What's up everyone, this is Cortland from IndieHackers.com where I talk to the founders
of profitable internet businesses and side projects to get a sense of how they got to
where they are today and how the rest of us can do the same.
Today I'm here with Mubashar Iqbal, also known on the internet as Mubs.
He was Productant's Maker of the Year for 2016 and he's an extremely prolific developer
of side projects and other delightful things on the internet.
How's it going Mubs?
Absolutely happy to be here.
I've been a big fan of IndieHackers so it's nice to actually speak with you and hopefully
have something interesting to say for the audience as well.
Yeah, I think you're one of the first people to come on the podcast who's a regular poster
in the IndieHackers form.
I always see you in there commenting on different things and showing off your projects so it's
pretty cool to have you on the podcast too.
Yeah, it really is an awesome community because I think there's just a lot of people there
who are trying to do a lot of the same things and are also hitting a lot of the same struggles
as well.
So I mentioned you were the Maker of the Year for Productant in 2016.
Can you give us some sense of how one acquires that title and what exactly it means?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I was actually the runner-up for 2015 as well and they did change the way that they
figured out who the winner was from 2015 to 2016.
In 2015 it was just like the same as the other categories that Productant had in their awards
where people just went in and voted for who they thought was the Maker of the Year or
the Product of the Year, etc.
For 2016 they changed that to kind of be a little bit more data-driven.
They looked at how many products people had launched and how many upvotes they got and
kind of things like that.
And I think I just beat people by just doing more than anybody else did.
I launched more apps on Productant than anybody else did in 2016.
And it wasn't, you know, and they weren't just all kind of like throwaway apps.
They almost all were significant apps that got a lot of upvotes and kind of things like
that.
That was kind of how it got to be Maker of the Year.
Yeah, what were some of the apps that you launched in 2016?
Oh, 2016.
So I think some of the big ones for 2016 was I think we launched a port list last year
in 2016.
I also...
I'm actually going to cheat now and actually pull up the page because there was a lot of
them last year.
That's the thing about being so prolific.
You just...
You forget what you've worked on.
Is there so much?
Yeah.
I mean, it's...
Yeah.
I mean, and it's...
And that's the other thing that I think I like to do is I work with other people to
kind of help launch their ideas.
So it's kind of, you know, it's kind of significant when you work on your own idea and you kind
of launch, you know, something that's very personal to you and, you know, obviously sticks
in your mind and, you know, sort of all that kind of stuff.
When you do as many things as I do, I'm actually helping other people achieve their dreams
and their ideas and kind of make them into real apps as well.
So they're still significant to me, but they're way more significant to the other people as
well.
So, yeah, so that's why sometimes I do have to go and look up, okay, who did I help last
year to kind of launch their ideas and kind of things like that.
So, yeah, so there was actually a few leaderboard apps that I kind of launched last year, which
for Medium specifically, there was like top authors and top publications because I thought,
yeah, I started to blog a lot more on Medium in 2016, but it was very hard to find, you
know, who were the other authors who were, you know, highly followed or were putting
out good content and what were the good publications to submit my articles into and sort of that
kind of stuff.
So I kind of built some apps to kind of help people find top rated authors and the top
rated publications, kind of stuff like that.
Also did some work on Q last year, which is another side project that I kind of helped
out with some friends of mine over in England.
So we had some launches around that as well, so it was a pretty interesting and varied
2016.
Yeah, it sounds like it.
And I mean, there's a lot in there that explains why I wanted to have you on the podcast, because
I think for most people, just getting working up the motivation to launch one project is
difficult and doesn't happen, or even coming up with the idea for a single project that
you can be committed to often doesn't work out for most people.
Being able to maintain old projects that you've worked on is a hairy problem.
And finding co-founders to work with who are actually reliable people that can help you
get something out the door is another challenge.
And you seem to have perfected this entire process every step of it to the point of insanity.
So I'm hoping that we'll be able to dive into some of the specific lessons that you've
learned with maybe not every project, because we would be here for like 10 hours, but with
a lot of them.
And I think a good place to start is the beginning of the process, which is coming up with ideas.
How do you know what projects are worth working on, and how do you decide what to do?
Yeah, it's kind of an interesting one.
I mean, I think for me, a lot of it has to do with solving a problem of my own.
And so I think it becomes a lot easier to kind of find those projects when you're trying
to solve a problem that you have.
And obviously, if you have that problem every day, that makes it a lot more obvious as well.
So for example, one of the first things that I ever launched on Product Hunt was a website
called Interviewed.
And it was basically just a way to find podcast episodes from specific people.
So when they'd been interviewed.
So if I wanted to go, like Patrick Collison, since we're now part of Stripe, and since
India can now part of Stripe, we can start with him.
If you wanted to find all the interviews from Patrick, you could basically just have a page,
you click on his profile, and you'd see all the podcasts that he'd appeared on, and which
kind of episodes he was on.
And so that was just trying to solve a pain point that I had.
I was trying to listen to podcasts, I was trying to find interesting people, see what
they were doing, see how they were doing things, and so I wanted to get as much information
about what they were doing.
And suddenly, I found there was no way to kind of find all of the podcasts that somebody
was on.
So I kind of solved that problem for myself.
And then it obviously grew out of there, added more people, added more podcasts and things
like that.
It's kind of hard to maintain that because you have to kind of keep listening to a lot
of podcasts and kind of update them.
So I did keep it up-to-date for a while, but now it's kind of more of an archive, kind
of historically.
But yeah, so that's my main way of kind of finding ideas, finding things to solve.
It's just, if you're doing something and you're like, damn, this is annoying, why does it
work like this?
Or if there's some information that you're looking for that isn't there, instead of waiting
for somebody else to solve that problem for you, I just tend to solve it myself.
Do you spend dedicated time brainstorming ideas to work on, or do you have some sort
of list of ideas that you're keeping, or do you just wait for inspiration to strike and
then work on whatever is the most exciting?
Yeah, it's kind of a mixture.
There's some ideas that you kind of hit on the idea and you're like, immediately, I have
to work on that idea.
But I've been trying to do less of that, but yeah, so I've got a Trello board actually
that whenever I hit a pain point or something that I think that would be a cool thing to
work on, I come and add a card into my Trello board that has that idea in it.
And I've been doing this thing where I've been tracking the fact that I've added it
in already, so I know that I've hit that same pain point and thought it was a really smart
idea to kind of solve that pain point, and then I go to my Trello board and say, oh,
it's already here.
So I've been kind of tracking how many times I've had that thought, and so the more times
I have that thought, the more likely it is that that's actually a good problem to try
and solve.
So yeah, so I kind of track my ideas through that, but occasionally I'll just hit on an
idea and be like, okay, I'm going to work on this right now.
Yeah, I get that same thing, where it's like I just have to do this thing right now all
the time.
Another thing about the way that you come up with ideas and the projects that you work
on is that you don't seem primarily motivated by profit, and very often it looks like most
of the things you release aren't constrained by needing to make a profit.
You don't put ads on there, you don't sell things.
What drives you to build things?
Yeah, I mean, I've had a job since I left school, I've been doing the software things
for about 20 years now, and that whole time I've been employed.
So doing the side projects and things that I do, profit hasn't been the primary factor
in terms of why you're starting something new.
Probably about two or three years ago, the main reason that I started doing side projects
was I was working at an agency at the time, and I had been working in an agency world
for about three or four years, and I was doing some really awesome stuff with some really
awesome people, but because of the way that the agency world works and because of the
way that they're very secretive about who's doing what and who's subcontracting, who's
building what website, I was doing some really awesome stuff, but I couldn't talk about it.
I couldn't say, this is what I just built for the last six months or whatever, and so
I found that my public profile had kind of diminished, so people weren't really aware
of what I was doing and kind of things like that, so I kind of started doing side projects
more as a way to kind of spread the word about, hey, look, I just built this thing at school
and just kind of expand my network and my public profile more.
So that was kind of like the main reasoning that I got back into doing all of these things.
It worked.
Yeah, I think it did, I think it definitely did.
People definitely know who I am now.
Have you ever considered going full-time with your side projects?
I mean, I guess at that point they would no longer be side projects, technically speaking,
but do you have a dream or a goal of being self-employed and generating all of your revenue
and income from your own projects, or do you think you're happier with the status quo working
a full-time job and keeping your projects as hobbies on the side?
Yeah, I mean, I've thought about that a lot, and obviously, if I have a project that takes
off and starts making a lot of money, it's actually funny because I've spoken to people
in the past and I've said to them quite openly, although I have a drive to make projects and
make software and to kind of launch things, I've never really had the strong desire to
be a CEO and like a leader of a company.
I think that's a completely different skill set, right?
In terms of taking an idea and kind of implementing it, that's not really what a CEO normally would
do, and even when you get to the other kind of higher-level roles, like the CTO of a company
and those kind of things, once you get past a certain size, those people aren't very
hands-on anymore, right?
They're more managing the process, they're talking to investors, they're talking to partners,
they're kind of doing that whole kind of management shuffle sort of at that point, and that's
not really what I enjoy.
I think that's why I've never really had that pull to like, okay, I want to go start my
own company and do my own thing like that because I never really wanted to do all of
those other things.
I'd much rather have my hands on taking ideas, implementing ideas, implementing new technology,
doing those kind of things.
So yeah, I've never really had that pull to, you know, I want to quit my job and I want
to start my own thing.
That's never really been a strong appeal.
Yeah, that makes complete sense.
It's a totally different mindset, it's a totally different skill set, and it's a totally different
set of tasks that you find yourself doing and responsible for on a daily basis.
You find yourself doing all sorts of management tasks and getting away from writing the actual
code and building the products.
Although I will say that there is a lot of room in between releasing free side projects
and starting a bigger company with a team that requires a lot of management overhead.
A really good example is Dave DeSandro of Metafizzy, who I had on the podcast a couple
weeks back.
He's making one off tools for developers to use on their websites.
And what I find particularly cool about it is that once he's done building a tool, he's
done.
They don't require a whole lot of maintenance overhead, so he can just move on to the next
one and then have to worry about it.
And what's also cool is that he releases his tools for free, they're also open source.
So anybody can use these for personal projects.
But if you're a company, then you need to pay him something like $20 or $40 per developer
for a license.
So it just seems like a super chill business model.
I think so.
I mean, I've definitely considered like, you know, what people call that lifestyle kind
of business, right as well, like it doesn't have to be like this big enterprise, like
I don't, I don't, I don't necessarily want to go run a big company with, with like, you
know, 20 employees on that kind of thing.
But if I had one company where it's just like me and maybe one other person, and we're making,
you know, couple hundred thousand dollars a year, I mean, like, that, that will be fine.
Like as long as I'm not, as long as I'm still kind of involved in the, in the every, every
day operation kind of of that thing, I think, I think that would be something that would
be interesting.
And I think also, you know, like you said, you know, maybe it's, it's kind of pivoting
where I can still do what I enjoy, right?
Like it, it's still find a way to run my own company, but it's not about growing the company,
it's about running the company and still doing the things that I enjoy.
If I could figure that out, I think that may be something I want to do, but, but I think,
I think until I figured out exactly what that is, I think I'll kind of say where exactly
where I am.
Yeah, that makes complete sense.
You have to find something that you enjoy working on.
And it's pretty cool to be able to jump around and work on a variety of things.
Right.
And that's, that's, that's also one of the things that I really enjoy is, and one of
the reasons that I do end up doing so many different projects is that I, I do, I enjoy
that variety, right?
Of you work on one project one day, you work on something else another day, or you help
somebody one day, and then you help somebody else another day.
So you end up having this wide variety of things of industries that you're working in,
of, of tools that you're working with as well.
And that's actually one of the reasons I did like working in the agency world as well is
you get that wide array of clients who work in all kinds of different industries.
And so you're not pigeonholed into doing one thing every day, and doing the same thing
for, you know, years and years and years.
Speaking of tools, why don't you tell us about some of your favorite programming languages,
frameworks, apps, and other tools that you use to get your projects off the ground?
Well, one of the things I do try and tell people, and again, this kind of freaks people
out, is I say I am tool agnostic.
I really don't care about what tools I use, right?
I can use Ruby on Rails one day, I can use Laravel one day, I can use Node.js one day,
you know, I can use, you know, all the different front end tools too, like I've used React
and Vue and jQuery and all those kind of things.
So you know, tools to me aren't that important.
Like I'm not going to say I'm only going to use one tool, and if you're not going to use
that tool on a project, I don't want to be on the project.
But having said that, I'm more than willing to work with lots of different tools.
But my favorites, probably right now, you know, I use Laravel PHP for almost all of
my website stuff, and I tend to float between jQuery and Vue.js, depending on how complex
the front end is.
And then I do almost all of my hosting for all of my side projects is on DigitalOcean.
So it makes it very easy to kind of spin up a project, deploy it and have it up and running
on a server like I've done that in like sort of hours, you know, kind of had the idea spun
it up, figured out what it is and kind of have it up and having up on a live server
I can do in a few hours.
I hear so much about Laravel.
And it's funny because PHP was the first back end language that I really ever used, but
it was way before Laravel existed, so I'm going to have to have Taylor on the podcast
and have him talk about it.
Absolutely.
But what about products?
Are there any products you find yourself using besides Trello?
I mean, I think product, I mean, I use her blind text as my editor of choice.
I've tried like just about every other one that appears, you know, I've tried things
like Atom and, you know, Paracits from Adobe and sort of all and, you know, Agile Studio
and kind of all of those, you know, they all have their strengths and weaknesses.
I think the sort of thing that I like about Sublime the most is just its speed, you know,
so switching between different files and opening files and, you know, switching between different
projects and things like that, I still haven't found anything that works as fast as it does.
And it's got all the standard features in terms of themes and, you know, sort of all
that kind of stuff, too.
So it looks really awesome.
But, yeah, so I think that's probably the tool I use every day and probably for like
eight or 12 hours a day is I'm kind of in that a lot.
Outside of that, I mean, I try and keep my development stuff really lightweight.
Like, I mean, obviously, we use things like Slack to kind of talk.
I use Slack to kind of talk to people I'm working with on side projects and things like
that.
But other than that, I mean, other than things like the social media tools like Twitter and
those kind of things, I tend to stay kind of lightweight on apps.
So one of the things that I really like talking about is learning to code and really like
the necessity of learning to code in order to build an online business or release a side
project or any sort of app that people will use.
And one of the things that you do very well is work with various collaborators on your
projects.
Do the people you work with help you write the code or do you generally work with people
who don't know how to code to help them bring their ideas to life?
Yeah, I generally, I tend to work more with people who don't know how to code or they
need to code a little bit.
So they kind of have a sense of kind of what needs to happen, but they don't always know
how to make it happen.
And so I think I find I mean, obviously, when you try and do things as quickly as I try
and do them, I think having more hands actually could kind of slow things down in there.
When I work with other people, we try and make that clear segmentation between, okay,
I'm going to do the technology stuff, I'm going to write the code, I'm going to manage
the servers, all that kind of stuff.
But I work with designers a lot, so they handle a lot of the visual aspects of what the website
should look like and how it should work from page to page, from screen to screen.
So that kind of aspect of things.
And then when I'm working with other people too who are more kind of business-y type people,
we kind of tend to talk more about, okay, you know, this is how I want the website to
work because this is the business solution that we're trying to solve.
So I just have them articulate what the website is supposed to do and how it's supposed to
do it at sort of a very high level.
And then I take that and I turn that into wireframes and then we kind of turn that into
a functioning app as well.
Yeah, I think being a programmer and working with designers is such a badass combination.
I'm in love with the design team at Stripe.
Obviously they're super talented and my desk just got moved to kind of where they sit.
So I spend all day just like spying on them and like peeking over their shoulders at what
they're doing.
Let's say you're not a programmer.
A lot of people listening in are probably not programmers, but they would love to be
able to partner with somebody like you on a project to get something out the door.
What is it that you look for in a collaborator to say, okay, this is somebody that I could
work with?
Yeah, I mean, normally, yeah, I have lots of conversations with people who've got ideas
that they want to build.
You know, normally I'm looking for something that's not necessarily 100% original, right?
But I'm looking for an idea that's not just, I want to build Facebook for, you know, Facebook
for animals.
Yeah, I want something that's fairly original or, you know, at least it's solving a pain
point for you specifically, at least, right, like, or even if it's not used specifically,
but it's something that you've spoken to, it's something that you've, that, you know,
it's a potential market opportunity.
I'm not saying it has to make money, but at least you know that there's an audience for
what you're trying to achieve because I think that, I mean, because I do, I've kind of had
this conversation with people where it's like, well, I saw a friend of mine launched an app
that does this and now I want to launch an app that does like that too, but, and those
kind of ideas obviously don't end well because they haven't really thought through what that
idea is.
And so I think, I think that's the other thing that I look for is even if you can't code,
you can think about the solution that you're trying to create, right?
Like how does it work, you know, in terms of not technically, but you're trying to get
information from here, you're trying to connect to another person or you're trying to automate
a process.
So when, when, when I talk to somebody, you know, I want them to have like actually thought
about that, right?
Like what's, what will the software do?
Not technically how will it do it, you know, not technically how are we going to implement
it, but what does the software help you do?
And the people who kind of sat down and actually thought through like the process of what the
software is supposed to do and who it's supposed to connect and, and those kinds of things.
I think that really makes it easier because when they talk to me about, you know, this
is what I want to build and, you know, then I have to start asking them the questions
of, okay, well, how do you get that information or how do you know that you're supposed to
send them to the right screens next?
And, you know, they, they've thought through a lot of those things as well.
And so it makes me comfortable that, that we're actually building something that will
actually work.
It sounds like you've almost got a formal checklist that you run through to figure out
if something's worth working on.
So it's like, okay, does it have an audience check?
Have they thought through the product check?
What are some other things that are part of your checklist?
Well, I mean, normally I want to know what they're going to do as well, right?
Like I understand you can't code, right?
But how are you going to move the project forward as well?
Like are you going to go and submit it to every app directory that's out there?
Are you going to go and write articles and then, you know, talk about what you're building?
How are you going to advance it as well?
I mean, I can make the software for you.
We can put it on the server.
We can launch it.
We can put up a website.
How are people going to know it exists?
How are they, you know, how, how are people going to find the thing that we've built?
So if you can't code, that's fine because not everybody can code, but, you know, can
you do content marketing?
Can you, can you talk to customers?
I mean, how are you, how are you going to take what we work on?
I mean, if we're going to take months or weeks or months making something, how are you going
to help as well?
And people who've thought about that as well, I think that people are just like, I want
you to make it and then we're going to sell it and make lots of money.
I mean, yeah, it's not how things work, you know?
I already did help.
I gave you the idea.
And it's like, no, that's not quite.
It seems like half the battle is just putting yourself in the right position to be around
the kinds of people who are going to be good partners and collaborators.
It's very easy to be surrounded by people who might have ideas but aren't particularly
helpful in bringing them to life.
Or even worse, to not have anybody around you at all, who cares?
Where do you hang out and what do you do and what are your strategies for finding good
people to work with?
Yeah, I mean, it's it's just being available and being a part of the communities out there
that kind of exist.
Right.
Like, I mean, I joined indie hackers as soon as I heard about it, because that's my kind
of people, right?
Like people who just have that idea, they have that spark, and they want to work on
something.
And they don't necessarily have to be technical to kind of have that spark.
You know, even because I like I said, I've worked with a bunch of designers.
And like one of the first projects I did was a designer had actually made every screen
of the app.
He's like, this is what I want to build.
And so he couldn't he couldn't implement that.
But the fact that he'd already taken the time to kind of think through all of the screens
and figure out like this is how the app should work was really awesome, because I could look
at it and be like, I know exactly what I need to build.
And obviously, we kind of went over it and said, OK, we're going to change this and change
that.
But but at least they taken that time they they kind of made that effort.
So yeah, I just try and make myself available on Twitter.
People can you know, people can reach out to me and you know, we kind of have a conversation
outside of that.
It's just being involved in the community, being involved in indie hackers.
I kind of hang out on like the show area of Hacker News as well.
I kind of hang out even on designer news as well, even though I'm not really a fully fledged
designer.
But you know, it's again, it's that it's it's finding people with the same attitude as you.
I think just finding where where they hang out and just hanging out with them as well.
I think another one of the big challenges that you're extremely successful at overcoming
that I mentioned earlier is finding the time to actually get your projects out the door
and see them through to completion, especially given that you've got a full time job.
You've got a family, I believe kids.
How do you make that work?
Yeah, I try and be honest about this.
I'm kind of a freak in that I don't sleep a lot.
How much do you sleep?
I typically if I get four or five hours sleep at night, I'm OK.
Wow.
Yeah.
So that that obviously helps, you know, like, I mean, I don't need the full eight to ten
hours that a lot that a lot of other people need.
So having that extra three hours a day that normal people would normal people would be
asleep.
I'm not.
Yeah.
And for me too, I mean, outside of that, I mean, like, I do treat what I'm doing as my
hobby, right?
Like, it really is something I enjoy to do.
And I just happen to really enjoy doing it in front of a computer.
I love making stuff.
You know, some people like to go work on cars or they or they love to go work in the wood
shop or, you know, do whatever it is.
I just happen to love being in front of a computer writing code.
And so, you know, I make time for it because it's something that I like to do.
But it's also something I can do while I'm doing other things like, you know, because
I'm also a big fan of TV and movies as well.
I love to watch movies.
I love to watch TV as well.
It just so happens I can sit in front of a TV, watch a TV show and write code at the
same time.
So it makes it a little bit easier where I can do these things at the same time.
So making time is just that.
I mean, like, it's something I enjoy to do.
So I make the time for it.
And like I said, I don't sleep as much as other people do.
So I mean, like, what I used to do a lot was when my kids went to sleep, my kids, you know,
they go to sleep at eight o'clock, nine o'clock at night.
Yeah, I would hang out with the wife for a little bit.
She would go to bed as well around 11 o'clock.
Then at 11 o'clock, I'd have two or three hours where I could work.
And everybody wasn't work, right?
I mean, it was a hobby.
It was something I enjoyed to do.
So from 11 till about two o'clock in the morning is when I do a lot of my stuff for side stuff.
Yeah, you're like, you've got these genetic advantages where you can multitask with the
TV and your projects and you can stay up late, you're like the LeBron James of side projects.
And I don't think technology is at the point where very many of us can copy your genetic
makeup.
Yeah.
I mean, I do try and be honest about that.
I mean, it's not something that sort of everybody can do and people can do it for a short amount
of time, right?
Like you could do that for like a week or two, like if you had any idea that you really
were passionate about, you wanted to launch it, you could do it for a week, right?
You could just all go sleep.
But I've been doing it for the last, well, I've been doing it since I was in high school.
Like I would drive my parents nuts because when I was in high school, I was like 15,
16 years old, I would be up till one o'clock in the morning.
And they would be like, well, you have to wake up at seven o'clock in the morning and
get ready for school and all that kind of, and I was like, well, I'm not tired.
I could try and go to sleep, but I'd rather be up working or at that time I was just playing
around.
I was playing video games and hacking on video games at the time, but yeah, I've been doing
it for as long as I can remember.
I think the most concrete thing that I take out of that is the fact that working on these
side projects really needs to be your hobby.
It needs to be something that you enjoy and that you're passionate about.
As cliche as that might sound, if that's not the case, then you're going to find that you
have to make a lot of sacrifices in order to squeeze in the time because you'll be sacrificing
the things that are your actual hobbies and passions in order to make room for this other
thing that you're not that into.
Whereas somebody like you can work on these projects and not feel like you're making a
sacrifice at all.
Right.
And that's the other thing that I look for when I'm looking for a partner to work on
stuff.
If they're coming to me with an idea, let's say they're a big musician, if they're building
something that's in the musical industry, it's much more likely that they have the passion
for that.
But if they're coming to you with an insurance idea, I want to build a website for an insurance
service, but they're like musicians and they want to play music all the time, like why
are you building an insurance service, that kind of thing too.
I think that's really important as well.
Having something, having an idea that you're really passionate about is not just about
I want to build a company around that, but it's actually a problem that I really want
to solve because it's something that I really enjoy being involved with and being around
other people who like that kind of thing as well.
What's your secret for getting things out the door quickly?
Because not only do you spend a lot of time working, but you seem to, from start to finish,
get a product out the door in the minimum amount of time possible and it doesn't even
look crappy.
The things that you produce look great and they work great.
What are your tips there?
That's just come from experience, I think, right?
I've been doing this for 20 years now and I actually just wrote a post on Medium recently.
It's called Jack the Master of All Trades and it kind of talks a little bit about... I've
got a lot of advice in the past about people have told me, look, if you want to be successful
in life, in a career specifically, that you need to have one skill that you do better
than everybody else.
You got to pick one technology, you got to pick Ruby on Rails and just become the master
of Ruby on Rails.
I've tried to follow that in the past, but more and more I've kind of come to the realization
that I don't want to do that, but because I want to be a generalist, I want to be good
at everything.
I don't want to be master at one thing, I want to be good at everything.
That means that when somebody comes to me with an idea and they want it to look not
so bad, I can make a website that looks not so bad.
I can think about servers and think about, okay, how can I optimize the server so that
when I deploy this new website, it will actually run and it won't crash the server.
I can think about the user experience and understand why it's good to have things positioned
a certain way.
Having that generalized knowledge and that generalized experience of all aspects of making
a project on a website, I think is one of the things that really helps me get things
out fast.
Because I'm making things, I consider all of those things.
I don't wait till the end and then be like, oh, now I need to optimize the server, I need
to go and optimize the code to run faster because it's going to crash the server.
I'm doing all of those things along the way and it's often easier to do those things earlier
on and do them along the way than to have to go back and re-engineer things and to rethink
things because I think that's where a lot of people waste time is they finish it and
then they go back to the start to fix things.
I find I tend not to have to do a lot of that.
That's where I'm able to push things out really quickly, I think.
It reminds me of my brother who helps run Indie Hackers, but he's also a novelist.
I remember him writing his first novel when we were in college and sending me chapter
after chapter.
By the time he got to the end of the book, the latest chapters were so much better than
the earlier chapters that he had to go back and rewrite it because it sounded like two
different books.
Yeah, I think that happens a lot.
Even from a design standpoint, I've worked with designers a lot and they design the first
screen and they hand it off to me and I'll work on it.
Then as we go further in the project, they'll do more of those, but then when they get to
the end, they're like, well, now that last screen doesn't really look like the first
one that I gave you, so I have to go back to the first one and re-change how that one
looks.
So you end up going through all of the screens multiple times because it doesn't quite match
anymore because by the time they get to the end of the project, they've improved where
they finished so much that they feel they have to go back to the beginning and improve
that over from the start as well.
Exactly.
I try not to do that.
I try and factor a lot of that stuff in at the beginning and then just try and work through
and just get it to the point where I think the one other thing that I try and do is,
and again, I've written a post about this as well, it's like, I don't try and make
things perfect.
I make them good enough.
I think because it's a personal project, they often feel like they put more pressure on
themselves like, it's mine, I own it, it has to be perfect versus it's my job, I'm going
to do it, I'm going to do a really good job, but I don't feel like I own it versus it's
a side project.
This is all me, I have to own it and it has to be perfect.
But really, as we know, there's no such thing as perfect.
We do as much as we can, we make it as good as we can and then we launch it.
What's funny to me about that whole paradigm or that trap of getting sucked into my project
has to be perfect before I release it is that most projects that people release, nobody
ever sees.
They get zero traction.
So you can spend six months or 12 months releasing this perfect project and then nobody sees
and it doesn't matter that it was perfect.
That's the other thing, I try and tell people too, especially when working with collaborators
as well, there's no such thing as a finished product anymore.
If you have a successful thing on your hands, it will change every day from now until you
stop working on it.
And so there's no such thing as finished.
There's no such thing as perfect because if it's not finished, how can it be perfect?
And so just let's launch it, we'll see what people say and if they tell you to change
something, that's what you do.
And so yeah, so there's no such thing as perfect.
Launch it, get it in the hands of people as soon as you can, they will tell you what's
wrong with it.
I think another cool thing about the vantage point from which you can look at things is
that very few people get to see the actual behind the scenes details of taking a project
from start to finish as many times as you have, maybe investors have, but very few people
in the driver's seat have actually gotten to do that because they're not as prolific
as you.
And I'm sure going through this process time and time again, you've learned a lot of lessons
about how to actually get the thing that you've made into the hands of users rather than the
typical fate of most projects and businesses, which is to fade away with nobody ever trying
it out.
So what are some of the lessons that you've learned about promoting what you've done,
distributing what you've done and what channels have you found particularly effective for
getting the word out about your projects?
Well I think I actually learned this lesson when I worked in agency world as well because
I think a lot of times what happened even in agency world is a client comes to you and
they want to hire your agency to kind of rebuild their website or rebuild a specific app or
launch a specific app that they have in mind.
But it's a large company that you're working with, there's a thousand people at the company,
but the person talking to you isn't necessarily the person who's going to be using the product
or isn't even the person who's going to give final sign off on that particular app or that
particular website.
So I mean a lot of what happened in agency world was that there would be a project manager
on the company side as well as on the agency side and so we would go through the cycle
of figuring out what the requirements were and doing all that kind of stuff and then
doing the build and doing the launch, doing the handoff of the project.
And then the person who's actually responsible for the application or the thing, who's actually
going to sign off on it and say this works the way it's supposed to, they would see that
the end of the cycle and they would be like well this doesn't work.
And so I think that's kind of like my first inkling of you have to get it to the people
who are actually going to use it as quickly as you can kind of came about through that.
Do you have a process that you go through for finding these initial users and getting
into their hands?
It depends on the app and it depends on if I'm working with other people and things like
that too.
Typically a lot of the things I do side project wise are kind of meant for people like me
in terms of you know they're either software people or they're web design people or things
like that and because I've been a part of the community for so long I already have access
to a few of those right like I'll build something and long before I launch it I've shown it
to 10, 12 people already just to get their initial thoughts on it you know just high
level this is a good idea this is a bad idea I like the overall look and feel of it sort
of that kind of thing.
That's like the ultimate hack and it's what you said earlier it's building things that
you want to see yourself because then you I mean ultimately what you really want to
do is just understand the customer or the user that you're building for and for building
a product for yourself then of course you understand where you hang on online what kind
of features are important to you etc and that makes it easier to build a product that other
people like you will also enjoy.
Yeah absolutely and then I mean there are certain websites out there like we've used
beta list in the past we are used to offer kind of a splash page you know this kind of
web app is about to launch soon you know you collect email addresses yeah you kind of send
out the emails hey we've you know we've kind of got our MVP out we'd love you know we'd
love for you to come and try it out products aren't just started something like that called
upcoming as well where you can kind of list your upcoming product that hasn't launched
yet so you can collect email addresses kind of get feedback like that yeah increasingly
now as well there there seems to be there's a slack for that too right like so what whatever
industry you're working in whatever product or service you're trying to build there's
probably either a Facebook group or a slack group of people who who are your target market
join that community start being a part of that as soon as you can obviously don't spam
them or kind of anything like that but you know start engaging start seeing what they're
talking about start seeing are they actually experiencing the same pain that you're trying
to solve and if they are awesome and if they're not find out what problem they are trying
to solve and you know you start having those one-on-one conversations with with people
in those communities and to see if you're trying to solve something that really exists
what's your take on product hunt itself as a distribution channel for getting the word
out about something that you've built and you have kind of a checklist or playbook that
you go by for promoting what you've done on product hunt so I think it kind of depends
on why you built something right like I find product on is great it may not necessarily
get you like the the biggest audience numbers that you can get elsewhere but I find most
influencers look on product on first before they look elsewhere right so so where we launched
will robots take my job dot-com about six or seven weeks ago now program was the first
place that I kind of launched it but I knew that they wouldn't I knew it would do well
on product on but I knew that that was my door into into a lot wider space so we launched
on product on I'm not sure if you if you heard that story but we got we got something like
six million page views in less than three weeks I think it was yeah it was huge I remember
you posting about it on indie hackers I thought it was it was mind-blowing how much traffic
you got it was it was awesome I think the thing was is that even though product itself
didn't send us a lot of traffic there was a lot of people who check product on to see
what's cool and what's new so they can then spread the word elsewhere cuz like you know
we got most of our traffic from MSN and AOL and places like that but had I not posted
on product on the people who wrote about it on those other places would never have have
heard about it so you didn't pitch any press you didn't actually reach out to them we we
pitched a couple like after we'd launched because like that was our plan was that well
launch your product on will kind of get Irish our initial feedback from the community and
then you know then we'll kind of start to reach out to the press once we're happy with
everything working the way that it's supposed to and everything look in the way that it's
supposed to obviously we didn't end up working out quite like that because the the press
kind of found it and kind of and kind of ran with it all up ran with it all on their own
so yeah I think that's the one thing I try and tell people is that product sounds awesome
and obviously if you got the kind of product that will be a good fit I think it will it
will send you a lot of audience and it will also send you potentially customers as well
but I try not make it my only way to kind of spread the word if you are going to do
press if you are going to pitch it you know try and pitch the press at the same time as
you're doing your product hunt launch if you're trying to raise money you know on angel list
or something like that if you're if you're going to post yourself on angel list you're
trying to launch on product hunt around the same time so that when people find your angel
list posting oh they are I just saw them on product hunt you know I keep because there
is that small community of people that hang out in most of the places that you would use
to get more exposure more and some more kind of startup related things but they kind of
use product hunt as a has that product or that service been on product hunt if not why
not you know why have they launched on product hunt so if you can leverage product hunt to
kind of make sure that people have already heard of you when you want those other things
I think that works that works the best that I've seen is like when I've pitched press
in the past I've told them hey look I just launched this thing it's number one on product
hunt it's number two on product hunt they tend to pay more attention to it than if I
just pitched them without having been on product hunt itself yeah it's like it adds legitimacy
to what you've done and I found similar effects on other communities on the internet where
some communities are a really good launching pad to get what you've built noticed in other
places so a few weeks ago there was an article that I really wanted to get on Hacker News
but instead of posting directly to Hacker News I submitted it to a subreddit slash r
slash entrepreneur and the people there liked it and eventually they submitted it to Hacker
News because there's so many people there looking at it so yeah it's really good to
be aware of the various communities you can post and get traction and obviously product
hunt is the one that I most associate with you just because you're so prolific there
and you want product hunts maker of the year but I'm also glad that you mentioned your
project that you released a few months ago will robots take my job dot com which if you're
listening to you and you haven't been there you should go there and absolutely find out
if robots are going to take your job I would love for you to go into detail and tell the
story about that project from beginning to end because it has all of the challenges and
all of the hallmarks really of getting any side project out the door for example you
had to find a collaborator to work with you had to actually build the thing and make it
good but at the same time be mindful of spending too much time working on it you had to launch
it and promote it and get into people's hands how did all this happen and how did it begin
your robots take my job is it's a very simple website you go you punch in the title of your
job and it gives you a percentage likelihood that your job will be automated away either
through AI or through robotics and kind of things like that and actually so it's not
my idea this is one of these ideas where somebody else came to me with the idea so about two
months ago I joined the freelance.tv slack group and so freelance.tv is a new website
by Dan Petty who's an awesome designer out in California and so I was just I joined the
slack group and somebody reached out to me on the slack group was like hey I've seen
you on Proctan I would love to work on something with you at some point and I was like well
absolutely awesome yeah I would I would love to as well but it's one of those things where
it's like well I don't know who you are I don't know anything about you I'm not going
to work on like the next big you know big project with you why don't we start with something
small so his name's Timitar and he works he lives I should say out in Bulgaria and so
we did all of this in slack we didn't we didn't actually talk to each other until after we'd
launched the actual app itself we didn't actually speak on online or you know we didn't do a
hangout or anything like that we did everything in slack so yeah so we tried to come up with
some ideas of things that we could work on that that would be kind of small in scope
that we could kind of get a feel for how we would work with with each other in terms of
working on something that might someday become much larger and so we kind of threw out some
ideas and one one of the ideas that Timitar had was that he'd found this report that was
published in 2013 by some researchers over in over in Oxford that just did the analysis
of looking at 700 odd jobs and looked at the skills that were associated with those particular
jobs they did all of the mathematical research to figure out what the likelihood of a of
a particular job being automated it was away was and so it was a very long winded report
it was something like 50 or 60 pages long that talked into how they did all of their
research and how they figured out what this percentage was and at the very end of it was
just like this three pages where they listed the 700 jobs and what the percentage was that
that particular job would be automated away and we were like well that's really interesting
nobody's gonna read a 50 page report and and get to the end of it to kind of look at these
things so we kind of found a way to kind of extract all that information out and we're
like well okay so we know we can use this this information and then we're like well
just having a job title and the percentage isn't very interesting so how can we pad this
a little bit so it's a little bit more interesting so we went and found on the lab on the Bureau
of Labor and Statistics has a website which actually the report actually used the same
job code IDs as the US department I guess there's some official job classification stuff
that exists and so we pulled out some information about like how many people actually work in
this job you know what's the average salary for a person in this job things like that
just to kind of pad the sort of information a little bit to make a little bit more interesting
once we knew that we could get all that information we kind of like okay well it's still a very
simple website right like you you come you search for your job and we give you a page
that gives you the sort of likelihood that that particular job will get kind of automated
away with some extra information as well and so we figured we could kind of build it in
a couple of weekends is kind of what we thought and so that that seems small enough in scope
that that it was it was a good first project to get to kind of see if we like working together
if we like the work that we did to that kind of stuff and so yeah so we so we kind of sat
down and kind of figured out who would do what and like I said he was a designer and
he actually did some front-end work as well so he did all of the UI and did the HTML and
the CSS stuff and I did everything else in terms of taking the information that was in
the report importing it into a database so people could search it collect the other information
from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and and all that kind of glue it all together so that
when you search for a job you got back all of the right stuff and so we did that and
we did it in a couple of weeks you know obviously working a few hours here and there it wasn't
like a full-time thing or anything like that so a few weeks later we we kind of launched
it and it kind of went insane it when it when it like I said it we would come launch it
on product time we post it on I think we post on hacking news as well in the show hacking
news area I can pull up the stats right now but I mean it was something like 4 million
page views in the first five days or first few weeks or something I think we've actually
crossed 7 million now that's nuts so let's not bad for a two-week project right and that
and it was it was one of the things we were like well we're gonna do this project just
to see how we might like working together so that when we do something real something
that's gonna be big that we actually know that we want to work together you know I don't
think we're ever gonna do anything quite this large steps yeah we skipped a few step we
just went straight to the large project instead but yes so just looking at the stats now yeah
so we've done 7.5 million page views since we launched and we launched on May the 29th
is when we launched what do you think it was about this project in particular that made
it so popular and are there any lessons that you learned here that you're going to carry
forward into your future projects no I think it's just a topic that people are really interested
in right like people there's just a lot of talk right now about you know people being
afraid of their jobs being automated away I'm like it's a very it's a very common worry
it's not limited to a particular part of the industry right like all the particular part
the working population everybody seems to be concerned about this whether you're a web
designer or a web developer or you know somebody working on on or somebody working on a farm
I mean like everybody seems to be interested to know if there's gonna be some machine or
some AI that's gonna come and take your work and so I think that that I think that's one
of the reasons that it gets so much attention is that it just is something that people are
talking about a lot right now I think one one one of the other things that we did a
lot of other people because this this reports existed since 2013 and so other people have
built these these kind of things in the past but I think the way that we presented the
information to was really was really a unique way right like I think some people had taken
that same information and just put together a website that just had the list on it but
you know you're just seeing a list of jobs and the percentages it's not very interesting
and the way that we did it in terms of you know you actually type in your job and it
kind of gives you the matches of the job so you can easily find your job and then we did
put a lot of effort into making it so that you could say that you could share your particular
job as well so we made it very easy for you to post on Facebook my job is gonna yeah my
job has a 5% chance of being automated away you know what's yours doing that kind of thing
so we made it very easy for people to spread the word about the website as well
yeah I see the social buttons there I think it makes a lot of sense that you guys made
it so personal you're not looking at everybody's job so you're just looking at your job and
how that will be affected which makes it more fun to share I think that really was the key
thing because I think we did end up getting a lot of traffic from we'd see spikes coming
from you know when it was posted on on some news websites as well but we'd see a corresponding
spike in social activity as well so we'd see this spike coming yeah because I was on it
because it was on AOL or it was or it was on some TV station as well it was covered
on TV as well it was covered on TV and radio as well a lot but we'd see that that spike
come in and then we'd see the long tail of that like for you know if the hours after
that we'd see like the we'd see the we'd see the traffic from Facebook and Twitter stay
high after that because people were sharing it and people were finding it from Facebook
and people were sharing on Twitter and people finding it on on Twitter as well so to close
out because we were running out of time I would love to get your thoughts on what the
average person can do to bring their ideas into reality because I think most people are
in a situation where they're facing a lot of the challenges that you seem to have overcome
so effortlessly they have full-time jobs they might not know who to work with they might
not know what to work on and once they finish they might not know how to get into people's
hands what is the biggest or the best thing that they can do to go from where they are
now to producing a project that people will pay for or at least if they can build an audience
for I think I think the biggest mistake people make when they when they're doing this thing
for the first time is they start too large right they try and build a massive project
that does that solves a hundred different things you know so that kind of thing I think
I think most people what they need to do is start small right build the you know build
a one-page website that solves one specific is the other solves one thing because I think
a lot of the things that people forget is they look at things like Facebook and even
Instagram and they are those kind of things and they see these big massive sites that
are out there they do so much you can share videos and pictures and you can share your
statuses and things like that but they they forget that when most of those things launch
they did one thing and I think that's I think that's the trap that people fall into is like
well now I got to compete with Facebook which means I got to do all the things that Facebook
does but the reality is that you don't have to write start small build a small audience
do one thing once that's you know once that's locked in and you're doing well with that
add the second feature add the third feature add the fourth feature and I think if you
start small like that too it also makes the other things that you have to do easier too
right like if you're looking for somebody to build something right like you're not presenting
them with this 60 page spec of what they need to build because you're building 20 features
you're building one feature you can spec that out on one page now when you're looking for
people to work with it's a lot easier to get them to sign on for building something smaller
than this big massive thing that they would have to commit six months to as well speaking
in my heart right now I could take this episode back in time to little Cortland like 10 years
ago all right well thank you so much for the advice can you tell people who are listening
in where they can go to learn more about you and find the projects that you're working
on absolutely well obviously on product on at my best shirt bowl same on Twitter that's
probably the place I'm active the most I share a lot of links and things related to making
side projects and kind of things like that as well and my website is mubs dot me so
that's pretty easy I think all right well thanks for coming on the show and it was great
having you thank you very much if you enjoyed listening to this conversation and you're
looking for a way to help support the Andy hackers podcast then you should subscribe on
iTunes and leave a quick rating and a review it only takes about 30 seconds but it actually
really helps get the word out and I would personally appreciate it very much in addition
if you are running an internet business or if it's something that you'd like to do in
the future should join me and a whole bunch of other internet entrepreneurs on the Andy
hackers com forum it's basically a community of like-minded individuals just giving each
other feedback and helping out with ideas and landing pages and marketing and growth
and other internet business related topics that's www.ndhackers.com slash form hope to
see you guys there.