What's up, everybody? This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to
the IndieHackers podcast. More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making
a lot of money in the process. And on this show, I sit down with these IndieHackers to
discuss the ideas, the opportunities, and the strategies they're taking advantage of
so the rest of us can do the same. I'm here with Justin Jackson, the founder of Transistor,
which is a very successful podcast hosting company. It's what I'm using to host this
podcast and also my other podcast Brains. Justin, welcome back to IndieHackers. I think
this is your third time on the show. Yeah. Well, it's just good to chat with you. It's
actually good to chat with any human being these days. Yeah. Well, you're particularly
fun to talk to you because they're very easy to talk to. We have our Twitter DMs back and
forth where we share random thoughts on stuff, but it's good to just flow. Yeah, totally.
I've noticed the change in the way you do the show. When I listen, it's become a lot
more conversational. Yeah. Well, it's much more fun to have authentic, normal conversations.
And there's this idea of a... You're familiar with the concept of an Overton window. It's
kind of like, what are you allowed to say? What are you not allowed to say? There's kind
of a polite society that just bounds on things that everybody agrees are okay and everybody
doesn't agree are okay. And I think if you have a show or an audience, Twitter account,
a newsletter or whatever, you kind of create your own Overton window, meaning that whatever
it is that you put out, the people who like it will stick with you and the people who
don't won't. And so you can kind of do whatever you want on your own show, but once you pick
something, you're kind of locked into it because now your audience wants that. And so it's
always kind of hard to change the format of a podcast show because it's like, if I've
been doing interviews for a long time and then I'm like, you know what? I want to do
more conversational stuff. A lot of people will be like, what the hell? What happened
to the interviews? Yeah. What an interesting idea. What's Bon Jovi's Overton window? It's
like everyone wants to hear the same songs over and over again. They don't want anything
new, right? Get locked in. Yeah. Yeah. And this is a real actually, this is a fundamental
challenge of life, which is I do think people need to grow. Businesses need to grow and
change and adapt and people don't like change. But if you don't change, you kind of, you
can recede, you know, you can, your business can die over time just because it becomes
gradually more irrelevant or doesn't respond to current market conditions. And then you
as a person, you know, you might like being comfortable in the moment. I, in some ways
I have this with Transistor. John and I talk, my co-founder talk about this all the time,
which is, okay, we made it. Like this is what so many indie entrepreneurs want. A successful
SaaS company that's, you know, making good revenue. And we have, we have, it's a team
of four now. So we have Jason as a full-time software developer and Helen full-time on
customer success, but it's a small team and it's just very comfortable. But there's also
this nagging thought of like, well, we can't stay here. Like the business has to evolve.
And we as individuals have to evolve too. And so how, how are we going to move forward,
not get too comfortable, not stay in the same place? And yeah, in some ways the comfort
is impediment. In other ways, though, the dynamics aren't as simple as people say,
you know, like, it's like, oh, well, if you're too comfortable, then, then, you know, that's,
that's almost worse than being desperate. And I don't agree with that at all. The underlying
margin that especially good finances provides, it's so crucial. It's just so, it just seems
so good in terms of being able to have time to think and be creative and maneuver and
try experiments and push yourself to be a little uncomfortable.
You've made like a few of these sort of transitions where I think you were like doing good at
something or maybe not, but then you were able to like leap into like the next level.
So like, if I look at like earlier in your life, you know, you wrote a blog post about
this, actually, how you were surrounded by these sort of brick and mortar businesses
and you knew you want, wanted like what businesses could provide, but you didn't have any real
examples of like these like scalable internet businesses. So you started like, I think like
a snowboard shop or something. Yeah. The real deal.
Yeah. And that's cool, but like not that many people who are in this sort of brick and mortar
business world, like leapfrog out of that into the tech world. And you did. And then
I think that's where I kind of, you popped onto my radar because you're like a creator.
You're like, I've got a newsletter, multiple podcasts, a community, a blog, my Twitter
account. Like you're just putting out content constantly and doing that for years. And I'm
like, okay, this is who Justin is. Like, that's cool. And then like, sort of leapt out of
that and made another transition into like, okay, now you have the successful SaaS business
that's grown to at least a million dollars in revenue and you're crushing it with that.
So it's like, there's multiple leaps you've made out of this, you know, some smaller pond
before and now you're at this place where you've got the successful SaaS business. And
it's like, where do you leap to from here? And maybe the answer is nowhere. Like maybe
the answer is like, Oh, this is good. Now I'm just going to focus on other parts of
my life. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is what I've been challenged on this before, especially
when John and I were talking about building transistor. And we had a bunch of listeners
who were asking us, what is your enough number? And at the time, I think it was even difficult
to answer that. Like, what do you mean enough? Like, of course, we're just going to keep
growing, even if it's slowly, like we knew we wanted it to be gradual and sustainable.
And you know, we have this list of values on our GitHub, it's public, but we ask ourselves
these questions, like, you know, if we make this decision, is it going to make us like
working on transistor more in six months or not like it as much? Does this decision give
us more margin or does it take away margin out of our life? You know, space, breathing
room. A lot of it has to do with like, is this going to be an enjoyable company? Is
this going to be an enjoyable thing to do if we make these decisions? And it's helped
us avoid a lot of complexity. We decided to not go the venture capital route because it
just felt like, oh, that would just add too much weight and expectation on us. And so
we self funded, there was difficulty in that. But once you make it over the the initial
hurdle of like getting to, you know, a baseline of MRR, if you're able to self fund and get
there and survive, and you still have pretty good growth. I mean, that's, it is a great
place to be. There's a point where things I think flip, where later in your business
when you're successful, you're making hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars,
you're like, like, you've made it to where you initially wanted to go. I think it is
really easy to make these decisions about that prioritize like your quality of life,
like what feels good to me, what's gonna make me happy, etc. Because the other stuff is
taken care of. And I think before that, it is tempting to make a lot of decisions based
on that, but not always helpful. Like I see a lot of founders who are just getting started,
and they quit their jobs, and they're working for themselves. And they're like, I'm only
working three days a week, and I hate marketing. So I'm not going to do anything for marketing.
And it's like all these decisions that are like that feel good. But it's like, you haven't
built a sustainable business yet. So you might have to kind of do some work you don't like
to get there. And later on, like you can kind of cut it out. Like with any hackers, like
I do a lot of stuff that I like, I've cut out a lot of stuff that I probably should
do that I don't like. But it's only because any actors is big and successful enough that
like, I can do that now. And I could not have done in the early days.
It's kind of frustrating when you're in the beginning stages, because it can feel like
it's all or nothing. Like when you're struggling, like all those years, I call it the years
in the wilderness, like all those years, I was trying to build something. And in some
ways, I had the freedom, I had the freedom with my time, right? I was able to kind of
set my own schedule. But there was a piece that was missing, which was just like consistent
revenue every month. And not having that pillar kind of crumbles the whole building in a way.
It's necessary. It's the foundation. Yeah. And so but I can remember what I was trying
to like when I was in the beginning stages or the not not there yet stage. It's so frustrating.
Because you see people and you go, Oh, wow, like I want to get there. And the gap, like
the number of things that have to fall into place in order for you to have that life is
it just seems so challenging. And, and even with transistor, like, it was almost like
we just crossed this invisible line. And then, like a few months later, I just felt better.
And then I've just felt better and more secure every month since then. So it hasn't gone
away, you haven't acclimated to feeling like you've made it. I have acclimatized to it
in the sense that I feel way more secure, and way more at peace. The one thing I sometimes
intuit from other founders, like even like whatever the whatever class of SAS founder
I was in. There's a handful of those founders that seem to be more stressed out now than
they were when we started. And from what I can tell, it's because they've had to have
bigger teams like bigger teams seem to be associated with more stress, especially if
you're not the kind of founder that wants to lead a big team. Some of them more like
more popularity and visibility has really been stressful. And for some, the just the
dynamics of the business get more and more complicated, like you have to write more enterprise
deals and write those by their very nature, just in my mind, they, they can ruin a person
like it's all that additional craft. And I do feel lucky in that, for whatever reason,
I'm not sure if it was because we were intentional about it at the beginning. It probably has
a lot to do with the market we're in. It probably has a lot to do with the product that we built
and the customers we serve. But one thing that has been kind of consistent once we crossed
that line of whatever it was 25k MRR, once we crossed that line, and definitely once
we crossed $50,000, it's just felt more and more secure, more simplicity in life, and,
and less stress in a lot of ways. Like there's just, there's not much that really stresses
this out like it used to, you know?
It sounds like you're living the dream. And when I think about why indie hackers do what
they do, it's almost always because of like a desire of like different kinds of freedom.
And so there's a creative freedom. I want to work on whatever I want. And then my normal
job, I have to work on what the man tells me to do, but like the own business, I can
do my own creative sort of thing. And you've obviously got that location freedom. I don't
work from wherever I want. I guess lots of people have that now with COVID and work from
home, but like it wasn't traditionally super common.
So there's another, there's another level of that, which is I was working for a startup
that got acquired by an agency. And I mean, everyone was fine. It was like a fine work
environment except there was just this unwritten expectation that you'd be on Slack all the
time. And that pressure, I mean, I remember chafing at it when I was there, but then once
I had this new life with transistor where it's like, I don't have to be on Slack all
the time. You know, I don't feel like I'm, I'm chained to it. That was a huge relief.
The other weird one was I, maybe I'm the only one that feels this, but like having to ask
my manager for vacation time always just felt like, why, why, why do I have to prostate
myself in front of this company and, you know, beg for time off to have permission to go
live my life? It's like asking to go to the bathroom when you're in school, a little bit
demeaning. Well, and, and often in Slack, it's like that.
It's like, Hey guys, I'm just heading to the washroom or heading to out for lunch or whatever.
It's like, why do I have to tell anybody what I'm doing? Yeah. And now there's like all
these articles. It's hilarious since remote work started. There's all these articles about
employees having sex during the day. And it's like, why would any company care? Like why?
It's such a weird paradigm that, that a manager would even have the right to care or know
or even think about that. Like if, as long as you're getting your work done and you're
a kind coworker and, you know, the expectations on the average worker, I don't know, sometimes
they just seem very odd to me, especially when you're out of it and you go, Oh man,
that's sure weird. Like, yeah, it's hard to imagine going back. And that's like, yeah,
that's why you do what you do. That's why everybody who comes on this show does what
they do because they don't want to have to live that life. And it's really cool to build
the company that you've built and then look forward and be like, I never have to go do
that ever again. And so I think that's like a third kind of freedom that you're talking
about, which is like temporal freedom, like time freedom. Like I want to use my time however
the hell I want to without ever asking anybody's permission. And then obviously there's financial
independence too, which is like kind of the Holy Grail, which is I don't want to have
to depend on someone else's or my paycheck. And like you've achieved all of those. And
I think one of the questions that I have for you, because you spend a lot of time, like
I said earlier, as a creator, you were sort of putting out a lot of content and helping
people and running a community, et cetera. Like you were making money doing that and
then you transitioned into like a SaaS founder. And the question I have is like, is it even
worth being a creator? Like all that time you spent doing all that other stuff, like
I think you were able to achieve a lot of that freedom, but in some ways like you're
still kind of on the hook in terms of time. You still kind of put out another newsletter,
another podcast episode, another whatever. Otherwise like you're done. Whereas it seems
like you have even more control over your time. Yeah. I mean, the pressure is different
for sure. Like before it was like, I have to get that newsletter out every Saturday
morning. I have to publish this podcast every week. And you can see a lot of creators doing
this even now. Like there's a lot of pressure to keep that weekly cadence, for example.
And what I'm realizing more and more, especially as I try to give people advice is that my
position now is just the culmination of everything that came before. And so you take any of those
variables out and I don't know, even though like honestly, some of those variables caused
me a lot of pain. Just like sacrificing a lot in my personal life and maybe like sacrificing
too much. And it's hard to know in retrospect how much of that was necessary and how much
of it wasn't necessary. Same. I often feel like I sacrificed too much
in my twenties. And I'm curious to hear why you felt you did the same. For me it was very
obviously came down to the fact that I was in too much of a rush. I was like, I need
to make this work next month, this year, et cetera, et cetera. And if I had said, you know
it's cool if it takes me six years to build this business, I'm going to go have fun with
my friends and do this other stuff. And at the same time, and it's cool if I go slow,
I wouldn't have made those sacrifices, but I was so impatient and I did not think on
that scale. I was thinking in months and years. Yeah. Yeah. And I think my impatience was
probably more, uh, I was just in a real rush to become an adult, quote unquote, whatever
that meant. And so, um, you know, I got a full time. I went right to university. I got
a full time job right away. I moved out of my parents' house right away. I didn't go
traveling. I got married pretty young. I had kids pretty young. Um, and that I think in
retrospect, I think that was a mistake. Although again, maybe this is just built into me and
there's just no way I could have avoided it. But I think there is something about allowing
people to explore whatever stage of life they're at. There's like appropriate levels of exploration.
We've talked about this a lot actually. And I just finished range that book by David Epstein
and it took me like two years to read it, but it's great. It's a really great book.
And I just found myself agreeing a lot with his thesis, which is we've, we made specialization
in our culture, uh, religion. And you know, now a lot of parents, you know, they want
to get their kid, you know, in Canada, it's like, we want to get our kids playing hockey
by three years old and so that they can maybe have a chance to get into the NHL. And there
is this other path, which is allowing kids and people in their twenties and people in
their thirties and forties to explore at kind of an appropriate in an appropriate way at
that stage of life and not be in such a rush to, you know, start that business or whatever.
And I think it can still result in, you know, like when I look at Nathan Barry as he's someone
that achieved a lot in his twenties, but there's just a lot of exploration in there as well.
And I think that served them really well, uh, as opposed to, you know, I really locked
in in my twenties, uh, and then spent my entire twenties just doing one thing and didn't even
get into tech until, uh, basically my thirties that it's also one reason, even though I'm
a, I'm a huge crypto, I'm a huge skeptic, crypto critic, I would say, but I'm the, the
one thing I'm trying to temper myself on is just that, that unbridled youthful enthusiasm
and idealism that so many of these kids who are 18, 19, 20, you know, in their twenties,
I don't want to, I don't want to shit on it too much, you know, because it's just like
there's something about that idealism that is so fun to explore when you're young.
I think there still needs to be attention. And one thing that concerns me is when I was,
you know, in my early twenties, I went to university and for a long time I thought,
well, that was a waste of time, but I've kept coming back to these business ethics classes
I took in university. And the one thing that academia I think was good at was giving us
this tension that kind of balanced out that idealism. So, okay, sure you want to go do
this, but let's pull on the other side of that in a way that makes you uncomfortable
and makes you have to rethink your baseline assumptions. And it feels like our tech culture
especially is missing that there's no one to kind of hold the balance because everybody's
self teaching themselves, everybody's, you know, getting hired when they're super young,
everyone's making all this money. And there's not a lot of people saying, whoa, just hold
up.
Well, I think there are, but they get drowned out because I do see a lot of skepticism and
criticism in the tech industry. I think it comes from a lot of, a lot of us and particularly
bootstrapper sort of sphere tends to criticize what like the high growth VC funded startup
sphere does quite often. Yeah. And sometimes those criticisms are very prescient and pan
out, but there's no sort of like pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, like nothing really,
like the companies that are criticized just fail and like a few hundred people say, I
told you so. And that's it. And then sometimes like there's like criticism and like it's
goes ignored and nothing like it's just wrong or it just, it gets overpowered by the idealism
and enthusiasm. So with like the crypto blockchain space, like there's been critics for the last
10 years and it's only gotten louder and bigger and more popular and spread even further to
the point where like somebody like me, like I've also been kind of a crypto skeptic. I'm
now like, okay, at this point, is it your spot? Am I just like an old man shaking his
fists at the sky, not learning this stuff? Like, am I missing something? Like, how can
something be this sustained for so long by so many intelligent people and not have like
a there there? Yeah. And so like in the last few weeks, I've been looking into it. I'm
curious, like you mentioned the ethics, business ethics, like is there something that you find
unethical about it? Is it so we now be doing this stuff? I think a lot of people in tech
evaluate things on whether they are technically possible or financially beneficial. So those
are two planes that you can evaluate things on. But there's a whole other underlying layer,
which is how morally good, how ethically good and how structurally good for society is a
given thing. And so when you're suggesting something that could be a really radical change
without considering all the underlying implications of what you're presenting. So one example
would be I remember when Uber came out and as a kind of, you know, I'm in my early 30s
and as a newly minted, you know, tech utopian believer, I was just when I saw the the taxi
cab drivers protesting, I just thought, you know, you Luddites, like you why even protest
this? This is going to happen. It's inevitable. And that the role of people in society is
just to conform to this technical inevitability. And now looking back on that, I'm like, whoo,
like that. There's I think those societal considerations are exactly the things we should
be wrestling with. Before we go too far down a road, and maybe we were a little too like
an Uber's case, as I've reflected on it, maybe we were a little bit too eager to have this
new paradigm and to get rid of the old one without considering all the things that might
happen. And the the shakeout of even that of, you know, if tech continues to displace
huge segments of the population, eventually, there's going to be repercussions for that.
And, you know, you could argue that there's a lot of the political instability we have
in the world as a result of that, a lot of the anger that there is, that is a result
of that. A lot of the skepticism about science is a result of that. And so I'm, I'm kind
of worried about these underlying tectonic plates, as they keep shifting. And sometimes
you don't realize what you've done until later. It's like it's also I don't know if this is
a good metaphor, but it's the Saddam Hussein problem, which is you think by going in and
removing Saddam Hussein from Iraq, all the problems are going to disappear. But instead,
you just create a whole new mess of problems, you know, like, oh, here's a simple solution.
We just remove this dictator and now everything's fine. And it turns out that that that the
world's not that simple. And maybe sometimes we need to be more careful about the things
we put in motion. And so that's my underlying concern about crypto is that I can see the
fun side of it, I can see the idealistic side of it, the the rhetoric as a former kind of
religious person. The rhetoric really worries me. It like triggers old memories of being
in a religion. And I there's a hardcore believer aspect to it. There's a lot of faith that
goes into sort of this crypto optimism. There's a hardcore preacher element to it as well,
which is there's a lot of preachers out there. And that that kind of noise like that, that
as soon as we move away from being rational actors or as as rational as we can be, and
we we move to this like cult like people jumping on the train, people coming up with honestly,
to me, it just sounds like ridiculous rhetoric, like, like the ideas of displacing an entire
worldwide economic system, even in the manner of a decade, feels profoundly dangerous to
me. And then there's deeper ecological considerations. And yep. And I know none of this stuff is
fun to talk about. No, it's super fun to talk about. But but and I also realize there's
a balance like part of me just does want to let that especially younger people who are
excited about it go and explore it. But we got to be careful about what we set in motion.
Yeah, and I'm kind of bite like by my nature, I'm an optimist, I kind of just tend to think
that things will work out, which in many cases is naive. Some things don't work out. But I
think that when it comes to like technological innovation, there's a quote that I really
love, which is when you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck. And it has always been
true since the dawn of time that when we create new things as a society, there's a lot of
negative side effects that we might not have anticipated that throw things in the turmoil.
And I think the thing that gives me faith and optimism is that like, nobody really wants
the negative side effects, the haters don't want it, the believers don't want it. Nobody
wants it. And so when we create these new inventions, whether it's television, whether
it's social media, whether it's crypto, whether it's nuclear weapons, there is almost always
a scary period where it's just really bad, followed by like a usually pretty massive
worldwide effort to fix the bad things to plug the leaks. And I think I have a sort
of faith that like, these problems will be addressed. They are very real problems. They
should not be ignored. But there are a lot of people like you who are like, this sucks,
you know, like the ecological impact of crypto, the energy usage is ridiculously wasteful.
And like many tens of thousands of people working to fix that problem. And it's hard
to imagine a world 10 years from now or like that problem isn't addressed. And sometimes
it might be too late. And like, you're right, we have to be careful. But I have like a sort
of an optimism that like, we won't ignore this. Like nobody wants to live in a dystopian
society, which is why I don't think we'll ever have a dystopian society because people
don't want it. Like, yeah, like we just we will fix that stuff. Except, except that I've
been thinking a lot about this Adam Grant quote, which is like something, think like
a scientist, not like a preacher. And I think it's just really easy in our society to think
like a preacher, like Elon, whether he likes it or not, he is a religious like figure to
millions of people. And even you can think you're a rational actor. When you are the
when you are the figurehead of something like that, you can think, Oh, no, I've got a lots
of fans and lots of people who follow me, but I'm still a rational person. But in practice,
it is just it's just so difficult to remain rational when you've got that kind of attention.
And I think the best example of this is just like the abuses of of religion, the abuses
of politics, you know, once people get into the once they have that kind of attention
or power, it can be dangerous. Yeah, there's another quote that I like that is relevant
to this. It's from Nietzsche. It says when madness is rare in individuals, but in groups,
parties, nations and ages, it's the rule. And when I look at some of like the crazes
where you have lots and lots of people saying things, like sometimes it's hard to determine
like, is there truth behind this? Or do we all just feel comfortable pushing this narrative
because everyone else is doing it and this many people can't be wrong. Yeah, me diving
into crypto, for example, I've been doing some research because I want to do some episodes
on it. A lot of what I'm trying to figure out is like, okay, how much of this is just
like fanatical religious belief that this is how the world should be? So therefore this
is good. How much of this is people just trying to actually profit and make a quick buck?
Because that's clearly a lot of it. And then like, if I can get beneath the surface of
those two sort of facades, like what's the actual core utility? Like that's what I've
been trying to figure out. But it's hard. Yeah. Because like madness is the rule in
groups and there's a huge thick layer of people who are sort of crazy. Like you can go back
to any age and you're going to find like some sort of demagogue, some sort of extremely
charismatic leader who might not be saying responsible or rational things, but they've
got that energy and the tide just goes with them. Whether it's like a small tribe of people,
whether it's something like the Roman empire and you've got this charismatic, it just kind
of happens. And it's been weird to see the internet transform into a place that supports
that online where there are always like these little status, this person, this 6 million
followers, listen to them, like on Twitter, like, okay, if you say something against this
particular idea or movement, you're going to get mobbed by a bunch of fanatics who are
all on the same side, I think has turned the internet into like a simulacrum of what kind
of already happens in real life, which is not shocking or surprising. And I don't know
if there's a way to, like in a way it's like, can we fight against human nature? Like we
are not robots, you know, we're not programmed to listen to the most logical argument. Like
we are programmed to look at the person who's saying it and say, like, do I like this person?
How do they make me feel? And what does everybody else think? Like these are kind of the things
that are the undercurrent of our decision making sometimes.
I think one way to battle it, especially like if we return to the idea of business, so like
indie hackers trying to do their own thing. If I could give people advice, it would be
maybe focus less on the heroes, like the people that you see that have made it and focus more
on building relationships with peers. Relationships with peers is ultimately, I think what ended
up being the most helpful for me. So Adam Wavin and Taylor Otwell in particular kind
of opening up their bank statements to me and showing me what kind of money they were
making and giving me these insights. Taylor Otwell invited me to speak at a Laracon and
just seeing how many people were there that were passionate about Laravel, that became
kind of the clues and the seeds to something I repeat a lot, which is the market will determine
most of your growth. Once I saw the PHP developer market and how Taylor had served that market,
that became the inspiration. Even though they were ahead of me, I really felt like Adam
and Taylor were my friends and they were my peers. They weren't like Jason Fried or all
these other people I had kind of idolized before. They were my level and we could message
each other back and forth on Telegram all the time. Then building a company with John
Buddha, that was another kind of advantage. He's really my peer and in some ways starting
with somebody like that who also kind of felt like an old guy in tech, also kind of felt
like, well, we've been working for people for a while. We've both tried doing our own
thing on our own. That equality I think was helpful and neither of us had kind of more
power over each other. It was like this meeting each other where we're at and then moving
forward together.
It's such a tricky balance though because I remember five, six years ago trying to start
companies, really struggling and looking at some of the reasons why I failed. They weren't
really that novel. They weren't that special. They were kind of things that I had read before,
like don't do this and I just did it anyway. There's a sort of struggle where some mistakes,
you kind of have to make on your own to learn from them. Even if you have the Jason Coens
of the world telling you don't do this, don't do this, do this. It's hard to internalize
it. To be a better founder I think sometimes means being better at learning from other
people's mistakes rather than having to make them yourself, which would be the argument
for looking to what these people have to say who come before you and saying, okay, I may
not have no experience. It might seem so intuitive in my bones that I'm just going to build a
product and people are going to find it and I don't need to do any marketing. It feels
so intuitive. I keep hearing that I need to do marketing and so I'm going to ignore my
own intuition and do what these people say because I trust them. I've seen fledgling
founders do that and do really well. I've been the person who ignored that advice and
suffered for it. I needed to touch the hot stove myself. I find myself, I hear you, that
you shouldn't put people on too high of a pedestal but I also see so many cases of people
struggling where they're struggling in ways that are preventable and others have told
them how to avoid that.
The difference is that by the time I started I was in my early 30s and I already had four
kids and that dynamic does affect things and it does make it harder. Ben Ornstein and I
had this, I think it was on Twitter Spaces or something, I was reacting emotionally to
one of his tweets which was something to the effect of like, after a while the money is
not a real motivator or I've heard it, I don't think it was him but I think it was Pomp or
somebody that said, real founders aren't motivated by money. For me, growing up and trying to
provide for a family, that's always just seemed like bullshit to me. A big reason, a big motivator
was the money.
I've been wrestling with this idea of kids because I'm 34, I don't have kids. I'm not
really on a path to having kids anytime soon but I've been thinking a lot about it. It's
fun for me to talk to people like, you had kids super young. You have a business making
millions of dollars and your kids are at the age where I think they're graduating high
school and stuff which is kind of the dream because now you have the rest of your life
ahead of you but how did you juggle that? How did you make it work?
I'm not even sure how much my experience is instructive because we had kids pretty early
and I also think, this might seem weird to say, I just want to say, I adore my kids.
I love them forever and ever and ever. I could not imagine life without them but I could
imagine a life where I didn't have kids. I'm not sure if that's clear but I think it's
okay for me to admit that like, you know what? That could have been a fine possibility. I
don't know how my life would have turned out different but I don't think everybody should
and growing up, there's a lot of cultural expectation especially in church that you
would have kids and have kids young and I think that's unhealthy and so unfortunately
I had that and so having kids young is difficult especially in today's culture and having kids
before you've got some sort of financial stability is tough. It just puts you so far behind.
There are opposite problems that I can imagine which is having too much money when you have
kids might also present problems. I haven't had to deal with that as much because my kids
mostly grew up when we were paying our bills but it was work.
How old is your youngest kid?
My youngest is 12 and so I have 12-year-old boy, 13-year-old boy, 16-year-old boy and
my daughter's turning 19. We're just in a different stage now too.
Do you feel like having money has changed your relationship with your kids or your relationship
with being a father?
When you're kind of always in that stressed out mode of okay, I got to pay this credit
card, the kids need braces. When you're always having to think about that stuff, you flail
a lot more and so that part was hard. Now, I'm definitely more calm. I think it's helped
me to be more present but it does present its own problems like now all of a sudden
there is money and so as a parent, you're always like I don't want to give my kids everything.
I want them to have to experience some of this so there's a challenge to it.
I will say that I think for people who want children, I think kids are a part of life
that can just add a lot to your life even though a lot of it's a struggle. I've basically
signed up for being concerned about my kids for the rest of my life. I just think about
them all the time. Right now, I'm thinking about what kinds of jobs are they going to
be able to get? Are they ever going to be able to own their own home? Those kinds of
anxieties, I don't think those ever go away. That's a wait I didn't consider before I had
kids that now I'm like, wow, that's a thing that you really have to consider that you're
going to be concerned about them.
Okay, so here's my thinking on kids. I think there's kind of like maybe two or two different
things we sort of aim for in life. One is like the sort of hedonistic category, like
things that we do for ourselves. I want to make more money. I want to have a great partnership
with a partner. I want to have amazing friends. I want to be comfortable and happy. Those
are all things for ourselves and those are totally fine and totally great, but they're
definitely hedonistic. They just make us happier. Then there are occasions where we do things
that aren't for ourselves. You pick up a piece of litter off the street is a contrived example,
like having kids. Spent a lot of time doing things to your kids. You're like, I'm never
going to get paid back for this. I'm just doing this to help this other person or working
for a nonprofit or all sorts of different things you can do. I think once you realize
like, hey, this isn't even for me. This is for other people. It creates this sense of
meaning and purpose where I think we think about like, hey, this might not be for me,
but it's still good because it's something that it's bigger than me. I think that as
we get older, I talked to a lot of older people to find out what they care about. They spend
a lot more time looking back on the past and constructing a story of their life and prioritizing
what was meaningful in their life. I think the kids are like kind of a shortcut to have
meaning. What is more selfless than helping a bunch of other people live when they can't
take care of themselves? What could be bigger than you, than creating this legacy that's
going to live on after you die? I think it gives you the sense of meaning in that without
kids, it's hard to find. I think you have to be very deliberate about how to get that
sense. I wonder as like a father, do you feel like you have that sense of meaning having
had kids?
Oh, yeah. I don't know if I would call it a shortcut because it's just so challenging,
but in terms of meaning, I don't know if I would be as concerned about the climate crisis
if I didn't have kids. I don't know if I'd be concerned about ethical issues. I don't
know if I'd be concerned. There is something about it that raises your awareness. Maybe
I'd still be concerned, but my awareness about all that stuff is raised because I'm like,
man, what kind of world are they going to have?
They're instantly a much more caring person.
And just practically day by day, what you have to give up for kids is like there's no,
there's really, I mean, there's other kinds of dependence I think you could have that
would have a similar effect, but it is, you're giving them everything and it's a huge, huge
sacrifice. And there's something about that that is really healthy. And it's challenging
to get in other areas of life. And there's lots of fun too. I mean, there's just some,
like it makes life feel like this is worth living. Even when things get hard, like, look
at this family we have and the more we invest in this and the more we sustain this, we can
just see like the end result of that is these healthy lives and these healthy futures and
this strong connection that everybody has together. And that whole thing is incredible.
How do you think about the future of Transistor? Because it's like, okay, you have kids. There's
this idea that you could pass your business on to your family and create some sort of
legacy, which is like nothing that's ever crossed my mind because I don't have kids.
There's an idea that you just keep growing Transistor. You do what Jason Cohen said,
continue growing your businesses because that's what businesses do. There's a chance that
you become a crypto founder and hop over to Web3. I highly doubt you can do that. How
are you in your mind trying to figure out what the future holds? Because now you're
pretty financially stable. It's a completely different equation.
Yeah, I mean, I think about whether we're going to be able to sell Transistor quite
a bit. Not that I want to, but really the best outcome for my family would be for there
eventually to be a lump sum that they could access. I'm conflicted about this. So when
I'm being selfish about my family, I think that the best outcome is for me to make quite
a bit of money and then for the family to have that, maybe not in the billions or even
hundreds of millions, but for a family in this day and age to have millions of dollars
to access once I'm gone, there's a lot of benefits to that. There is probably, just
like you don't want to be too popular or too famous, there is probably a threshold there,
but there's also a threshold on the other side, which is, you know, not having any sort
of generational inheritance. This is what I'm conflicted about. It's because in one
sense, this kind of generational inheritance is creating huge rifts in society where there's
a group of people that just continue to get shut out of this intergenerational wealth
pattern. But then just like honestly, like there's this other part of me that's just
like, Oh, man, I just want to make sure my kids are okay. Yeah, it's your family. And
I'm really wrestling with that. I remember being a kid and it was like, very encouraging
to me that my parents weren't like mega successful. Like he gave me more room to like make a name
for myself and do what I wanted to do. And I think it was easier for my parents to be
proud of me too, because I was like sort of leapfrogging them. And so there is like, I
do wonder like if my parents had been like super rich and successful or famous or whatever,
if I would have had any fire, because I have lots of friends like that. Like I know a lot
of people who like their parents are crazy successful. And they run the gamut from like,
they don't care. They're still gonna do their own thing to like feeling like this on we
have like, what's the point of even striving? Like I already have all this stuff. Yeah.
I push back on that though, too, though, because I know lots of people who grew up in not great
situations and they're the same characteristics are visible on both sides of the coin. Yep.
So it's sometimes difficult to again, like no, empirically, what's gonna be best for
my kids. I do think it was there was healthy parts of them. Before Transistor, we when
we moved to this town, we lived in a 1200 square foot house with six people. And so
a small house. And then after Transistor made money, we moved to a bigger house. And I think
there's something about that, that transition that was healthy, meaning we know we can always
go back to the small house because we knew we lived there. But we also know like the
big house is nice. And we appreciate it. And in many ways, it is better. It's also cool
that your kids could see that you were able to do something and make a transition. I think
it's like there was never any sort of transition like that in my childhood. It was kind of
like, this is how much money my parents make. This is just it. Like I never, my mom was
always very entrepreneurial, but I didn't, there wasn't like huge step change of like,
we made it. And I think it's kind of like, I can imagine it'd be kind of cool to have
a father in your life who like has like struggled. And I don't know how much your kids are aware
of like your entrepreneurial journey, but you can see hard at something and then succeed
and then it's kind of like, prove positive like you can change sort of your fortune.
Yeah, I think I've tried to be pretty open about that. Telling my kids like, hey, I went
to therapy today. That's a pretty common conversation. When I can, I try to reveal the things I'm
struggling with. When I have a breakthrough in therapy that feels appropriate to communicate,
I like to share those things too. Cool. And so I think, I think there is something healthy
about all of that. And there's also just this other possibility, which is, I think entrepreneurship
and bootstrapping and the new American dream, as Tyler Trungus calls it, of having a successful
SaaS. I think that's all worth pursuing, but clearly it's not going to be enough for everybody.
And I wonder in the future, if I had enough resources, would that free me up to exploring
some of those bigger shifts of like, what can we do for the rest of the world, the rest
of society? What can we do to, you know, just having Transistor has allowed me to, in some
ways to criticize Jeff Bezos and a lot of other people. And some people might debate
whether that's helpful or not. But I think having the freedom to try to invest in other
things that are good for, maybe good for society, there's something about that. Although I'm
a little bit conflicted about that too, because I don't want to become just another rich guy
that thinks he has all the answers for society. So not, not everybody's in your position where
they have built this company that is successful and where they can think about how to use
our resources. I know you're big on like the importance of picking a market, you know,
I know, and I'm big on this too. I think it's very easy as like sort of a fledgling founder
to be like, how do I get to where Justin is? And then completely with like, just make a
hugely wrong decisions up front that sort of cap your growth potential. Like you had
a tweet actually, you sort of pointed out how stark this can be and how important it
is to pick the right market. You're talking about how you were in the podcast hosting
market. I think it was like Libsyn or someone that you pointed out, like Libsyn is one of
the biggest companies and they make $25 million a year. And ConvertKit, meanwhile, is like
one of the smaller players in the email marketing space and they make like $29 million a year.
So it's kind of just like choosing the right market. You automatically have chosen like
how much your revenue can grow and how fast you can grow. And I think this is something
that people overlook a lot. Like your story earlier about going to speak at Lara Con and
seeing how many people were there and actually feeling like, oh, this is a big market full
of excited people. Like on the internet, like it's sometimes we're divorced from that. Like
you're building something and you can't really see like how many people out there even want
what I'm doing? Yeah. I guess my question for you is like, how do you think that a fledgling
founder should think about this when they're like, what kind of startups should I build
in the first place?
Yeah, I mean, in some ways I'm dealing with this right now because I've invested some
money in Josh Anderton and this new product Meeps, which is a way of building an online
membership or community site. So the idea is it would replace Patreon, Memberful, Mailchimp,
all this other stuff. And, you know, this is kind of the thing we're evaluating right
now is, is there enough momentum here? So the size of, I'm not always saying you have
to go for a big market. The size of the market will determine kind of your ceiling. So for
any of the saster people to say, well, everybody should be trying to build a hundred million
dollar AR business. I know in podcasting, it's just probably not possible because the
biggest player is doing 25 million. And, and like the idea that we would suddenly be able
to reach that is just not practical. I think ConvertKit could get to a hundred million
because the ceiling of that market is just so much higher. The momentum in that market
every single day, there's just millions and millions of people who need to send email
and they, that, that can only grow really. Like that's, I don't think that's going to
slow down. So determining kind of what the ceiling is. And then if for John and I, we
knew that podcasting wasn't going to make us billionaires, but the ceiling was like,
you know, if we could do a couple of million dollars a year in revenue, that would be amazing.
And so this market's fine for us. Do you think that picking a bigger market would make it
faster to go from zero to a couple of million? It depends on the turnover of dollars. So
how, when I talk about momentum, it's like how many people every single day are waking
up and either saying I'm going to buy this or I'm going to switch from something else
to this. The more of those fish that are swimming in the river, the more chance you could catch
them. And with meeps, that's one question we're asking is, you know, a lot of people
are talking about the creator economy, a community building is really big now, both for indie
makers, but also for companies. And so we saw some evidence that there was maybe a lot
of fish and now we're trying to figure out how much is there. And it's, we still don't
know. That's part of the thing about companies, like you're kind of feeling it out. So I mean,
at least 20, 30 people in early access, maybe more. And that's good. That's a good sign.
But if we keep catching fish at this rate, and if it's, if it's this hard to catch fish
each time, I think it will not be a good market. And so practically, what does that mean? We're
trying things like going out and we've, we've got a, we built a waiting list of, you know,
800 people or something. That's a good sign. Transistor had something similar. The difference
I would say is that the fish bite faster with podcast hosting, it was just like, so every
time I sent an email to the waiting list said, Hey, we're opening up 10 new spots for early
access. I got a bite, got a bite, got a bite. And with meeps, I haven't experienced that
yet. Well, it seems like in podcast hosting is like, I don't want to say it's boring,
but it's just like so easy to understand. It's like, I have a podcast, I need a host.
It is really simple. Upload my mp3s. You guys. Yeah. For me, with something like meeps or
like anything that's writing like a really new trend, it's kind of harder to wrap your
mind around. It's like, okay, I know I want to be a creator on the internet, but like,
do I need a community? Why do I need a community? What does that look like? What does that mean
to have a community? It's like, I would imagine much harder even if you need this to know
that you need it and to know like what to search for or how you're going to use it.
Yeah. And I think about thresholds a lot and then the possible benefit. So what I mean
by thresholds is stuff like how hard is it to find a customer, but also how quickly does
a customer make a decision? I remember being in the project management software space.
It was just like I had to convince people. It took forever to convince people to buy.
It's like, I got to talk to my dev manager and then it's like, Oh, can you guys do a
zoom call? And I'm like, this is a $49 product. Like if this is how hard it is to catch fish,
we can't be in this market. It's just too much. Also in terms of like time to buy. So
by the time somebody searches best podcasting host, they're basically ready to buy. And
if you look at our funnel for transistor, it's like, um, we get hundreds of trials every
month and then basically of those trials, like 75% convert to paid. It's a very short
funnel. I would say we don't have to do a lot of education. We don't have to do a lot
of massaging. It's just like here it is. And people are already like, yeah, I want this.
And also the threshold to success is relatively low. Like all they really need to do is upload
one episode and they feel satisfied. So yeah, with a product like meeps, we'll have to see
if we can get there. And there might be ways of maneuvering around it and there might be
ways of getting it. I think if it takes too long, my advice to Josh will be to maybe sell
it. Now there's a market for, for indie SaaS apps and then probably try something else.
And it's super easy to overlook that when you're deciding what to do, because I think
like we as founders seem to be like action bias towards action, which means we look at
the things that we can do, you know, we can build this feature, we can send this email,
we can advertise over here, we can do all these things, but it's like, you can't create
a market where there isn't one. And so we tend to ignore that. But it's like, that's
super important. I remember even starting Indie Hackers, I was working on this other
app beforehand that was kind of like a to-do list app. And I just found it so hard to get
customers and so hard to retain them. Like I was literally emailing people like, don't
you want to be productive? And people did, but it was just like a lot of effort and they
just weren't doing it. And then I saw a couple stories of other apps that just grew really
quickly. I'm like, man, I'm at a few thousand dollars in revenue, I'm grinding. And then
someone's like, I launched, you know, two months ago and I'm at 10K in revenue. I'm
like, okay, so that first story is a little discouraging, but I'm like, I'll get there.
And I saw another one and I'm like, I'm done. I don't want to grind this out. I don't want
to take years and years to grow. Like I want to build something in a market that has a
lot of momentum and a lot of excitement. And like that was Indie Hackers and it was a thousand
times easier to grow when there was a ton of people who were already eating the stuff
up and like who were really interested in it. And it's like, it's kind of crazy. Cause
like when people talk about the stories of how they succeeded, they're rarely like, I
picked to the right market. You know, we tend to focus on all the things that we did. I
did this, I did that, I did this. But it's like, ah, you also picked like a really good
market and people who don't can do three times more work than you, three times better than
you. But like the excitement that motivation, like there just aren't that many people who
want to solve that problem that you're solving. And it's interesting because it's like, there's
so many examples of people I bought on the podcast. I mean, yourself, Transistor grew
super rapidly. I mean, you were doing a million in revenue after like, I think a couple years
after your launch before that, Riverside FM podcast recording tool using to record this.
Two brothers like messaged me about like, Oh, try our new tool. Like February of last
year, they're already pushing like a million revenue a year later. Or like I talked to
Saba, the founder of these, like a video editing tool, January, 2020, they're making like 150
K a year in revenue feeling pretty good, you know, you can pay an engineer with that. A
year later, three and a half million dollars in revenue, like just astronomical growth.
And it's like, those are all very talented founders, but they're not like 100 times more
talented than other people who are growing 100 times slow. And but also a good example
of you really because because the founders of Riverside, they emailed me to they were
clearly hustling. And so there is a baseline of effort you have to put in. You temper that
with Okay, but in a year, let's see if all of that effort has produced anything that's
kind of riding its own momentum. And if it's not, this is why I think a lot of freelancing
is difficult because you put in this a ton of effort to get the client to then do the
work for the client to go through all the revisions. And then you got to start up again
the next month and do it again. That's kind of like the opposite feeling that you want
in software.
I've got like a little sanity check checklist for myself. If I ever started another startup,
I'm gonna make sure it checks as many of these boxes as possible. These are all like the
market that I'm in, or as I like to call it the problem that I'm solving, like what are
the characteristics of that problem? And like, let me try to like go through my checklist
and apply it to transistor. Oh, yeah, first one is like the problem is shared by lots
of people. In other words, you're in a big market. Obviously, lots of people are starting
podcasts, there are millions of podcasts, and a lot of them are new. And so like, there
are people who don't have a podcast player yet. So like, you check that box pretty easily,
might be harder to determine with something like meeps, how many people want to start
a community, etc. But the podcast stats are there. The problem is growing, which means,
okay, even if it's big, is it growing or shrinking? You know, there are a lot of people who publish
newspapers where that problem is shrinking. Fewer and fewer people are publishing newspapers,
but if the problem is growing every year, then you see that, okay, this is something
you want to solve, because that sets the stage for you to grow without having to do anything.
You're writing a wave that's getting bigger, instead of writing a wave that's getting smaller.
That's something you can check. Is it a problem that is necessary to have solved? Is this
like an optional thing? Like, people can just go without it? Or is it required? If you want
a podcast, guess what? You have to host it. There's no, none of your market is like, you
know what, I just won't get a podcast host. There are a lot of people who want to get
things done who are like, you know what, I'm not going to use a to-do list app. And that
was not good for me trying to do. It was really easy for them to just say, I don't need any
of this. The problem is urgent. So when you need it, like, can you wait? Or do you need
to get it immediately? Podcast hosting, easy. It's urgent. If you want to start a podcast
tomorrow and you need to host tomorrow, is the problem experienced by people that you
like? So this one's kind of optional. I like doing this, though, because I want to work
with customers who I like. Yes, you like podcasting, even podcasting forever, you have multiple
podcasts, you understand podcasters. And so it's not going to be like, you go into work
every day dealing with people you don't understand, you don't like, you don't care about. Yeah.
And it's honestly why I probably, even though maybe we could move into more enterprise customers,
I probably just won't. Because every time I've, I've dabbled in it, it hasn't been enjoyable.
Right. It's reduced. It's reduced my life enjoyment by quite a bit. But there's some
people that love that stuff. Like, I think Jordan Gall, I think he would probably maybe
he gets fired up about that stuff. And so what he's doing with rally, that's a great
fit for him. But for me, I just, I don't really get fired up about it. Right. Yeah. Another
one on here, I think is really important is the problem needs to be valuable for people
to solve it. Meaning people need to be willing to pay money to solve it. This one, I think
it's a lot of indie hackers where they're like, ah, no one's going to buy my thing that
costs a hundred bucks a month. Like I got to do something that costs five bucks a month.
And then you're fucked because you need thousands and thousands of customers to even get to
10K MRR. And then their customers don't care because it's something that only costs five
bucks, which means it's probably not that valuable. And so they can take it or leave
it. And so right out of the gate, like I would never do anything that I can't obviously sell
for at least 50 bucks a month at least. Although to push back on that a bit, it might still
be worth running that experiment because like Transistor still makes most of our money from
our $19 plan. And there's pros and cons to serving those kinds of customers, but there's
just enough of them that it works. And the customer support we have to give is actually
not that heavy. And so it might be worth doing it. Some of these golden rules of like, you
know, only $50 or $100. It still might be worth trying that, you know, like it might
be worth it just having a bunch of people who just sign up themselves at a lower price
rate. So I think that's a pretty good rule of thumb, but it might be worth testing it
to see, you know, if you put something out and it's, it's $10 a month and instantly like
there's thousands of people signing up and they're not asking for too much support. I
would totally do that. That sounds awesome. And that's the trade off. Like if you, you
can't simultaneously have a product that's like a super low price. They're solving a
problem that people won't pay that much for. And the market isn't that big and it's really
hard to find people. You gotta like, you gotta pick one at the very, you can't like have
both of them be a zero. The last item on my checklist is that the problem is a lasting
one. And this has bitten me before where I solve a problem for people. They're like,
fuck yeah, that's awesome. And then the problem doesn't last. Like they don't need the solution
for very long. And so then they're out hosting is like the exact opposite. Like as long as
I have my podcast, I need a host. I never outgrow your solution. I never graduate. I
never churn. I'm just like, I always need hosting every year. I need a tax preparer
every day. I need food. Like some problems just never end with any hackers. Like it's
one could say that one of the problems that I help solve is inspiring people to get started.
That is a problem with a very short shelf life. You get inspired and then you're kind
of like, all right, thanks, indie hackers. I'm out. And so there's like a lot of overhead.
There's a lot of churn, I should say, where people come in, they get what they need. It's
great. And so I like that you've solved a lasting problem. You probably don't churn
that many people. I mean, I guess people's podcasts quit and fail. It's kind of like
a big growing market solves all problems. It's the almost all of these things are tradeoffs,
but they can almost all be contracted by the fact that you've got a lot of people coming
in the door. So you can have a lot of churn or you can have people who don't pay that
much. It doesn't need to be big. It just needs to be big enough. And then it doesn't need
to be growing super fast. It just needs to be growing fast enough. And sorry, in that
growth equation, especially for indie hackers, this is one that gets missed a lot is part
of your growth equation for a indie hacker isn't just how fast the market is growing.
So podcasting, I don't know, maybe grows 10 to 20% a year. But the big incumbent, how
many customers can I take from the big incumbent that are willing to switch that that comes
into my growth equation for ConvertKit? How many people are going to switch from Mailchimp
to him? Actually, the big one we've both noticed that seems contradictory, but is really cool
is we were both worried about these free tools coming in. So sub sub stack for him and anchor
for me. And being like, Okay, well, there's a free option. We're dead. Turns out it's
just like a great gateway drug into email newsletters and podcasts. And our highest
number of people who switch switch from a free solution. Oh, cool. So we don't even
need to run a free freemium plan, because anchors doing that for us. And then eventually
people want to graduate to something more pro better customer support is a big one.
And so we've benefited from from that part too. So part of the growth is, again, podcasting
not super fast growth. But you've got anchor. Like, when we started Transistor, there's
500,000 podcasts. And now there's estimates as high as 2 million. A lot of that growth
has come from anchor. It's this great, like, growth machine for the rest of the paid podcast
hosting market. And, you know, if you were just an analyst, you might be like, wow, this
podcasting thing has grown too slow. But the truth is, as long as there's a big, heavy
incumbent that's like shedding customers, that's growth for an indie hacker, right?
If there's people, people that want to switch are willing to switch. And the other benefit
for indies, especially getting started is you can almost with the right product, you
can almost grow just because you're an indie sharing your story. Like Derek Rimer with
Savvy Cal, you know, people might be fine with Cal Lindley. And even like feature wise,
it might not be that big of a difference. But why wouldn't I switch to an indie, right?
You can get growth just from that in the beginning. So like, whoever's the look at, don't just
look at how fast the category is growing. But also look at, okay, is there a big incumbent
that's carved out this big market share that we can now come in and, you know, start getting
people to switch to us from them?
I was wondering how much of this is like, helpful and encouraging or overwhelming and
discouraging to a new founder? That's like, well, here's like all the different things
you can think about, you know, this and this and that and that, like, yeah, 100 things.
And in the grand scheme of things, like 100 things is not that much like you could read
through that list in a day and kind of go through the checkboxes and see if your business
idea corresponds to it. But it's also like, holy shit, this is so much to have to know.
Maybe I just shouldn't do a startup after all. And to be fair, a lot of the most successful
people that I know, like didn't think about any of this stuff and happened to check a
lot of the right boxes because they tried a lot of stuff. I wonder what your thoughts
are on this because like I like my heart of hearts want people to be more thoughtful when
they start things. I want them to not, you know, mess around for six months doing, you
know, in a market that's obviously not going to work. Yeah. Just go through a checklist
like this. But sometimes people get overwhelmed. Yeah. I mean, my baseline advice is people
in motion tend to eventually find success. That the caveat would be as long as you're
in motion in the kinds of ways that matter. Like the thing about that one blog post about
me growing up in this small town and only seeing what was around me. And so I was like,
well, what do I do to start a business? Well, I start a brick and mortar shop on Main Street.
Being in motion for me meant I got to get out of my bubble. I got to go to some conferences.
I've got to meet some new people. I got to work in a different industry. I've got to
do some consulting for clients and see what they're, what kinds of things they're buying
on a daily basis. So being in motion is better than staying home and just reading Hacker
News all day or even indie hackers all day. Like actually doing things, taking action
to get more experience, build your sphere of connections, get more skills, run more
experiments. That's the kind of thing I mean when I say be in motion. And also I think
there are a bunch of bread and butter things that I think are still worth trying. So Peter
Soom is doing this reform forms app and then when type form increases their pricing, it's
just easy to convince people to switch. I mean, not easy, but there's a path to people.
There's momentum. It's like, okay, well type form has increased their pricing again. They've
restricted my account again. I'll try Peter's thing. Some of these bread and butter apps
and some of these apps we think of as new, like we saw the product launch of type form
whenever it was, it's actually old now. And so there's opportunity for a fresh face, a
new kid on the block to come and Transistor benefited massively from that. We were kind
of the first of the new batch. There's people who have come after us, but we were the first
of the new batch and we were able to make a splash and we just got a lot of customers
just could be, we're like, man, I've been waiting for something new. Finally. Okay. I'm
going to switch to you, you folks. Yeah. It's kind of like all the old crusty podcast hosting
options and then you finally put a fresh coat of paint on it. Yeah. It was good to use the
new shiny thing. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's probably opportunities in some of the old
things that you used to build when you're a freelance contractor. Like I used to build
a lot of like, uh, donation and fundraising widgets. I think there's like an option that
you could make a business out of that. There's still lots of people that need stuff like
that. The, the practical like non-software thing I was, I thought of was, uh, car detailing.
There's all this kind of latent demand that you might not see evidence for it, but I guarantee
you like I, I bought a Tesla like you do, um, anybody and it's my first nice car. Uh,
my previous car was a Honda fit that I bought from my dad, but once you have a nice car,
you start to think about car detailing and literally like this guy showed up with a business
card and said, Hey, do you want car detailing? And I was kind of like, yeah, I've been waiting
for this. You know, like I, I want this. This is something that I just, there's just a whole
group of customers need this kind of all the time. And if you show up, you just have to
give them a little nudge, like, Hey, do you need car detailing? And people were like, yeah,
like come on over. You know, uh, I think there's things like that in the real business world,
the services and also in the software world where people are like, Hey, are you sick of
type form? And people are like, yeah, I kind of am sick of it. Like I'm glad you came along.
And so much of that is like being in the right place to find those people. Like if you imagine
the market being like a lake full of fish, uh, you could be just a terrible fishing spot
where the fish aren't, you know, with any actors, like it's pretty obvious in the early
days that the people who wanted to start companies and bootstrap companies were like kind of
all on hacker news or on Twitter. And like, luckily I knew enough to find out where they
were and we transistor. I'm not sure. Like most of our customers come from, but like,
I would guess that there's a lot of people who are searching and SEO was like a big channel
for you. And I think it's, you know, to this point you were making earlier where if you
were an indie hacker and you're struggling with something and you're asking yourself,
like, is the market big enough? Is it just too small? It might just be that you're in
the wrong place in the pond. Yeah. Yeah. I have this old, old story on my blog where
I talk about an arborist who was, he lived in a farm community, the town I grew up in
and he could not get sales. Like he was just like going out all the time, knocking on doors
like, Hey, do you need trees pruned or trimmed? And it's a town full of like farmers. So they
do that stuff themselves, you know? And he wasn't getting any phone calls. He was running
ads in the phone book. This was at the time when people looked at the phone book and then
he changed two things. He changed his area code so that it was this suburb that was about
30 minutes away that had a lot of money, a lot of professionals. And then he started
advertising in their yellow pages and his business changed overnight. So he was just
in the wrong part of the pond. He was, he was trying to sell tree pruning to people
that could just do it themselves and didn't want to be bothered. But changing his area
code so that the suburb thought, Oh, well he's right here. I'll just call him even though
he had to drive there. That changed a lot for him. And then advertising there, it was
like, okay, this is, this is, this is where the fish are. You know, listen, Justin, we've
had a pretty wide range in conversation, some real good advice here, I think packed into
the end of the episode. And then a lot of, uh, philosophizing and just, uh, talking about
the realities of being a human on earth earlier on. I've enjoyed having you on the show. Yeah.
I always enjoy, uh, our conversation. So it's really, really fun to be here. Where should
people go to find out more about, uh, you and what you're up to. Oh, uh, I'd love for
people to go to transistor.fm. If you're starting a podcast or you want to switch for something
else, check out Josh's project, meeps.app. M E E P S dot app. And I blog at Justin Jackson
dot CA. All right. Thanks again, Justin. Thanks.