What's up everybody, this is Cortland from IndieHackers.com where I talk to the founders
of profitable internet businesses and I ask them what's going on behind the scenes so
that the rest of us can learn from their examples and become IndieHackers ourselves.
Today I'm talking to Mike Carson, he's the founder of Park.io, how's it going Mike?
Pretty good, how are you?
I'm doing great.
I got some new glasses in the mail today and they are, I think, the wrong prescription
so it's a little bit hard for me to see but other than that, life is good.
Alright.
So you were on IndieHackers a year ago for your company Park.io and you were one of the
most popular interviews that we have ever done on the site for a good reason.
So for anyone who hasn't read your text interview, I think it was a great quote you have in there
that really sums up why your interview is so popular.
You said, Park.io is set to break over $1 million in revenue this year and I am the
only employee and that really speaks for itself.
I think you're living every bootstrapper's dream, you're checking all the boxes, you
are self-employed and killing it and so I just want to ask you a lot of questions about
what that feels like later on but to begin with, there are probably a lot of people listening
in who haven't read your interview yet so can you explain what Park.io is and how you
got started working on it?
Yeah, sure, so Park.io is like a domain drop catching service for kind of like hacker domain,
like CCTLDs like.io,.ly,.me, so a domain drop catching service is like when domains
expire so you have to renew domains every year and if they expire, sometimes if it's
a good domain there's a lot of competition to get that domain right when it becomes available
for registration and so Park.io focuses on creating scripts to get them as fast as possible
so that we can get them for our users when they become available and yeah, I got started
so what got me into, I mean I'm a hacker, I feel like I identify as a hacker, I'm on
Hacker News, I love Hacker News, I feel like it's like my people there, I read it every
day and I've been reading it for like 10 years and I just love it, I mean I love the content
there and yeah, like I was into.io domains because that's what a lot of hackers were
using them because a lot of the.coms were taken so there was one I wanted for a project
like me and my friend were going to build this thing and we saw that the domain smile
of.io had become available or it was expiring and we figured out the day, the exact day
it was going to become available but we didn't know the time so I wrote the script that would
check it every second and when it became available it would email me around dinnertime, I was
about to sit down and I got an email and I rushed to the computer but somebody had already
registered it and it was pretty frustrating but it led me to look more into this and figure
out exactly what time and also to look at all the domains that are becoming available
and I started to see some good ones becoming available and there wasn't a lot of competition
to get some of them, I mean I hand registered some really good ones like ask.io and a lot
of two letter.io domains so for me I was just getting them for future projects, I thought
these are too cool to not register and I don't know exactly what I would use them for but
I probably will use them and I think they're valuable so I might as well, so I started
getting more and more like I don't know 20 domains or 25 and you know the cost, so I
was adding up the cost like I was talking with my wife and I was like this, yeah I think
they're valuable, I think it's worth more than I'm paying for them and so she actually
suggested, she was like well why don't you try selling a couple just to see if you're
right about that and so I put one on Flipa, there's this website Flipa.com where you can
auction domain names and stuff and so I put one on there and it sold, it was a two letter
.io domain, it sold for $2,000 and so I registered it for like $40 and so then I thought maybe
that was just a fluke so I tried it again and then it worked and so I thought okay I'm
going to scale this, I'll try to scale this up and see what I can do with it and that's
basically how it kind of started.
And when was this?
End of 2013, 2014.
I started park.io in like June 2014.
Yeah, that's so interesting because you think like even in 2013, 2014, kind of the feeling
that most people probably had around that time is that like buying domains and selling
them is that time is over, that ship is sailed, you know like people were doing that in the
late 90s, it doesn't work anymore, that's what I would have said if you had asked me.
I know, I think this is one big lesson from this is like you're never too late because
I was like I was late later than everybody else, you know, to domains.
I mean like 20 people 20 years before, you know, when I started were getting into domain
investing and like and so like 20 years later on internet like business like that's, you
know, that's way late.
So yeah, you're basically you're never too late for something is a big lesson from that.
So I want to get a handle on the exact business model for park.io.
How do I as an interested customer buy one of your domains?
And what's the breakdown of your revenue look like?
So if you go to park.io, we list all the domains that are going to become available in the
next week, and you can place an order for one of those.
And if we get it for you, and you're the only person that ordered it, you're charged $99,
which includes the one year registration for the domain.
If other users have also ordered it, then it goes to a 10 day auction.
Okay.
What about the other domains that you've because I imagine you could probably bought a lot
of domains that people have yet to bid on and that haven't been sold.
How do I buy one of those?
Is there still an auction or is it just a flat $99?
When I was first starting out, I got a lot of domains for like a private portfolio of
domains.
And I know, like, as I've through park.io and stuff, I've gained a lot of knowledge
and like the prices like the market basically for domains.
And so I have a good feel for it.
So I've bought domains from others.
And so I also have like half of the revenue I have is from also from like buying and selling
domains on my own, and then half of it through park.io.
Got it.
So you've got a lot of personal domains.
But what happens if you see a domain expiring, but nobody bids on it through park.io?
If nobody places an order for it, we won't try to get it.
But if people order it, then we'll get it for them.
So it's only if, you know, if there's interest.
So let's go back to the beginning of a story.
You've sold a few domains here, you realize that you can buy these domains for a few tens
of dollars and sell them for 10 times more than that.
What was your first step in deciding that, hey, this is not just going to be a hobby,
this should be my full time job?
Or was there ever a moment like that?
Really, I just became full time like a couple months ago, I have I had another startup wise,
wise I've calm and so I was working on that mostly.
And it was just yeah, it's just this thing I thought was fun.
And I just did it and you know, it just became kind of fun.
And I was doing it on my own, like I didn't have parked at IO at first, I was just kind
of writing my scripts on my own and there's a few competitors I even like reached.
There's a guy in Germany who, you know, every now and then he would beat me.
We chatted on Skype back and forth a little bit, but then eventually I, I figured out
a way to beat him consistently.
So I was constantly getting them.
And so that's when I was like, I decided, okay, maybe I can make this a service for
others also.
And so yeah, I just I decided, yeah, around the summer of 2014, that I would create like
a front end and make this a service for other people.
And so I spent a couple weeks like creating a user interface.
And you know, just making a way you can do payments, stripe and things like that.
And then I launched it.
So when you say that you were beating this other guy, you're referring to the speed with
which you could register these domains that were expiring.
Yeah, yeah, it's really competitive.
I mean, it's like, it's almost like free money.
I mean, it's like, if you get you, you can register a domain for $40.
And sometimes you can sell it for, you know, $10,000 or something.
And so there's a lot of competition to try to get the domain, you know, and anybody in
the world can do it, basically.
And so you're always trying to figure out what's, you know, how are they, how'd they
get it?
That's, you know, how did I get beat that time?
And what can I do to optimize this?
What can I, how can I make it better?
So yeah, it's like, he was, you know, I had my scripts running full, you know, full force,
and he would still beat me sometimes.
And then, so yeah, it's just figuring out a way to get better and better.
And I mean, that still happens today.
It's still very competitive.
And yeah, I mean, it kind of reminds me, I talked to this guy.
He was at a Weibo shop.
And I hope I'm saying that right, and probably not.
But he ran a Lyric site in like the 2000s.
And it was similarly extremely competitive because they were all competing for like these
front page spots on Google.
And so every single time he would move down in the rankings, he would do a bunch of research
and try to figure out what his competitors were doing to get, to build their page rank.
And I imagine it's the same for you.
Like what you started off doing, you probably evolved your techniques or getting these domain
names very quickly.
Yeah, and I mean, I think this is just a common thing with business.
Like I read this really good, well, I actually listened to it on Audible, but there's this
book called Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, the founder of Nike.
And it's a great book, but like he, in the business, it's like, there's constantly something
that seems like it's a huge crisis that feels like it's going to end everything.
I mean, it's like, I mean, that's a pretty, that's kind of, I could relate to that book
a lot because like the last two years, it's like, oh crap, this is, this route, I'm done,
it's done.
But then like you figure out a way and you just kind of figure out a way to get around
it.
You learn that even though it seems like a huge, horrible crisis, there's probably a
way to work around it or make it work for you or something.
I think one of the things that makes your story so interesting is that you sort of like
hit it big pretty early on.
I mean, a lot of the companies that I talk to you spend months or even years kind of
in this pre-product market fit phase where they don't know what their users want and
their product isn't good enough or it's not even done yet.
And then they finally figure it out and start making money where really like your first
time even dabbling in it, you immediately figured out like, hey, this could be something
that works.
And so most of the challenges came after that point for you.
What are some of the, some of these challenges that like had you worried that it was all
over?
Well, I mean, the competition, you know, sometimes the competition does that also, you know,
one time actually the.io registry decided to have their own back orders.
That was actually in like December of 2014, like right after I started it.
And I was like, whoa, well, what am I going to do now?
I mean, I can't compete against the registry, but it didn't turn out to be that popular
and it, it was expensive and theirs was different, like you had to pay up front.
And if you, if somebody renewed the domain, the, you didn't get your money back.
And so it had its own risks and stuff.
And I was surprised that we were, I was able to figure out a way to continue going through
that.
And actually part that I will continue to do pretty well after that.
So it's something, you know, something like that seems like it's totally like a game
stopper.
It felt like at the time I was like, well, what am I going to do now?
I guess I'm just going to have to close everything down.
But then, yeah, it wasn't like that.
When we talked last year, I think you had just hit $125,000 a month in revenue.
What did the path look like to go from just selling a couple of domains to a number of
that huge?
So.io domains make up most of the revenue.
And I think just the growth in.io has been big and, and I, you know, I started using
it just because like a lot of hackers were using it and it was a good alternative.
But then no domain investors really knew about.io they're like, they just kind of blew it
off as not being important.
And so they started to become more aware of its value.
And also, there's some other things that happened with.io, like there's some games that started
to take off like slither.io, which really made people a lot more aware of.io domains.
And then recently with cryptocurrencies, a lot of them are using like filecoin.io.
So I think it's kind of just the general growth of this space that also helped too.
It's like you're kind of in this, you're riding this wave that's happening around you.
And you're able to take advantage of just how much people were into iOS and how much
it grew.
And you kind of got in, maybe not the very beginning, but like at a good point where
you could kind of be carried along by it.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's like, one piece of advice I would give to people is, and it's probably been
said a lot of times before, but this is the story of my life, basically.
It's like, I did a bunch of things, like just launched a bunch of things and they were all,
most of them at first, most of them, like 90% of them, just like nobody used, nobody
cared about, didn't really take off.
And I just kind of had to suck it up and quit, tried to quit fast and then do another thing.
And then one day you just luck out, one day you just luck out.
And then you just try to, yeah, I mean, so basically my advice would be just do a bunch
of things.
You know when it doesn't work.
It's going to be obvious when it doesn't work.
Like after a month, if you're still trying, don't fight reality.
Like if it's not working, just stop and what I would do is just stop and start something
else.
And then one time you will see and you'll know that it's working because it'll be clearly
obvious that it works.
And then just take advantage of that one, you know, because it doesn't come along a
lot.
So just, you know, do a bunch of things.
You'll know what doesn't work.
You know what does.
And when you do see the one that does take advantage of it as much as you can.
It's so fascinating to think about because on one hand, like you really did luck out
that this IO wave grew to be such a big thing.
But on the other hand, you were so prepared for it.
I mean, you've spent years just working on project after project and obviously honing
your skills and getting better to the point where when you hit on this good idea, you're
in a great position to actually take advantage of it.
I mean, you actually had to compete against these other developers.
And it was basically a gold rush to write better algorithms than they do and better
scripts that can act faster and buy these expiring domains.
And at the same time, you need a user interface that's pleasant and easy and simple enough
that you can communicate your value proposition to customers and they can actually enjoy the
process of bidding on domains through your site versus your competitors, which included
the.io registry itself.
And this whole thing is something that I can personally relate to because I spent years
working on projects that didn't really amount to much before I eventually got the idea for
ND hackers, which is done very well, relatively speaking.
So on one hand, it's very easy to get discouraged when you spend time on a product and you launch
it and nothing happens or you spend time on a product and you don't even get to the point
where you launch it and you quit early.
But on the other hand, it's important to realize that what's really going on is you're actually
building up a skill set.
And so even if something doesn't work out, you walk away from that with permanent knowledge
that can help you in the future that you didn't know beforehand.
I'm undoubtedly much faster and more prolific as a developer as a result of all those projects
that I've worked on.
I've improved as a product designer and a visual aesthetic designer like 10 fold over
where I was just a few years ago.
I'm better with servers and with AWS and I didn't know anything about that stuff when
I first got started and every site I built used to crash.
And then there are all these intangible skills to like having a better intuition for good
versus bad ideas, what customers find valuable, how to talk to people, how to write compelling
marketing copy, etc.
This is all just stuff I picked up out of necessity after failing so many times.
To looking at it this way, maybe the most important thing that you can do is just to
make sure you're always working on things that are a little bit out of your comfort
zone.
So at the very least, you'll come away with extra knowledge and also to have the patience
to keep going even when you fail because you realize that what you're learning is making
you more and more formidable as a founder.
But at the same time, all the stuff about quitting fast is such challenging advice to
follow because you hear these stories about people who, for example, like Airbnb is the
one I always mentioned, but they stuck with like one idea that wasn't working for years
and years until they made it work.
And then you hear stories from people like you who quit immediately when things weren't
working and just switched to something else.
So how do you know when to quit something?
You know, how do you know if it's a bad idea?
And that's why it's not working or if it's a good idea, but you just haven't figured
out how to make it work yet.
Yeah, I mean, maybe I just didn't have patience and select Airbnb guys or whatever, but or
maybe they just had a determination because they've really saw the value in it.
I don't know.
But I think from my from my personality, my standpoint is like a hacker.
It's like, I think we have the opportunity to do really quick businesses online that
could make things like right out of the gate can start making a lot of money with, you
know, just the work of ourselves.
And so as I would recommend to other developers, hackers is to to do it the way that I suggest
and maybe not the Airbnb way, because I think it's you could get like I started a website,
which was letters that I owe, which was, you know, handwritten letter, like it was it was
going to be you could buy handwritten letters and we'll send them out and you know, it's
like a software as a service, like, but we would send out handwritten letters and it
was like, not a very good idea.
I don't think it was a very good idea.
And if I would have stayed with that for, you know, really trying to make it work, it
would just it's like fighting reality, I feel like.
So yeah, I don't know.
I guess if you have strong conviction on something, maybe the Airbnb, they just had this, they
just really believed in it.
But I think as a hacker, at least my personality, I think it really works to just try a lot
of things.
And, you know, one will take off.
Yeah.
And I wouldn't say that you didn't have persistence at all, because I think, you know, there's
two different types of persistence, they're sticking with one idea, and then they're sticking
with like the entire endeavor and coming up with lots of ideas, but you still kept going
even when things failed.
And I think for most people, even that's challenging, like it's really easy when one of your ideas
doesn't work to just say, screw it, I'm getting a job, or you know, I'm done with this stuff.
It's too much work.
But one of the things that you said that really stuck out to me was kind of the importance
that you put on the idea.
And this is something you hear advice on that's all over the map.
Like when I first started getting into startups and following Hacker News and my Combinator,
the phrase that I heard all the time was, your idea doesn't matter.
It's all about the execution.
And if you start with a bad idea, you can just pivot into a good one.
But over the last seven or eight years, I've increasingly believed that your idea actually
does matter quite a lot.
And if you can start somewhere close to the mark, then you're making things much, much
easier on yourself, because it's very easy to get discouraged and quit if you start with
a very bad idea.
So I'm curious how you think about the idea for Parked.io and how it evolved over time.
Because you certainly didn't start right out of the gate saying, here's my exact game plan.
Well, yeah, I mean, with regards to the idea thing, I mean, basically what I feel like
I learned through Parked.io and what I kind of recommend to people, I mean, it's like,
don't even start with an idea.
Like, there's like two schools of thought, the idea doesn't matter, or like the idea
is really important.
But maybe there's another one, which is like, don't worry about that.
Like an idea, don't even think about the idea.
Because if you don't think about the idea, then you're focusing more on just things you
find interesting, what you enjoy, and then the idea kind of comes to you anyway.
Plus, I didn't really come up with, I don't feel like I really came up with an idea, honestly.
I don't feel like, like, I feel like it just kind of happened.
It was just like this, it's more like the idea happened to me or something.
It's not, I didn't, things just happened out of my own, like, interest in exploring these
different things.
And with a lot of the other things I did before is like, I had an idea, oh, what about this?
I'll do this.
And so yeah, I think maybe that's one way, one different perspective, maybe for people
to think about is be open to creating businesses, you know, if the opportunity arises, but maybe
just explore things that you're interested in.
And something will come with that.
I think doing something you're interested in is extremely important in terms of what
we were just talking about too, and not quitting.
Because to your point, I see a lot of people trying too hard to think about what their
idea is going to be in terms of what can make money.
And then they end up doing stuff like selling raincoats to people in Siberia or something
that they don't really care about, you know, and after a couple weeks, like, this sucks,
I quit.
Whereas in your case, if you're a hacker, and you've got all these different projects
you're working on that are fun, and you're trying to get a good domain, it's a situation
that's much more amenable for one thing to lead to another, and for you to stumble onto
something cool and profitable before you get burned out and tired.
Plus you have good domains for your other projects that you want to work on.
So how many other projects have you worked on?
Because it sounds like you've been building stuff for a long time.
Well, there's a bunch of projects that, you know, like, I don't, built that have failed
and like are forgotten kind of, but then there's a few things that I'm working, that I kind
of still am working on, like, file.io is, it's like, convenient, easy file sharing that's
anonymous and secure, and it's ephemeral, so like, you can, you upload a file, and the
first time it's downloaded, it's deleted right away, and there's a simple API for it, so
you can use that.
But, so file.io, then there's a, there's this name server.io, you can see them all
if you go to humbly.com, different projects that I've started.
And what does your schedule look like?
How many hours a week are you spending on park.io right now, and how many hours a week
are you spending on file.io and your other businesses?
Yeah, most of it's park.io, but yeah, lately I've been also really interested in like the
blockchain stuff, so I've been looking more into that and really interested in possibly
doing a project with that.
So yeah, I've been spending a little time with that, but mostly, yeah, it's all park.io.
You're just all over the place doing everything.
So are you transparent at all with these other projects you're working on?
Like, have you shared revenue numbers with file.io?
I mean, so park.io has made it so that I can launch some things that are not profitable
right away, and then if they're not that expensive, I can just keep them going for free or, you
know, see what happens.
So file.io, basically, it was free for like the first year, and then I was thinking of
shutting it down because it, you know, it wasn't a lot of expense, but it was an expense
and I just didn't.
But then I got it kind of like a white label service.
So from one client who was willing to pay a certain amount, like for a year.
So it's like, I mean, basically, it's profitable, but it's like really small revenue.
And then same with nameserver.io, there's like a few users for that.
So yeah, they're not like huge, making lots of money, but they're like just barely profitable.
And like, how did you decide to be transparent about park.io in the first place?
Because I know like, there's probably some other people out there running some extremely
profitable businesses by themselves who just don't want to say anything because they're
afraid of competition, or they're afraid of revealing their secrets.
What was going through your mind when you decided like, hey, I'll sign up for an interview
and just tell everybody what I'm up to?
Yeah, not much was going through my mind.
I mean, I don't know, I guess I'm more, I tend to be more open about things.
I don't know if that was a mistake because, you know, some now when I try to buy domains
from people, I think they quickly find that indie hackers interview and they're like,
you know, ask a lot more.
It might have had a little impact there.
But also, I mean, I really appreciate you, you know, doing that because it did bring
a lot of users, a lot of people say, you know, they found they found me through that.
So, but yeah, I don't know, I guess I just, there wasn't much thinking really involved
and I just tend to try to be more open with things.
Well, that's interesting that it actually brought some traffic to you and that it kind
of affected your business in that way and I kind of want to get back to the story about
how you grew your revenue to 125K a month because that's like a huge number and I know
that doesn't happen overnight even if you found something that's doing as well and as
desired as park.io was.
So what are some of the marketing techniques that you use to bring people to your service
and how do people even find out that park.io existed?
Yeah, I didn't, I, you know, I think I feel like this is kind of one indicator of, you
know, it's working for you like a project is working is like you don't have to do any
marketing at all really it's like I didn't do any marketing I just well what I did is
any domains we got I just put a parked page up that said, you know, this domain is parked
on park.io and that's how the first users came and then I think it came from word of
mouth from that there's yeah not really any marketing involved.
Have you seen like your traffic numbers change and grow over time or is it been kind of like
it grew initially and it's just been flat?
Yeah, I think it grew to about last year is growing really fast.
I think it's kind of correlates to basically the.io growth.
It grew really fast until like last year and then maybe it's flattened out a little since
then.
What about your early growth like in the first few months after launching park.io?
What kinds of numbers are you seeing in traffic or I guess in revenue to convince you that
this was an idea we're sticking with?
Basically what I remember from the beginning is like selling a couple domains and they're
pretty profitable sales and then just thinking to myself okay well what I want to try to
do now is take the profit from these domains and buy more domains and see how far it could
go that way and that worked pretty well and then yeah I remember thinking okay why don't
I try to sell this service, sell it as a service online for other people and I thought what's
the risk?
Basically the only risk is my time so it shouldn't take that long because I have all the scripts
already built and stuff so basically it's building the user interface and I mean it
took some time but a certain number of hours is what I risk and then not much financially
because to run the services stuff is not that much so basically it came down to well here's
an opportunity and there's not much risk potential rewards so I did it and then yeah it turned
out to be pretty good.
A lot of people started using it.
I think the first few months, I think I only had.io domains at that time and not many
people knew about the site at first and so I think the first few months the revenue from
Park.io was like $5,000 a month and then I think on the fourth month we got the domain
SMTP.io and there was a few businesses who were interested in that one and SendGrid ended
up getting it for like $5,000 or something which was the highest sale at the time but
I was really happy that SendGrid was a customer and so yeah that was probably another milestone
at that point with more people started using it and then it grew from there I guess.
What kinds of product decisions and changes did you make once you saw that Park.io was
really working out and you started making these sales and you saw that your revenue
was $5,000 a month and growing because I can't imagine that the product as it existed at
the very beginning is still how it is now.
So yeah, a couple of things I did was add more CCTLDs which you have to research.
The CCTLDs, it's kind of interesting, they're like the wild west of domains because each
CCTLD is country code top level domain like.io so anything that ends with.2 letters
is a country code top level domain and they have their own rules, everyone has their own
rules and they don't actually even follow ICANN rules.
So it's interesting like.io's Indian Ocean is what it stands for but a lot of hackers
use it as input output but there I think the British government or something, some company
in I think United Kingdom or something runs it but like.ly is Libya and that's like a
war-torn country and it's been really interesting, researching a lot of these CCTLDs.
I was just curious, what kinds of things did you change and what kind of code did you write
once you saw that park.io was working out?
You talk about adding CCTLDs but was that the plan from the beginning?
What was your roadmap like?
I think the roadmap, the easy roadmap was adding CCTLDs like.ly because a lot of people
use that and so that was an easy roadmap was adding these CCTLDs and then I mean the other
part of the whole thing is just when I first built it, I built it very bare bones and there
was a lot of things I did manually and then just building that out more so that it's a
lot more automated and self-service and things like that.
I think one of the cooler parts of your story is that it's just you.
I haven't talked to very many solo founders and solo developers who've had as much success
as you've had revenue wise.
I think it's just probably you and Mike Parham from Sidekick, maybe Brennan Dunn but a lot
of the other people that I've talked to who've had these outsized results and built these
million dollar companies have generally built teams behind them.
Even if they started out as a solo founder, now they've got 10 or 11 employees.
What has enabled you to stay solo for so long?
Yeah, I mean, I got to that point where it's like, should I hire?
There's a lot of pressure or a lot of stuff online and people who they're like, oh, you
got to hire a team, you got to build, you got to grow, you got to grow and so I was
thinking, okay, yeah, I got to hire some people but then I thought about it and I don't know.
I don't know if that's a great advice, always trying to grow.
You see that everywhere and it's almost like taken as fact, you should grow, you should
just really try to grow your business always and I don't know if that is the best advice.
It depends what you're trying for, if you're going for, well, if you just want to make
as much money as possible then, and there's nothing wrong with that, then maybe trying
to grow is the best way, maybe not though, I don't know, maybe not, maybe because when
you grow, you become slow, if you become a big company with a lot of people, you're slower
to make decisions, there's meeting, I hate meetings, meeting, I don't know, it's just
like slow, there's just a lot less things that happen, you can't make decisions as fast.
In a lot of ways, you slow down and also, there's people who aren't as attached to it
as you are or who care about the users as much.
Maybe if you hire the right people, I don't know, but I see other companies, what's the
goal?
Is the goal to become like Equifax?
You grow so big that you let out, you make such horrible mistakes.
If the goal is for happiness, which is what I wish is what I want to do, I want to optimize
for happiness, and for my personality and everything, it's like this is what works for
me the best, and also, I feel like I can make the decisions faster, I can do things faster,
so I don't know if I'm a little anti-growth with all of the stuff that's out there.
I don't think, in the right circumstance, for certain things, it's like Airbnb or something,
yeah, it makes sense, you want to grow, but I think in a lot of ways, it's a little bit
more like, I don't know if this is a good example, but like a painter, when they paint
a picture, do they want to... I mean, it almost, asking a company to grow or your project
to grow, it's almost like saying, you want the painting to get bigger, you want to have
the biggest painting, it's almost like, well, that is one way to do it, but it might take
away from certain things, if you care about what you're doing and you care about the users
and stuff, I don't know, so I don't know if growing is always the best thing to try to
do.
For me, I found that trying to optimize my happiness and stuff has worked out much better.
Yeah, I totally understand and agree with pretty much everything you've said, and you're
right, there are situations where growing really helps, there are companies that could
not make it if they didn't have hundreds of people working there, but at the same time,
like what you said, for example, about development speed, if you look at someone like Peter Levels,
that guy's cranking out features every day, it's nothing, and you see these other big
companies with 20 or 100 or 200 employees, you release one feature every two months and
then celebrate it as if it's unbelievable to get things out that fast, there's just
so many barriers and like you said, I like your painting analogy too, what's the point
of having the biggest painting for the sake of having the biggest painting if you're happy
with like a small painting where you can focus more on the details that matter to you.
So I have to ask you, like one of the things that pressures people into growing is just
being overwhelmed by different parts of their business, you know, maybe there are so many
features that need to get added that they need to hire developers and maybe customer
support has taken up so much of their time, they really need to hire some, you know, customer
support people.
I know that every project that I've ever worked on, I've seen my to-do list grow longer and
longer and longer with just things that I really want to get done, but I just don't
have the time to do by myself.
What have you felt in terms of pressure that would cause you to hire that has been hard
for you as a solo founder?
Yeah, I mean, it is like, yeah, I mean, I have to do everything.
So like dealing with support issues takes time and yeah, features and then like just
making sure that the code is like refactoring the code and tests and stuff.
So yeah, there is a lot and it would be nice to have some help.
Yeah, I think the hardest thing, I think the hardest thing with doing something like this
on your own is just not having another set of eyes or, you know, a different perspective
on ideas and things, like especially with regards to the code, you know, like I would
just, it would be nice to have somebody looking over a lot of the code just to make sure.
I mean, that's why I think like testing, a lot of automated testing is really important
when it's just you, but I really would, I know I could, it would be, it would add a
lot of value to have somebody else just looking over things because it's just, you can't just,
you can't see everything.
Like you're going to miss some things, it's just inevitable.
And so yeah, that's probably the biggest pain point.
And also just like ideas about where to go or what to do or like ideas on the design
of, you know, the UI or different things, just being able to have a different perspective
on things.
I mean, I asked my wife a lot of the, like a lot of questions and she's really helpful
with it, but you know, she's not a developer.
So yeah, it is a lot, there is a lot and it would be nice to have some help with that.
One of the interesting things that you talked about back when you did your text interview
last year for ndhackers.com was just how important automation is to your business.
And you explicitly mentioned that the only reason why you can run things as a solo founder
is because you've got so many bots helping you out with things behind the scenes.
I think that's fascinating because I myself have this gigantic list of things that I need
to automate for ndhackers that are taking up my time every week.
And it's hard figuring out, you know, when do I have the time to build some automated
software so that I can save myself time in the future.
So I'd really like to pick your brain here about all of your automation and just learn
what kind of bots you're building and what jobs you're having them do.
Maybe the place to start is to just ask you overall, like what's your philosophy on automation
and how do you approach it?
Well, yeah, I mean, I guess one kind of philosophy that has seems to have worked and I guess
might be good advice for other people starting out is that when I built Parked.io at first,
I just made the bare bones like there is a lot of stuff that was done manually, you know,
like user actions.
I don't know.
I don't remember exactly the things but it could have been something like maybe even
like setting the name servers for a certain CCTD domain.
That could have been a manual thing and when somebody did it, I would just see, oh, they
entered this in to do this and then I would take care of it.
And I did it that way just to, you know, be fast and also because you don't know, maybe
I would build something that's automated that nobody would use and it would be a waste of
time.
So my kind of philosophy with the whole thing was build the bare bones and then once I get
start doing something over and over and over again, then I automate it and then it's like
a big relief.
I have all this time and then, you know, another thing comes up that I'm doing manually over
and over and over and then I try to automate it and then saves a lot of time.
So yeah, I mean, I think that's a big advantage for developers these days is, I mean, there's
so much you can do.
There's so much that can be done automated.
And what kinds of languages and technology are you relying on here?
Is everything on AWS?
Are you using Lambda?
Do you have Zapier scripts?
Yeah, I'm using, well, it's all on AWS and it's just like EC2 and it's actually, the website
is just built with PHP using KCP.
The scripts are, I use Node.js for a lot of the scripts on the back end.
So what are some of the jobs that you've automated and written bots to do?
It's, I mean, there's a lot of data collection.
I guess for park.io specifically, there's like a lot of data collection and like analyzing
that and then, well, like domain name stuff, like yeah, like who is information or even
other things like there's this service called esteboc.com where they give appraisals of
domain names.
And so you can hook that up, get the appraisals and use that and then also use other things
in combination with that, like even using GitHub, like so, I mean, like I realized that
if the word of a domain name, it has a lot more results in GitHub, it's a lot more valuable
of a domain name.
So I even hooked up the GitHub API to analyze that.
And I mean, a lot of the, this is not so much on the park.io side, it's more like on the
personal research domain investing side, just like learning more, like getting a better
idea of everything.
But I think this is where developers have a huge advantage because, you know, like in
the domain name industry, there's not a lot of developers surprisingly, because I feel
like it's an internet thing, but there's not a lot of developers and they have to do a
lot of this manually.
Like, I don't know how they do.
It's a lot harder, I think they have to be a lot more resourceful to, in order to get
a lot of this data and, you know, figure out a lot of these things.
So as a developer going into like an industry like that, I think we have a huge advantage
in a lot of ways by automating things.
So you've got a lot of stuff to help you figure out which domains to buy and obviously to
buy them before your competitors do, do you have any bots that help you with sort of the
softer skills like marketing or customer support or just the product itself from the customer's
point of view?
I guess it's kind of a hard question to answer.
I mean, for marketing, I do have a newsletter, a weekly newsletter that goes out and that
is automated.
I mean, it basically just like collects the current auctions and domains that are dropping
in the next week and also like recent sales and it just puts it in there and sends it
out every week.
And then, yeah, a lot of the other stuff is things with domain renewal, like domain renewals,
sending out, you know, sending out emails to users about different things.
I mean, when somebody buys a domain on park.io, they get it automatically parks a page where
somebody can contact them.
And so if they are contacted, emails are sent out that way.
I don't know.
It doesn't seem I off the top of my head, I can't think of anything really.
That's sophisticated.
Well, what's cool about it is not even that it's sophisticated, but it's more that it's
not normal for one person to be able to run a business that generates this much revenue
by themselves.
It's just not.
And I don't know if it's because of the degree to which you've automated things and maybe
it's, you know, that in combination with the fact that you really just don't care that
much about growth and you're willing to maybe make some sacrifices to live a happy life.
But you're doing this incredible thing and you don't seem particularly stressed out or
overworked.
Yeah.
I mean, I think there's so like, it's crazy how many things you can do now as a single
person like with technology, like as a developer.
I mean, one example I was thinking of recently is like, so the person who's found the person
who started Bitcoin, I mean, so this is theoretically could be one developer, you know, who started
Bitcoin, which could revolutionize could, I mean, right now there's, you know, there's
like hundreds of billions of dollars in it, but it could potentially disrupt everything
just by one developer doing that.
And I don't know if there's other, a lot of other industries where one person can create
something that disrupts like and completely changes the entire like up ends the world
financial system, you know?
So I think, yeah, it's crazy what and it's exciting what can be what you can do.
Yeah, I mean, it's nuts.
And I think that's, that's kind of why your story is so interesting.
And it's so inspirational, because you're just one person.
And yet you've created this company and presumably this lifestyle for yourself that any hacker
would would love to have, I mean, number one, like the idea, even if you didn't put that
much thought into it to begin with and just kind of fell onto it, it's a brilliant idea.
I mean, you're essentially in an industry where the value that you're providing to customers
is super clear.
I mean, there's no chance they'd be able to get these domains against the other competitors
on their own.
And it's also something that people are quite comfortable paying for, like nobody's box
at paying a few hundred or a few thousand dollars for a domain.
And on top of all that, it's kind of self marketing, because the domains that you bought
personally are advertisements for your business.
So you don't really have to exhaust yourself trying to figure out Facebook ads or content
marketing or any of this other stuff that typically developers hate doing.
And on top of that, you're really taking advantage of the fact that you can live anywhere and
build a business on the internet.
I mean, you're not like the stereotypical startup developer who works at Facebook or
Google and lives in San Francisco paying $4,000 a month rent for a one bedroom.
So I kind of want to dive into your personal life a little bit before we end this episode
and find out what it's like to be Mike Carson.
For starters, where do you live?
I live just outside of Philadelphia.
Yeah, I mean, right now my personal life, I mean, I just had a son, so he's a year old
and he takes up a lot of my time.
I mean, yeah, the hack, I guess when I say I'm a hacker, like I don't, yeah, I have friends
who are like really good with coding, like really smart.
I'm not like that.
I mean, I have the hacker mindset, which is like, I just really enjoy reading about ways
that people have hacked together things or building.
I really love to build things that people can use.
Yeah, my life, I guess my daily life, like I kind of, I mean, my personality, I'm very
introverted.
I'm a really introverted type of person, but I've kind of like, I feel like I've just filtered
myself into this place where I don't ever have to go into an office or like, and maybe
this is why I don't have a team or anything, but like, I just, you know, I really, I feel
like I get, I don't have to, I don't have a commute.
Like there were some times when I was working at Wise, I mean, I only had to go in once
a week to the office, but it was like, I dreaded it and I had to commute like 45 minutes or
an hour and it was just like, I felt like this colossal waste of time and I would sit
in the meetings and it would just be like, we're not getting anything done.
So I could barely stand it.
Like I was like on the, I don't know, I just work in my office every day and yeah, I feel
like I can get so much more done that way just by focusing.
What about like the people around you?
Like how many people look at what you're doing and even understand it?
Because I know for a lot of people who are working like outside of a major tech hub,
they say they're going to start an online business and everybody, their friends and
their family look at them like they're crazy, like they've just grown two heads.
And so, you know, I remember you saying like your wife, like, you know, was the one who
originally recommended that you sell domain names.
Do you feel like you have a lot of support from the people around you or do you kind
of stick out like a sore thumb?
I don't have that many friends.
I mean, I think that's what I had.
Like I read this article, like when you become middle age and I turned, well, I'm 41 now,
but like when you become middle age, like middle age men, they don't have a lot of close
friends or a lot in general, a lot of them don't have close friends and it's actually
kind of like a health crisis because it's more depression and stuff.
But like I feel I can relate to that.
And I mean, honestly, my wife deserves a ton of credit for parked at IO because and she
doesn't even have like she's not really interested in business.
She's definitely not like hacker anything.
She's like did therapy and stuff, but she yeah, she's like I bounce all these ideas
off her all the time.
And she yeah, initially got me started selling them, which led to this whole thing.
But yeah, so I don't know.
I mean that I guess if I could, and this is probably common advice too, but it really
has been important for me in my life is, you know, if you if you decide to have a partner
in your life, make sure, you know, it's important because I was married before and, you know,
it was it's a lot harder when it's not a good relationship.
And actually, I think, I'll teach James, I'll teach I think is his name he he said like
he makes money when he's in a good relationship and he loses money when he's in a bad relationship.
He's not sure if it's because, you know, one or the other like he's not sure if the really
but what causes the other but like for me, it's I've noticed the exact same thing.
It's like, it's important to people you pick in your life.
So yeah, I agree completely.
And I think like, you know, for a lot of people, for example, any hackers itself is a community
and there's like a forum on any hackers where all these people who are making stuff can
go and talk to each other about what they're building and get feedback, etc.
And for a lot of people, I think just being able to like share like their ups and downs,
what's going wrong, what's going right with other people on the forum is really helpful
because they don't have someone in their life, they don't have a relationship, I don't have
friends who can identify with what they're doing.
And so like, I totally agree that like, you need to get your personal life together.
Because starting a company, especially if you're going to go through what you went through
and like fail a whole bunch of times and create things that don't work out, like, you kind
of need like the psychological wherewithal to keep going in that situation.
And if things in your personal life are like really stressful or not working out, then
it's going to make your business life a lot harder.
Yeah, yeah, it's that it's interesting.
Like also when you launch things online or in the internet in general, but on Hacker
News, like they you get berated, like, like actually the last indie hackers interview
I did when it when it was on Hacker News, like, I think two separate I was telling my
wife that two separate people called me a douche.
And like, I'm not when was the last time like, I don't like it's so weird, like, in
real life, nobody called I've never been called that except maybe like when I was back in
middle school.
Yeah, but like, it's like, yeah, so I think you get once you launch enough things or when
maybe when you get to a certain age, like 40 or something like that, it's like, whatever,
you don't you give up, you don't care as much, but you kind of have to let those things just
go.
Like I wouldn't even don't even spend the time defending or anything like that, like
just kind of let it go and move on, like, take what you can from it and just move on.
I'm young enough that I like arguing back, but you're probably right.
I think Hacker News is a special place where, quite frankly, a lot of people hang out who
aren't actually making stuff and who really just like to tear down the things that other
people have made.
I don't know.
I don't know why it is.
It's really toxic.
Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, there's a lot of, you know, there's egos involved and stuff
like that.
And it's understandable.
I guess people are going through different things in their life.
And so, but I mean, hacking it, the people in Hacker News, I love some of the comments
and I mean, you can't, like, some of the stuff.
It's like the best and the worst.
Yeah, yeah, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How has your life changed after starting Park.io?
I know a lot of people wonder that if they start something successful, how their life
will be different.
So you're a pretty good person to ask given the success of your website.
I mean, what's interesting about Park.io is it's not a subscription model thing.
So it's not like you have a hundred subscribers, so you can feel kind of confident next, you
know, like next month, you're going to get all these, you know, everybody's going to
pay their monthly subscription.
It's like basically you just get orders and if the next month there's no orders, then
you don't get any money.
So I always kind of had this perspective that I didn't know how long this would last.
Like, yeah, so I guess I just didn't always feel comfortable, like I'm always on the edge
of my, you know, like I'm always on that.
I always feel like, and also the things that happen, like there's constantly competitors
coming in and other things where it seems really, you never feel, I guess I never really
feel that comfortable that things are going to, you know, go on forever like this.
So and it also hasn't been that long of going on like this, so I don't know how much my
life has changed.
I mean, it has been, I feel really lucky and grateful that it's done so well so far and
that, you know, it has made my life easier in some ways and I've also been able to quit
my job and just focus on things that I like doing.
So with regards to the money, I mean, I didn't buy it.
Like there's a lot on Hacker News, sometimes people talk about like, fuck you money, which
is like, you know, you have, like you want to have enough so you can do whatever the
hell you want to do.
I think it started originally with Humphrey Bogart, he kept some money in his drawer
so that if you didn't like what a director is telling him, you could just, you know,
fuck you and then he could just do whatever he wanted.
But so I didn't really buy into that because it's like, you know, homeless person could
say the same thing.
Like they don't, so I don't know if it's the money so much as the frame of mind that allows
you to do something like that.
So I guess now it probably has helped me to focus more on what I want to do.
Like if I just want to work on blockchain stuff, I can.
I mean, I don't have a boss.
So that's nice.
Like, some people could say, oh, well, your users are your boss, but I really love my
users and I want them to be happy and I like, you know, serving them.
And so I don't know, it's kind of a hard question.
But I haven't bought a lot of fancy cars or anything like that.
But I do feel, you know, more stable and can focus on things.
More than other people I've talked to, you seem focused on maintaining your happiness
as a founder.
Even to the point where you prioritize it over growing your revenue and your team.
Which makes a lot of sense and I'm not sure why I don't talk to as many other people with
similar priorities.
Are there any other unconventional things you do here that other founders might be able
to borrow from you?
Yeah.
As for optimizing happiness, like I think focusing on happy users is really good.
Like if you have happy users, it's just such a more enjoyable thing to work with.
Like there was a lot of people on park.io, a lot of users actually ask for a feature
to sell their own domains, like create a marketplace.
And I've been reluctant to do that just because I know with marketplaces, I think it would
lead to a lot more unhappy users because they may not be able to sell the domains that they
have for what they want or it might not have the expectations that they want.
And I think it would basically just lead to a lot more unhappy users.
And so I've been reluctant to do it for that reason.
So I think focusing on having happy users.
One other thing I guess I didn't mention is Sam Harris wrote this book Lying, which talks
about how like, yeah, people know you shouldn't lie, but like even white lies, even little
white lies, they don't really serve a purpose and they're not that good.
And I think my wife has actually influenced me a lot with this.
And so I try to really do that, like every email, like I don't even, I try really hard
not to have any like white lies or anything like that.
And I think it really is good for your users and with your relationship to others and business
and online, especially online if you're reliable that way.
So I think that's really important too.
That's really interesting advice because I think the stereotypical relationship that
businesses have with customers is to constantly tell a bunch of little white lies to never
really be forthcoming and always have this layer of business speak that's very inauthentic.
And we don't really think of it that way as lying or as unhealthy just because it's so
prevalent.
But nowadays, I think there are a lot of founders who are moving towards more transparency and
honesty and openness and who aren't afraid to say, hey, I'm just one person working on
this thing.
Here's what I care about.
Here's my roadmap.
Here's what I will and won't do, take it or leave it.
And maybe this has been driven somewhat over the years by social media injecting businesses
into the sorts of places where normal people hang out with each other.
So they've been forced to be more colloquial.
But regardless of why it's happening, it really works.
People feel closer to you, they feel like they can trust you more, and they're more
interested in buying from you when they can read your story and see that they can communicate
with you honestly, and that you're not just some faceless corporation.
It's hard to do too.
I mean, I'm not perfect with it.
I'm not saying I'm perfect with it, but it is actually really hard to do once you start
trying it.
But I think that book's really good.
I think people should check it out.
It's really short too, so you can read it really quickly.
Yeah, I think I'll read that myself.
Can you tell listeners where they can go to find out more about you personally and about
the things that you're working on?
Yeah, I guess humbly.com.
That's kind of like a parent company for my-