not alone in feeling in such way. IH outright lost its essence and what gave sense to it.

by mezod 10y ago

the word is "betrayed". And you are not alone in feeling in such way. IH outright lost its essence and what gave sense to it.

fpgaminer 10y ago

I don't feel betrayed, no. There are plenty of companies interviewed on IndieHackers.com that started as small shops and eventually got acquired. I've got nothing against that, obviously. It's a great opportunity to cash out and do something else fun. It's just weird to have IndieHackers.com, which I sort of viewed as a bastion of the movement, suddenly no longer part of it. At the end of the day ... I'd probably do the same thing as csallen, if I were in the same position. He talked several times about how time consuming it was to find sponsors for the site and podcast. As a consumer of the site, I started noticing more and more ads showing up and interrupting the content. Hopefully Stripe will help reduce that. It wasn't clear from the OP if they intend to do away with all sponsorship. That would be really nice!

csallen 10y ago
Thanks fpgaminer for following along and being one of the few crazy people (including myself) to have read so many interviews! Totally understand your view about the acquisition... but I wouldn't say Indie Hackers is no longer part of the movement. I'm not cashing out and doing something else. Rather, I'm going back to spending all of my time improving the site itself and trying to make it more useful to more people. Yes, Stripe is helping me do away with all sponsorships!
- sah2ed 10y ago
  > I'm not cashing out and doing something else. I get that the cash infusion from Stripe allows you to not have to worry about sponsorships but if you are not "cashing out" in some way, why go the acquisition route? I think parent is right. Indie Hackers is now Stripe's baby and it is normal that after a few years, you'll get bored and move on to more exciting things. Anyway, I hope the timely release of the weekly podcasts is now a forgone conclusion. Congratulations on the acquisition Courtland!
- fpgaminer 10y ago
  Thanks for the reply, csallen. I hope my comments don't detract in any way from how awesome this is for IndieHackers.com and yourself, and the potential good it could do. Let me clarify what I mean by IndieHackers no longer being part of the movement. Obviously IndieHackers.com is still an invaluable resource for small businesses to share and learn. The difference now is that you, and IndieHackers.com, are no longer in the same position as those participating in the community. You won't feel the same pain. That struggle to find sponsorships and keep the cash flowing is in many ways the beating heart of every small business. That's the major pain that everyone feels. You no longer experience that. Obviously that's a great relief to yourself, and obviously that frees you to work more exclusively on the content, which is the soul of your business. So that's in many ways a great thing! But since you yourself won't be experiencing that pain anymore, you may, in time, end up introducing bias into the content. That's my fear and concern. That you'll forget how difficult it is for small businesses to keep the cash flowing, and so color your interviews, tending to focus on other aspects of business. In particular your recent podcasts have enabled you to interject your own thoughts and struggles into the conversations (compared to the website interviews which are 100% focused on the interviewee's story). That's been great; you've always had something interesting to say. But that means that, going forward, since you won't be struggling with cash flow, what you interject won't be perfectly aligned with the kinds of things other entrepreneurs will be struggling with or need to hear. I hope that makes more sense? Put another way ... it's like rap. Rap is most often about the struggles that young, improvised people face on a day to day basis. But ... most of the rap those people are going to hear is from successful rappers ... who have a ton of money and live lavish life styles. It's a bit ... weird. That's not _necessarily_ a bad thing. In many ways that gives people hope, that they too could crawl their way out of poverty and become successful doing something they love. But sometimes it can leave the rappers disconnected. (I'm speaking more about rap from 10 or more years ago. Nowadays I feel like rappers just said "fuck it" and rap about their current lifestyles. Smokin' reefer, bangin' hookers, and hanging with Avicii ... stuff people can really relate to!)