Insight
Courtland Allen: Starting a VC-backed company is a bad bet for most people
“It's probably a bad bet to start a VC-funded company for the vast majority of people. You should not go that route.”
Disclosure
Allen Used Fake Accounts to Simulate Activity on Indie Hackers
“The first week created a bunch of fake accounts, which I had heard other people doing. I was like, all right, this seems cheesy, but you know, I'll try it. And I would have conversations with myself.”
Insight
Courtland Allen: Founders should be honest about being motivated by money
“I think that and the value of kind of this culture of always talking about, like, you know, what mission drives you, and we kind of are not honest about the fact that a lot of us are motivated by money and financial things. I think it's probably better for the…”
Insight
Allen: The primary goal of building a startup is simply not quitting
“The way that I look at it, like my mental model for building a startup, is that essentially your whole goal is not to quit. I saw a really good tweet the other day that was, here's the secret to success. Pick any idea, work on it for 10 years. You know, you wi…”
Insight
Allen: VCs Prefer Most of Their Portfolio Companies to Fail
“Their incentives are such that, you know, 90% of the time, they would rather have a whole bunch of people fail, and a few people make it big, than have everybody have kind of a middling result.”
Insight
Allen: Founders should read more because building startups is counterintuitive
“I think people don't read enough, and I get the opposite of this often. I hear people say, oh, stop reading and just start doing. That's true, but I think if you're the kind of person who is going to have the determination and the grit to, like, actually start…”
Opinion
Courtland Allen: Zero to One has terrible advice for bootstrapped startups
“Like, if you read Zero to One, that book is written for, like, high-growth startups. It's got a lot of advice in there that's terrible if you're trying to bootstrap your way to success.”
Insight
Allen advises founders against bootstrapping startups in San Francisco
“Like I do not recommend trying to bootstrap in San Francisco, paying ridiculous rent here.”
Insight
Allen: People overweight novel advice and ignore repeated foundational principles
“Generally speaking, like, all of us tend to overweight, like, novel advice. Like, things that are new, or flashy, or we haven't heard before. And we tend, it's like so easy to ignore the things that we hear all the time. You know, like, oh, make something peop…”
Insight
Allen: Ideation is a practiced creative skill, not innate talent
“A lot of people, when they come to the idea phase, they think that it's something that you naturally have to be good at. You know, you just get a good idea, or you don't, right? Whereas, like, the reality is, it's like any other creative endeavor. If you pract…”
Insight
Allen: Copycats Copying Transparent Business Details Are Rarely a Threat
“If you think about the kind of person out there who's gonna, like, just listen to your podcast and read your interview, and he's just waiting for someone to reveal all the details, and then they clone everything that you've done and, like, make some, like, cra…”
Opinion
Allen: Y Combinator's advantages outweigh disadvantages tenfold for founders
“If it's Y Combinator, undoubtedly, yes, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages tenfold.”
Insight
Courtland Allen: Bootstrapped founders making millions rarely raise VC capital
“Very rarely does somebody who is killing it and making millions of dollars decide that they're going to raise a ton of capital.”
Disclosure
Allen: About 60% of Indie Hackers traffic is outside the US
“If I look at the IndieHackers traffic stats, something like 60% of the traffic is from not in the United States, let alone in Silicon Valley.”
Assertion Supported
Allen: Indie Hackers launched with 10 interviews and grew to 200
“I think, when we launched IndieHackers last, last, when I launched it last August, it was like 10 interviews. And it took me three weeks. I sent hundreds of emails. To get 10 people to agree to do an interview. And one of them was me, so it was really only nin…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Allen: Hacker News is probably Indie Hackers' top growth channel
“Things get submitted to Hacker News. I think that's probably our number one growth channel. People on Hacker News reading interviews.”
Disclosure
Allen: Nomad List was the primary inspiration for Indie Hackers
“When I was scouring Hacker News trying to come up with an idea the company that I saw that inspired me the most. And actually the first person that I reached out to for an interview afterwards was a company called Nomad List.”
Insight
Allen: Participating in peer communities makes solo founders much less likely to quit
“Being able to rely on some sort of online community, whether it's on any hackers or another site, like if you can go somewhere, and people are also doing what you're doing, and you can tell them what you're up to, and they can give you feedback, and, you know,…”
Assertion Supported
Allen: Scott's Cheap Flights is generating $4M per year
“And it turned from, like, that tiny side project into, like, this massive business that's doing, like, four million dollars a year.”
Assertion Supported
Allen: Mike Perham makes over $1M annually from Sidekiq
“This guy, Mike Parham, he created an app called Sidekick. It's basically like a background job processor for developers so that they can run tasks in the background on their server and make their websites faster. He was doing it on the side of his business, an…”
Disclosure
Allen: Indie Hackers Podcast Launched to Interview Founders Guarding Revenue Data
“Part of the text interviews was that you have to share your revenue. So everyone is completely transparent. And the number of people that I reached out to who I thought would have really good stories for the site that people can learn from, who were willing to…”
Assertion Supported
Allen: Solo Creator Wes Bos Built a 170K Developer Email List
“He's got an email list, like, a 170,000 developers on it, That he's built by himself in like five or six years Twitter following of like a 100,000 people and he's just trucking along.”
Disclosure
Allen: Task Force still exists and makes passive income
“So, I mean, the company that I did YC with, Task Force, still exists. It's still out there. It still actually makes money passively.”
Disclosure
Allen: Indie Hackers has published every text interview conducted
“I don't think I've ever conducted a text interview that I didn't end up putting up.”
