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Indie Hackers is indie again
- theery 4y agoWow! That's crazy. I wonder exactly how that went down.
- culi 4y agoHow 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
- adam_arthur 4y agoDoesn’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
- actionfromafar 4y agoMaybe 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.
- urbandw311er 4y agoWhat exactly does indiehackers do?
- ChanningAllen 4y agoTeach and inspire people to become entrepreneurs on their own terms, e.g. without raising venture capital. Media company (podcast, newsletter) with a large online and in-person community.
- hobo_mark 4y agoI had the same question, but phrased as: how does it make money?
- postsantum 4y agoPerhaps indirectly driving people towards using Stripe's services?
- actionfromafar 4y agoThat was explicitly stated at some point - more entrepreneurs, more Stripe customers. Lifting tide.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kikokikokiko 4y agoIt doesn't, hence Stripe allowed it to "be indie" again. You simply do not give up ownership of cash cows.
- prawn 4y agoFrom the post: "Right now we're sitting at exactly $0 in MRR, so the journey is just now (re)starting."
- tchock23 4y agoHappy for Courtland. Should be a good move in the long term. Hope they keep the (excellent) podcast going.
- ingend88 4y agoWow this is a big one! Congrats csallen@, what drove this change ?
- enumjorge 4y agoIf 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/goodbye-css-tricks/ https://geoffgraham.me/goodbye-css-tricks/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35455797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35455797
- NiagaraThistle 4y agoWithout an actual clear response from COurtland or Channing, this is the first reason that I've sen that makes sense.
- reducesuffering 4y agoThe 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.
- lispybanana 4y ago$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.
- reducesuffering 4y agoA 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.
- Bjorkbat 4y agoVery exciting! On a side-note, I wonder if this decision relates to Stripe’s ambitions to IPO soonish.
- nextworddev 4y agoI’m guessing maybe Stripe’s recent round allowed IndieHacker founders to cleanly cash out and separate
- thyrox 4y agoAs 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 self-promoting posts that offer little substance or value to the community has made it harder to find the signal amid the noise. I hope now that the site isn't pressed to make money maybe it will go back to the roots and stop compromising the quality and authenticity.
- DANmode 4y agoI think it simply opened the eyes of many of us to the high number of those sorts of actors in our midst.
- ano88888 4y ago"I hope now that the site isn't pressed to make money".. it is the opposite ,right? now they have to make revenue and profit because they are independent
- xwdv 4y agoOr… they could just run the site for free. It’s not expensive if they make everything static files.
- mtlynch 4y agoThe main purpose of the site is the discussion forum, which can't be a static site.
- quickthrower2 4y ago$1000 a month on servers would do it. They could probably do something premium $10/m to pay for it.
- 4y ago
- TimLeland 4y agoIndie 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 Shortener https://t.ly/ https://t.ly/ Park.io Interview https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/034-mike-carson-of-park-io https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/034-mike-carson-of-park...
- triyambakam 4y agoDo you pronounce it "tee dot el why"? or "tee lee"?
- TimLeland 4y agoI pronounce it “ tee dot el why”. Not sure if that’s better but my thought is it will help people remember the domain. What do you think?
- gitgud 4y agoThat 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 :)
- TimLeland 4y agoYes it is. It’s amazing what you can build online as a solo dev!
- gardenhedge 4y agoWow this is a pretty big spin. To me it sounds like they basically got fired or let go and/or lost their main investor.
- nl 4y agoThat'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.
- kelipso 4y agoThey 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.
- NiagaraThistle 4y agoIt 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.
- gardenhedge 4y agoWhat has changed?
- NiagaraThistle 4y agoI hope Courtland and/or Channing does a podcast to explain this.
- rvz 4y ago[flagged]
- rektide 4y agoOT but had this confused in my head with indie.vc, supported by OReilly AlphaTech Ventures, which shut down March 2021. https://www.axios.com/2021/03/03/indievc-venture-capital-investment-shut-down https://www.axios.com/2021/03/03/indievc-venture-capital-inv...
- mactunes 4y agoCompletely 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…
- fourseventy 4y agoMaybe check the mailbox attached to your house?
- dhruvkar 4y agoReach of to Courtland. He helped me out with a similar situation.
- mactunes 4y agoI did but never got a response unfortunately.
- dopeboy 4y agoGot to meet Channing and Courtland at a meetup in SF years ago. Two awesome, humble dudes. Congrats on the acquisition and being free again. If you're reading this, I'm curious what your plans are to monetize. What companies are you taking inspiration from?
- adxmcollins 4y agoSounds like they're going for ads to start with (their responses in the IH post comments). Feels like less than 1% of the users are actually active regularly. Can't see how ads are gonna bring in much revenue. Hope they manage to turn it around though because the old IH days were the best!
- quantumwoke 4y agoIndie hackers inspired me as a junior developer to work independently and have a startup focused mind. I have to confess that I left the community some time ago due to the rapid descent into hustlebro type content. I hope this is a positive change leaving stripe but my more cynical side is thinking not much will change.
- schnebbau 4y agoIndiehackers 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- openplatypus 4y agoI definitely second Starter Story. Great, curated resource. Indie Hackers is hit or miss. Occasionally, you stumble upon a great nugget, you find outstanding help from community members. Typically, you get a lofty influence post with no value. I am still a member. Semi-active. But not very involved. Looking forward to the future, though! With reclaimed freedom, I would love to see it flourish again.
- mattgreenrocks 4y agoNote that Starter Story is $348/yr. Is it worth it? Feels a bit rich for me without knowing whether the value is there.
- NiagaraThistle 4y agoi disagree. Maybe the POSTS in the Forums are low-value, but the Podcast and interviews have always been great sources of inspiration and value imo. I do agree that the past several months, and the past several podcast episodes have been less than exciting and inspirational, but I wonder if the reason has anything to do with this decision. It may be that there were changes happening behind the scenes and Courtland and Channing were getting bored and that affected their enthusiasm. That could be why they decided to leave and rekindle that Indie spark. Either way, I never thought the value of IndeiHackers was in the forum post - comments sometimes maybe- but rather in the podcasts and interviews as these told the stories of starters and how they built their companies. To me the forum was just a way to keep traffic around engaged between episodes of the podcast.
- wonderfuly 4y agoHow does this happen? Did they buy it back from Stripe?
- simonbarker87 4y agoHopefully this means they go back to actually focussing on Independent software development and entrepreneurship. I stopped listening to the podcast after what felt like the tenth unrelated big business content creator or VC interview and the actual community became a boring series of promotion and PH launch posts. Glad to see if back in the founder hands with a fire to make it great again.
- nickjj 4y agoIt's interesting that IH promotes sharing business details and figures from all of their guests but they don't share their own info. On one hand they mention they're at $0, but also say Stripe is still being supportive as an investor. Is Stripe still financially supporting them? What were the details of their set up? What did their salary look like over the last 6 years? What was the growth like? What was it like working for Stripe? What caused the break?
- chipgap98 4y agoThey do say they were getting paid a salary over the last 6 years
- shp0ngle 4y agoSorry for asking... what is the site about? From first glance it looks like a Reddit/Hacker News clone? But it was acquired by Stripe so I guess I am wrong?
- n1c 4y agoIt's a Reddit/HN clone maybe in the sense that it's a community, but it's not a "post links get karma discuss" it's more focused on individuals trying to make profitable internet companies & helping each other out on that journey (and of course promoting themselves along the way). This is a good place to start: https://www.indiehackers.com/start https://www.indiehackers.com/start
- KaoruAoiShiho 4y agoIt's about people trying to make money from their small lifestyle startups (as opposed to trying to get VC funding).