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[00:00:01.280 --> 00:00:09.680] As makers, I think we have this moral obligation of sorts to sort of give it to the world because otherwise nobody might actually do it, right?
[00:00:09.680 --> 00:00:15.120] Hello, and welcome back to Indiebytes, the podcast writing stories of fellow indie hackers in 15 minutes or less.
[00:00:15.120 --> 00:00:22.320] Today I'm joined by Gijo Sunny, who is the co-founder of Buy Me a Coffee, one of the most popular donation and membership platforms on the internet.
[00:00:22.320 --> 00:00:26.800] They process tens of millions for creators and have built a 26 strong team.
[00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:34.720] Since founding Buy Me a Coffee, Gijo has dabbled in all sorts of projects, including a stint in YC for a podcasting app that has since been sunsetted.
[00:00:34.720 --> 00:00:43.600] Now though, Gijo is back building a new product, VoiceNotes, a voice-driven AI note-taking app in which he spent $20,000 on a domain for.
[00:00:43.600 --> 00:00:48.000] But before we get into this chat, I would like to thank my sponsor, Email Octopus.
[00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:57.280] Email Octopus are an email platform focused on affordability and ease of use with a very generous free plan and without some of those bloated features that we know these email platforms have.
[00:00:57.280 --> 00:01:04.080] So you can focus on what's important, which is shipping and growing your audience, which regular listeners will know is essential for growth in the early days.
[00:01:04.080 --> 00:01:09.840] So to get started with an email platform, just get us out of the way where you can contact up to 2,500 people for free.
[00:01:09.840 --> 00:01:13.520] Head to emailoctopus.com or hit the link in the show notes.
[00:01:13.520 --> 00:01:25.680] This was actually a one-hour recording where we talk about how Gijo founded his company with his brothers, how he made thousands of dollars as a teenager, how he got rejected from YC four times before getting in, and why he thinks a lot of AI apps are just fluff.
[00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:31.840] I published the full conversation on the Indiebytes membership, where you can get access to at indiebytes.com slash membership.
[00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:33.360] Let's get into it.
[00:01:33.360 --> 00:01:34.720] Gijo, welcome to the pod.
[00:01:34.720 --> 00:01:35.280] How are you doing?
[00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:35.920] Thanks, man.
[00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:36.240] I'm good.
[00:01:36.240 --> 00:01:37.040] How are you?
[00:01:37.040 --> 00:01:37.680] I'm very good.
[00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:46.000] And this is a long time coming because we have been chatting for years and years and years since you did that podcasting app from YC.
[00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:48.240] I've been a user of Buy Me a Coffee.
[00:01:48.240 --> 00:01:50.240] So, let's talk about your background.
[00:01:50.240 --> 00:01:51.840] You grew up in India.
[00:01:51.840 --> 00:01:56.400] I think there are quite a few indie hackers and tech founders that have grown up in India.
[00:01:56.400 --> 00:02:02.280] When was your first experience of making money, building startups, doing this indie thing?
[00:02:02.600 --> 00:02:07.480] So, I started making money from ads, writing articles for other people.
[00:02:07.480 --> 00:02:13.560] The first product was something called Ad Intego, which is an ad network, which I built when I was 15 years old.
[00:02:13.560 --> 00:02:14.680] It was in 2010.
[00:02:14.680 --> 00:02:16.200] It lasted for like six months, man.
[00:02:16.200 --> 00:02:24.120] I had to shut it down after six months because I spent all the money that I made from selling these e-books on the startup and it wasn't working, and then I had to shut it down.
[00:02:24.120 --> 00:02:27.640] And then I didn't even use my computer for like an entire year or something.
[00:02:27.640 --> 00:02:30.840] And where in the timeline does buy me a coffee come in?
[00:02:30.840 --> 00:02:33.800] Because this is the thing that a lot of people know you for.
[00:02:33.800 --> 00:02:35.560] It's such a great product now.
[00:02:35.560 --> 00:02:38.680] Where did that come and what was the initial idea for it?
[00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:46.840] So, I was in the UK and I used my money, which I was supposed to pay for and to buy this domain, buy me a coffee.com, really.
[00:02:46.840 --> 00:02:48.920] I think it was like £1,600 or something, man.
[00:02:48.920 --> 00:02:53.560] But it was actually this small module for this project I was doing called Publisher.
[00:02:53.560 --> 00:02:57.800] And people were already using the term buy me a coffee everywhere on blocks.
[00:02:57.800 --> 00:03:14.280] So, to see that the domain was available, I saw the full picture of how it should look like, how it should feel like, but every single transaction is someone showing gratitude or sort of every everything comes from a place of love that felt surreal for me to make that happen.
[00:03:14.280 --> 00:03:18.280] So, I did not know that you spent $1,600 on a domain.
[00:03:18.280 --> 00:03:20.520] Did you buy this domain before you built the product?
[00:03:20.520 --> 00:03:22.280] Obviously, that's the way it should be, right?
[00:03:22.280 --> 00:03:26.920] Like, I know, but people buy $10 domains, not $1,600.
[00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:27.640] I'm just joking.
[00:03:27.640 --> 00:03:28.280] I'm just talking.
[00:03:28.280 --> 00:03:32.440] I don't know if I would even recommend, but that's, I guess, how I always did it, right?
[00:03:32.440 --> 00:03:33.960] It gives you that push.
[00:03:34.600 --> 00:03:37.560] You are down 2K, you might as well fucking do it, right?
[00:03:37.560 --> 00:03:39.080] How did you grow it at the start?
[00:03:39.080 --> 00:03:53.920] Because it's a commission-based model, and you need quite a large amount of user adoption to make money from this because the donation amounts are small and you're only taking a percentage of that amount.
[00:03:53.920 --> 00:03:57.120] So, what were you doing to get users in those early days, GJ?
[00:03:57.120 --> 00:03:58.800] We got really lucky with the launch.
[00:03:58.800 --> 00:04:02.800] I mean, we almost immediately went viral, I think.
[00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:06.320] So, we had a really lucky launch on Product 10 and HackerNews.
[00:04:06.320 --> 00:04:10.800] The product was so simple that people could try it in like a couple of tabs.
[00:04:10.800 --> 00:04:15.120] Right after we launched, we had thousands of creators using BuyMake Coffee.
[00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:27.200] And the thing about a product like BuyMakeOffee is that the more users that we have, they are actually sort of sharing their links everywhere so that they can make money, which sort of results in your product actually growing with them.
[00:04:27.200 --> 00:04:30.240] But we still made super low in revenue, man.
[00:04:30.240 --> 00:04:32.160] I mean, 5% is nothing.
[00:04:32.160 --> 00:04:38.560] So, you have to sort of process millions every month to actually make any meaningful sort of income to run a company with BuyMay Coffee.
[00:04:38.560 --> 00:04:40.000] So, it took some time.
[00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:40.880] Exactly, right?
[00:04:40.880 --> 00:04:53.920] So, you can have a good launch and you can get thousands of users, but in order to make a 5% commission work and be successful, you've got to have more and more and more and keep new users going.
[00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:59.040] And also, your creators need to be successful enough to receive the donations.
[00:04:59.040 --> 00:05:02.640] So, what were the challenges there for you, and how were you overcoming those?
[00:05:02.640 --> 00:05:09.120] Or was it a case of you've got this set up, you're going to keep it running in the background, and you're going to sort of move on to other things?
[00:05:09.120 --> 00:05:12.480] I really don't know what I was thinking back then, but I really liked the product.
[00:05:12.480 --> 00:05:14.240] I just want to keep it running.
[00:05:14.320 --> 00:05:20.320] Wasn't making enough money, so I was supporting it with my other money-making stuff that I was doing on the side, really.
[00:05:19.720 --> 00:05:22.400] Really, that's the honest answer.
[00:05:22.400 --> 00:05:29.720] But it took some time, it's not because I had a ton of patience, it's just because I didn't want to shut it down because people were loving the product.
[00:05:29.720 --> 00:05:34.440] The people that I looked up to sort of were using it as well, and that was very inspiring.
[00:05:29.440 --> 00:05:35.720] So, I just want to keep it running.
[00:05:36.360 --> 00:05:42.600] So, simple product, cheap to run, and it had a good amount of users.
[00:05:42.600 --> 00:05:45.400] So, there was no real reason to shut it down.
[00:05:45.400 --> 00:05:50.520] What do you think of this multiple projects thing where you see lots of people starting lots of different things?
[00:05:50.520 --> 00:05:54.280] Because this is kind of what you've done throughout your entrepreneurial career.
[00:05:54.280 --> 00:05:58.440] I don't know if I would recommend it because you can only do one thing really well at a time.
[00:05:58.600 --> 00:06:04.920] So, if you're doing one thing, then you are not giving your 100% to this other thing.
[00:06:04.920 --> 00:06:07.080] But then again, I guess if you're a maker, right?
[00:06:07.080 --> 00:06:24.600] Like, let's say you are a designer and who knows how to code and has some taste in good products, and you come across this problem that you really know, you have a clarity on what a solution would look like, and you are energized by it, and you want to just sort of do it.
[00:06:24.600 --> 00:06:26.280] Then, why not just do it, right?
[00:06:26.280 --> 00:06:28.520] Like, what's stopping us from doing it as makers?
[00:06:28.520 --> 00:06:36.120] I think we have this moral obligation of sorts to sort of give it to the world because otherwise, nobody might actually do it, right?
[00:06:36.120 --> 00:06:37.000] I agree.
[00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:42.920] I do think makers, if they have the talent to make, should put their products out into the world.
[00:06:42.920 --> 00:06:50.840] But I think a lot of people do struggle with making money, and so if they're making ideas that consistently don't make economic sense, that's kind of hard.
[00:06:50.840 --> 00:06:53.800] You do need to have your money driver at this point.
[00:06:53.800 --> 00:06:56.120] What was driving your income?
[00:06:56.120 --> 00:06:58.440] Because you're living in London, it's not cheap to live in London.
[00:06:58.440 --> 00:07:01.000] Buy me a coffee is not like making tons of money.
[00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:02.360] Were you contracting?
[00:07:02.680 --> 00:07:07.080] We touched on this briefly before that, you know, all of my projects are super cheap to run.
[00:07:07.080 --> 00:07:11.480] So, BioLink, which is now used by over a million creators, do you know how much it costs to run?
[00:07:11.480 --> 00:07:13.960] Like, less than $3,000 a month?
[00:07:13.960 --> 00:07:15.360] Like, super cheap.
[00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:21.120] It has like three times the traffic of Buy Me a Coffee, but any logical person would have shut it down because it doesn't make a ton of money.
[00:07:21.440 --> 00:07:24.400] Can you give us a sense of the size of Buy Me a Coffee now?
[00:07:24.400 --> 00:07:30.080] Because we've been talking about it as something that is like really well known, that's been going for seven, eight years at this point.
[00:07:30.080 --> 00:07:37.760] We process tens of millions of dollars and we don't share the exact numbers publicly, but yeah, it's doing well and it's supporting a really good team.
[00:07:37.760 --> 00:07:39.120] How big is your team?
[00:07:39.120 --> 00:07:40.720] 26.
[00:07:41.040 --> 00:07:41.840] Wow.
[00:07:41.840 --> 00:07:44.640] And what's the future look like for Buy Me a Coffee?
[00:07:44.640 --> 00:07:46.000] Where do you take it?
[00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:50.720] Well, we want to build the best possible product that we can and the most beautiful thing for creators.
[00:07:50.720 --> 00:07:55.760] No, we don't have any projections internally or some revenue targets or something like that.
[00:07:55.760 --> 00:08:03.440] It is so fun working on Buy Me Coffee because the first thing that I do when I wake up in the morning is going to check out the recent transactions on Buy Me Coffee.
[00:08:03.440 --> 00:08:12.000] And you would see these transactions in the last few seconds and all of them with these very kind comments.
[00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:13.280] That makes my day, right?
[00:08:13.280 --> 00:08:13.680] Yeah.
[00:08:13.920 --> 00:08:17.520] It's like this different kind of commerce that we are facilitating.
[00:08:17.520 --> 00:08:19.120] And we want to do more of that.
[00:08:19.120 --> 00:08:19.760] I love that.
[00:08:19.760 --> 00:08:22.320] So no plans to sell it.
[00:08:22.320 --> 00:08:24.640] Just I'm sure you've had offers and interest.
[00:08:24.640 --> 00:08:26.560] You just want to carry on running it as it is.
[00:08:27.200 --> 00:08:29.600] I really want to run it like the end of my life, right?
[00:08:29.680 --> 00:08:30.960] Man, I don't want to retire.
[00:08:30.960 --> 00:08:32.480] Why don't you sell it and cash in?
[00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:35.520] If I enjoy doing something, why should we stop doing it, right?
[00:08:35.520 --> 00:08:42.000] I mean, if you asked me like two years ago when I wouldn't have much money, I couldn't take a proper salary, then yes, 100%.
[00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:44.080] I would just sort of sell it and sort of do something else.
[00:08:44.080 --> 00:08:47.200] But now I can take a decent amount of salary.
[00:08:47.200 --> 00:08:48.160] I enjoy doing it.
[00:08:48.160 --> 00:08:49.280] Why should I sell it?
[00:08:49.280 --> 00:08:50.640] Hey, you're quite right.
[00:08:50.640 --> 00:08:52.400] You put me in my place there, GJ.
[00:08:52.720 --> 00:09:02.200] The amount of people I speak to who have sold a product and they end up feeling a bit lost because the one thing that they had so much identity in has now gone.
[00:09:02.520 --> 00:09:11.320] If you can get a massive exit, then sure, because then you can have a ton of money and go and start the same thing again or do something different.
[00:09:11.320 --> 00:09:14.920] But right now, it seems good that you're enjoying it.
[00:09:14.920 --> 00:09:21.080] And you also have the freedom to start new things, GJ, as you do, as we keep seeing you launch things.
[00:09:21.080 --> 00:09:24.440] Most recently, voicenotes.com.
[00:09:24.440 --> 00:09:28.360] This is an AI-powered note-taking app, voice note-taking app.
[00:09:28.360 --> 00:09:29.880] But I've got to ask about the domain.
[00:09:29.880 --> 00:09:31.400] We've spoken about domains.
[00:09:31.400 --> 00:09:33.240] Voicenotes.com.
[00:09:33.240 --> 00:09:35.560] Was that an expensive one for you?
[00:09:35.560 --> 00:09:36.840] Yeah, it was.
[00:09:36.840 --> 00:09:38.920] We had to use our money, right?
[00:09:38.920 --> 00:09:43.480] Like, it's not a buy-me-a-coffee company, so we had to use our own personal money.
[00:09:43.480 --> 00:09:44.920] So it was 21K.
[00:09:44.920 --> 00:09:49.080] Okay, so why invest 21,000 in a domain, GJO?
[00:09:49.080 --> 00:09:50.440] What were you thinking here?
[00:09:50.600 --> 00:09:51.880] It's a really cool domain, right?
[00:09:51.880 --> 00:09:54.280] Like, I would do it again, right?
[00:09:54.280 --> 00:09:58.920] When I do a new project, I was like, I would sort of allocate X amount of money, right?
[00:09:58.920 --> 00:10:05.160] Like, for voice notes, I was thinking, like, maybe, hey, we would spend 100K over the next two years.
[00:10:05.160 --> 00:10:12.360] And domain is not just a site that you enter on the browser, it's also the real estate, but also the name of the product, really.
[00:10:12.680 --> 00:10:16.760] So I thought it made sense to sort of allocate 20%.
[00:10:16.760 --> 00:10:19.080] So talk to me about VoiceNotes.
[00:10:19.080 --> 00:10:19.800] What is it?
[00:10:19.800 --> 00:10:21.240] Why did you want to build it?
[00:10:21.240 --> 00:10:26.280] And touch on like that sort of troubling personal story that pushed you to build it.
[00:10:26.280 --> 00:10:31.880] So VoiceNote wasn't really an ambitious startup project idea that I had.
[00:10:31.880 --> 00:10:35.320] Like, it was something that, you know, my wife and I wanted to use.
[00:10:35.320 --> 00:10:38.680] And we decided to do it during a really tough period in our life.
[00:10:38.680 --> 00:10:42.440] It was of us pregnancy, and we sort of learned that we miscarried.
[00:10:42.440 --> 00:10:44.720] And we had a down few weeks.
[00:10:44.280 --> 00:10:50.800] And so, my brother and I had this idea of you know, the one thing that keeps Alicia occupied is sort of coding.
[00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:57.440] So, we thought, you know, if we can get her excited to build something, that would be the perfect distraction, really.
[00:10:57.760 --> 00:11:07.040] And we had this idea, I had this idea for over a while that, you know, it's like just like we have chat GPT, we should have a chat GPT for our personal lives, you know, where we record stuff and we talk to it.
[00:11:07.040 --> 00:11:14.000] Because I think our personal information is 100x more interesting than general public information.
[00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:18.880] So, I want to make it accessible and also want to get people to sort of take notes effortlessly.
[00:11:18.880 --> 00:11:25.440] So, I had this idea for over a year, and we designed a basic thing on Figma and sort of shared it with Alicia.
[00:11:25.440 --> 00:11:30.800] She wasn't very excited at first, but you know, we got her excited and sort of did it and did a prototype in like a week.
[00:11:30.800 --> 00:11:34.240] And then we knew it was so much fun to use.
[00:11:34.240 --> 00:11:51.760] It's interesting how something as challenging and personally disruptive as a miscarriage can, or the way you can get out of that is being creative, building something as an engineer, but also building something that doesn't have much pressure.
[00:11:51.760 --> 00:12:02.320] It's let's build something for fun, do what we want to build, and then because like when you're building features for buy me a coffee, it is a job at the end of the day.
[00:12:02.320 --> 00:12:04.880] You've got a lot of users, there is pressure there.
[00:12:04.880 --> 00:12:13.840] But building something like voice notes where you can be creative and get really stuck into something without much consequence, is quite freeing.
[00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:16.640] It was very different building voice notes.
[00:12:16.640 --> 00:12:18.000] And I love note-taking.
[00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:21.920] So, my main set of tools are like Roam Research.
[00:12:21.920 --> 00:12:26.480] Roam has this, I wouldn't call it entry barrier, but you know, it doesn't fit most people.
[00:12:26.480 --> 00:12:36.200] And I really wanted more people to take notes, and I think that was one of the set of motivation to do voice notes, really, because voice notes makes it super easy for anyone to sort of capture notes and go back to them.
[00:12:36.280 --> 00:12:37.800] And that's the important bit.
[00:12:37.800 --> 00:12:44.200] If you take a ton of notes, and if you don't go back to them and use it, it's basically useless, and you won't sort of take notes for a long time.
[00:12:44.200 --> 00:12:49.080] But I've always figured out some way to sort of enjoy the past notes.
[00:12:49.080 --> 00:12:50.280] And Roam makes it easy.
[00:12:50.280 --> 00:12:58.120] And I think voice notes makes it easy because you can simply ask on your voice notes, like, hey, which was that restaurant that I mentioned that I really enjoy going for breakfast?
[00:12:58.120 --> 00:13:00.280] And I think everyone should take notes, man.
[00:13:00.280 --> 00:13:00.760] Yeah.
[00:13:00.760 --> 00:13:03.560] Hey, GJ, I'm on board with this.
[00:13:03.560 --> 00:13:13.560] I love note-taking, but I never quite got into the Roam research thing because I like taking down my notes, but I could never figure out how to resurface it.
[00:13:13.800 --> 00:13:21.640] I always felt like you had to put in a lot of work to build a system that would enable that thing to resurface when you want.
[00:13:21.960 --> 00:13:27.480] And I can see how voice notes sort of removes the barrier to a lot of that getting your phone out and typing.
[00:13:27.480 --> 00:13:35.960] Where we voice note people more often on WhatsApp if they've got a quick thought or we got a slightly longer thought that's going to take a while to tap out.
[00:13:35.960 --> 00:13:38.280] But then, how is your app going to resurface that?
[00:13:38.280 --> 00:13:44.280] Is that where AI comes in and is a new way of being able to do it that I'm not quite understanding?
[00:13:44.280 --> 00:13:44.680] Yes.
[00:13:44.680 --> 00:13:48.920] So AI has 100% complete context of whatever you sort of wrote.
[00:13:48.920 --> 00:13:54.040] So you can simply ask it things like, hey, what made me upset last month?
[00:13:54.200 --> 00:13:56.280] Or what made me happy last month?
[00:13:56.280 --> 00:14:01.000] But with Roam or any tool, I guess the tools really are just a medium.
[00:14:01.000 --> 00:14:02.280] Just use whatever you want.
[00:14:02.600 --> 00:14:11.000] GJ, thank you so much for coming on and sort of sharing the story of Buy Me a Coffee and some of the other products you started.
[00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:12.600] I'll put you on the spot here.
[00:14:12.600 --> 00:14:30.480] I was thinking, through these years of building successful kind of mass adoption products, are there any things you've learned that you could give as advice to people coming in who want to start products that they've seen like Buy Me a Coffee, like Bio.link, and now Voice Notes?
[00:14:30.480 --> 00:14:32.640] So, most of my project didn't succeed.
[00:14:32.640 --> 00:14:33.760] So, just want to start with that.
[00:14:33.760 --> 00:14:36.000] So, I tried a bunch of things that failed.
[00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:38.800] I have more failed projects than the ones that succeeded.
[00:14:38.800 --> 00:14:44.400] And even the ones that you would call success, like BioLink, is technically a failure in the economic sense of it, right?
[00:14:44.400 --> 00:14:46.400] Like, it doesn't make a ton of money.
[00:14:46.400 --> 00:14:49.840] So, the only thing that actually made any actual money is buy me a coffee.
[00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:55.040] I think having a breadth of experience in a ton of stuff helps.
[00:14:55.040 --> 00:15:02.240] And I would say we over-romanticize tech founders and sort of under-appreciate sort of design-led companies.
[00:15:02.240 --> 00:15:05.760] And I really hope to see more beautiful things, beautiful products in the world.
[00:15:05.760 --> 00:15:09.280] And we as a team believe that everything starts and ends with the design.
[00:15:09.280 --> 00:15:19.520] So, everything starts with, you know, writing something down and sort of designing a basic wireframe and having that clear picture before you even start of what the end would look like.
[00:15:19.520 --> 00:15:25.360] And then, sort of, building it and then having that sense of, yeah, this is not too bad to share.
[00:15:25.440 --> 00:15:29.200] Sort of, again, a design sense really, really helps.
[00:15:29.200 --> 00:15:31.440] So, yeah, spend more time on Figma, I guess.
[00:15:31.440 --> 00:15:37.760] So, what I'm sort of getting from this is design and simplicity are really important for you.
[00:15:37.760 --> 00:15:45.120] Because if you look at all the products you've done, even the ones that you've sunsetted look really good and they're simple.
[00:15:45.120 --> 00:15:52.800] A lot of them have some sort of product-like growth mechanism, some sort of viral mechanism built into them, and a good domain.
[00:15:52.800 --> 00:15:54.240] Exactly.
[00:15:54.240 --> 00:15:56.320] Right, yeah, exactly.
[00:15:56.960 --> 00:16:00.000] I end the episode on three recommendations.
[00:16:01.160 --> 00:16:03.880] A book, a podcast, an indie hacker.
[00:16:03.960 --> 00:16:04.680] Right, book.
[00:16:04.680 --> 00:16:07.240] This is a book called Friendly, Ambitious Nerd.
[00:16:07.400 --> 00:16:14.440] Okay, so I really enjoyed this podcast, Dithering, by the writer of Stratikeri, Ben Thompson and John Gruber.
[00:16:14.520 --> 00:16:15.080] Yeah.
[00:16:15.080 --> 00:16:16.360] And, oh, Indie Hacker.
[00:16:16.360 --> 00:16:19.240] Okay, Indie Hacker is, I would say, Danny Posmo of Hedgehog Pro.
[00:16:19.240 --> 00:16:19.800] We recently met.
[00:16:19.800 --> 00:16:20.360] He was nice.
[00:16:20.360 --> 00:16:20.760] Yeah.
[00:16:20.760 --> 00:16:23.320] GJ, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Indie Bytes.
[00:16:23.320 --> 00:16:24.360] Oh, thanks for having me, man.
[00:16:24.360 --> 00:16:25.480] I appreciate it.
[00:16:25.480 --> 00:16:27.320] Thank you for listening to this episode of Indieby.
[00:16:27.400 --> 00:16:31.720] Don't forget, you can get access to the full conversation on the Indie Bytes membership by hitting the link in the show notes.
[00:16:31.720 --> 00:16:34.920] And a thank you again to my sponsor, Email Oxpus, for making the show happen.
[00:16:34.920 --> 00:16:35.800] That's all from me.
[00:16:35.800 --> 00:16:37.880] See you in the next episode.

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 --> 00:00:09.680] As makers, I think we have this moral obligation of sorts to sort of give it to the world because otherwise nobody might actually do it, right?
[00:00:09.680 --> 00:00:15.120] Hello, and welcome back to Indiebytes, the podcast writing stories of fellow indie hackers in 15 minutes or less.
[00:00:15.120 --> 00:00:22.320] Today I'm joined by Gijo Sunny, who is the co-founder of Buy Me a Coffee, one of the most popular donation and membership platforms on the internet.
[00:00:22.320 --> 00:00:26.800] They process tens of millions for creators and have built a 26 strong team.
[00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:34.720] Since founding Buy Me a Coffee, Gijo has dabbled in all sorts of projects, including a stint in YC for a podcasting app that has since been sunsetted.
[00:00:34.720 --> 00:00:43.600] Now though, Gijo is back building a new product, VoiceNotes, a voice-driven AI note-taking app in which he spent $20,000 on a domain for.
[00:00:43.600 --> 00:00:48.000] But before we get into this chat, I would like to thank my sponsor, Email Octopus.
[00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:57.280] Email Octopus are an email platform focused on affordability and ease of use with a very generous free plan and without some of those bloated features that we know these email platforms have.
[00:00:57.280 --> 00:01:04.080] So you can focus on what's important, which is shipping and growing your audience, which regular listeners will know is essential for growth in the early days.
[00:01:04.080 --> 00:01:09.840] So to get started with an email platform, just get us out of the way where you can contact up to 2,500 people for free.
[00:01:09.840 --> 00:01:13.520] Head to emailoctopus.com or hit the link in the show notes.
[00:01:13.520 --> 00:01:25.680] This was actually a one-hour recording where we talk about how Gijo founded his company with his brothers, how he made thousands of dollars as a teenager, how he got rejected from YC four times before getting in, and why he thinks a lot of AI apps are just fluff.
[00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:31.840] I published the full conversation on the Indiebytes membership, where you can get access to at indiebytes.com slash membership.
[00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:33.360] Let's get into it.
[00:01:33.360 --> 00:01:34.720] Gijo, welcome to the pod.
[00:01:34.720 --> 00:01:35.280] How are you doing?
[00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:35.920] Thanks, man.
[00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:36.240] I'm good.
[00:01:36.240 --> 00:01:37.040] How are you?
[00:01:37.040 --> 00:01:37.680] I'm very good.
[00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:46.000] And this is a long time coming because we have been chatting for years and years and years since you did that podcasting app from YC.
[00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:48.240] I've been a user of Buy Me a Coffee.
[00:01:48.240 --> 00:01:50.240] So, let's talk about your background.
[00:01:50.240 --> 00:01:51.840] You grew up in India.
[00:01:51.840 --> 00:01:56.400] I think there are quite a few indie hackers and tech founders that have grown up in India.
[00:01:56.400 --> 00:02:02.280] When was your first experience of making money, building startups, doing this indie thing?
[00:02:02.600 --> 00:02:07.480] So, I started making money from ads, writing articles for other people.
[00:02:07.480 --> 00:02:13.560] The first product was something called Ad Intego, which is an ad network, which I built when I was 15 years old.
[00:02:13.560 --> 00:02:14.680] It was in 2010.
[00:02:14.680 --> 00:02:16.200] It lasted for like six months, man.
[00:02:16.200 --> 00:02:24.120] I had to shut it down after six months because I spent all the money that I made from selling these e-books on the startup and it wasn't working, and then I had to shut it down.
[00:02:24.120 --> 00:02:27.640] And then I didn't even use my computer for like an entire year or something.
[00:02:27.640 --> 00:02:30.840] And where in the timeline does buy me a coffee come in?
[00:02:30.840 --> 00:02:33.800] Because this is the thing that a lot of people know you for.
[00:02:33.800 --> 00:02:35.560] It's such a great product now.
[00:02:35.560 --> 00:02:38.680] Where did that come and what was the initial idea for it?
[00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:46.840] So, I was in the UK and I used my money, which I was supposed to pay for and to buy this domain, buy me a coffee.com, really.
[00:02:46.840 --> 00:02:48.920] I think it was like £1,600 or something, man.
[00:02:48.920 --> 00:02:53.560] But it was actually this small module for this project I was doing called Publisher.
[00:02:53.560 --> 00:02:57.800] And people were already using the term buy me a coffee everywhere on blocks.
[00:02:57.800 --> 00:03:14.280] So, to see that the domain was available, I saw the full picture of how it should look like, how it should feel like, but every single transaction is someone showing gratitude or sort of every everything comes from a place of love that felt surreal for me to make that happen.
[00:03:14.280 --> 00:03:18.280] So, I did not know that you spent $1,600 on a domain.
[00:03:18.280 --> 00:03:20.520] Did you buy this domain before you built the product?
[00:03:20.520 --> 00:03:22.280] Obviously, that's the way it should be, right?
[00:03:22.280 --> 00:03:26.920] Like, I know, but people buy $10 domains, not $1,600.
[00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:27.640] I'm just joking.
[00:03:27.640 --> 00:03:28.280] I'm just talking.
[00:03:28.280 --> 00:03:32.440] I don't know if I would even recommend, but that's, I guess, how I always did it, right?
[00:03:32.440 --> 00:03:33.960] It gives you that push.
[00:03:34.600 --> 00:03:37.560] You are down 2K, you might as well fucking do it, right?
[00:03:37.560 --> 00:03:39.080] How did you grow it at the start?
[00:03:39.080 --> 00:03:53.920] Because it's a commission-based model, and you need quite a large amount of user adoption to make money from this because the donation amounts are small and you're only taking a percentage of that amount.
[00:03:53.920 --> 00:03:57.120] So, what were you doing to get users in those early days, GJ?
[00:03:57.120 --> 00:03:58.800] We got really lucky with the launch.
[00:03:58.800 --> 00:04:02.800] I mean, we almost immediately went viral, I think.
[00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:06.320] So, we had a really lucky launch on Product 10 and HackerNews.
[00:04:06.320 --> 00:04:10.800] The product was so simple that people could try it in like a couple of tabs.
[00:04:10.800 --> 00:04:15.120] Right after we launched, we had thousands of creators using BuyMake Coffee.
[00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:27.200] And the thing about a product like BuyMakeOffee is that the more users that we have, they are actually sort of sharing their links everywhere so that they can make money, which sort of results in your product actually growing with them.
[00:04:27.200 --> 00:04:30.240] But we still made super low in revenue, man.
[00:04:30.240 --> 00:04:32.160] I mean, 5% is nothing.
[00:04:32.160 --> 00:04:38.560] So, you have to sort of process millions every month to actually make any meaningful sort of income to run a company with BuyMay Coffee.
[00:04:38.560 --> 00:04:40.000] So, it took some time.
[00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:40.880] Exactly, right?
[00:04:40.880 --> 00:04:53.920] So, you can have a good launch and you can get thousands of users, but in order to make a 5% commission work and be successful, you've got to have more and more and more and keep new users going.
[00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:59.040] And also, your creators need to be successful enough to receive the donations.
[00:04:59.040 --> 00:05:02.640] So, what were the challenges there for you, and how were you overcoming those?
[00:05:02.640 --> 00:05:09.120] Or was it a case of you've got this set up, you're going to keep it running in the background, and you're going to sort of move on to other things?
[00:05:09.120 --> 00:05:12.480] I really don't know what I was thinking back then, but I really liked the product.
[00:05:12.480 --> 00:05:14.240] I just want to keep it running.
[00:05:14.320 --> 00:05:20.320] Wasn't making enough money, so I was supporting it with my other money-making stuff that I was doing on the side, really.
[00:05:19.720 --> 00:05:22.400] Really, that's the honest answer.
[00:05:22.400 --> 00:05:29.720] But it took some time, it's not because I had a ton of patience, it's just because I didn't want to shut it down because people were loving the product.
[00:05:29.720 --> 00:05:34.440] The people that I looked up to sort of were using it as well, and that was very inspiring.
[00:05:29.440 --> 00:05:35.720] So, I just want to keep it running.
[00:05:36.360 --> 00:05:42.600] So, simple product, cheap to run, and it had a good amount of users.
[00:05:42.600 --> 00:05:45.400] So, there was no real reason to shut it down.
[00:05:45.400 --> 00:05:50.520] What do you think of this multiple projects thing where you see lots of people starting lots of different things?
[00:05:50.520 --> 00:05:54.280] Because this is kind of what you've done throughout your entrepreneurial career.
[00:05:54.280 --> 00:05:58.440] I don't know if I would recommend it because you can only do one thing really well at a time.
[00:05:58.600 --> 00:06:04.920] So, if you're doing one thing, then you are not giving your 100% to this other thing.
[00:06:04.920 --> 00:06:07.080] But then again, I guess if you're a maker, right?
[00:06:07.080 --> 00:06:24.600] Like, let's say you are a designer and who knows how to code and has some taste in good products, and you come across this problem that you really know, you have a clarity on what a solution would look like, and you are energized by it, and you want to just sort of do it.
[00:06:24.600 --> 00:06:26.280] Then, why not just do it, right?
[00:06:26.280 --> 00:06:28.520] Like, what's stopping us from doing it as makers?
[00:06:28.520 --> 00:06:36.120] I think we have this moral obligation of sorts to sort of give it to the world because otherwise, nobody might actually do it, right?
[00:06:36.120 --> 00:06:37.000] I agree.
[00:06:37.000 --> 00:06:42.920] I do think makers, if they have the talent to make, should put their products out into the world.
[00:06:42.920 --> 00:06:50.840] But I think a lot of people do struggle with making money, and so if they're making ideas that consistently don't make economic sense, that's kind of hard.
[00:06:50.840 --> 00:06:53.800] You do need to have your money driver at this point.
[00:06:53.800 --> 00:06:56.120] What was driving your income?
[00:06:56.120 --> 00:06:58.440] Because you're living in London, it's not cheap to live in London.
[00:06:58.440 --> 00:07:01.000] Buy me a coffee is not like making tons of money.
[00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:02.360] Were you contracting?
[00:07:02.680 --> 00:07:07.080] We touched on this briefly before that, you know, all of my projects are super cheap to run.
[00:07:07.080 --> 00:07:11.480] So, BioLink, which is now used by over a million creators, do you know how much it costs to run?
[00:07:11.480 --> 00:07:13.960] Like, less than $3,000 a month?
[00:07:13.960 --> 00:07:15.360] Like, super cheap.
[00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:21.120] It has like three times the traffic of Buy Me a Coffee, but any logical person would have shut it down because it doesn't make a ton of money.
[00:07:21.440 --> 00:07:24.400] Can you give us a sense of the size of Buy Me a Coffee now?
[00:07:24.400 --> 00:07:30.080] Because we've been talking about it as something that is like really well known, that's been going for seven, eight years at this point.
[00:07:30.080 --> 00:07:37.760] We process tens of millions of dollars and we don't share the exact numbers publicly, but yeah, it's doing well and it's supporting a really good team.
[00:07:37.760 --> 00:07:39.120] How big is your team?
[00:07:39.120 --> 00:07:40.720] 26.
[00:07:41.040 --> 00:07:41.840] Wow.
[00:07:41.840 --> 00:07:44.640] And what's the future look like for Buy Me a Coffee?
[00:07:44.640 --> 00:07:46.000] Where do you take it?
[00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:50.720] Well, we want to build the best possible product that we can and the most beautiful thing for creators.
[00:07:50.720 --> 00:07:55.760] No, we don't have any projections internally or some revenue targets or something like that.
[00:07:55.760 --> 00:08:03.440] It is so fun working on Buy Me Coffee because the first thing that I do when I wake up in the morning is going to check out the recent transactions on Buy Me Coffee.
[00:08:03.440 --> 00:08:12.000] And you would see these transactions in the last few seconds and all of them with these very kind comments.
[00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:13.280] That makes my day, right?
[00:08:13.280 --> 00:08:13.680] Yeah.
[00:08:13.920 --> 00:08:17.520] It's like this different kind of commerce that we are facilitating.
[00:08:17.520 --> 00:08:19.120] And we want to do more of that.
[00:08:19.120 --> 00:08:19.760] I love that.
[00:08:19.760 --> 00:08:22.320] So no plans to sell it.
[00:08:22.320 --> 00:08:24.640] Just I'm sure you've had offers and interest.
[00:08:24.640 --> 00:08:26.560] You just want to carry on running it as it is.
[00:08:27.200 --> 00:08:29.600] I really want to run it like the end of my life, right?
[00:08:29.680 --> 00:08:30.960] Man, I don't want to retire.
[00:08:30.960 --> 00:08:32.480] Why don't you sell it and cash in?
[00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:35.520] If I enjoy doing something, why should we stop doing it, right?
[00:08:35.520 --> 00:08:42.000] I mean, if you asked me like two years ago when I wouldn't have much money, I couldn't take a proper salary, then yes, 100%.
[00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:44.080] I would just sort of sell it and sort of do something else.
[00:08:44.080 --> 00:08:47.200] But now I can take a decent amount of salary.
[00:08:47.200 --> 00:08:48.160] I enjoy doing it.
[00:08:48.160 --> 00:08:49.280] Why should I sell it?
[00:08:49.280 --> 00:08:50.640] Hey, you're quite right.
[00:08:50.640 --> 00:08:52.400] You put me in my place there, GJ.
[00:08:52.720 --> 00:09:02.200] The amount of people I speak to who have sold a product and they end up feeling a bit lost because the one thing that they had so much identity in has now gone.
[00:09:02.520 --> 00:09:11.320] If you can get a massive exit, then sure, because then you can have a ton of money and go and start the same thing again or do something different.
[00:09:11.320 --> 00:09:14.920] But right now, it seems good that you're enjoying it.
[00:09:14.920 --> 00:09:21.080] And you also have the freedom to start new things, GJ, as you do, as we keep seeing you launch things.
[00:09:21.080 --> 00:09:24.440] Most recently, voicenotes.com.
[00:09:24.440 --> 00:09:28.360] This is an AI-powered note-taking app, voice note-taking app.
[00:09:28.360 --> 00:09:29.880] But I've got to ask about the domain.
[00:09:29.880 --> 00:09:31.400] We've spoken about domains.
[00:09:31.400 --> 00:09:33.240] Voicenotes.com.
[00:09:33.240 --> 00:09:35.560] Was that an expensive one for you?
[00:09:35.560 --> 00:09:36.840] Yeah, it was.
[00:09:36.840 --> 00:09:38.920] We had to use our money, right?
[00:09:38.920 --> 00:09:43.480] Like, it's not a buy-me-a-coffee company, so we had to use our own personal money.
[00:09:43.480 --> 00:09:44.920] So it was 21K.
[00:09:44.920 --> 00:09:49.080] Okay, so why invest 21,000 in a domain, GJO?
[00:09:49.080 --> 00:09:50.440] What were you thinking here?
[00:09:50.600 --> 00:09:51.880] It's a really cool domain, right?
[00:09:51.880 --> 00:09:54.280] Like, I would do it again, right?
[00:09:54.280 --> 00:09:58.920] When I do a new project, I was like, I would sort of allocate X amount of money, right?
[00:09:58.920 --> 00:10:05.160] Like, for voice notes, I was thinking, like, maybe, hey, we would spend 100K over the next two years.
[00:10:05.160 --> 00:10:12.360] And domain is not just a site that you enter on the browser, it's also the real estate, but also the name of the product, really.
[00:10:12.680 --> 00:10:16.760] So I thought it made sense to sort of allocate 20%.
[00:10:16.760 --> 00:10:19.080] So talk to me about VoiceNotes.
[00:10:19.080 --> 00:10:19.800] What is it?
[00:10:19.800 --> 00:10:21.240] Why did you want to build it?
[00:10:21.240 --> 00:10:26.280] And touch on like that sort of troubling personal story that pushed you to build it.
[00:10:26.280 --> 00:10:31.880] So VoiceNote wasn't really an ambitious startup project idea that I had.
[00:10:31.880 --> 00:10:35.320] Like, it was something that, you know, my wife and I wanted to use.
[00:10:35.320 --> 00:10:38.680] And we decided to do it during a really tough period in our life.
[00:10:38.680 --> 00:10:42.440] It was of us pregnancy, and we sort of learned that we miscarried.
[00:10:42.440 --> 00:10:44.720] And we had a down few weeks.
[00:10:44.280 --> 00:10:50.800] And so, my brother and I had this idea of you know, the one thing that keeps Alicia occupied is sort of coding.
[00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:57.440] So, we thought, you know, if we can get her excited to build something, that would be the perfect distraction, really.
[00:10:57.760 --> 00:11:07.040] And we had this idea, I had this idea for over a while that, you know, it's like just like we have chat GPT, we should have a chat GPT for our personal lives, you know, where we record stuff and we talk to it.
[00:11:07.040 --> 00:11:14.000] Because I think our personal information is 100x more interesting than general public information.
[00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:18.880] So, I want to make it accessible and also want to get people to sort of take notes effortlessly.
[00:11:18.880 --> 00:11:25.440] So, I had this idea for over a year, and we designed a basic thing on Figma and sort of shared it with Alicia.
[00:11:25.440 --> 00:11:30.800] She wasn't very excited at first, but you know, we got her excited and sort of did it and did a prototype in like a week.
[00:11:30.800 --> 00:11:34.240] And then we knew it was so much fun to use.
[00:11:34.240 --> 00:11:51.760] It's interesting how something as challenging and personally disruptive as a miscarriage can, or the way you can get out of that is being creative, building something as an engineer, but also building something that doesn't have much pressure.
[00:11:51.760 --> 00:12:02.320] It's let's build something for fun, do what we want to build, and then because like when you're building features for buy me a coffee, it is a job at the end of the day.
[00:12:02.320 --> 00:12:04.880] You've got a lot of users, there is pressure there.
[00:12:04.880 --> 00:12:13.840] But building something like voice notes where you can be creative and get really stuck into something without much consequence, is quite freeing.
[00:12:14.000 --> 00:12:16.640] It was very different building voice notes.
[00:12:16.640 --> 00:12:18.000] And I love note-taking.
[00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:21.920] So, my main set of tools are like Roam Research.
[00:12:21.920 --> 00:12:26.480] Roam has this, I wouldn't call it entry barrier, but you know, it doesn't fit most people.
[00:12:26.480 --> 00:12:36.200] And I really wanted more people to take notes, and I think that was one of the set of motivation to do voice notes, really, because voice notes makes it super easy for anyone to sort of capture notes and go back to them.
[00:12:36.280 --> 00:12:37.800] And that's the important bit.
[00:12:37.800 --> 00:12:44.200] If you take a ton of notes, and if you don't go back to them and use it, it's basically useless, and you won't sort of take notes for a long time.
[00:12:44.200 --> 00:12:49.080] But I've always figured out some way to sort of enjoy the past notes.
[00:12:49.080 --> 00:12:50.280] And Roam makes it easy.
[00:12:50.280 --> 00:12:58.120] And I think voice notes makes it easy because you can simply ask on your voice notes, like, hey, which was that restaurant that I mentioned that I really enjoy going for breakfast?
[00:12:58.120 --> 00:13:00.280] And I think everyone should take notes, man.
[00:13:00.280 --> 00:13:00.760] Yeah.
[00:13:00.760 --> 00:13:03.560] Hey, GJ, I'm on board with this.
[00:13:03.560 --> 00:13:13.560] I love note-taking, but I never quite got into the Roam research thing because I like taking down my notes, but I could never figure out how to resurface it.
[00:13:13.800 --> 00:13:21.640] I always felt like you had to put in a lot of work to build a system that would enable that thing to resurface when you want.
[00:13:21.960 --> 00:13:27.480] And I can see how voice notes sort of removes the barrier to a lot of that getting your phone out and typing.
[00:13:27.480 --> 00:13:35.960] Where we voice note people more often on WhatsApp if they've got a quick thought or we got a slightly longer thought that's going to take a while to tap out.
[00:13:35.960 --> 00:13:38.280] But then, how is your app going to resurface that?
[00:13:38.280 --> 00:13:44.280] Is that where AI comes in and is a new way of being able to do it that I'm not quite understanding?
[00:13:44.280 --> 00:13:44.680] Yes.
[00:13:44.680 --> 00:13:48.920] So AI has 100% complete context of whatever you sort of wrote.
[00:13:48.920 --> 00:13:54.040] So you can simply ask it things like, hey, what made me upset last month?
[00:13:54.200 --> 00:13:56.280] Or what made me happy last month?
[00:13:56.280 --> 00:14:01.000] But with Roam or any tool, I guess the tools really are just a medium.
[00:14:01.000 --> 00:14:02.280] Just use whatever you want.
[00:14:02.600 --> 00:14:11.000] GJ, thank you so much for coming on and sort of sharing the story of Buy Me a Coffee and some of the other products you started.
[00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:12.600] I'll put you on the spot here.
[00:14:12.600 --> 00:14:30.480] I was thinking, through these years of building successful kind of mass adoption products, are there any things you've learned that you could give as advice to people coming in who want to start products that they've seen like Buy Me a Coffee, like Bio.link, and now Voice Notes?
[00:14:30.480 --> 00:14:32.640] So, most of my project didn't succeed.
[00:14:32.640 --> 00:14:33.760] So, just want to start with that.
[00:14:33.760 --> 00:14:36.000] So, I tried a bunch of things that failed.
[00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:38.800] I have more failed projects than the ones that succeeded.
[00:14:38.800 --> 00:14:44.400] And even the ones that you would call success, like BioLink, is technically a failure in the economic sense of it, right?
[00:14:44.400 --> 00:14:46.400] Like, it doesn't make a ton of money.
[00:14:46.400 --> 00:14:49.840] So, the only thing that actually made any actual money is buy me a coffee.
[00:14:49.840 --> 00:14:55.040] I think having a breadth of experience in a ton of stuff helps.
[00:14:55.040 --> 00:15:02.240] And I would say we over-romanticize tech founders and sort of under-appreciate sort of design-led companies.
[00:15:02.240 --> 00:15:05.760] And I really hope to see more beautiful things, beautiful products in the world.
[00:15:05.760 --> 00:15:09.280] And we as a team believe that everything starts and ends with the design.
[00:15:09.280 --> 00:15:19.520] So, everything starts with, you know, writing something down and sort of designing a basic wireframe and having that clear picture before you even start of what the end would look like.
[00:15:19.520 --> 00:15:25.360] And then, sort of, building it and then having that sense of, yeah, this is not too bad to share.
[00:15:25.440 --> 00:15:29.200] Sort of, again, a design sense really, really helps.
[00:15:29.200 --> 00:15:31.440] So, yeah, spend more time on Figma, I guess.
[00:15:31.440 --> 00:15:37.760] So, what I'm sort of getting from this is design and simplicity are really important for you.
[00:15:37.760 --> 00:15:45.120] Because if you look at all the products you've done, even the ones that you've sunsetted look really good and they're simple.
[00:15:45.120 --> 00:15:52.800] A lot of them have some sort of product-like growth mechanism, some sort of viral mechanism built into them, and a good domain.
[00:15:52.800 --> 00:15:54.240] Exactly.
[00:15:54.240 --> 00:15:56.320] Right, yeah, exactly.
[00:15:56.960 --> 00:16:00.000] I end the episode on three recommendations.
[00:16:01.160 --> 00:16:03.880] A book, a podcast, an indie hacker.
[00:16:03.960 --> 00:16:04.680] Right, book.
[00:16:04.680 --> 00:16:07.240] This is a book called Friendly, Ambitious Nerd.
[00:16:07.400 --> 00:16:14.440] Okay, so I really enjoyed this podcast, Dithering, by the writer of Stratikeri, Ben Thompson and John Gruber.
[00:16:14.520 --> 00:16:15.080] Yeah.
[00:16:15.080 --> 00:16:16.360] And, oh, Indie Hacker.
[00:16:16.360 --> 00:16:19.240] Okay, Indie Hacker is, I would say, Danny Posmo of Hedgehog Pro.
[00:16:19.240 --> 00:16:19.800] We recently met.
[00:16:19.800 --> 00:16:20.360] He was nice.
[00:16:20.360 --> 00:16:20.760] Yeah.
[00:16:20.760 --> 00:16:23.320] GJ, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Indie Bytes.
[00:16:23.320 --> 00:16:24.360] Oh, thanks for having me, man.
[00:16:24.360 --> 00:16:25.480] I appreciate it.
[00:16:25.480 --> 00:16:27.320] Thank you for listening to this episode of Indieby.
[00:16:27.400 --> 00:16:31.720] Don't forget, you can get access to the full conversation on the Indie Bytes membership by hitting the link in the show notes.
[00:16:31.720 --> 00:16:34.920] And a thank you again to my sponsor, Email Oxpus, for making the show happen.
[00:16:34.920 --> 00:16:35.800] That's all from me.
[00:16:35.800 --> 00:16:37.880] See you in the next episode.