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[00:00:01.280 --> 00:00:04.320] If I didn't have hover code to work on, I would have struggled.
[00:00:04.320 --> 00:00:13.440] And I think that's partially why, you know, once I got those valuations back from the brokers, I thought, like, maybe I should just go ahead and do this so I could focus on my other products.
[00:00:13.440 --> 00:00:19.120] Hello, and welcome back to Indie Bytes, the podcast arriving you stories of fellow indie hackers in 15 minutes or less.
[00:00:19.120 --> 00:00:25.280] And today I'm joined by Rami Kafash, who is the founder of Hovercode, a QR code generator he's working on full-time.
[00:00:25.280 --> 00:00:32.720] Previously, Ramy started PageFlows, a library of inspiration videos for product designers that he sold last November.
[00:00:33.040 --> 00:00:34.240] Rami, welcome to the pod.
[00:00:34.240 --> 00:00:35.280] How are you doing?
[00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:36.320] I'm good, mate.
[00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:39.040] It's good to be here back again after a few years.
[00:00:39.040 --> 00:00:48.560] Well, I'm interested to speak to people that have started, grown, and sold something, been on the podcast talking about that growth, and then have done it again with a new thing.
[00:00:48.560 --> 00:00:54.640] Because you know something that I think a lot of people want to know, which is, I've done it once, how do I do it again?
[00:00:54.640 --> 00:00:56.400] What's the secret source?
[00:00:56.400 --> 00:01:02.400] Now, regular listeners will know that this podcast is sponsored by my friends at Email Octopus.
[00:01:02.720 --> 00:01:09.760] And I know, Rami, that you use Email Octopus for hover code and I'm guessing page flows as well.
[00:01:09.760 --> 00:01:12.400] Yeah, I did use it for page flows when I was running that.
[00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:18.080] And I use it for, I've been using it for every product I've created for the last, I don't know, five years or so.
[00:01:18.080 --> 00:01:18.880] Why do you use it?
[00:01:18.880 --> 00:01:24.240] Because there's a lot of sexy email tools out there that will try and woo you with all their features.
[00:01:24.240 --> 00:01:27.040] I mean, I tried a few tools years ago.
[00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:33.920] The obvious one is MailChimp, which a lot of people start out with because they're great at marketing and branding and their names known everywhere.
[00:01:33.920 --> 00:01:37.120] So I tried that out, ended up moving off them probably based on price.
[00:01:37.440 --> 00:01:41.200] It was getting a bit clunky or I wanted to experiment with some other tools.
[00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:44.800] I tried a few out, eventually landed on Email Octopus.
[00:01:44.800 --> 00:01:53.120] And it was quick, it was simple to use, and you know, the one or two times I did have to contact support, they were super understanding and helpful.
[00:01:53.120 --> 00:01:55.200] And I found no reason to switch, to be honest.
[00:01:55.200 --> 00:01:58.400] It just does the job I need it to do, and it does it well.
[00:01:58.400 --> 00:02:00.440] What sort of emails do you send through it?
[00:02:00.440 --> 00:02:03.640] Like, you're an indie hacker who has a product.
[00:02:03.640 --> 00:02:05.480] Are you sending a regular newsletter?
[00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:07.320] Are you doing your transactional emails?
[00:02:07.880 --> 00:02:09.400] What's it useful for you?
[00:02:09.400 --> 00:02:15.880] With PageFlows, I used to send out a weekly kind of update based on what content was added to the site, and it was great for that.
[00:02:15.880 --> 00:02:22.680] And more recently, the most important thing I do with Email Octopus is send out a welcome email to everyone who signs up to Hovercode.
[00:02:22.680 --> 00:02:26.360] And then occasionally, I send up the kind of product update email.
[00:02:26.360 --> 00:02:30.760] I should be sending those more often, but yeah, that's kind of what I'm using it for at the moment.
[00:02:30.760 --> 00:02:35.080] So, if you want to use Email Octopus after Rami's recommendation, head to emailoctopus.com.
[00:02:35.080 --> 00:02:39.320] And if you choose to upgrade to their pay plan, use code IndieBytes for 30% off.
[00:02:39.320 --> 00:02:41.320] Let's get into this episode.
[00:02:41.320 --> 00:02:45.880] So, Rami, you were last on the podcast three and a half years ago.
[00:02:45.880 --> 00:02:52.920] You were episode 12 when we were talking about how you went full-time working on page flows.
[00:02:52.920 --> 00:02:56.440] You've since sold that, and now you're no longer working on page flows.
[00:02:56.440 --> 00:02:59.640] I'll leave a link so people can listen to your founding story of that.
[00:02:59.640 --> 00:03:00.600] Why sell it?
[00:03:00.600 --> 00:03:06.360] Because at this point, you had grown it into something that is like a solid indie business.
[00:03:06.360 --> 00:03:13.000] People can sort of think of the numbers they want to as MRR, but it's like a solid level of engineer salary.
[00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:15.400] Yeah, that's something I was wondering about myself.
[00:03:15.400 --> 00:03:21.000] I mean, I was kind of umming and ahing about selling it, and I mostly decided that I didn't want to sell it.
[00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:25.880] And I wanted to kind of outsource most of the work, work on other products, and move on.
[00:03:25.880 --> 00:03:30.440] Because I was getting a bit bored of working on it for, I think at that point, it was like six years.
[00:03:30.440 --> 00:03:39.560] But yeah, out of intrigue, I decided to go to some of the brokers that you might have heard of, like Effie International and Quiet Light, and just see what valuation they'd put on the business.
[00:03:39.560 --> 00:03:48.400] It was mostly just to see, you know, what the number would be if it was close to the number I had in my head, and kind of go from there, either maybe progress with the process or not.
[00:03:48.400 --> 00:03:51.520] Yeah, and once I did that, I kind of just thought, well, you know, I'm here now.
[00:03:51.520 --> 00:03:53.440] I've answered a bunch of their questions.
[00:03:53.440 --> 00:03:57.920] I might as well just kind of go ahead and see if I can actually sell the business.
[00:03:57.920 --> 00:04:02.880] So, like, after six years of doing something, this was like a big part of your life, Rami.
[00:04:02.880 --> 00:04:04.960] Some people can struggle a little bit.
[00:04:04.960 --> 00:04:07.280] They're like, what do I do now?
[00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:08.960] Like, this has been my life.
[00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:16.480] Or was it fine for you because you had another product that you'd started that you could sort of transition into nice and easily?
[00:04:16.480 --> 00:04:17.600] Yeah, 100%.
[00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:21.520] I think if I didn't have hover code to work on, yeah, I would have struggled.
[00:04:21.520 --> 00:04:30.960] And I think that's partially why, you know, once I got those valuations back from the brokers, I thought like maybe I should just go ahead and do this so I could focus on my other products.
[00:04:30.960 --> 00:04:38.800] I mean, I think it's a bit of a double-edged sword because I think it probably would have been nice to have been able to go on holiday without my laptop, for example.
[00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:44.960] Because I kind of transitioned from, you know, having one business that I needed to keep running straight into another one that I needed to keep running.
[00:04:44.960 --> 00:04:48.320] And I've been doing both businesses as a solo founder.
[00:04:48.320 --> 00:04:52.720] So there's no other person I could kind of rely on when I want to take some downtime.
[00:04:52.720 --> 00:05:00.880] So yeah, I think maybe it's also a good idea to just have a break, take some time, figure out what's next, and kind of go from there.
[00:05:00.880 --> 00:05:03.920] Even though that can be a struggle for people, there are some upsides to it.
[00:05:03.920 --> 00:05:07.280] After you sold PageFlows, what are you doing in the money?
[00:05:07.280 --> 00:05:08.240] Did you buy anything?
[00:05:08.240 --> 00:05:08.880] Nice.
[00:05:09.600 --> 00:05:10.080] Yeah.
[00:05:11.280 --> 00:05:12.960] I guess I swapped the car.
[00:05:12.960 --> 00:05:15.760] I now drive a Volkswagen polo.
[00:05:19.120 --> 00:05:21.360] I thought you were going to say Tesla or something.
[00:05:22.080 --> 00:05:23.840] I did plan to buy a Ninja Creamy.
[00:05:23.840 --> 00:05:25.040] I don't know if you've heard of a Ninja Creamy.
[00:05:25.120 --> 00:05:26.720] I know, I know a Ninja Creamy.
[00:05:26.720 --> 00:05:33.800] Yeah, so the plan was to buy that, but my birthday was coming up, so I thought that'd be a good birthday request, which I did end up getting, and I do love.
[00:05:29.760 --> 00:05:34.680] But yeah, not really.
[00:05:34.920 --> 00:05:39.480] I mean, a lot of it was just being more comfortable, spending a bit more money generally.
[00:05:39.480 --> 00:05:41.160] So you sold your company.
[00:05:41.400 --> 00:05:44.680] You didn't go on holiday because you had your other product to work on.
[00:05:44.680 --> 00:05:47.000] You got a polo of all the cars.
[00:05:47.880 --> 00:05:51.080] You contemplated getting a Ninja Creamy, but then didn't.
[00:05:51.080 --> 00:05:54.040] By the way, guys, that's like $250.
[00:05:54.040 --> 00:06:01.000] So let's move on to HoverCode, which was the product that you started while you were still doing page flows and is now your full-time gig.
[00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:03.320] You sort of transitioned into doing it.
[00:06:03.320 --> 00:06:06.600] What was the idea behind starting a QR code generator?
[00:06:06.600 --> 00:06:10.280] Surely this is old stuff that's already been covered by someone, Rami.
[00:06:10.280 --> 00:06:14.360] Yeah, it was one project of, I think, three at the time that I ended up building.
[00:06:14.360 --> 00:06:17.000] So I was kind of getting a bit bored with page flows.
[00:06:17.160 --> 00:06:20.200] I wanted to potentially look at what's next.
[00:06:20.520 --> 00:06:33.240] And I built a few products, including HoverCode, and just put them online, built a few pages, and kind of let them sit on the back burner and saw which would get some traction, maybe in Google, maybe anywhere, I suppose.
[00:06:33.240 --> 00:06:38.200] And Hovercode was the one that ended up getting traction in terms of just a little bit of traffic from Google.
[00:06:38.200 --> 00:06:40.680] So that's kind of why I ended up focusing on there.
[00:06:40.680 --> 00:06:47.160] Now, to answer your question about why the QR code specifically, each of the products I built had a little bit of hypothesis behind them.
[00:06:47.160 --> 00:06:54.760] With the QR codes, just before starting, I met a friend who worked in marketing and he told me about a leaflet campaign that he worked on.
[00:06:54.760 --> 00:06:57.960] And he mentioned that each leaflet had a unique QR code on it.
[00:06:57.960 --> 00:07:00.280] When someone scanned it, it went to a unique video.
[00:07:00.280 --> 00:07:02.520] And I thought it was a really interesting campaign.
[00:07:02.520 --> 00:07:07.560] But the kind of way it was done, the tracking involved and that sort of stuff was still quite simple.
[00:07:07.560 --> 00:07:10.600] So that kind of got me intrigued into the QR code space.
[00:07:10.600 --> 00:07:14.280] I did a bit of research and started looking at what was out there.
[00:07:14.280 --> 00:07:19.520] And as you mentioned, there's hundreds, I'd say, of QR code generators out there.
[00:07:19.520 --> 00:07:25.200] Most companies are already using QR codes in some form if they do marketing, especially if they do offline marketing.
[00:07:25.200 --> 00:07:26.800] But it was all fairly simple.
[00:07:26.800 --> 00:07:34.240] A lot of leaflets just have one static QR code on it that just goes to a link on a website, doesn't include any analytics or tracking.
[00:07:34.240 --> 00:07:40.400] So yeah, my hypothesis mostly was around stuff in marketing tends to get more complicated and more advanced over time.
[00:07:40.400 --> 00:07:43.200] Currently, QR codes are used in very simple ways.
[00:07:43.200 --> 00:07:48.560] So there's probably opportunity to get involved now as stuff gets more complicated and a bit more advanced.
[00:07:48.560 --> 00:07:50.560] I guess that's the word I'm looking for.
[00:07:50.560 --> 00:07:57.520] It sounds like I had a lot of thought behind it, but it was mostly that, yeah, I think QR codes will be used in more sophisticated ways over time.
[00:07:57.520 --> 00:07:59.120] So there's probably still opportunity.
[00:07:59.120 --> 00:08:01.600] But I didn't really have massive conviction behind that.
[00:08:01.600 --> 00:08:05.600] It was just enough of a bet for me to spend a couple of weeks building a simple product.
[00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:07.280] What were your other two projects?
[00:08:07.440 --> 00:08:09.440] One was called memo.fm.
[00:08:09.440 --> 00:08:12.720] It was kind of like a voicemail product for podcasters.
[00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:17.840] That does still get some usage, but it's just way, way, way less than hover code.
[00:08:17.840 --> 00:08:24.720] And another one was called Feedback Lane, which was a feedback widget for websites where when people leave feedback, it goes into your Notion documents.
[00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:26.960] That one didn't go very far at all.
[00:08:27.280 --> 00:08:31.520] Yeah, I can see why the QR code one is more of a mass adopted problem.
[00:08:31.840 --> 00:08:35.120] Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing there was just the search volume as well.
[00:08:35.360 --> 00:08:41.680] So when I was looking at all of these, I was looking in like hrefs and a tool called Keywords Everywhere or Anywhere.
[00:08:41.680 --> 00:08:42.160] Yeah.
[00:08:42.160 --> 00:08:45.280] Just to see the search volume for the product categories.
[00:08:45.280 --> 00:08:49.760] And QR codes just had way, way more search volume, but it was quite competitive.
[00:08:49.760 --> 00:08:52.160] So I wasn't sure if I'd be able to kind of break through any of that.
[00:08:52.480 --> 00:08:53.360] So interesting.
[00:08:53.360 --> 00:09:03.720] Your way of finding a new project to work on was first going and looking at the keywords, what people are searching for, what the difficulty is, and then building based on that.
[00:09:03.880 --> 00:09:09.320] Because I've heard that approach from a lot of people, and that approach seems to work.
[00:09:09.320 --> 00:09:18.280] Yeah, that's so it's it's a combination of that and then just having some sort of hypothesis of like maybe how to get a bit of early traction or whether I think the market's growing.
[00:09:18.280 --> 00:09:23.640] So it's kind of a combination of that and then just having a little bit of a thought about the category.
[00:09:23.640 --> 00:09:27.880] But yeah, it was Saba from Veed who said, make things people search for.
[00:09:27.880 --> 00:09:29.400] And he said that and that really stuck with me.
[00:09:29.400 --> 00:09:32.760] So that was definitely a big inspiration for HoverCode.
[00:09:32.760 --> 00:09:35.720] So talk to me first bit of traction from HoverCode.
[00:09:35.720 --> 00:09:36.920] So how did you do that?
[00:09:36.920 --> 00:09:42.600] Yeah, so after I kind of built the initial version, which was super simple, I built a few landing pages based around the features.
[00:09:42.600 --> 00:09:49.880] So some of the features were things around like tracking and analytics, adding a custom domain to the QR code, making them editable, that sort of thing.
[00:09:49.880 --> 00:09:51.480] I just put it online.
[00:09:51.480 --> 00:09:53.960] I didn't have any sort of pricing or subscription initially.
[00:09:53.960 --> 00:09:57.320] There was just a pricing page that said we might charge for something at some point.
[00:09:57.320 --> 00:09:58.760] Yeah, and kind of just let it be.
[00:09:58.760 --> 00:10:05.880] And then I'd guess three to six months later, I started to see a bit of traffic start to come in from some of those pages.
[00:10:05.880 --> 00:10:08.040] And this was small amounts of traffic.
[00:10:08.040 --> 00:10:10.760] But yeah, it was more traffic than the other products were getting.
[00:10:10.760 --> 00:10:19.640] So at that point, I started to kind of iterate on the product, improve the features, build more features, work a bit more on the SEO, kind of work on it incrementally.
[00:10:19.640 --> 00:10:24.840] I'll also say like at the time, when I initially launched all three of these products, I did launch them all on Product Hunt.
[00:10:24.840 --> 00:10:32.440] So I think that gives you a little bit of an SEO boost, at least so Google knows you exist and starts indexing some of your pages.
[00:10:32.440 --> 00:10:37.960] What made your product different to some of the other QR code generators out there?
[00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:39.240] Because I've used it.
[00:10:39.240 --> 00:10:42.680] It's really nice and easy and simple to use.
[00:10:42.680 --> 00:10:45.520] And the level of customizability is quite good as well.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:49.280] Yeah, I don't think much made it different at the beginning, to be honest.
[00:10:49.600 --> 00:10:54.240] Again, it was one of those things, which is why I wasn't super convinced it would work.
[00:10:54.240 --> 00:11:03.600] I saw the volume, I thought the market was growing, but I did build two other tools because I wasn't certain I'd be able to break through because there wasn't actually that much differentiation there.
[00:11:03.600 --> 00:11:05.040] Sometimes it's a bit of luck.
[00:11:05.040 --> 00:11:10.240] Sometimes I don't really know why Google picks a site versus another, but it managed to work in my favor.
[00:11:10.240 --> 00:11:22.240] And over time, we've started building some differentiators with things like pricing, customer service, the kind of default like indie hacker things where you just try to do stuff in a better way that suits some businesses more than others.
[00:11:22.880 --> 00:11:26.080] What has it been like being in the QR code world?
[00:11:26.080 --> 00:11:30.320] Because you're like one of these products which is completely horizontal.
[00:11:30.320 --> 00:11:36.160] It works across all industries, all sorts of types of links people can put in.
[00:11:36.160 --> 00:11:37.840] Has that thrown up any challenges?
[00:11:38.640 --> 00:11:44.720] I always kind of fantasize about running a business that is more kind of vertical so you understand your customers.
[00:11:44.720 --> 00:11:48.560] You might be able to go to a conference and meet, you know, hundreds of them.
[00:11:48.560 --> 00:11:55.600] So yeah, it's quite difficult not really knowing who your best customers are, how you can reach more people like them.
[00:11:55.760 --> 00:11:59.840] I think there's ways around this, and obviously other businesses manage to do this really well.
[00:11:59.840 --> 00:12:02.560] For example, like document signing software.
[00:12:02.560 --> 00:12:05.360] But yeah, I'm finding that quite challenging.
[00:12:05.360 --> 00:12:12.400] But at the same time, I'm really enjoying working on something where there's just tons of volume of people looking to do the thing that you let them do.
[00:12:12.720 --> 00:12:17.600] Every day there's just thousands of people looking to generate QR codes in various ways for various needs.
[00:12:17.600 --> 00:12:20.000] So, you know, that's the positive side of it.
[00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:24.960] Rami, it seems like you've built like the perfect indie business.
[00:12:24.960 --> 00:12:28.480] It pays you a good amount, like a good engineer salary.
[00:12:28.480 --> 00:12:29.440] You're solo.
[00:12:29.440 --> 00:12:31.960] I mean, you can't go away without your laptop.
[00:12:32.200 --> 00:12:35.000] But is this the perfect indie business for you?
[00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:36.440] Would you change anything?
[00:12:36.440 --> 00:12:47.640] Yeah, I mean, the grass is always greener, but I think a more kind of niche down, like vertical business would be a better indie business because in the QR code industry, there's tons of competition.
[00:12:47.880 --> 00:12:49.240] That's one of the downsides.
[00:12:49.240 --> 00:12:55.400] There's some very well-funded, super successful companies in the space that are going to be hard to compete with.
[00:12:55.400 --> 00:12:57.880] It's quite hard to differentiate at the moment.
[00:12:57.880 --> 00:13:00.600] I mean, I haven't found a good differentiator right now.
[00:13:00.600 --> 00:13:03.320] I'm one of many QR code generators.
[00:13:03.320 --> 00:13:12.520] So, yeah, I think maybe a smaller, less competitive, more niche space, or at least a better differentiated product in some way, would be better.
[00:13:12.520 --> 00:13:14.440] That's not to say I won't get there.
[00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:22.440] But yeah, I don't know if I'd call it the perfect indie business, but I'm really happy to just go where the traction is based on the things I work on.
[00:13:22.440 --> 00:13:22.920] Yeah.
[00:13:22.920 --> 00:13:34.680] Well, where you are in a sea of a lot of competition, there's bound to be some challenges that can be thrown out when there are large fish in that pond for you to deal with.
[00:13:34.680 --> 00:13:39.000] So as a one-person company, that's kind of hard.
[00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:49.880] But also, you kind of have the benefit there of being small and agile and being able to not have to make huge amounts of profit like some of these well-funded competitors have to.
[00:13:49.880 --> 00:13:56.120] So like it feels like they've got more chance of dying than you have because you have more resilience because of the size and the leanness.
[00:13:56.120 --> 00:13:56.600] I think so.
[00:13:56.600 --> 00:14:06.840] I think a lot of them not necessarily have a risk of dying, but I think they might have to pivot at some point to kind of justify the valuations they've got or at least go up market.
[00:14:06.840 --> 00:14:09.880] That sort of thing that you kind of see from VC funded companies.
[00:14:09.880 --> 00:14:12.120] A bit like some of those VC funded email apps.
[00:14:12.120 --> 00:14:13.640] Unlike email octopus.
[00:14:13.960 --> 00:14:14.680] Exactly.
[00:14:15.760 --> 00:14:26.960] So another thing with the QR code industry that makes it less indie hacker friendly is there's like issues with spam, which again, related to email octopus, that that makes it a bit harder to work in.
[00:14:26.960 --> 00:14:32.160] There's like scammers and stuff, create phishing links, add them to QR codes and that sort of thing.
[00:14:32.160 --> 00:14:38.720] And then the links used with the dynamic QR codes end up getting blocked by antivirus softwares, which kind of affects all customers.
[00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:40.400] So we have to really keep on top of that.
[00:14:40.400 --> 00:14:41.760] So there's things like that.
[00:14:41.760 --> 00:14:48.720] But, you know, it's kind of hard to find a software business that doesn't have to battle spam and scammers in some way.
[00:14:48.720 --> 00:14:50.400] What does the future look like for you?
[00:14:50.640 --> 00:14:52.480] I have no idea, to be honest.
[00:14:52.480 --> 00:14:55.200] I'm just kind of trying to take it one step at a time.
[00:14:55.200 --> 00:14:58.880] I've got a pretty decent-sized roadmap of things I want to work on.
[00:14:58.880 --> 00:15:03.760] I've got a decent roadmap of marketing kind of activities I want to try out and experiment with.
[00:15:03.760 --> 00:15:07.520] So yeah, it's just kind of trying to prioritize those and get going.
[00:15:08.800 --> 00:15:12.880] Well, Rami, you've been a fantastic guest, a returning guest.
[00:15:12.880 --> 00:15:17.200] Thank you for sharing your story of page flows and hover code.
[00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:18.720] No, you've been on the pop before.
[00:15:18.720 --> 00:15:21.600] You know that I end on three recommendations.
[00:15:21.600 --> 00:15:26.000] So Rami, what are your recommendations for me for a book, a podcast, and an indie hacker?
[00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:30.480] So for a book, I'll go with one that's been recommended a lot, the Mum Test.
[00:15:30.480 --> 00:15:34.160] I still think it's one that a lot of founders and indie hackers can benefit from.
[00:15:34.160 --> 00:15:37.440] For podcasts, I'll go with a non-indie hacker related one.
[00:15:37.440 --> 00:15:39.360] I'll go with one called Hidden Brain.
[00:15:39.360 --> 00:15:40.560] It's about psychology.
[00:15:40.560 --> 00:15:41.840] It's pretty good.
[00:15:42.160 --> 00:15:46.000] And Indie Hacker, I'm going to cheat and give you two.
[00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:53.360] I'm going to go with Laura Rhoda, who's working on Paper Bell at the moment and has done a whole bunch of stuff.
[00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:56.320] And Amar, two of my friends here in Brighton.
[00:15:56.320 --> 00:16:02.200] They're both really active on Twitter, which, you know, is pretty rare these days for indie archetypes and founders.
[00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:05.800] And they're both super successful, and I think a lot of people could learn a lot from them.
[00:15:59.680 --> 00:16:06.200] For sure.
[00:16:06.360 --> 00:16:09.160] Rami, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Indiebites.
[00:16:09.160 --> 00:16:09.960] All right, thank you, James.
[00:16:09.960 --> 00:16:11.240] It was great to catch up.
[00:16:11.240 --> 00:16:13.400] Thank you for listening to this episode of Indiebites.
[00:16:13.400 --> 00:16:16.520] A big thank you to my sponsor, Emer Octopus, for making the show happen.
[00:16:16.520 --> 00:16:17.480] That's all from me.
[00:16:17.480 --> 00:16:19.160] See you next week.

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:01.280 --> 00:00:04.320] If I didn't have hover code to work on, I would have struggled.
[00:00:04.320 --> 00:00:13.440] And I think that's partially why, you know, once I got those valuations back from the brokers, I thought, like, maybe I should just go ahead and do this so I could focus on my other products.
[00:00:13.440 --> 00:00:19.120] Hello, and welcome back to Indie Bytes, the podcast arriving you stories of fellow indie hackers in 15 minutes or less.
[00:00:19.120 --> 00:00:25.280] And today I'm joined by Rami Kafash, who is the founder of Hovercode, a QR code generator he's working on full-time.
[00:00:25.280 --> 00:00:32.720] Previously, Ramy started PageFlows, a library of inspiration videos for product designers that he sold last November.
[00:00:33.040 --> 00:00:34.240] Rami, welcome to the pod.
[00:00:34.240 --> 00:00:35.280] How are you doing?
[00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:36.320] I'm good, mate.
[00:00:36.320 --> 00:00:39.040] It's good to be here back again after a few years.
[00:00:39.040 --> 00:00:48.560] Well, I'm interested to speak to people that have started, grown, and sold something, been on the podcast talking about that growth, and then have done it again with a new thing.
[00:00:48.560 --> 00:00:54.640] Because you know something that I think a lot of people want to know, which is, I've done it once, how do I do it again?
[00:00:54.640 --> 00:00:56.400] What's the secret source?
[00:00:56.400 --> 00:01:02.400] Now, regular listeners will know that this podcast is sponsored by my friends at Email Octopus.
[00:01:02.720 --> 00:01:09.760] And I know, Rami, that you use Email Octopus for hover code and I'm guessing page flows as well.
[00:01:09.760 --> 00:01:12.400] Yeah, I did use it for page flows when I was running that.
[00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:18.080] And I use it for, I've been using it for every product I've created for the last, I don't know, five years or so.
[00:01:18.080 --> 00:01:18.880] Why do you use it?
[00:01:18.880 --> 00:01:24.240] Because there's a lot of sexy email tools out there that will try and woo you with all their features.
[00:01:24.240 --> 00:01:27.040] I mean, I tried a few tools years ago.
[00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:33.920] The obvious one is MailChimp, which a lot of people start out with because they're great at marketing and branding and their names known everywhere.
[00:01:33.920 --> 00:01:37.120] So I tried that out, ended up moving off them probably based on price.
[00:01:37.440 --> 00:01:41.200] It was getting a bit clunky or I wanted to experiment with some other tools.
[00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:44.800] I tried a few out, eventually landed on Email Octopus.
[00:01:44.800 --> 00:01:53.120] And it was quick, it was simple to use, and you know, the one or two times I did have to contact support, they were super understanding and helpful.
[00:01:53.120 --> 00:01:55.200] And I found no reason to switch, to be honest.
[00:01:55.200 --> 00:01:58.400] It just does the job I need it to do, and it does it well.
[00:01:58.400 --> 00:02:00.440] What sort of emails do you send through it?
[00:02:00.440 --> 00:02:03.640] Like, you're an indie hacker who has a product.
[00:02:03.640 --> 00:02:05.480] Are you sending a regular newsletter?
[00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:07.320] Are you doing your transactional emails?
[00:02:07.880 --> 00:02:09.400] What's it useful for you?
[00:02:09.400 --> 00:02:15.880] With PageFlows, I used to send out a weekly kind of update based on what content was added to the site, and it was great for that.
[00:02:15.880 --> 00:02:22.680] And more recently, the most important thing I do with Email Octopus is send out a welcome email to everyone who signs up to Hovercode.
[00:02:22.680 --> 00:02:26.360] And then occasionally, I send up the kind of product update email.
[00:02:26.360 --> 00:02:30.760] I should be sending those more often, but yeah, that's kind of what I'm using it for at the moment.
[00:02:30.760 --> 00:02:35.080] So, if you want to use Email Octopus after Rami's recommendation, head to emailoctopus.com.
[00:02:35.080 --> 00:02:39.320] And if you choose to upgrade to their pay plan, use code IndieBytes for 30% off.
[00:02:39.320 --> 00:02:41.320] Let's get into this episode.
[00:02:41.320 --> 00:02:45.880] So, Rami, you were last on the podcast three and a half years ago.
[00:02:45.880 --> 00:02:52.920] You were episode 12 when we were talking about how you went full-time working on page flows.
[00:02:52.920 --> 00:02:56.440] You've since sold that, and now you're no longer working on page flows.
[00:02:56.440 --> 00:02:59.640] I'll leave a link so people can listen to your founding story of that.
[00:02:59.640 --> 00:03:00.600] Why sell it?
[00:03:00.600 --> 00:03:06.360] Because at this point, you had grown it into something that is like a solid indie business.
[00:03:06.360 --> 00:03:13.000] People can sort of think of the numbers they want to as MRR, but it's like a solid level of engineer salary.
[00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:15.400] Yeah, that's something I was wondering about myself.
[00:03:15.400 --> 00:03:21.000] I mean, I was kind of umming and ahing about selling it, and I mostly decided that I didn't want to sell it.
[00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:25.880] And I wanted to kind of outsource most of the work, work on other products, and move on.
[00:03:25.880 --> 00:03:30.440] Because I was getting a bit bored of working on it for, I think at that point, it was like six years.
[00:03:30.440 --> 00:03:39.560] But yeah, out of intrigue, I decided to go to some of the brokers that you might have heard of, like Effie International and Quiet Light, and just see what valuation they'd put on the business.
[00:03:39.560 --> 00:03:48.400] It was mostly just to see, you know, what the number would be if it was close to the number I had in my head, and kind of go from there, either maybe progress with the process or not.
[00:03:48.400 --> 00:03:51.520] Yeah, and once I did that, I kind of just thought, well, you know, I'm here now.
[00:03:51.520 --> 00:03:53.440] I've answered a bunch of their questions.
[00:03:53.440 --> 00:03:57.920] I might as well just kind of go ahead and see if I can actually sell the business.
[00:03:57.920 --> 00:04:02.880] So, like, after six years of doing something, this was like a big part of your life, Rami.
[00:04:02.880 --> 00:04:04.960] Some people can struggle a little bit.
[00:04:04.960 --> 00:04:07.280] They're like, what do I do now?
[00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:08.960] Like, this has been my life.
[00:04:08.960 --> 00:04:16.480] Or was it fine for you because you had another product that you'd started that you could sort of transition into nice and easily?
[00:04:16.480 --> 00:04:17.600] Yeah, 100%.
[00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:21.520] I think if I didn't have hover code to work on, yeah, I would have struggled.
[00:04:21.520 --> 00:04:30.960] And I think that's partially why, you know, once I got those valuations back from the brokers, I thought like maybe I should just go ahead and do this so I could focus on my other products.
[00:04:30.960 --> 00:04:38.800] I mean, I think it's a bit of a double-edged sword because I think it probably would have been nice to have been able to go on holiday without my laptop, for example.
[00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:44.960] Because I kind of transitioned from, you know, having one business that I needed to keep running straight into another one that I needed to keep running.
[00:04:44.960 --> 00:04:48.320] And I've been doing both businesses as a solo founder.
[00:04:48.320 --> 00:04:52.720] So there's no other person I could kind of rely on when I want to take some downtime.
[00:04:52.720 --> 00:05:00.880] So yeah, I think maybe it's also a good idea to just have a break, take some time, figure out what's next, and kind of go from there.
[00:05:00.880 --> 00:05:03.920] Even though that can be a struggle for people, there are some upsides to it.
[00:05:03.920 --> 00:05:07.280] After you sold PageFlows, what are you doing in the money?
[00:05:07.280 --> 00:05:08.240] Did you buy anything?
[00:05:08.240 --> 00:05:08.880] Nice.
[00:05:09.600 --> 00:05:10.080] Yeah.
[00:05:11.280 --> 00:05:12.960] I guess I swapped the car.
[00:05:12.960 --> 00:05:15.760] I now drive a Volkswagen polo.
[00:05:19.120 --> 00:05:21.360] I thought you were going to say Tesla or something.
[00:05:22.080 --> 00:05:23.840] I did plan to buy a Ninja Creamy.
[00:05:23.840 --> 00:05:25.040] I don't know if you've heard of a Ninja Creamy.
[00:05:25.120 --> 00:05:26.720] I know, I know a Ninja Creamy.
[00:05:26.720 --> 00:05:33.800] Yeah, so the plan was to buy that, but my birthday was coming up, so I thought that'd be a good birthday request, which I did end up getting, and I do love.
[00:05:29.760 --> 00:05:34.680] But yeah, not really.
[00:05:34.920 --> 00:05:39.480] I mean, a lot of it was just being more comfortable, spending a bit more money generally.
[00:05:39.480 --> 00:05:41.160] So you sold your company.
[00:05:41.400 --> 00:05:44.680] You didn't go on holiday because you had your other product to work on.
[00:05:44.680 --> 00:05:47.000] You got a polo of all the cars.
[00:05:47.880 --> 00:05:51.080] You contemplated getting a Ninja Creamy, but then didn't.
[00:05:51.080 --> 00:05:54.040] By the way, guys, that's like $250.
[00:05:54.040 --> 00:06:01.000] So let's move on to HoverCode, which was the product that you started while you were still doing page flows and is now your full-time gig.
[00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:03.320] You sort of transitioned into doing it.
[00:06:03.320 --> 00:06:06.600] What was the idea behind starting a QR code generator?
[00:06:06.600 --> 00:06:10.280] Surely this is old stuff that's already been covered by someone, Rami.
[00:06:10.280 --> 00:06:14.360] Yeah, it was one project of, I think, three at the time that I ended up building.
[00:06:14.360 --> 00:06:17.000] So I was kind of getting a bit bored with page flows.
[00:06:17.160 --> 00:06:20.200] I wanted to potentially look at what's next.
[00:06:20.520 --> 00:06:33.240] And I built a few products, including HoverCode, and just put them online, built a few pages, and kind of let them sit on the back burner and saw which would get some traction, maybe in Google, maybe anywhere, I suppose.
[00:06:33.240 --> 00:06:38.200] And Hovercode was the one that ended up getting traction in terms of just a little bit of traffic from Google.
[00:06:38.200 --> 00:06:40.680] So that's kind of why I ended up focusing on there.
[00:06:40.680 --> 00:06:47.160] Now, to answer your question about why the QR code specifically, each of the products I built had a little bit of hypothesis behind them.
[00:06:47.160 --> 00:06:54.760] With the QR codes, just before starting, I met a friend who worked in marketing and he told me about a leaflet campaign that he worked on.
[00:06:54.760 --> 00:06:57.960] And he mentioned that each leaflet had a unique QR code on it.
[00:06:57.960 --> 00:07:00.280] When someone scanned it, it went to a unique video.
[00:07:00.280 --> 00:07:02.520] And I thought it was a really interesting campaign.
[00:07:02.520 --> 00:07:07.560] But the kind of way it was done, the tracking involved and that sort of stuff was still quite simple.
[00:07:07.560 --> 00:07:10.600] So that kind of got me intrigued into the QR code space.
[00:07:10.600 --> 00:07:14.280] I did a bit of research and started looking at what was out there.
[00:07:14.280 --> 00:07:19.520] And as you mentioned, there's hundreds, I'd say, of QR code generators out there.
[00:07:19.520 --> 00:07:25.200] Most companies are already using QR codes in some form if they do marketing, especially if they do offline marketing.
[00:07:25.200 --> 00:07:26.800] But it was all fairly simple.
[00:07:26.800 --> 00:07:34.240] A lot of leaflets just have one static QR code on it that just goes to a link on a website, doesn't include any analytics or tracking.
[00:07:34.240 --> 00:07:40.400] So yeah, my hypothesis mostly was around stuff in marketing tends to get more complicated and more advanced over time.
[00:07:40.400 --> 00:07:43.200] Currently, QR codes are used in very simple ways.
[00:07:43.200 --> 00:07:48.560] So there's probably opportunity to get involved now as stuff gets more complicated and a bit more advanced.
[00:07:48.560 --> 00:07:50.560] I guess that's the word I'm looking for.
[00:07:50.560 --> 00:07:57.520] It sounds like I had a lot of thought behind it, but it was mostly that, yeah, I think QR codes will be used in more sophisticated ways over time.
[00:07:57.520 --> 00:07:59.120] So there's probably still opportunity.
[00:07:59.120 --> 00:08:01.600] But I didn't really have massive conviction behind that.
[00:08:01.600 --> 00:08:05.600] It was just enough of a bet for me to spend a couple of weeks building a simple product.
[00:08:05.600 --> 00:08:07.280] What were your other two projects?
[00:08:07.440 --> 00:08:09.440] One was called memo.fm.
[00:08:09.440 --> 00:08:12.720] It was kind of like a voicemail product for podcasters.
[00:08:12.720 --> 00:08:17.840] That does still get some usage, but it's just way, way, way less than hover code.
[00:08:17.840 --> 00:08:24.720] And another one was called Feedback Lane, which was a feedback widget for websites where when people leave feedback, it goes into your Notion documents.
[00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:26.960] That one didn't go very far at all.
[00:08:27.280 --> 00:08:31.520] Yeah, I can see why the QR code one is more of a mass adopted problem.
[00:08:31.840 --> 00:08:35.120] Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing there was just the search volume as well.
[00:08:35.360 --> 00:08:41.680] So when I was looking at all of these, I was looking in like hrefs and a tool called Keywords Everywhere or Anywhere.
[00:08:41.680 --> 00:08:42.160] Yeah.
[00:08:42.160 --> 00:08:45.280] Just to see the search volume for the product categories.
[00:08:45.280 --> 00:08:49.760] And QR codes just had way, way more search volume, but it was quite competitive.
[00:08:49.760 --> 00:08:52.160] So I wasn't sure if I'd be able to kind of break through any of that.
[00:08:52.480 --> 00:08:53.360] So interesting.
[00:08:53.360 --> 00:09:03.720] Your way of finding a new project to work on was first going and looking at the keywords, what people are searching for, what the difficulty is, and then building based on that.
[00:09:03.880 --> 00:09:09.320] Because I've heard that approach from a lot of people, and that approach seems to work.
[00:09:09.320 --> 00:09:18.280] Yeah, that's so it's it's a combination of that and then just having some sort of hypothesis of like maybe how to get a bit of early traction or whether I think the market's growing.
[00:09:18.280 --> 00:09:23.640] So it's kind of a combination of that and then just having a little bit of a thought about the category.
[00:09:23.640 --> 00:09:27.880] But yeah, it was Saba from Veed who said, make things people search for.
[00:09:27.880 --> 00:09:29.400] And he said that and that really stuck with me.
[00:09:29.400 --> 00:09:32.760] So that was definitely a big inspiration for HoverCode.
[00:09:32.760 --> 00:09:35.720] So talk to me first bit of traction from HoverCode.
[00:09:35.720 --> 00:09:36.920] So how did you do that?
[00:09:36.920 --> 00:09:42.600] Yeah, so after I kind of built the initial version, which was super simple, I built a few landing pages based around the features.
[00:09:42.600 --> 00:09:49.880] So some of the features were things around like tracking and analytics, adding a custom domain to the QR code, making them editable, that sort of thing.
[00:09:49.880 --> 00:09:51.480] I just put it online.
[00:09:51.480 --> 00:09:53.960] I didn't have any sort of pricing or subscription initially.
[00:09:53.960 --> 00:09:57.320] There was just a pricing page that said we might charge for something at some point.
[00:09:57.320 --> 00:09:58.760] Yeah, and kind of just let it be.
[00:09:58.760 --> 00:10:05.880] And then I'd guess three to six months later, I started to see a bit of traffic start to come in from some of those pages.
[00:10:05.880 --> 00:10:08.040] And this was small amounts of traffic.
[00:10:08.040 --> 00:10:10.760] But yeah, it was more traffic than the other products were getting.
[00:10:10.760 --> 00:10:19.640] So at that point, I started to kind of iterate on the product, improve the features, build more features, work a bit more on the SEO, kind of work on it incrementally.
[00:10:19.640 --> 00:10:24.840] I'll also say like at the time, when I initially launched all three of these products, I did launch them all on Product Hunt.
[00:10:24.840 --> 00:10:32.440] So I think that gives you a little bit of an SEO boost, at least so Google knows you exist and starts indexing some of your pages.
[00:10:32.440 --> 00:10:37.960] What made your product different to some of the other QR code generators out there?
[00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:39.240] Because I've used it.
[00:10:39.240 --> 00:10:42.680] It's really nice and easy and simple to use.
[00:10:42.680 --> 00:10:45.520] And the level of customizability is quite good as well.
[00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:49.280] Yeah, I don't think much made it different at the beginning, to be honest.
[00:10:49.600 --> 00:10:54.240] Again, it was one of those things, which is why I wasn't super convinced it would work.
[00:10:54.240 --> 00:11:03.600] I saw the volume, I thought the market was growing, but I did build two other tools because I wasn't certain I'd be able to break through because there wasn't actually that much differentiation there.
[00:11:03.600 --> 00:11:05.040] Sometimes it's a bit of luck.
[00:11:05.040 --> 00:11:10.240] Sometimes I don't really know why Google picks a site versus another, but it managed to work in my favor.
[00:11:10.240 --> 00:11:22.240] And over time, we've started building some differentiators with things like pricing, customer service, the kind of default like indie hacker things where you just try to do stuff in a better way that suits some businesses more than others.
[00:11:22.880 --> 00:11:26.080] What has it been like being in the QR code world?
[00:11:26.080 --> 00:11:30.320] Because you're like one of these products which is completely horizontal.
[00:11:30.320 --> 00:11:36.160] It works across all industries, all sorts of types of links people can put in.
[00:11:36.160 --> 00:11:37.840] Has that thrown up any challenges?
[00:11:38.640 --> 00:11:44.720] I always kind of fantasize about running a business that is more kind of vertical so you understand your customers.
[00:11:44.720 --> 00:11:48.560] You might be able to go to a conference and meet, you know, hundreds of them.
[00:11:48.560 --> 00:11:55.600] So yeah, it's quite difficult not really knowing who your best customers are, how you can reach more people like them.
[00:11:55.760 --> 00:11:59.840] I think there's ways around this, and obviously other businesses manage to do this really well.
[00:11:59.840 --> 00:12:02.560] For example, like document signing software.
[00:12:02.560 --> 00:12:05.360] But yeah, I'm finding that quite challenging.
[00:12:05.360 --> 00:12:12.400] But at the same time, I'm really enjoying working on something where there's just tons of volume of people looking to do the thing that you let them do.
[00:12:12.720 --> 00:12:17.600] Every day there's just thousands of people looking to generate QR codes in various ways for various needs.
[00:12:17.600 --> 00:12:20.000] So, you know, that's the positive side of it.
[00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:24.960] Rami, it seems like you've built like the perfect indie business.
[00:12:24.960 --> 00:12:28.480] It pays you a good amount, like a good engineer salary.
[00:12:28.480 --> 00:12:29.440] You're solo.
[00:12:29.440 --> 00:12:31.960] I mean, you can't go away without your laptop.
[00:12:32.200 --> 00:12:35.000] But is this the perfect indie business for you?
[00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:36.440] Would you change anything?
[00:12:36.440 --> 00:12:47.640] Yeah, I mean, the grass is always greener, but I think a more kind of niche down, like vertical business would be a better indie business because in the QR code industry, there's tons of competition.
[00:12:47.880 --> 00:12:49.240] That's one of the downsides.
[00:12:49.240 --> 00:12:55.400] There's some very well-funded, super successful companies in the space that are going to be hard to compete with.
[00:12:55.400 --> 00:12:57.880] It's quite hard to differentiate at the moment.
[00:12:57.880 --> 00:13:00.600] I mean, I haven't found a good differentiator right now.
[00:13:00.600 --> 00:13:03.320] I'm one of many QR code generators.
[00:13:03.320 --> 00:13:12.520] So, yeah, I think maybe a smaller, less competitive, more niche space, or at least a better differentiated product in some way, would be better.
[00:13:12.520 --> 00:13:14.440] That's not to say I won't get there.
[00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:22.440] But yeah, I don't know if I'd call it the perfect indie business, but I'm really happy to just go where the traction is based on the things I work on.
[00:13:22.440 --> 00:13:22.920] Yeah.
[00:13:22.920 --> 00:13:34.680] Well, where you are in a sea of a lot of competition, there's bound to be some challenges that can be thrown out when there are large fish in that pond for you to deal with.
[00:13:34.680 --> 00:13:39.000] So as a one-person company, that's kind of hard.
[00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:49.880] But also, you kind of have the benefit there of being small and agile and being able to not have to make huge amounts of profit like some of these well-funded competitors have to.
[00:13:49.880 --> 00:13:56.120] So like it feels like they've got more chance of dying than you have because you have more resilience because of the size and the leanness.
[00:13:56.120 --> 00:13:56.600] I think so.
[00:13:56.600 --> 00:14:06.840] I think a lot of them not necessarily have a risk of dying, but I think they might have to pivot at some point to kind of justify the valuations they've got or at least go up market.
[00:14:06.840 --> 00:14:09.880] That sort of thing that you kind of see from VC funded companies.
[00:14:09.880 --> 00:14:12.120] A bit like some of those VC funded email apps.
[00:14:12.120 --> 00:14:13.640] Unlike email octopus.
[00:14:13.960 --> 00:14:14.680] Exactly.
[00:14:15.760 --> 00:14:26.960] So another thing with the QR code industry that makes it less indie hacker friendly is there's like issues with spam, which again, related to email octopus, that that makes it a bit harder to work in.
[00:14:26.960 --> 00:14:32.160] There's like scammers and stuff, create phishing links, add them to QR codes and that sort of thing.
[00:14:32.160 --> 00:14:38.720] And then the links used with the dynamic QR codes end up getting blocked by antivirus softwares, which kind of affects all customers.
[00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:40.400] So we have to really keep on top of that.
[00:14:40.400 --> 00:14:41.760] So there's things like that.
[00:14:41.760 --> 00:14:48.720] But, you know, it's kind of hard to find a software business that doesn't have to battle spam and scammers in some way.
[00:14:48.720 --> 00:14:50.400] What does the future look like for you?
[00:14:50.640 --> 00:14:52.480] I have no idea, to be honest.
[00:14:52.480 --> 00:14:55.200] I'm just kind of trying to take it one step at a time.
[00:14:55.200 --> 00:14:58.880] I've got a pretty decent-sized roadmap of things I want to work on.
[00:14:58.880 --> 00:15:03.760] I've got a decent roadmap of marketing kind of activities I want to try out and experiment with.
[00:15:03.760 --> 00:15:07.520] So yeah, it's just kind of trying to prioritize those and get going.
[00:15:08.800 --> 00:15:12.880] Well, Rami, you've been a fantastic guest, a returning guest.
[00:15:12.880 --> 00:15:17.200] Thank you for sharing your story of page flows and hover code.
[00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:18.720] No, you've been on the pop before.
[00:15:18.720 --> 00:15:21.600] You know that I end on three recommendations.
[00:15:21.600 --> 00:15:26.000] So Rami, what are your recommendations for me for a book, a podcast, and an indie hacker?
[00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:30.480] So for a book, I'll go with one that's been recommended a lot, the Mum Test.
[00:15:30.480 --> 00:15:34.160] I still think it's one that a lot of founders and indie hackers can benefit from.
[00:15:34.160 --> 00:15:37.440] For podcasts, I'll go with a non-indie hacker related one.
[00:15:37.440 --> 00:15:39.360] I'll go with one called Hidden Brain.
[00:15:39.360 --> 00:15:40.560] It's about psychology.
[00:15:40.560 --> 00:15:41.840] It's pretty good.
[00:15:42.160 --> 00:15:46.000] And Indie Hacker, I'm going to cheat and give you two.
[00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:53.360] I'm going to go with Laura Rhoda, who's working on Paper Bell at the moment and has done a whole bunch of stuff.
[00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:56.320] And Amar, two of my friends here in Brighton.
[00:15:56.320 --> 00:16:02.200] They're both really active on Twitter, which, you know, is pretty rare these days for indie archetypes and founders.
[00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:05.800] And they're both super successful, and I think a lot of people could learn a lot from them.
[00:15:59.680 --> 00:16:06.200] For sure.
[00:16:06.360 --> 00:16:09.160] Rami, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Indiebites.
[00:16:09.160 --> 00:16:09.960] All right, thank you, James.
[00:16:09.960 --> 00:16:11.240] It was great to catch up.
[00:16:11.240 --> 00:16:13.400] Thank you for listening to this episode of Indiebites.
[00:16:13.400 --> 00:16:16.520] A big thank you to my sponsor, Emer Octopus, for making the show happen.
[00:16:16.520 --> 00:16:17.480] That's all from me.
[00:16:17.480 --> 00:16:19.160] See you next week.