Hey there, this is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to the IndieHackers podcast.
On this show, I talk to the founders of profitable internet businesses, and I try to get a sense
of what it's like to be in their shoes.
How did they get to where they are today?
How did they make decisions, both in their companies and in their personal lives, and
what exactly makes their businesses tick?
And the goal here, as always, is so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and
go on to build our own profitable internet businesses.
Today, I'm talking to Jislan Gayat.
Jislan, welcome to the IndieHackers podcast.
Thanks for having me, Cortland.
Thank you.
You are the founder of a meetup.
It's called Indie London.
Tell us about that.
What is Indie London exactly?
So Indie London is the London community of bootstrappers, indie hackers, indie makers
that want to help each other and meet to grow their online profitable businesses.
We do quarterly events, usually centered around key business concepts and offering the opportunity
from our attendees who are IndieHackers, bootstrapped entrepreneurs, or people that wish to start
their own business to learn from other people from the community.
People that have succeeded already, people that have succeeded already, people that have
some key skills, so we have had, to give you an example, some people actually that were
on the podcast not long ago.
So we had Ari Dry for marketing example as a speaker.
We had Luis from Sales for Founder talking about sales.
We've had some really successful bootstrappers, such as Johnny from Ticket Taylor.
So yeah, it's really the opportunity for IndieHackers in London to meet, connect, share their struggles,
and learn from each other.
And I have been to one of your events.
Yeah.
It was about a year ago.
You had like an ND London workshop day.
So I flew out to London and it was a whole Saturday of people just getting together in
groups and I think everybody worked from like basically nothing to coming up with an idea
for a business to figuring out exactly what kind of roadmap they would use to sort of
bring it to life.
And at the end of the day, we all got together and basically gave each other feedback on
our ideas.
So it was super fun and that was one of the many different formats that you've had for
the Meetup.
Why do you run a Meetup?
What's the point of even doing this?
So it all started, I think it's been now a year and a half, two years ago, that we started
the Meetup.
I started the Meetup and I've been in London for four years now.
And about a year in, living in London, I moved to London to be at the center of the tech
entrepreneurship in Europe because, you know, even still today, London is still the place
to be if you're into startup, into online businesses, into tech.
And I really wanted to grow my network and to meet, you know, like-minded people that
wanted to start their own business.
That was really my goal for me and find people I could share my struggles with.
I did not think at the beginning of starting a Meetup because I guess that's not the most
obvious way to go and meet people.
So the way it all started is a few iterations where at the beginning, I went to other Meetups.
I went to business, the usual tech entrepreneur Meetups.
I went to software developer Meetups, but there was always something a bit off.
So tech entrepreneur Meetups, you know, it was really interesting events, really interesting
people, but often you have the people that are past my stage where I'm just a, you know,
software engineer that build this project where in this tech entrepreneur Meetup, you
have people that have raised tens of millions and are already way past that.
On the other side, in the software developer Meetups, okay, it was software developers
like you and I, but maybe not with a scratch to build a business.
So I don't know, one day it clicked.
Maybe I don't remember how, but I was hanging out on Indieacres.
You know, it had been two years I've been there, you know, I've been following when
you were doing the interviews, posting them on I Can Use, then build the forum, build
the podcast.
And I felt, yeah, but that's the community, I guess that's the most similar to me.
So why not simply meet those people?
And it all started with, yeah, post on the forum back in February, 2018, early 2018,
where I asked, you know, is there any Indieacres in London, people working on the project that
would like to meet?
And we met, we organized like about five, 10 people replies, replies, and we organized
our seven telegram, found some work, some time, sorry, that worked for all of us.
And I think that's how it started.
So really a motivation to meet other like-minded people, be together in a room and from there
it just, I guess, just grew.
This is also how the Indieacres Meetup program started because it was a very unofficial thing.
Like I didn't set out for there to be meetups.
You created this Indie London thing just on your own initiative on the forum and people
showed up.
Mark Firstain in San Francisco did kind of the same thing, like, hey, who's an SF?
Let's all meet up.
And again, this is like early 2018.
And I was honestly kind of resistant to it.
I'm like, oh man, this is going to be so much work if it's like going to meet people in
person.
And then I went to Mark's Meetup in San Francisco and it was amazing.
It was so cool to see actual people who are Indieacres who are working on projects or
thinking about working on projects and just kind of feeding off of each other's energy.
And so that was what a year and a half ago.
And today we've got something like, I think an average of 60 meetups a month.
So pretty much any day somewhere in the world, there's two different Indieacres meetups going
on.
And Indie London is regularly one of the biggest, I think the one I came to, there's something
like 80 or 90 people there all learning together in the Stripe office in London.
So let's talk about how you grew from five people attending your first meetup to like
100 people attending your meetup.
It grew a bit naturally and I guess there was, you said something interesting, you used
the word energy.
I've tried to describe why I'm still doing it and why people are showing up.
And I think there is this, I don't know, maybe it sounds a bit hippy, but I don't know how
to say it differently, but there is this energy you get when you are in the same room with
other people that care about the same thing than you.
And we kind of all hang out online, we hang out on Twitter, but being face to face, being
in a small room with just 20, 30, 80 people, it's really something, there's really something
different about it.
So that's maybe why I keep doing it.
Now I kept in touch with the people that came in, we discussed a bit what was the type of
format people wanted, I tried to gather a bit of feedback and we got a lot of help from
Stripe at the beginning.
So big shout out to Ross at the beginning and having that location helped really to
put some, let's say, to keep the momentum.
I think that's what really helped it grow, having certain momentum.
So you guys have done a bunch of different formats.
It doesn't seem like you ever really settled on one tried and true format that you've used
for every meetup.
Walk me through some of the different ways you've run your meetup.
Yeah, so the very first meetups were kind of standups.
So people were coming in and we were, you know, at the time we were maybe 10, 15 people.
So everyone was sharing what they are working on, what their struggles are, and then being
able to connect with the person that you can help the person that can help you.
Something we have done quite a while now is the more speakers formats where we have two
speakers from the community.
So I always try to find people from the community because one big learning I had when trying
different format is that people want to get out there something actionable.
So having speakers from the community really help with that.
We have done the workshop.
So that's where you are one year ago now.
And workshop has been really amazing.
And to tell you how there is this, I guess, need for people to meet.
People showed up at 8 a.m. on a Saturday and I was like, whoa, it was the really very beginning
of the meetup.
And we asked these 80 people to come up on a Saturday morning to work together and everyone
was there.
So yeah, that's a bit different format we tried and really impressed again how people
are really willing to come and to get that energy and to share what they are working
on.
Yeah, one of the things that I liked about that workshop meetup was that you had a lot
of help.
It wasn't just you by yourself trying to put this thing together and carry all the weight
on your shoulders, but you work with Stripe to use their office.
You had Ann Larr there who now runs Maker Mag helping you out, you had Alex and Peter.
People were giving talks and presentations.
And a lot of other meetup founders on Indie Hackers will do smaller events that are just
run by themselves solo, which are cool too.
But I think the fact that you weren't afraid to ask for help to work with others and collaborate
meant that you were able to put on something that was unique that other people really don't
have the bandwidth to do.
And I think now in London, so yeah, you mentioned Peter has been helping me for a while for
this event.
We had a few other people as well.
And I thank them a lot for that because one day of event is not something easy to pull
off.
I think what has been interesting is that in London we have maybe because it's such
a big city, there is a certain mass and we have different type of events.
So I know I have a friend, Charlie, who run Indie beers in London, which is different
type of event, more relaxed, where people meet at the pub, which I guess is the typical
English tradition.
And yeah, we've done yesterday, I was with him, he was doing a work day session where
people came in and worked together.
So there is a lot of space to experiment, to do different things and I think being willing
to have other people help and have other people do their own things, it's amazing for the
community.
Yeah.
Charlie is also one of our official Indie Hackers meetup founders.
So the story behind that is after you and Mark and some others put together your sort
of unofficial Indie Hackers meetups last year, I built like a super simple meetups page on
Indie Hackers where you could submit an event and then I talked to my boss Patrick and he
was like, hey, you know, why don't you make this even more official?
Why don't you put up like a form where people can apply to be official meetup founders?
And I did.
And it went from like a small trickle of just a few meetups basically every week to I think
200 people filled out this application to become an official meetup founder, which is
funny because we don't even really do that much for meetup founders.
I think we have all of you in a Slack room together and I just got some stickers that
I'll be sending out.
But yeah, Charlie running Indie Peers is an official founder in London.
You've got your meetup in London.
There's meetups in New York, Toronto, Vancouver, San Francisco, Bali, Australia, Paris, there's
huge.
There's a little competition going on now.
I met with one of the organizers, yeah, it's a big city as well.
So lots of demand to do different meetups.
Yeah.
And Joan and Barcelona has got a pretty big meetup too, where it was forever, it was just
like five or 10 people meeting in this dark warehouse.
We would send pictures and look like a very Illuminati type meeting.
And now I think he's up to 40 or 50 members coming into his meetups every month.
How do you gain steam with the meetup?
How do you make sure that you get more and more people coming to the successive events
that you're throwing?
I think one thing, so there is a lot that happened.
I think just riding a wave saying, you know, there was really a need for people to meet
and having being broadcast on indie hackers, what you did with the meetup section being
included in the newsletter, having Twitter on Twitter, all of that helped.
Something that helped at the beginning was doing some cold outreach.
So whenever I was seeing someone on the forum mentioning London, or whenever I saw someone
saying they were, yeah, saying they were from London, I reached out and I told them about
the meetup and all of that helped, but I guess I would not focus, let's say, on making it
as big as possible.
I got some advice when I started, so I reached out to a friend of mine, Dimitri, that was
running one of the biggest tech meetup, HN London, back in the days.
And he told me to be very careful once it reaches, you know, 100 people, because at
that point, in terms of logistic, it becomes really heavy on you in terms of dilution of
the people there, meaning that the real value of the meetup is to be with other indie hackers,
other bootstrapped entrepreneurs, and you don't want growth at all costs.
And then you start having people that may not be really the target audience for indie
hacking, let's say.
I think that's what helped as well, to keep things really tight and to keep things really,
keep your target audience right, always in mind.
Since we are speaking of growth, I think one thing I want to mention as well is that maybe
in London, we are 80, 100 people now, but already when we are only 10 people, there
was a lot of value from meeting.
So I guess people listening, I think would be very helpful for anyone listening at the
end of the podcast to just reach out to go, I guess, on indiehackers.com on the meetup
page to see if there's anything happening in their city.
If nothing is happening, just, you know, pass on the forum, is anyone in my city that's
meet?
Really, it can start from a coffee, it can start from lunch, I've had, you know, dinners
with a few people from London, it was as great as the 80 people meetup we do, right?
So really, it's really about that connection with five, 10 people and that's enough, really.
Yeah, some of my favorite meetups are the really tiny ones.
And there's a lot of parallels, I think, between running a meetup and running an early stage
company where the way it looks early on when it's small might not be anything like what
it's like later on.
For example, you might have people coming and presenting and, you know, presenting slides
and giving talks that you're bigger meetups.
But early on, it might be just what you said, three or four people sitting around a dinner
table, right?
Or two people getting coffee can be the start of a meetup, it actually is how most indiehackers
meetups get started.
Just someone's like, hey, I'm getting coffee in the city, are there any indiehackers here
who want to join, kind of like putting up a bat signal in the air, and like one or two
people will show up, and it becomes a regular thing.
Yeah, exactly.
As I was saying earlier to you, I have a full-time job and this meetup is a bit my side project
and I think I try to incorporate some of the learning from building products where, you
know, you start small, you do things that don't scale, you know, all the things that
you read out there applies as well for this type of, let's say, products, this type of
events.
So, yeah, I would encourage anyone listening to go have a coffee with another indiehacker,
go have lunch, go have dinner, go to the library, book a room, you know, there's plenty of options,
right?
Yeah, tons of options.
Like, for me, my favorite use case is just putting up a meetup to meet people when I'm
traveling in a foreign country because it's guaranteed there's going to be some indiehackers
there who are down to talk shop.
What did you get out of this?
As somebody who, you said your primary side project is really this meetup outside your
full-time job, what's the biggest way that hosting a meetup improves your life just on?
Because the organizer, the advantage I have, I guess, is that I get to meet everyone because
I go and try to greet everyone, make everyone feel welcome, try to understand what everyone
is working on.
The speakers we have often, it's people that are very successful.
So, you know, it's very interesting then to keep in touch with them.
So I guess the incentive for me, which kept me motivated to keep doing it personally is
that I'm growing my network.
So as I was saying earlier, my goal at the beginning was to meet other indie hackers,
grow my network, and then that's exactly what I get out of the meetup.
So that's my motivation.
So when I feel it's a bit difficult of finding the time, I remind myself that this is the
objective of getting to meet people and then the meetup happens.
I spend an amazing three hours getting a lot of energy from all the attendees and I just
go back and try to put the next one together.
I got a ton of energy to go into the meetups.
So when I came to Indie London last year, it was sort of a trip.
I stopped in Ireland first and we had a meetup there.
I think there's like 60 people there and I interviewed John Collison as sort of a live
podcast episode.
And then I came to Indie London and we did that awesome workshop day.
And then I flew back to Toronto and Henry, who runs a meetup there, did this cool unconference
format where everybody could sort of suggest topics they wanted to talk about and we broke
up into sessions to talk about those things and then reconvened.
And then I came back to SF and there's a meetup.
And after like four meetups in a row over two weeks, I was so energized.
All I wanted to do was code.
All I wanted to do was build something.
There's something about it just being like a guaranteed refresher if you're ever feeling
down.
If you just go to a room full of a bunch of other people, if I go to microconf or if I
decide I want to have a small meetup in SF and I just put a little post on the website
and people show up, it's always just super motivating.
The best thing someone said at the meetup was, someone came to me, I think it was, we
have a lot of regulars and he came to me and he said, yeah, last time there was this talk
by Pete about putting his project up there, putting a landing page and I went home and
I did exactly that.
And now I'm selling my software and I've got 10 sales already.
And I was like, wow, we made an impact.
Something came out of it.
And I'm sure now it's multiplied by 10, 15 across everyone attending.
So just thinking that a bit of time that I give to put that together, having those three
hours every three months or so enables so many people to create and to be productive
and to fulfill, I guess, their goal and their dream.
So I mean, what more do we want, right?
So what goes into running a meetup exactly?
What are the essential boxes you need to check off if you're deciding to try to do one of
these?
The main one which happened at the beginning was making sure your communication with the
attendees is right.
So when we started, so someone that's probably listening and wants to start, I would encourage
you to put up a WhatsApp group, a Telegram group, because when it's only two or three,
10 people, that's the best way to connect.
Later on, let's say you figured this out.
I guess the main checkbox is location because it's an offline event, so you have to find
a place where to meet.
But again, in our case, we were lucky first to have a friend that could give us some space
and we had Stripe in London that gave us some space.
Now that we have outgrown, I spent some time trying to build a relationship and find bigger
companies that could, you know, bigger spaces that could host us.
So in terms of logistics, the main one is finding a space and goes back a bit to some
advice I've heard in the podcast, which is how do I find a space?
And it's called a lot of cold outreach.
So in the end, I ended up doing a lot of sales, emailing locations, saying, hey, we have this
event, can you host us, or emailing speakers, hey, you know, I saw you last time at the
event, would you like to speak?
So practice your cold outreach skills, and it's a good training for that.
Yet another way that starting a meetup is kind of similar to starting a business.
Do you think you'll ever monetize your meetup and turn it into kind of a business of its
own?
So I thought about it at the very beginning, or I thought about it at the very beginning,
but then I felt like I was worried to decrease the value of it, let's say.
So for instance, the obvious one is charge the attendees.
But I think given what I've just explained in terms of how we can enable people, how
much people can get energy, I don't think that would be the right thing to do.
So now that the meetup has grown to a certain size, I've been thinking of taking on sponsorship,
because there are obviously 80 bootstrap entrepreneurs in the same room, it's an opportunity for
companies to spread the word about themselves.
So that's something I've been slowly working on.
But I haven't been worried about that, to be honest.
If people come and enjoy it enough, in terms of cost for me, it's a couple of hours here
and there, on the day really, I've had help from Stripe at the beginning, from email octopus
recently for everything that has to do with food and drinks.
So I keep it simple and I try not to worry about it.
Do you see this post we put in the Slack earlier this week?
I think the offer will be expired by the time this episode comes out.
But Postmark, who I use for sending transactional emails, they're doing meetup sponsorships
and they're paying anyone who's hosting a qualified meetup $300 to cover pizza and the
space and anything like that.
And there's lots of companies that I think have initiatives like this, which is so cool,
because it's a way to basically do something a little bit more upscale, a little bit more,
I think, useful for attendees and easy for them because you're providing food, etc. while
also promoting another company.
And we were talking earlier about what goes into putting a meetup and the logistics of
finding a place.
Here again, tons of companies would love the opportunity to have developers, to have entrepreneurs
in their office for an evening.
So it's an opportunity as well to reach out and for them to spread the word.
So yeah.
So what do you think about the NDHackers meetups program in particular?
Because I'm always struggling with how to run this.
On one hand, it's super, as we've been talking about over and over, it's just energetic.
It's a lot of energy in these rooms.
I think the value of one person at an NDHackers meetup is like having 10 or 20 people on the
website.
But on the other hand, in terms of the scale, the website's massive.
So even though we have, I think, 100 and something meetup founders now, and they're running 16
meetups a month, on any given day, the website will get 100 times that many people.
So it's hard to say, okay, well, I'm going to spend a whole week implementing meetup-related
features on the website if I could do some change to the forum that will affect 100 times
as many people.
But you're looking at this from the other side.
You're an official NDHackers meetup founder.
What do you think about how we run it?
What suggestions do you have for how I can make it better?
That's the question in terms of suggestions.
I guess what I can share with you is what are the challenges we have.
And one of the main challenges, how do I bring offline and online together?
Because as a product, and that's probably something, I guess, for you to think about
and that could be helpful for you as you decide what to work on.
The challenge we have is that we provide value.
The value of the meetup is four hours an evening every three months.
And how can I bring value to the attendees?
How can I bring value to the brand itself or to myself outside of these four hours?
So in terms of the attendees, what we have tried to do is build our own Slack community
so people get to still connect and talk to each other.
So that's on the attendees side.
So maybe here, I don't know if on the forum, there would be a way to tie the meetup section
to the attendees, to their profile on NDHackers.
Maybe that could be something we could do, or I guess that could be done.
And for ourselves on the meetup side, I guess, what I've tried to do for the brand is start
recording the videos and sharing on Twitter, sharing on our website, sharing on the Indie
London website.
So maybe, I guess, just brainstorming up there if there was a page for the meetup where I
could share that video.
I guess I've been doing that now with the new milestone feature you've been doing.
So I've been updating a bit the whole story.
So probably here, once I have recorded the video, I can put the video and people can
start getting the value of the meetup out of those four hours of offline interaction.
So I think really the challenge is there is how do we, because there is definitely value.
So I guess an interesting story is because of the meetup and because of the Slack group,
we have one attendee, Johnny, who's working on his company called ProgressionApp.com.
So he had been working on it for a year and coming to the meetup, he met, Shnongshari
Sothimate, his co-founder.
And how it all happened is they kept in touch on Slack, then they went to meet on their own.
And now they are co-founding this company.
So you see that connection between the meetup that happens offline and how can people still
connect online.
That's where really the challenge is.
I don't have the solution yet, but I guess that's where it is really the pain, I think.
Yeah, I think it's really cool that people meet their co-founders and collaborate on
projects together because they met at an IndieHackers meetup and I really hear you about bridging
this online offline gap because you have this meetup and there's so much energy and people
are talking and helping each other and then it's like, all right, a month or two or three
until the next one.
Yeah.
How does everybody stay in contact?
So the fact that you have a Slack group is really cool and perhaps I could do some sort
of, I don't know, Indie London group on IndieHackers.
I've been so tempted to just clone meetup.com's features for the meetup features on IndieHackers,
but it's so much work.
Yeah, yeah, I can imagine.
Yeah.
You have RSVPs and you send email notifications based on all these different events, the location
changes, the details change, you need to notify people, all sorts of stuff.
So I can easily see myself getting bogged down and coding that for like several weeks.
But at some point I might do that.
I'm looking to hire a developer pretty soon for IndieHackers to work with me.
So I'll have some more bandwidth and perhaps I can add some cool meetup related features.
Yeah, we tried to, as I was saying, we tried to get feedback from people and one feedback
on that exact same point was that at the end of the day, the meetup is for two, three hours
and there is 80 people in the same room and as an attendee, how can I know who's there?
How can I make the most out of it and meet really the people that I care about?
And I would love to find a way where it ties back to the IndieHackers profile.
So maybe I will just tell people to share the profile and maybe there is a simple way
to do it, but to give you some concrete example of where this bridge can be built between
online and offline.
All right.
I'll keep it in mind.
Juslan, thank you so much for coming on and telling me about your meetup.
Can you tell listeners where they can go to learn more about Indie London?
Yeah.
So they can, we have a website so they can go on IndieLondon.com, IndieLDN.com.
We have a product page on IndieHackers and you will find every time we create a new event.
The next one will be in December.
So anyone from London listening that hasn't been to a meetup yet, you will receive, go
check out our page.
We have a newsletter, we have a meetup page and yeah, let's keep in touch and anyone in
London listening, we meet soon, I guess.
Thanks so much, Juslan.
Thanks a lot for having me, Kortna.
Quick note for listeners, if you are interested in coming onto the podcast like Juslan to
have a quick chat with me, go to IndieHackers.com slash milestones and post a milestone about
what you're working on.
It can be pretty much anything, people like Juslan have posted about their meetups.
Others have posted about launching or finding their first customers.
They posted about growing their mailing list or reaching a certain number of Twitter followers
or different revenue milestone.
The sky is the limit.
So whatever it is you're proud of, come celebrate it on IndieHackers.com slash milestones and
other IndieHackers will help you celebrate.
We love supporting each other and encouraging each other when we hit these milestones.
And what I do at the end of every week is I take a look at the top milestones posted
and reach out to the people who posted them to invite them onto the podcast for a quick
chat.
So once again, that's IndieHackers.com slash milestones.
I'm looking forward to seeing what you post.