Best Val Sopi Podcasts (2024)

1
Pricing–change rollercoaster of emotions 35:15

2d ago35:15

35:15

Newsletter: https://blogstatic.io/blog/old-pricingBy Val Sopi

1
Building a $700k ARR newsletter - Manu Cinca, Stacked Marketer 16:12

8d ago16:12

16:12

Manu Cinca is the founder of Stacked Marketer, a daily marketing newsletter he bootstrapped to $700k. In 2023, he acquired 2 newsletters to bring the subscriber count to 100k and raised a small 250k funding round to help boost growth.By James McKinven

1
Bootstrapping the 100DaysOfNoCode learning platform - Max Haining 15:45

16d ago15:45

15:45

Max Haining is the founder of 100DaysofNoCode and 100DaysofAI, which are bootcamps designed to help non-techies gain tech skills. Max wanted to be an entrepreneur from a young age and started 100DaysofNoCode as a challenge for himself to learn NoCode tools during covid, but as more people joined in, he realised he could bootstrap the challenge into…

1
Bouncing back from losing 70% revenue - Max Serrano, IGotAnOffer 15:37

23d ago15:37

15:37

Max Serrano is the founder of IGotAnOffer, a bootstrapped coaching platform focused on helping people get jobs and progress their career. Initially starting out in consulting, Max started IGotAnOffer on the side, creating digital products to help people land consulting jobs, but pivoted to coaching after they lost 70% of their revenue in the tech h…

1
A conundrum 🤔 14:12

2M ago14:12

14:12

Weighing the pros and cons of either keeping blogstatic as is and making it the best possible product at blogging OR going down the monetization route where there's more financial opportunity, but a new can of worms and a departure from the initial idea (rebrand/reposition). The big question: Are these limiting beliefs that are not allowing me to g…

1
Building and monetizing an audience as a software engineer - Randall Kanna Franson 16:58

3M ago16:58

16:58

Today I’m joined by Randall Kanna Franson. Randall is a senior software engineer who has written 3 books, including one published by O’Reilly and a self published one which made over $70k. She also created a course called Hack the Tech interview which made $20k in the first 24 hours and $50k in the first month. All of this has been through Randall’…

1
Can you really scale a No Code SaaS? - Kieran Ball, NoCodeLife 16:45

3M ago16:45

16:45

Kieran Ball is the founder of NoCodeLife, a selection of case studies of those making successful businesses using NoCode. Kieran also has courses on how to become a NoCode SaaS founder, specifically using the Bubble platform. I wanted to get Kieran on the pod to discuss and challenge the NoCode movement and if you can actually create a scalable pro…

1
B2C vs B2B SaaS as an indie hacker - Val Sopi, Blogstatic 17:00

4M ago17:00

17:00

Today I’m joined by Val Sopi, the founder of Blogstatic, a lightweight blogging platform built to take on the likes of Ghost. Currently Val is sitting around $1k a month, but with a low-priced annual plans approach, he’s relying on new sign ups and plan upgrades instead of recurring subscriptions. So he’s at a crossroads of needing to pour fuel on …

1
How VEED bootstrapped to $7m ARR - Sabba Keynejad, VEED.io (2020) 14:23

4M ago14:23

14:23

Today I'm revisiting one of my favourite episodes, from 2020, with Sabba Keynejad, co-founder and CEO of VEED.io, an online video editing platform. When I interviewed Sabba, VEED were at around $2m ARR, fully bootstrapped. Since this interview, they’ve gone on to bootstrap to about $7m ARR before raising a whopping $35m series A from Sequoia. And w…

1
Pomodoro to the rescue 15:55

4M ago15:55

15:55

By Val Sopi

1
Lemon Squeezy CTO on why he still makes side projects - Gilbert Pellegrom 16:12

4M ago16:12

16:12

Gilbert Pellegrom, is co-founder and CTO of Lemon Squeezy, a platform for selling software and digital products online. Previously Gilbert created the Nivo Slider all in 2010, which grew to millions of users before selling it. He then went on to work with Orman Clark at ThemeZilla and Dunked, who he’s teamed up with again to build Lemon Squeezy. Wh…

1
Scaling and exiting a $65k MRR with meal planning app - Jeffrey Bunn, Mealime & Clearful 17:14

4M ago17:14

17:14

Today I’m joined by Jeffrey Bunn, who is the co-founder of Clearful, a digital journal app he built with his wife, Maria. Previously they co-founded Mealime, a meal planning app which grew to a whopping $65k MRR before they exited in 2018. In this episode we cover the story of founding both apps, how they utilised the app stores for growth and why …

1
The slow and steady path to growth - Michael Christofides 16:55

5M ago16:55

16:55

Today I’m joined by Michael Christofides, who is the founder of PgMustard, a product which helps people speed up Postgres queries. Michael started out working for a Devtools company as a product manager and went on to run customer success at London based unicorn, GoCardless. Now, Michael might not be as well known and successful as other popular in…

1
Arvid Kahl on side projects, hobbies and making money as a founder 17:06

5M ago17:06

17:06

Arvid Kahl runs The Bootstrapped Founder, a podcast, newsletter and educational resource to help founders grow successful bootstrapped businesses. He’s also written two books, Zero to Sold and The Embedded Entreprenuer. Arvid is a returning guest, having previously been on the show almost 3 years ago, to talk about his exit from FeedbackPanda, whic…

1
Quitting his job and taking a £20k loan to go full time indie - Harvey Carpenter, Growform 15:49

5M ago15:49

15:49

Harvey Carpenter is the founder of Growform, a form builder which is now around 7K MRR. It's a mixture of enterprise and some other clients, and he's tackling a product in a market that is extremely competitive and crowded, but he's trying to carve out his own little slice of that market. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:21 Harvey's life before Growform 0…

1
EP70 — 11 months later 🤗 12:36

5M ago12:36

12:36

After an 11-month hiatus recording these, I'm trying to make a comeback.By Val Sopi

1
How to get to ramen profitability - Charlie Ward, Ramen Club 15:49

5M ago15:49

15:49

Today is a special episode, because it marks 100 episodes of Indie Bites. And to mark the occasion, I’m bringing back my guest from episode 1, Charlie Ward, founder of Ramen Club to talk about how he’s grown to community into the core of the London indie scene while scaling to £7k MRR in the process. Charlie has also been a long time supporter of t…

1
Bootstrapping EmailOctopus to $3m+ ARR - Jonathan Bull & Tom Evans 17:11

5M ago17:11

17:11

Today I’m joined by Tom Evans and Jonathan Bull from EmailOctopus, an email platform who have bootstrapped to over $3m ARR since they were founded in 2014. They’ve been battling in a crowded and competitive market, with some huge funded companies to contend with, but they’ve made it work in an indie way. In this episode we talk about how they lost …

1
Building a financial engine for your indie business - Justin Jackson 15:48

6M ago15:48

15:48

In this episode I have a returning guest, someone who is a keystone of the bootstrapping community, it’s Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor, MegaMaker and more. Today we have an unstructured but very useful chat about building a financial engine for your business. This is a topic that has come up countless times in my indie journey and I thin…

1
Rob Walling on multiple projects, why building an audience is dumb and other SaaS wisdom 17:09

6M ago17:09

17:09

Rob Walling is an absolute legend in the bootstrapping and indie scene. He’s a veteran entrepreneur with his most notable exit being Drip in 2016. Rob also founded MicroConf, started TinySeed and is the host of the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast, which has over 680 episodes having started in 2010. It doesn’t stop there for Rob, he’s also writt…

1
Growing an audience, making difficult decisions and launching screencasting.com - Aaron Francis 16:53

7M ago16:53

16:53

Aaron Francis is currently an Educator at Planet Scale, but you would have seen him all around the internet doing courses, YouTube videos, podcasts and more. Notably he was a founding member of the Hammerstone team, which he’s recently left, to focus his energy on doing something he loves. Most recently, Aaron has launched Screencasting.com, a cour…

1
$20k MRR with Airtable app using YouTube and SEO for growth - Andy Cloke, Data Fetcher 15:30

7M ago15:30

15:30

Today I’m joined by a returning guest, Andy Cloke, who runs Data Fetcher. Data Fetcher is an API plugin for Airtable that he’s grown to 20k MRR. In our previous episode Andy was only at around £3k MRR, so in this conversation we talk about what he’s done to grow so rapidly, including investing in new marketing channels such as YouTube. Timestamps 0…

1
Making $200k a year teaching Google Sheets - Andrew Kamphey 14:48

7M ago14:48

14:48

Today I’m joined by Andrew Kamphey, who is the founder of Better Sheets, a platform of tools and tutorials to get better at using Google Sheets, that has done well over $200k in revenue since he launched in 2020. He started out working as a tech on cruise ships, before moving to LA to work in the film industry, which is where he gained all of his G…

1
Bootstrapping Ticket Tailor to £6m ARR, selling and repurchasing the company, losing motivation and more - Jonny White 16:33

8M ago16:33

16:33

Jonny White is the founder of Ticket Tailor, a platform for selling tickets online doing over £6m ARR and growing. Jonny founded Ticket Tailor in 2011, grew it to £2k MRR and then sold it to a company called TimeOut a short while later. After a few stagnant years at TimeOut, Jonny then bought the company back to make the lifestyle business he’d alw…

1
Carving a new life path with a newsletter about Workspaces - Ryan Gilbert, Workspaces 15:32

9M ago15:32

15:32

Ryan Gilbert is the creator of the Workspaces newsletter, which showcases the best workspaces in tech and beyond. He grew it to 6,000 subscribers and $2k per month with sponsors + affiliates, before being acquired by Loops (Founder Chris Frantz was on episode 61) and going on to be their first employee. In this episode we talk about how simplicity …

1
Taking on Bit.ly bootstrapped - Tim Leland, T.LY 16:19

9M ago16:19

16:19

Tim Leland is the founder of T.LY, a link shortener with almost half a million users that he recently quit his job to pursue full time. Tim started out building chrome extensions, including a weather extension that grew to 200k users at it’s peak. He then capitalised on Google closing down their link URL shortener and tried to build his own competi…

1
Working towards life-changing outcomes as an indie hacker - Colleen Schnettler, HelloQuery 15:38

10M ago15:38

15:38

In this episode I’m joined by Colleen Schnettler, which a lot of you would have heard from through her Software Social podcast she co-hosts with Michele Hansen. Colleen has been on quite the journey over the past few years, going from years of contracting to launching her first product, Simple File Upload, then getting a large contracting gig with …

1
Gamifying products, shipping quickly and knowing when to quit - Marc Louvion 16:09

10M ago16:09

16:09

Marc Louvion is an indie hacker with many many products. His tagline on his website is relatable for all “I was fired everywhere so I had to work for myself (even Tai Lopez fired me...)”. If you go to Marc’s Indie Page you can see all his projects, including Habits Garden, Gamify List, Visualise Habit, Make Landing & more. Marc is living in Bali an…

1
Is indie hacking having an identity crisis? - Dominic Monn, MentorCruise 15:47

11M ago15:47

15:47

In this episode I’m bringing back a previous guest, Dom Monn, who is the founder of MentorCruise, which he’s now working full time on with a small team. I brought Dom back on to discuss something that has been on my mind, and has come up in twitter conversations recently which Dom has been involved in. Is indie hacking having an identity crisis? Is…

1
How to find and validate your ideas - Bram Kanstein, Startup Stash / No Code MVP 15:58

11M ago15:58

15:58

Today I’m joined by Bram Kanstein, who you might know from Startup Stash, which is the most upvoted product ever on Product Hunt. Bram also started the No Code MVP a course, which shows you how to launch an MVP without code. In this episode we focus a lot on how indie hackers can find ideas and launch them the right way. Timestamps 00:00 Intro 03:1…

1
Growing Frontend Mentor to 500k users and $30k MRR - Matt Studdert 16:02

12M ago16:02

16:02

Matt Studdert is the founder of Frontend Mentor, which helps people level up their front-end coding skills by building projects. They have over 500,000 users and are hovering around $30k MRR. Matt didn’t start out wanting to run a SaaS, starting out playing poker, then became a personal trainer, before changing his career and learning to code when …

1
Jordan O'Connor on running a $30k MRR SaaS and doing SEO consulting on the side 17:03

1y ago17:03

17:03

Jordan O’Connor is the founder of Closet Tools, a bootstrapped app that helps people sell more stuff on Poshmark which has been in and around the $30-40k MRR mark. He’s found a lot of his growth through SEO, like many successful entrepreneurs, and now helps other founders do the same through his Rank to Sell power half hours. Listen to the full 90 …

1
Growing a $2m p/y indie business - Josh Ho, Referral Rock 16:30

1y ago16:30

16:30

Josh Ho is the founder and CEO of Referral Rock, a SaaS he founded in 2014 doing over $2m a year in revenue. Referral Rock helps businesses to design, launch and manage a customer referral program. Josh has had decades of experience as a founder, pouring his early entrepreneurship energy into a notes app that he ultimately couldn’t monetize. Timest…

1
Building a 6-figure creator business - Jay Clouse, Creator Science 16:31

1y ago16:31

16:31

Jay Clouse is the founder of Creator Science, which is a membership, community, newsletter and podcast helping you become build a creator business, which he bootstrapped to over $40k a month towards the end of last year. His podcast is one of the best produced shows out there and it’s on my very short list of shows that I can listen to every episod…

1
Building a $15k MRR side project while working at Stripe - Justin Duke, Buttondown 15:12

1y ago15:12

15:12

Justin Duke is the founder of Buttondown, a simple email newsletter tool without all the bloat. In December 2022 Buttondown was around $15k MRR. He also runs Spoonbill, which is a way to stay updated on what people change on their social profiles. At the time of recording this Justin was an engineering manager at Stripe so you’ll hear references to…

1
Breaking Convention: The Radical Thinking of Jack McDade and Statamic 16:25

1y ago16:25

16:25

Jack McDade is the creator of Statamic, a content management system for Laravel. What I love about Jack is how he approaches all of his projects, including Statamic, to just be different. There is so much cookie cutter content out there and everything just ends up looking the same - but not if Jack has anything to do with it. Just take a look at hi…

1
From $0 to $10k MRR in 2 years - Elston Baretto, Tiiny Host (Revisited) 16:22

1y ago16:22

16:22

Elston Baretto was last on the pod in March 2021, when he’d just grown his tool, Tiiny.host, to $600 MRR and we recorded as part of my mission to share stories of unknown indie hackers with potential. Fast forward 2 years and Tiiny Host has grown to $10k MRR and Elston has just quit his job to become a full time indie hacker. 👉 My side project, Whi…

1
Making $12k p/m with Wordpress plugins - Patrick Posner 15:39

1y ago15:39

15:39

Patrick Posner is the creator of a portfolio of Wordpress plugins which have been downloaded almost a million times collectively making him $12k p/m. Patrick went full time indie in 2020 and since then has both grown quickly and scaled back operations to build the best sort of life for him. I love these types of stories of relatively unknown indie …

1
From $50m VC-backed to $20k MRR notes app - Alex MacCaw, Reflect (prev. Clearbit) 16:58

1y ago16:58

16:58

Alex MacCaw is the founder of Reflect, a note taking app which he’s grown to $20k MRR with a team of 4. Previously, he was the co-founder of Clearbit, a VC-backed company that scaled to $50m in revenue. After stepping down as CEO of Clearbit, he decided to focus on doing the stuff he enjoys. So he’s sailing around the world building an app that get…

1
Stair stepping to millions in SaaS revenue - Craig Hewitt, Castos 16:37

1y ago16:37

16:37

Craig Hewitt is the Founder and CEO of Castos, a bootstrapped podcast hosting and analytics platform with a services arm for podcast production. He’s been in podcasting almost a decade, having started his own show, Rogue Startups and his production service Podcast Motor (which he folded into Castos). Craig not only shares his ponderings on his show…

1
Daniel Fayle: from commercial banker to making millions in software 16:05

1y ago16:05

16:05

Today I’m joined by Dan Fayle, who is the co-founder of Chekkit, a company that’s he bootstrapped to almost $2.5m ARR and 20 employees. There’s a few interesting things about Dan’s story I know you’re going to like. This is his first company and he quit his job to go all-in with 3 co-founders, he got his early customers through, and I’m not kidding…

1
How Ahrefs Built A Best-In-Class SEO Strategy - Tim Soulo, Ahrefs 15:54

1y ago15:54

15:54

Tim Soulo is the CMO at Ahrefs, one of the biggest and best SEO tools on the internet. Ahrefs are one of the clear success stories as a bootstrapped company, growing to be a an 8 figure brand over the past decade. Things really took off when Tim took over marketing for the company back in 2015, first focusing on growing the blog, before experimenti…

1
Bootstrapping a leather supply business to $50k in sales - Jared Maddern, Beamhouse Leather 16:58

1+ y ago16:58

16:58

Today I’m joined by Jared Maddern, the founder of Beamhouse Leather, a leather supply business he’s grown to £45k in sales in the past 2 years. Some of you might know I run a handmade leather wallet business on the side, called Whitstable Craft Co, and so this is a little look into the other part of my life. Although Jared doesn’t run an indie SaaS…

1
blogstatic's Product Hunt launch and the aftermath 15:34

1+ y ago15:34

15:34

By Val Sopi

1
The road to 5000 paid blogs 9:52

1+ y ago9:52

9:52

A quick look at what it will take to get to 5,000 paid blogs in total and make blogstatic a self-sustaining operation.By Val Sopi

1
Is this product market fit? 🤔 9:58

1+ y ago9:58

9:58

By Val Sopi

1
The week that tanked and what's next 12:33

1+ y ago12:33

12:33

It was a rough week. With the registrations and payments crashing down to zero.By Val Sopi

1
How to build a newsletter business - Louis Nicholls, SparkLoop 16:32

1+ y ago16:32

16:32

Louis Nicholls is the co-founder of SparkLoop, a product that helps newsletter operators grow through referral partnerships. Indie hackers might know Louis from his Sales for Founders course which he ran a few years ago, as well as his many other projects. What we covered in this episode: How Sparkloop Started How Louis met his cofounder Manuel Goi…

1
A quick recap since my last solo episode 18:03

1+ y ago18:03

18:03

Visit valsopi.com for more details on the latest.By Val Sopi

1
Near death VC experience to $25k p/m bootstrapped - Kyle Gawley, Gravity 16:20

1+ y ago16:20

16:20

Kyle Gawley is the founder of Gravity, which he’s bootstrapped to over $25k p/m. In 2012, he scaled a vc-backed company, called Get Invited, to $5m in sales, before a near-death experience made him rethink how he lived his life. Now, Kyle is travelling the world building his bootstrapped SaaS. Let’s find out how he did it. Join the Indie Bites memb…

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