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.
All right, I'm here with Andre Azimov.
How's it going, Andre?
You're going really good, and I'm excited to be here.
Yeah.
I think the last time we spoke, we were just saying it was like a year ago, a year and
a half ago, and you were running sheet to site.
And I think you were at like $10,000 a month in revenue.
And then it's been a while.
Yeah.
And then I just saw you tweet on Twitter, talking about, oh, I wish I could come back
on the podcast.
I think Peter Level's just saying something about that.
I was like, I should have Andre back on.
I meant to rerecord with you and just didn't.
And then he informed me that you've sold your company, so your story's a cool one, because
I think at the very start of your story, you didn't really know how to code.
You weren't sure what you were going to build.
You had very little money, and you'd quit your job.
And you decided to embark on this path to become a successful founder.
And you were very deliberate about it.
I've read some of your older posts, and you're talking about the lessons that you learned
from Peter Levels and from others who had gone ahead of you and how you incorporated
those into your journey.
And I think the very first decision that you made was that you weren't just going to start
on one project.
You didn't have one idea you wanted to work on.
You're going to take a whole year and basically work on lots of different projects.
Yeah, because I didn't know what will work out, so I just throw spaghetti on a wall and
see what will stick.
Right.
And this was more stickable spaghetti.
I like that approach, because I think no one really knows what's going to work out.
He has an idea and can be 100% confident that it's going to work.
And the people who are 100% confident that it's going to work are usually just diluted
in some way.
And so the throw-spaghetti-at-a-wall approach is awesome.
When Peter Levels did it, he did, I think he called it 12 startups in 12 months.
And he really did 12 startups in 12 months.
Every month, he forced himself to quit what he was working on and start something new.
And by, I think, two-thirds of the way through his journey, like seven or eight months in,
he knew that Nomad List was the breakout success.
And he started working on that the most.
And your journey, I think the thing that you built that did the best, called sheet-to-site,
was the very first thing that you built.
And then you ended up building a bunch of other stuff.
In hindsight, arguably, you could have just stopped there and only worked on that.
So you kind of did have the right idea at first.
But you had no way of actually knowing that.
Yeah, I didn't know.
I thought it will just – after one month, I thought it's done.
And I thought there is no way to make more than $300 of it.
So it was like a good signal for me that I need to start something new otherwise it will
be too risky.
Okay.
So let's talk about the beginning of how this started.
How did you decide to do this?
How did you afford to take a year off and do nothing to work on your own projects?
Because back then, I was living in Bali.
And Bali, relatively cheap compared if you live in Europe or US or some other countries.
So I was living on $400 and it was – A month?
Yeah.
Oh, that's crazy.
Yeah, rent was like $200 and food, like $150, it was good enough for me.
That was the good foundation to be able to sustain myself at least for like four months
or something.
And after I have no plan, so I decided just go full in and see what happened.
So you have like a few thousand dollars a month in savings then?
Yeah.
It's like the exact opposite of me when I started Andy Hackers.
I was like living in San Francisco spending like $4,000 a month burning through my savings
and like that's how much you had total.
And I've heard of people living in Bali for like a couple thousand dollars a month and
just like living like kings.
But the fact that you could make a living there on $400 a month or survive is pretty
– like that's pretty crazy.
And I read some of your blog posts too and like we talked about it last year how you
were – you couldn't afford like a bike and so you would walk home and you couldn't
afford Wi-Fi so you were working at Starbucks and like even after they were closed you would
stand outside Starbucks and just like use their Wi-Fi.
So it was just like part of your plan like I'm going to live in Bali and take a year
off simultaneously or did you just like coincidentally happen to be living in Bali and then you decided
that you were going to take a year off work and try building your own projects?
Both because when I was in Ukraine, I'm from Ukraine, I had a dream that at some point
I should go to Thailand or some other warm place where I can celebrate a new year and
it was my dream.
Just don't see snow because in Ukraine it's very cold in the winter.
Just go and see the beach and the ocean.
And it's like wow, this is good.
So I started a small developers agency which allowed me to travel and work remotely.
So I went to Thailand, spent six months there and after I moved to Bali and in Bali I found
a job.
I was working as a product manager in a rail square so like the product studio which is
was a really good experience for me because I was learning a lot there but on the side
I was making some side projects and after one and a half year I decided when I was in
Bali to quit this job and try something that makes me happy and if it will sustain myself
I can convert my hobby to the business that will be like the dream life for me.
Right.
And so then you started your hardcore year.
So at the beginning of this year, you know you've got a year hopefully of runway and
your goal was I think you said to make $1,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
Which basically means that it's like two and a half times what you were living off of in
Bali.
It's a really comfortable lifestyle for you to kind of start and figure out what you want
to do from there.
How did you go about coming up with like your ideas because I think that's where like most
people struggle.
They're like okay I want to be a nanny hacker but like what am I going to work on?
How do I know if an idea is a good idea?
You had plenty of ideas.
I think you started seven projects before the end.
How did you figure out what to work on?
First I didn't know how to code at all so I decided to build at least my first idea.
I built a surf web app that will show the best time when to surf.
I didn't know how to code and I accidentally meet Peter Levels and Mark Kohlbroek from
BattleList and they say just use PHP.
So it was a good coding school for me.
I launched it in one month and it was a good foundation.
But how to find ideas was surprisingly that when I do in this project I have already some
ideas for the next one.
Because all the time I need to commit the code so I thought why there is no big red
button when I can just hit and it will deploy my code.
So it was my second project but it didn't work out.
I didn't get enough pre-payments to start the factory in China.
You're trying to actually make like a literal red button that you would hit to deploy your
code?
Yeah, like physical button, right.
And you're taking pre-payments to try to get people to buy this thing before you even made
it?
Without Kickstarter?
Without Kickstarter.
Just PayPal button.
Without Kickstarter.
Yeah.
Okay.
Do you remember how much money you got?
So the goal was maybe couple of thousand dollars and I made only 250 or something.
Okay, not enough.
So then what do you do?
Just return the money back and just give up on it?
Yeah, just say sorry the project didn't work and refund all.
Okay, so you already, pretty quickly you're two projects in.
You do a surf app, you sort of teach yourself to code.
I also learned PHP as the very first sort of web programming language.
I guess I learned like HTML and CSS stuff to make design websites and I didn't know
how to code and so I was in school and I was just like trying to build I think a Facebook
app like my sophomore year of school and no one was really teaching me how to do this
despite the fact that I was like getting a CS degree and so I just like went online and
read a bunch of guides about PHP which like you know at the time I didn't know it was
like looked down on as a language.
Facebook was using it.
I was like yeah, that's good enough and like super scrappy and I ended up having like one
giant PHP file that was horrible and didn't follow any of the best practices but like
it was kind of a good way to learn because like I wasn't worried about writing perfect
code.
I was more worried about just like learning how to get stuff working and it kind of seems
like that's the same path that you took.
Yeah.
And in fact you actually wrote a blog post about I mentioned earlier about some of the
lessons that you were taking from Peter levels and you basically said solve your own problems,
stop going to startup events, avoid startup coaches, learn code by doing and searching
on Google, avoid courses, boot camps, books and startup coaches, do the simplest thing
that could possibly work with the current skills and don't waste time on super cool
new frameworks that will take you a year to learn and then finally do it all yourself.
And so like right in the middle of that is like learn code by doing and searching on
Google.
Honestly, that's what I tell people who are trying to learn how to code to like try to
envision what it is you want to do.
Like don't just learn code abstractly.
Have something you want to accomplish and then like Google around and try to figure
out how to do that thing and hopefully you know you start somewhere simple and like it'll
be scrappy and crappy at first but like ultimately you'll figure how to do that thing.
And if it's something you have to do often, you'll keep doing it repeatedly and you'll
kind of memorize it and learn and you'll just get better over time if you keep at it.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because the learning code is not the determinative idea.
It's just infinite idea.
There is no end in learning code you can never finish but better start something small like
build one app that will work and we'll have one button.
This much more simple and doable instead of try to learn entire code of entire world.
It's kind of weird because it's like if you think about someone who is like an expert
programmer training like a brand new programmer, the experts not going to teach them all the
crappy scrappy ways to do things.
They're going to probably teach a beginner like here's the best practices for today and
modern web development that they're using like all the biggest companies and it's like
that's way too much for a beginner to learn and memorize.
So as a beginner, it's kind of easier almost to teach yourself because then you have permission
just to do things kind of in a crappy simple way and you don't have anyone looking over
your shoulder telling you that it's crappy or that it's wrong but that's often the easiest
way to start and no expert is going to tell you to start that way and then like you said,
you're never done learning.
You can always unlearn those bad habits and I think to some degree, it's hard to appreciate
why the best practices are the best practices unless you've done it like the hard crappy
way first.
So I like that scrappy do-it-yourself path.
Yeah.
I would just add that it depends on your goal.
If you go to find the developer job, maybe it's a better approach to take some books
or trainings which will teach you how to do it in the right way.
Because obviously in a job, you work not alone, you work in a team and they're using all these
best practices which are probably a good idea to find out and learn.
But if you do it just for fun and for aside projects, I guess it's not much a big deal
which paths you will choose.
Yeah.
I think for learning to code and for like building a company, the biggest obstacle for
most people is just quitting.
You start and then it gets frustrating.
It's too hard.
You're not seeing very much progress and then you end up quitting and then you don't get
the job or start the company.
I think in either situation, if you can just figure out how to make it easy and fun for
yourself, you can get better over time and that's clearly what you did.
I can't imagine by the time that you finished your surfing app or your big red deploy code
button that you were the world's best programmer.
You're probably still super scrappy.
You probably didn't have a ton of confidence in being able to build a lot of stuff.
But eventually you ended up building sheet to site, which is from the sound of it, it
doesn't sound like a very simple project to start with.
The concept of it is basically people who don't know how to code can turn their spreadsheet
into a website and like here you were, someone who barely knew how to code.
So what was your, what was like the genesis of this idea and like how did you have the
confidence to try building this?
Because before I had the idea to build a website of list of apps that contains dark mode.
And I didn't know the SQL or any other database, but I knew the spreadsheet.
So before starting the website that collected all the data of apps that I found in a Google
sheet and the best way to do it was somehow I didn't know how to put this information
into HTML.
So I find a way how to easily call through API and in the for loop it will make the cards
like normally same style, which list of apps and it worked very well for me I was surprisingly
happy with the approach that I don't need to update the code I just update the Google
sheet and the website will update itself.
And once I had this idea with sheet to site, I thought maybe some other people also don't
know SQL and don't know how to code.
So maybe I can turn out this idea into the service app.
So firstly, it was very basic, it was just one template, just put your Google sheet URL
into the web form and it will convert into one template.
That was it was no login, no payments, no about page was just one page and API page
with a generated website without anything.
So it was I think it was maybe even luck for me that I don't know frameworks and databases
because I know very little.
So I focus only on one thing to ship it and see if it will work.
So maybe this disadvantage become my advantage.
It's kind of like a four step process that a lot of founders go through, which is number
one, work on something can be literally anything.
Number two, while you're working on the thing, you encounter a problem, you're like, oh shit,
like I need to figure out how to solve this problem.
Number three, you solve the problem for yourself.
Like, okay, this works.
And then number four, you have the insight to realize, okay, probably other people have
the same problem and I can solve it for them.
So you go from working on like a project to basically working on a completely different
project that solves a real problem that you encountered.
And so those four steps in your case were number one, work on something.
You built this website, dark mode list, still online, dark mode, list.com and like, what
is it?
It's just like a list of apps that have a dark mode.
Yeah.
So people like using apps that, you know, have a dark mode or black background.
They come to your list, very simple project, you know, not crazy ambitious.
Number two, you encountered a problem, which was like, all right, well, how do you add
all the data to this website?
How do you update the data?
You don't know SQL, you don't know about databases, but you do know how to use a spreadsheet.
And so you had to figure out, you know, step number three, solving that problem for yourself.
I'm not sure how you did it, but you figured out how to get the data from that spreadsheet
to update your website, which I'm sure like anyone with enough persistence, even if you're
a beginner at code could figure out how to do because it's a very specific problem.
And then number four, you realize like, Hey, other people have this problem too.
So tell me about like that last insight, because I think most people who solve problems don't
think that way, especially programmers, especially beginners.
We tend to think, Oh, I built this super simple solution to my own problem.
Like no one's going to care.
No one needs this.
You know, I'm a beginner.
Like, of course, everyone's going to build their own thing.
How did you have the insight to realize like, Hey, other people also might want to change,
update their websites based on data in a spreadsheet.
It was my assumption.
I never knew that some other people have this problem.
So I just thought, what if some other people also want to build a website from the Google
sheet?
And I just made this app in a month.
I think I even posted in my Twitter or Facebook, also in indie hackers, but it didn't went
well.
And some people say, nice, bro.
I say it's nice.
Very nice.
And didn't head, you know, like overnight success where people wow, all my life, I was
missing something in, it was website builder from the Google sheet.
Now I'm completely happy.
Andre.
Good job.
No, it almost never is.
No, no.
So I just launched it as is after polishing it a bit, at least make workable with this
one template.
And I even didn't have any like extra features which normal website builder have.
How long did it take you to get like this first version up?
Because I'm looking at it and it's like super duper crazy simple, like you've got a Twitter
thread where you have a screenshot of like your very first, basically very first version
of it.
And it's just like one website, one page and it's green and it just says make site from
Google sheet.
That's it.
You put in the link to your Google spreadsheet and then you click a button and it turns into
a website.
So how long did that take you to build?
I think this is from my first version I built like in a couple of days and it was very quickly.
But this version I didn't launch.
Also I showed for maybe like 10 or 20 people to get their onboarding right because many
I understood that what I understood myself and I believe should work where you should
click real people even don't understand.
So it was big insights for me make face to face user testing, sit with people, shut up
and listen where they struggle.
Your website reminds me of Gumroad.
It's like a website for basically selling products online, like the very, very first
version of that.
It was also very similar.
Like he built it in like as a weekend project, I think it just took a couple of days and
it was the same thing.
It was like a very simple website and you just like upload a product and then it's like
boom, there's a price tag on it.
And it's like as simple as that.
And so like you don't really have to like spend months or weeks planning.
Like you didn't even do market research for this idea.
You're like, oh, I have this problem.
I'm going to assume other people have this problem too.
Oh, I'm not going to put a bunch of bells and whistles and features on it.
Like I'm not going to have user accounts.
I'm not going to have password reset.
I'm not going to have a glitzy logo, like you just did the bare minimum and then put
it up.
And then you started learning from, as you just said, like user feedback.
So it wasn't so much like, oh, I'm going to predict what everybody wants up front to build
it.
Like, I'm going to put up the simplest, dirtiest, smallest possible thing and then show it to
real people and see what kind of feedback they have.
I'm like, of course you like, you hope that they love it, but like that's rarely the case
that they love the very first version.
And that's what you're learning from them.
So what did you learn when you actually talked to people?
They don't understand how to make their website public, because there is two ways to get the
data from the Google sheet first is using authentication and get the permission from
the user.
But another simple way is just to make the website public.
And the instruction what was on the website back then told where you need to click and
how to do it.
So many people don't understand this instruction.
And I tried to improve the optimize that they know how to do it was probably big inside
for me because otherwise, when I launched as is when I was a version of instruction,
in my understanding how it should work, many people will fail and was frustrated and confused
because they know the idea how to do.
Yeah, there's kind of like a trope in software development that like, you make your own app
and you take your laptop to a coffee shop, and you just look over somebody's shoulders,
they try to use it.
You don't say anything.
And like, always, you'll be shocked at how hard it is from their figure out like the
most basic stuff in your app that you thought would be super easy to do.
And it's kind of depressing to watch like I've done this with every app I've ever built,
including any hackers.
And it's like, I've never, I've never failed to be disappointed in watching people struggle
to use something that I thought was so intuitive.
So how did this this turnout?
I mean, obviously, you didn't use this is like month number one of your hardcore year.
Technically, you worked on a couple projects before this, but like, this is like the first
project where you're like had taken off your job and you're like living off your savings.
And you said that you only got to like $300 a month in revenue.
And so it didn't turn out to be the success that you wanted it to be.
What do you go from there?
After that, I decided to build a Mac app, which is completely different field with a
different language and different approach to everything.
But the idea why I took it not because I want to build a Mac app in just the Mac app, but
because it's cool.
Because I was a big fan of that Twitter account called a year progress, it's just a progress
bar and showing each couple of days that your year is growing like 365 days is 100%.
So each three days it's moving one and people like so I said, Wow, I like this, this idea
and a big fan of it, you know, like a momentum worry, it's reminders that our time is limited.
And we need to work more and do the stuff that we need to do now.
So I said why there is no such thing as this progress bar into Mac menu bar, because it's
just minimalistic and it's very cool.
So you can just put in your Mac menu bar and it will be perfect fit for it.
Yeah, I'm looking at this Twitter app right now, or the Twitter account right now called
year underscore progress.
And like you said, it's just a progress bar that it tweets every day of what percentage
we are through the year.
And today, literally four hours ago, just tweeted were 50% of the way through the year.
It's this most popular tweet of all time.
It's got 47,000 likes already in 17,000 retweets, you know, because it's kind of shocking that
we're already 50% through 2021.
But your progress bar went a step further.
So it didn't only tell you like what percentage we are through the year, but it was also like
what percentage we are through the day, what percentage we are through the month.
And then you have a cool part that's kind of depressing, which is a progress bar at
the bottom.
It's like, what percentage of your life are you through?
And so you can put in your age, it tells you that you're going to die, you know, whatever
age on average, you're 34% of the way through your life, which is kind of a grim reminder
to look up at your Mac progress bar and see that every day.
Yeah.
This second version with all other features I launched in the next couple of months, because
the first I launched the only the year, because this was the idea.
And I spent all the time figure out how to do the progress bar and coding on Swift.
But after I got a lot of feedback from the users, so I made maybe like, I know, 300 sales
of five bucks a app.
Oh, crazy.
Yeah.
And it was my biggest success.
I made so much money in one day that I never made in my life.
Back then.
I was like, wow.
Yeah.
300 sales, five bucks each is $1,500, which is almost four months of runway for you living
in Bali of like $400 a month.
So like, every time you're making one of these apps and charging money for it, like you can
like meaningfully extend the runway that you had to continue your hardcore year.
Yes.
The other interesting part was that you should make the animation moving of the progress
bar, right?
Each couple of percent.
And I have no idea how to do it on Swift.
I even don't know how to do it now.
So I make, you know, hardcore approach.
I make 50 different progress bar moving of like the picture.
Images.
Yeah.
Like if 3% shows zero and it's still working, just imagine after three years, people still
buying it even in the Apple store.
Yes.
So I said, wow, people even don't care if my code even not entirely optimized.
It's like the worst code in the world.
Yeah.
And that's the kind of consistent pattern, right?
Like users aren't buying your app because of how you've coded it.
They don't care if you've got like an authentically moving bar or if you just switch between one
and 50 pictures, like it just looks the same to them.
And so it works.
And like, that's kind of the, the other thing I like about this idea of doing like a different
project every month or two is that when you give yourself this time limit and you kind
of cap how long you can work on each project, you don't have time to waste doing trivial
unimportant things.
Like you have to figure out how to be scrappy if you're kind of like, oh, I've got one app
and it'll be done when it's done.
And you know, I'm gonna do the best I possibly can.
You have no time limit.
Then like probably you would have taken like all the time in the world to try to figure
out how to move the progress bar just right and learn the proper Swift code.
And like, what would have that, what would that have done for you?
Like probably nothing.
You know, you would have learned a bunch of extra stuff that stood in the way of you actually
accomplishing your goal rather than doing like the bare minimum that you needed to accomplish
your goal, which was to actually make money.
And so this app was making money and like, what's, what's wrong with that?
Did you try putting a subscription recurring payments on it or you just assume like no
one's going to buy this?
Yeah.
And I switched to another Mac app because I said, wow, this is like the money cow or
how you called it in English, right?
Where you find the idea and you just, oh, the money tree.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've never heard money cow before.
Yeah.
Milking the money cow, shaking the money tree.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this thing is working.
It's making, you know, five bucks for everybody who buys it, but yeah, it's not giving you
subscription revenue.
And so what's the next thing you do that does give you subscription revenue?
My plan was maybe I will be the Mac menu bar guy, you know, the guy who focused deeply
on the Mac menu bar apps and will be this might think.
So we'll focus on it.
And later I will figure out how to make subscription, but now I just need to switch to another idea
and not lose momentum to keep building stuff and launching it.
And maybe other people also buy.
So my project number three was the Mac app called make or six great again.
So the idea was to fix the annoying things in Mac Mac OS, which many people dislike.
For example, you cannot change the screenshot folder or the format, or you cannot hide all
your screenshots and stuff on the desktop.
And when you connect your phone to the iTunes, it always opened the iTunes.
So it was very right to many people.
So I was like every annoying thing about Mac OS, you're just like, okay, we're going to
fix this.
Yeah, I think now many, many of that was already fixed.
But the most annoying thing was every day, this pop up came as out, do you want to update
your new Mac OS version and you press tomorrow every single day?
So I just found a way how to fix it.
And this was like the first number one feature that many people like and even subscribed
before it was even made.
Yeah, I'm looking at this now.
To make OSX great again.com, it's still up and it costs $10, you also have like a video
people can watch and you've got some good screenshots of like what the app does on the
homepage.
How much money did you end up making from this one?
Maybe like $1,500 or $2,000, not much, yeah.
But again, enough to justify the investment because it probably didn't take you...
That's like what, four or five months of runway again in Bali, didn't take you four or five
months to build it.
Yeah, it was like two months, I think.
It was pretty hard to deal also with Swift's internal procedure, how to change the permission
of disable software updates, but I find the way.
It was good investment from my side.
So what's your process like for launching and publicizing these apps?
Because I think a lot of people, even if they have ideas, that's kind of step one, have
the idea.
Step two is like, be scrappy and build it, don't let anything get in your way.
And step three is like, you got to actually like market this thing and get it in the hands
of customers.
And you seem to be consistently pretty good at every one of these projects, getting it
in front of people who potentially need it and getting them to give you money.
So what was your process like for actually getting these apps into the hands of your
customers?
Because on the end of each project, I wrote a blog post and about...
So when I launched She To Site, I wrote a story about She To Site launch and in the
end of the story, I make a quick note say, hey, my next app will be this.
If you're interested, please subscribe.
And after I tweeted, hey, my next project will be this app, just one screenshot without
even app.
And if you like, please subscribe.
And after I build the project, put it everywhere where I can on product hunt on Twitter and
in the hackers on to my email list, to hacker news, launch everywhere when I can and got
the user feedback and see if it will work and if people actually like it and buy it.
So it was through each of this project, I built a little bit audience through Twitter
and mailing this and it was good for me because it was like the snowball each next project
I have bigger and bigger people interested in this particular project and in my challenge
as well.
So these are basically funneling everybody to the same mailing list, no matter what blog
post they read?
Yeah.
Cool.
That's super smart.
And what would you say in your blog post?
Like you launch She To Site, what is your blog post?
Like, you know, who's the target of that and what does it say?
I did it after launch, actually post-launch lessons learned.
So it was the story, the numbers, which was hard to do, how I done it, how was the launch
goes where I launch it, what was the revenue and what I will work next.
And this approach was pretty sustainable and I do it almost for every app that I made.
It makes a lot of sense.
So you're basically targeting like other makers and other indie hackers.
You're giving them like the behind the scenes sort of build in public approach.
Here's how I, here's what I did and here's the results and here's how I did it.
And anyone else who's a maker is going to be interested in that.
And then at the same time, the apps that you're building are apps that kind of appeal to that
target audience.
So like She To Site helps you build a website using a spreadsheet.
There's probably a ton of indie hackers who would love to build a website using a spreadsheet
or even like progress bar OSX, like, okay, maybe that's not targeted at any particular
niche in particular, but like if you use a Mac, if you're an indie hacker, you probably
use a Mac and it's kind of a cool niche app that like, you know, anyone could use.
And so nothing you're building is targeted at a different niche than the ones that you're
writing for by telling them how you're building all this stuff.
Yeah, it was pretty much for the same people, I suppose in general.
Yeah.
I just pulled up your, you've got a blog post called hardcore year first month, getting
press coverage and reaching $361 a month in revenue.
So if anyone searches for that, you can find it on medium, you get 2,400 likes for this
on meeting, which is a ton, and you've got a bunch of different sections.
First like the too long didn't read section, just a summary of the whole post.
Then you read, like wrote down the story of She To Site.
So you give people kind of a walkthrough story of how you built it and how you tested it
with users.
And then you have a section called depression.
We said after the site was ready, I made a launch and felt like everybody would be using
it.
That's not what happened.
People only said, Oh, this is a nice idea.
And that hurt.
And you now know this is a standard depression stage and any creative process.
So do you feel like you hit that, that point with all of your projects or it was only sheet
to site where you felt kind of depressed at the way the launch was received?
No, for always, it's like the, the classic problem.
I even know that I have this problem in the right direction because next will be good
feeling after the launch.
So it's a first when you don't know, you probably struggle with this, but after you
keep this as a, as a part of the game.
You know, when you need to defeat both first, you need to struggle a lot to get them to
the boss.
So the, the, the part of the game and at some point you, you like this pain of this depression.
That's another, like, just like you're going through like all these like sort of learnings
and they're all really, I think, testaments to why doing like a different project every
month or two was a smart idea.
If you only build one project, yeah, you can pour more of your like heart and soul and
attention and love into that project, but like you're not getting that many reps in.
And so you don't really know like what is unique to this one project and what is a common
experience across almost every project that you work on.
Whereas with you, like, okay, you had your surf app and then you had your big red button
app and you had sheet to site and then you had these progress bar apps and you're getting
like these reps in and you could see like, oh, like consistently it's kind of depressing
and hard in the beginning.
And then that almost always goes away after I launch and fix bugs and whatever.
So like now you know, it's kind of baked into your soul that like you shouldn't quit when
you feel that feeling or somebody who's only ever made like one project or two projects
is like, oh, this is not how it's supposed to be.
I never hear anybody else writing about this.
Like I should quit.
Like I'm not supposed to feel this bad.
Yeah.
I would just add that it's worked for me in my case, but I assume that many people have
different personalities and for them it's better to work on the one idea where they
can focus and work like a year or two even before launch.
So it's really depends on who you are and what was your, you know, inner triggers and
inner things that makes you happy.
What do you think it is about your personality that makes this sort of multiple projects
approach a better approach for you rather than just like working on one thing?
For me personally, it's much more better to work on different ideas.
And I really like this part when you don't know anything.
And after you have this idea and you launch it and see what happened, this makes me much
more excited and maybe because when I was a child, I cannot focus on the one thing I
do this and that and cannot finish books and cannot focus too much, you know, like learning
and study.
I just need to do many things at the same time and maybe one I will finish or maybe
no.
I like that.
I have a chance.
It's kind of like the consistent personality traits from other parts of your life will
probably also apply to your journey as a startup founder.
So if you're not finishing books like you said, then maybe you're not going to finish
a bunch of projects.
You should work on a lot of different small things rather than one really big thing that
you'll never finish.
I've also heard people who are extroverts tend to work better with co-founders because
it's kind of hard to motivate yourself if you're super extroverted and you're sitting
in your apartment by yourself all day and if you're introverted, maybe you can do the
solo founder thing.
And so there's all these little personality traits where if you're not really sure where
to start as a founder and which decision to make, realizing that, like, as you said, there
is no one right decision, you just have to figure out what works for you and you can
probably guess what approach will work for you based on how else you've lived your life
before you became a founder.
Were there any things that, like, did you have any bad habits that you had to break
or overcome to, like, finally find success?
Because I know I did for sure.
Like if I just follow my own sort of intuition and do what I want to do, like, I will lock
myself in a room and write code all day every day and never release anything, never market
and never talk to anybody.
Like, that's what's the most fun for me.
And so I had to kind of, like, deliberately work on ideas that don't require a lot of
code in order for me to have the discipline to do all the other stuff.
Did you have any habits that you needed to break or were you able to just kind of naturally
be yourself and that worked out for you?
I think it's not only habits, it's many things.
Habits to finish the project, the habit that you need to launch and market the project,
the fear that you scare that no one will even use it, the fear that people will hate you
and the anxiety, the things that maybe someone will copy your project.
It's like the psychological, emotional mess in all of this journey.
And if not my friends, I will probably give up to earlier.
I was just very lucky to have very good friends, Peter, Mark, Daniel, and Lin Luson from Brazil
and other guys who helped me during all these years to keep going and not give up.
Because without people, my personal fuel was only for, like, the couple of months.
So how did you make friends on the internet who believed in you and supported you and
stopped you from giving up?
Because that's easier said than done, mostly for sort of toiling away in obscurity.
Nobody knows what they're working on.
Even when they create a Twitter account and they tweet something about what they're working
on, like, nobody responds.
How did you go from, like, not having any internet friends to suddenly having, like,
all these people in your corner?
And I was lucky when I went to Bali.
So the first day, I don't know anybody.
I post in some Facebook group, hello, people of Bali, like, expats.
I'm Andre from Ukraine.
I like startups and jumping from parachutes and maybe surfing and stuff like this.
Let's meet on coconut.
And some people, hey, Andre, OK, let's meet.
And I made a couple of friends like this and everyone said to me, you know, go to the co-working
space called Dojo Bali.
There's many people, like, you go there and say, what is co-working space?
It's a place where I not just buy coffee, but I pay money for time.
Just imagine.
Pay money.
It was, like, mind blowing in my head.
Why I need to pay if I can go to the cafe?
It was, like, doesn't make sense.
OK, because not only one guy said, but also some other people said.
So I went there and met many interesting people, actually.
One of them was my ex-boss, the Yaroslav from elsewhere.
And I found a job.
So I said, wow, on the second day, I found a job.
OK, what happened next?
And then in the next couple of months, some girl said that, you know, Peter levels will
come to Bali.
Like, wow, no way.
It was, like, was a superstar guy from some different part of the world that write in
crazy blog posts.
I said, OK, I will go.
And I went to the pool party where was Peter and some other guys.
And it was a very interesting experience because I don't drink alcohol.
So I get the tea set with the Chinese tea and all these little cups.
And people in the pool drinking beer and, like, partying with this little diesel.
Hello, I'm Andre from Ukraine.
And that's how I meet Peter, actually.
And it was pretty strange.
But the next day we met in a normal environment.
And somehow we become friends.
And he introduced me to the Mark Kohlbroek from the Badleys.
So that's how it was more face to face because through the internet, the only connection
was when I post on a Facebook group to some random dudes, they say, hello, I'm Andre from
Ukraine.
Let's meet for a coconut.
That's cool.
That's cool.
It's bringing back memories of pre-pandemic times and meeting people at meetups and all
sorts of stuff like that, which hopefully will start back.
But one of the things I've seen from people like you and others, like the sort of indie
hackers community who've been able to make a lot of friends, is that you're all like
doers.
You're not just like, hey, let me go to the pool party, you're like, hey, I'm actually
working on stuff.
Do you want to see what I'm working on?
Let me show you what I'm working on.
And I think for somebody like Mark or Peter, when they meet somebody like you who they
don't know and you can actually show them what you're building and they come back a
few weeks later and be like, look how far along I am now.
It just sticks so much more than if you're not actually building anything because it's
like a camaraderie there because they're also building stuff all the time and they love
to see people kind of inspired by what they do and see people just change and grow.
Yeah, for sure.
Back then, I even have not work or anything.
I even don't have plants, like bee plants.
I said, when we met, you know, I want to build startup.
Maybe it will be about surfing.
And Mark said, so what's stopping you?
I said, I don't know.
I don't know how to code.
What should I do?
Peter, PHP, just PHP.
I say, okay.
So you end up going through your hardcore year.
I've got like a little timeline up that you wrote about like March started in March 2018.
That's when you quit your job with your goal to get to $1,000 a month in recurring revenue.
By November 2018, you had built seven projects.
And then in January, you ended up winning product ons maker of the year.
You are the third person to come on the show who's won product ons maker of the year award,
which I guess they award to basically whoever is the most impressive maker, the most impressive
builder.
And it's almost always like the most prolific person.
So Mubashar Iqbal has been on the podcast a few times, and he's like super prolific.
He's like building an app every week.
I swear to God, Peter levels has been on the show.
He also did his like startup beer and he built like 12 projects in 12 months.
And here you were, kind of alongside these other greats being recognized a product ons
maker of the year as someone who less than a year earlier, like didn't even know how
to code.
Oh my god, this was one of the happiest moment in my life.
Because I have no idea if I even will be nominated, I just launched the project, every of my project
will launch to the on the protocol and I was like is that many people love what I done
and they vote.
So I suppose they have some algorithms that check in for an entire year, who's the maker
launch total project with a total amount of votes or something like this.
But after they have like pre-nominated people and after that there is another vote.
So I was very surprised that I went to this first round.
And after I won, it was wow, how is even possible the guy from Bali from Ukraine that build
some apps that have little bit functionality can win such great awards.
I was really happy and I was partying and went to the beach party and screaming and
yelling and partying with my friends, it was really fun.
That's awesome.
It's cool to have like all these sources of motivation because it's not just like individuals
that you're meeting in person now, it's like an entire online community celebrating you.
And I got to say like this process that you have of like not only blogging at the end
of sort of each one of your projects, but also constantly tweeting about what you're
up to.
Like you've been building in public since well before it was cool.
You're always tweeting your ups and downs.
You're always like sharing your revenue numbers and how things went.
I think there's just something about that that is endearing to people who don't know
you or people who are trying to follow in your footsteps or build something similar
to what you're building.
So when the time comes for you to get like nominated for an award like this, like who's
going to be at the top of their mind?
Andre, of course, because Andre has been tweeting and you know, talking about all the stuff
he's been building all year long.
But like, why wouldn't somebody remember you kind of like a constant reminder in the Twitter
feed that like you're grinding and working and you're pursuing this goal.
And I think that's just it's really inspiring.
It's a great habit for you to develop.
So at some point you've done seven projects, probably eight or nine, 10 projects actually.
And you decided to go back to sheet to site, which is a big decision because you have all
these projects.
Like clearly some of them were still alive.
They're still alive today.
But how did you decide, you know, instead of working on newer projects or instead of
picking a different old project to go back to, to go back and relaunch sheet to site
the very first project that you worked on?
I guess was the three, three reason for this decision.
First that my idea list was finished and I haven't got any other idea.
Second reason that my goal was in a recurrent revenue.
So sheet to site was with only one project with recurrent revenue and it was like five
bucks per month or something or 10, but it was still working and some people still paying.
And the last reason that it was still alive and people was using it to build some websites
in with this free version that they had before.
I thought that maybe it was a good idea to try add all this feature that all people asked
because back then I even don't have the option to connect the custom domain because it's
obviously number one feature of any website builder, right?
Right.
That's the most important thing.
Yeah.
So the first I just sent through email when the people buying it on the PayPal, I said,
they actually just have this index HTML with iframe and just put on your server.
Good luck.
So for the non programmers, that means you gave people a really, really hacky way to
show the websites on their own domain name rather than like, you know, sheet to site
dot com slash Cortland Allen or whatever website you gave people.
Right.
Paul Graham would say do things that don't scale.
This is a really important point actually, because somebody was posting an indie hackers
a few weeks ago about how he is coding his website for like a year and then he realized
like he was doing all these features that he sees in other apps that you like don't
need to launch with.
He was like, oh, the password reset feature isn't automated yet.
So I've got to spend like three or four weeks like fixing that.
And like everyone's like, no, no, no, you're like, you don't have to do, you can just not
do that.
And yeah, maybe like one out of every two or 300 users will need to like reset their
password, but you can like do that for them manually until you have time to build that
feature.
But like, just get the most basic features out.
And like, you're kind of like intuitively on that level.
Like you left out not only like, you know, those sort of edge case features, but also
like the most important feature custom domains.
And yet the site was still alive.
People were still using it.
They didn't necessarily care that they had some, you know, to resort to smoother scrappy
iframe solution to get that feature.
Right.
It was very interesting approach to do, because I even don't know how to do.
So I decided just launch, see what will happen and if people really need this custom domain,
because it was my assumption.
Maybe people just like to use it on the, on the mind domain as it, but it was good validations
that people need this feature.
By the way, I still now don't have reset password feature.
So maybe I don't care about this too much.
It took me a long time to put reset pass a password reset features on any hackers to
you like changing your username on any hackers, like multiple years and the actors have been
acquired.
I've been working on it for years and people would send emails like, how do I change my
username?
Like, I'll do that for you.
And it wasn't until like maybe six or seven months ago that I built it.
So you really don't need these basic features to launch.
Yeah.
Maybe it's a good idea for a startup reset password as a service, right?
So you decided to go back to working on this because of all the reasons you outlined,
like this thing is still alive.
People have all these features that they want.
I'm sure the feature requests have been piling up for months at this point, and it's got
recurring revenue.
How long did it take you to sort of to build this and to the new version and get it out
the door?
I think maybe like three or four months, it was pretty big list because from that scrappy
website, I need to make in some, you know, like the real startup with many features that
people ask many technical problems and I need to level up myself as a developer to be able
to ship all these requested feature.
Right, right.
And it ended up doing super well.
You kind of launched it as sheet to site 2.0 and you had a lot more of the features that
like people would expect from a typical website builder.
You had a bunch of different templates people could use to make their websites look differently.
Did you end up adding custom domains?
Yeah, it was still semi-automated.
At least I didn't send the iFrame anymore.
I did it manually like each time when people ask because they message me in the website.
So I sent them the IP address to change in the DNS and I put on FTP their website.
So it was still, but it was, you know, 2.0, like a little bit more automation.
Yeah.
So how did people receive the new launch and how did that go for you financially?
It was probably the biggest success back then.
It was even great because it was a big pool party organized with friends with Peter and
Mark and Daniel and Lynn Nielsen was the big villa in Bali and maybe 200 people came.
So we took the microphone and said, we launching sheet to site and someone, what is this?
This is my website, like three, two, one.
It was already launched, but just for show, we pressed the button and it was went live
to the protocol.
I increased the price.
So from maybe hundreds of MRR, it becomes like 400 or five.
I think that was like March and then by May, so a couple months later, you were at your
goal.
You hit a thousand dollars a monthly recurring revenue and this is all 2019 and then I talked
to you last year in 2020 and you're 10 times that amount.
You're $10,000 a month in revenue, which is a crazy amount of growth, 10 X in one year.
I'm sure that was like well beyond your wireless streams for what you're going to hit.
I mean, that's literally 10 times more than your goal and you're living in Bali still
are traveling.
I think at this point, so you were like, this is way more money than you need to survive.
It was pretty amazing because you know, when you set up a public goal, you need actually
to finish this goal and people asking what's up Andre?
Why you don't post any update and you want like 300 monthly revenue, it's easy to post
when you achieve something, but it's very hard and I have huge respect for people who
post and keep posting this even if they don't succeed yet.
But I keep working on it and 18 finally added domains, added Stripe integration, launching
the Google sheeted on and were pressed on and many other things that people requested.
And in 2020, the COVID happened and I assume that many people decided, okay, I have this
idea and I will work on it because I have free time.
So they somehow remember my website because the idea was related to the Google sheet and
they opened my website and start paying the monthly subscription.
Yeah, it was a pretty good time for tech businesses in general for the exact reason that you said
like so many people decided to sit at home.
It's kind of like that phenomenon in January.
It's a new year.
Suddenly everybody's at the gym because everybody's got like this, you know, New Year's resolution
to get fit and you know, COVID happened and everyone was like, well, I might as well build
my online business.
And so if you are making any sort of tool, whether it's sheet to site to help people
build websites or whether it's Stripe to help people collect payments online, like 2020 was
a huge year for you most likely and it's kind of just like right place, right time.
And then as you said at the very beginning of the show, at some point you're like, well,
the support load is pretty big and it's only going to increase as you get more and more
customers.
Why sell sheet to site?
I mean, I understand like, okay, it's like it's not that fun to do customer support,
but like it's a solvable problem and you can hire people for it.
You can start automating different stuff and writing guides and fixing bugs.
Why not just keep working on this thing and take it to $20,000 a month in revenue or $40,000
a month in revenue instead of selling it and starting something new?
Because when a lot of support happened, I didn't decide to sell, I decided to keep working
on it and automate everything what I can.
It's like the good marker if people posting you in support and don't know how to do, or
they want to do something that they cannot do through their own account, it was like
a good signal.
So I done a lot of these in 2020, like a year, and it's become pretty good and stable project.
So last six months, I don't have much support before because it was optimized and automated.
And at some point, because I got requests for other people who want to buy it, I say,
if someone interested to buy, let's just see if I will post it not to some people who message
me directly, but for all people on the market.
I got the offer from the guy from UK named Neil.
So I want to have this feeling of fresh ideas, fresh projects.
Cool.
Well, this is very freeing, I think, to sort of divest yourself from a big project you've
been working on.
Like I've been working on any hackers for four years, I don't have any plans to stop
but it's like, wow, I'm kind of sucked into the exact same code base.
What's new?
What's going on?
I have all these other ideas that have been percolating in the back of my mind.
So part of me is kind of jealous to see what you're going to work on.
Do you have any ideas?
It's kind of in your future now that you've sold this project.
I assume you've made a big chunk of change and you don't really have to work on anything
for a while, but I know you're going to, what do you think it's going to be?
I have no idea yet, just didn't open my idea list for a while and just enjoying doing nothing.
At the moment, some people said that you need to always work on something and if you will
have a lot of money, you will probably start doing something new again.
But I want to reach this point when I will become totally boring of laziness to don't
do anything.
And after this, I will launch something new for sure.
Well, then what are you doing in your lazy off time?
Because I assume you're not doing projects, but you've got to be doing something in your
personal life.
What's keeping you occupied day-to-day?
A couple of things.
First, I'm making techno, like making electronic music just for fun.
Yeah.
I put it on the pulse because I was working a lot on my projects, but now I'm just doing
this.
And other stuff, I'm learning coding now in a proper way, finally, to understand how to
do databases and password resets.
So it will help a lot for my next project, finally.
Nice.
There's this idea in Silicon Valley of the deferred life plan where a lot of founders
spend 10 years working on projects and startups and they put a lot of their dreams and personal
hobbies and personal development on hold because it's so intense and it's so easy to justify
dumping every waking hour you have into your startup, especially if it's not working.
And then eventually they find success and they're like, okay, well, now it's time to
do all the things they wanted to do.
I'm going to start making music.
I'm going to learn how to code properly and I'm going to finally go get a girlfriend or
boyfriend or whatever.
It's cool when you can mix the two, but it also is cool when you do reach the end of
that journey and you can basically learn all those things you want to learn.
So best of luck.
I hope you make some really good techno.
You've got to send me some.
What is your advice?
I always end the episode by asking for just one piece of advice that you have for the
person who was in your shoes four years ago, who doesn't necessarily know how to code,
who doesn't know what they should build and is just trying to find some inspiration by
listening to this podcast.
What do you think they should take away from your story, Andre?
Try to surround myself with friends doing the same as you, but already succeed in any
ways and it would probably help a lot because personally, I'm not super crazy motivation
where I can work alone for 20 years in the basement.
I need some friends around me that will support and say, you can do it, man.
So that's one thing that I got advice and another thing that there is a big problem
now is there is too much different content.
There is indie hackers, hacker news, product hunt, tech crunch, fast companies, everyone
succeeding and you see this like Instagram stories of success every 10 seconds.
So it's very hard to decide what to do.
The best approach is just not focused too much on reading and learning, just start simple
one button up whatever your idea is and it will be much more better than watching some
other people's successes and try to build your own.
I like that advice and in some ways, it almost seems contradictory.
On one hand, it's like surround yourself with successful people.
On the other hand, it's like don't buy too much into these stories of successful people,
just get it done.
But I think both pieces of advice are really good and you got to have to figure out how
to strike that balance because it definitely is paralyzing to see all these success stories
and then to start copying them too much.
I think that's one of the things that you did really well was that you didn't get too
caught up in trying to make your apps look like they're these finished polished things.
You just, as we mentioned several times now, kept it scrappy, realized at the very beginning
of any startups life, it's going to look crappy and scrappy and it doesn't matter and it's
really easy to lose sight of that if you are only consuming these stories and only looking
at successful people.
But I think what's cool about actually surrounding yourself with people in real life is they'll
just give you the scrappy advice because they know their story and when they're your friends
in real life, they're not going to give you the buttoned up packaged version of their
story where it was all success the whole time.
They're going to tell you like, oh no, just go learn PHP and do it scrappy from the beginning.
So I love the way that you were able to find that balance by having these friends in real
life.
Andre, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Can you tell listeners where they can go to learn about, I guess, your next project whenever
you decide to work on it or maybe get on that mailing list that you have?
Yeah, you can find me on Twitter, Andre Azimov or on my personal website, Andreazimov.com.
Thanks Andre.
I'll see you back here when you've got your next $10,000 a month and the hacker app out
the door.
Yeah.
See ya next time.