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[00:00:07.520 --> 00:00:09.760] Okay, we're here with Damon Chen.
[00:00:09.760 --> 00:00:10.320] What's up, Damon?
[00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:10.800] How's it going?
[00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:11.680] Yo, yo.
[00:00:11.680 --> 00:00:13.040] Good, what's up, guys?
[00:00:13.360 --> 00:00:15.840] You are an indie hacker.
[00:00:15.840 --> 00:00:19.920] You're the founder of a company called Testimonial.
[00:00:20.240 --> 00:00:22.640] And I think you have a super inspirational story.
[00:00:22.640 --> 00:00:26.240] So you were like a developer at Cisco for eight years.
[00:00:26.240 --> 00:00:30.080] You saw a lot of other people take lucrative jobs elsewhere.
[00:00:30.080 --> 00:00:36.640] And you eventually started interviewing all the major tech companies, Amazon, Google, Facebook, all of them.
[00:00:36.640 --> 00:00:39.360] Today they're all just doing a bunch of layoffs, but at the time they weren't.
[00:00:39.360 --> 00:00:40.720] They were like hot shit.
[00:00:41.040 --> 00:00:42.480] And they turned you down.
[00:00:42.480 --> 00:00:44.720] But then you started building lots of apps.
[00:00:44.720 --> 00:00:49.440] I think you built like five apps in 2020 alone, most of which generated $0.
[00:00:50.080 --> 00:00:52.320] But you quit anyway and became an indie hacker.
[00:00:52.320 --> 00:00:54.800] And you launched Testimonial.
[00:00:54.800 --> 00:00:57.920] And eventually that made like, I think, $3,000 in the first 10 days.
[00:00:57.920 --> 00:01:00.480] What's your revenue at today?
[00:01:01.360 --> 00:01:04.800] The monthly recurring revenue is at 30K MRR.
[00:01:04.800 --> 00:01:09.920] And the annual recurrent revenue is almost approaching half a million dollars.
[00:01:09.920 --> 00:01:10.480] Dang.
[00:01:10.800 --> 00:01:12.240] That's crazy.
[00:01:12.240 --> 00:01:17.520] So from working a corporate job, making apps aren't making any money to making almost half a million dollars on your own.
[00:01:17.520 --> 00:01:18.720] Do you have any employees?
[00:01:18.720 --> 00:01:20.400] Do you have a co-founder?
[00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:23.840] How many people are working on Testimonial with you, splitting that revenue?
[00:01:23.840 --> 00:01:37.440] Well, actually, two weeks ago, I had my first employee who will be handling the marketing and sales, all those kind of code outreach, running a paid ads campaign, doing some social media stuff.
[00:01:37.440 --> 00:01:39.840] And I had a guy to complement my skill.
[00:01:40.160 --> 00:01:40.960] Very cool.
[00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:42.400] Let me just get some clarity.
[00:01:42.400 --> 00:01:45.200] So you're at 30K MRR now.
[00:01:45.840 --> 00:01:47.600] And you started these apps in 2020.
[00:01:47.600 --> 00:01:49.640] So how long, just Testimonial?
[00:01:49.640 --> 00:01:51.280] How long ago did you build Testimonial?
[00:01:51.280 --> 00:01:54.160] Like, how long did it take you to ramp that up to 30K?
[00:01:54.480 --> 00:01:57.280] Testmona, I launched Testmona December 2020.
[00:01:57.280 --> 00:02:00.000] So it's almost a two years anniversary.
[00:02:00.360 --> 00:02:10.040] Initially, I launched Testimony with the Lifetime Deal, which you know, a lot of indie hackers use this kind of a strategy to just attract some initial users.
[00:02:10.040 --> 00:02:17.240] And after I saw some initial traction from the lifetime deal, I saw a huge demand, people asking for lifetime deals.
[00:02:17.320 --> 00:02:23.000] Even I, you know, shift my pricing model from lifetime deal to subscription model.
[00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:30.600] People still asking for lifetime deal, and I'm saying, no, sorry, the lifetime is gone, and you gotta subscribe, pay me monthly, or anyway.
[00:02:30.920 --> 00:02:32.920] So, yeah, starting going from there.
[00:02:32.920 --> 00:02:37.560] So, the lifetime deal campaign only lasted two weeks.
[00:02:37.560 --> 00:02:50.280] And after I earned 5K, 6K from 20 lifetime customers, I just stopped lifetime and focused on the subscription and growing the recurrent revenue from there.
[00:02:50.280 --> 00:02:50.840] Nice.
[00:02:50.840 --> 00:02:58.600] I see on your Twitter, you've got a little progress bar in your bio saying that you're aiming for a million dollars in revenue from Testimonial.
[00:02:58.840 --> 00:03:03.880] I think one thing I notice a lot of indie hackers doing is thinking about these revenue milestones they want to hit for themselves.
[00:03:03.880 --> 00:03:08.520] So, maybe it's like, okay, once I make $100, an MIID has legs, and I'm going to keep working on it.
[00:03:08.520 --> 00:03:11.480] And once I make a couple thousand dollars in a month, I can quit my job.
[00:03:11.480 --> 00:03:16.440] And once I make $10,000 a month, I know I've made it, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:03:16.440 --> 00:03:20.520] What milestones do you have for Testimonial?
[00:03:20.520 --> 00:03:23.480] And why did you pick that $1 million a year milestone?
[00:03:23.480 --> 00:03:25.400] Like, what do you expect to happen when you hit that?
[00:03:25.400 --> 00:03:33.000] Yeah, if you check my Twitter profile again, and you will not be able to see the $1 million, you know, the progress bar anymore.
[00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:35.320] I just took it off because the one million.
[00:03:35.400 --> 00:03:37.080] Oh, you see, it just goes to one dollar now.
[00:03:37.080 --> 00:03:38.680] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.
[00:03:38.760 --> 00:03:47.840] Because, you know, I used to have the $1 million a year ago for myself, and I made myself made 40% there towards the $1 million goal.
[00:03:44.840 --> 00:03:50.560] And it's really fun to document my solo journey.
[00:03:50.720 --> 00:03:53.600] And all the effort is just by myself.
[00:03:53.600 --> 00:03:58.560] But as I said, two weeks ago, I had my first employee, so it's no longer my own effort.
[00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:01.280] It's kind of like a team joint effort.
[00:04:01.280 --> 00:04:03.120] So I kind of removed the progress bar.
[00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:05.680] But I still want to show some progress bar there.
[00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:12.960] So as you said, now the progress bar on the left side is just $0, and on the right side is $1.
[00:04:13.280 --> 00:04:18.480] And I think it just says something like, I made it by making my first online dollar.
[00:04:18.480 --> 00:04:21.440] And that's actually my biggest milestone.
[00:04:21.440 --> 00:04:26.000] And always the first online dollar is the most difficult.
[00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:33.280] And after the first dollar, I set my goal to next goal to 100K ARR.
[00:04:33.280 --> 00:04:35.600] That's actually the number that I promised to my wife.
[00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:42.960] Before quitting my day job, I told my wife, if I can't make 100K in a year, I'm going to go back to find another job.
[00:04:42.960 --> 00:04:44.400] So luckily, I made it.
[00:04:44.560 --> 00:04:50.000] Now, is that the number that you promised to your wife, or is that the number that your wife demanded of you?
[00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:55.440] Both myself and her had no choice because we live in the most expensive area.
[00:04:55.440 --> 00:04:56.960] I had to make some money.
[00:04:56.960 --> 00:05:04.720] So 100K is not even the average software engineer's salary in Silicon Valley, but at least it's nothing.
[00:05:04.960 --> 00:05:15.280] It is something to prove, to give both her and myself some confidence that this app could be a thing so that I can stick with it for the long term.
[00:05:15.280 --> 00:05:18.640] So, let me try to describe testimonial to the audience.
[00:05:18.960 --> 00:05:25.680] Testimonial is a tool that allows your customers to collect testimonials from their customers.
[00:05:25.680 --> 00:05:28.560] And it can be both text and video testimonials.
[00:05:28.560 --> 00:05:33.880] And then it gives them a copy, kind of a code snippet, that lets them display all of those testimonials on their website.
[00:05:34.040 --> 00:05:37.720] So, let's say I'm an indie hacker, I've got a business, I want a slick website.
[00:05:37.720 --> 00:05:42.040] I want that website to be covered in testimonials from happy customers who all say they love my product.
[00:05:42.040 --> 00:05:46.520] Or maybe if I'm just getting started, I'll get some fake testimonials from my friends and my family.
[00:05:46.520 --> 00:05:47.160] It doesn't matter.
[00:05:47.160 --> 00:05:48.280] I just want my thing to look cool.
[00:05:48.280 --> 00:05:52.680] So that when my customers come, they think that people are using my product.
[00:05:52.680 --> 00:05:54.440] But maybe I suck at asking for testimonials.
[00:05:54.440 --> 00:05:57.560] Maybe I don't know how to code, so I don't know how to add the testimonials to my website.
[00:05:57.560 --> 00:06:01.880] I see all these other websites that have these super slick video testimonials, and I'm not sure how to do that myself.
[00:06:01.880 --> 00:06:05.800] They have tweet testimonials, they have other testimonials, and all these fancy things.
[00:06:05.800 --> 00:06:07.400] That's where your product comes in.
[00:06:07.400 --> 00:06:09.480] I go to testimonial.to.
[00:06:09.480 --> 00:06:10.280] You make it easy.
[00:06:10.280 --> 00:06:11.080] I just sign up.
[00:06:11.080 --> 00:06:15.880] You give me all the stuff that I want, and you just make it easy for me to collect testimonials and put them on my website.
[00:06:15.880 --> 00:06:17.640] Is that an accurate description?
[00:06:17.640 --> 00:06:19.640] Are I missing anything, leaving anything out?
[00:06:19.960 --> 00:06:22.600] Yeah, you just wire it perfectly.
[00:06:22.600 --> 00:06:23.240] Thanks.
[00:06:23.240 --> 00:06:26.520] I probably can use it as one of the copy my answers.
[00:06:27.800 --> 00:06:30.040] I'm just trying to sell it for you here.
[00:06:30.040 --> 00:06:32.840] I think it's a great idea because pretty much every indie hacker wants this.
[00:06:32.840 --> 00:06:35.880] There's almost no business that doesn't want testimonials.
[00:06:35.880 --> 00:06:37.240] Everybody has a website.
[00:06:37.240 --> 00:06:38.840] And so your market is humongous.
[00:06:38.840 --> 00:06:41.160] You can sell to basically all of your people.
[00:06:41.160 --> 00:06:42.120] You can sell to your audience.
[00:06:42.120 --> 00:06:43.480] You can sell to your fellow indie hackers.
[00:06:43.480 --> 00:06:45.160] You can sell to your peers.
[00:06:45.160 --> 00:06:48.760] And if people are going to have testimonials, they're going to want to have good ones.
[00:06:48.760 --> 00:06:51.640] So they might as well just come to you because you're like the extracurriculars.
[00:06:51.880 --> 00:06:53.720] Also, it's like no code is on the rise, right?
[00:06:53.720 --> 00:07:01.240] So a lot of people don't have the technical competence to get this slick new element of their UI in place.
[00:07:01.960 --> 00:07:06.440] And I think testimonial also is a valid proposition.
[00:07:06.440 --> 00:07:07.720] It's pretty straightforward.
[00:07:07.720 --> 00:07:10.520] Like Courtney said, every business needs testimonials.
[00:07:10.520 --> 00:07:13.160] So people just get, people get it.
[00:07:13.160 --> 00:07:26.000] And, you know, it's somehow reminds me, recently, if you guys on Twitter and Peter Levels and many other makers launched an AI-powered tool to generate Avatar.
[00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:28.480] And the tool is a pretty simple idea.
[00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:32.160] And I guess that Peter and others don't need to do too much marketing.
[00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:33.120] People just get it.
[00:07:33.120 --> 00:07:34.640] And for Testimonial, the same.
[00:07:34.640 --> 00:07:37.760] It's just a tool that you can use to collect testimonials.
[00:07:37.760 --> 00:07:40.400] It saves you effort managing your test models.
[00:07:40.400 --> 00:07:45.120] And also, most of my customers are not really tech-savvy.
[00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:56.880] They are marketing folks and they can easily just use it as a no-code tool to plug in Testimonial as a widget on their website without too much developer effort.
[00:07:56.880 --> 00:07:57.520] Right.
[00:07:57.840 --> 00:08:01.760] So let's talk about how you got started here because I sort of alluded to it.
[00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:03.600] You were applying to all these tech jobs.
[00:08:03.600 --> 00:08:08.880] But most people on Earth are like they're pretty happy just working their job.
[00:08:08.880 --> 00:08:10.000] It's stable to work a job.
[00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:11.280] It's easy to work a job.
[00:08:11.280 --> 00:08:16.720] Frankly, you generally make more money working a job than trying to be an Indie hacker.
[00:08:16.960 --> 00:08:18.720] And being an Indian hacker is challenging, right?
[00:08:18.720 --> 00:08:20.320] It's risky, it's uncertain.
[00:08:20.320 --> 00:08:23.440] You might spend years working on projects that make zero dollars.
[00:08:23.440 --> 00:08:24.320] I know I did.
[00:08:24.320 --> 00:08:25.920] What inspires you to become an indie hacker?
[00:08:25.920 --> 00:08:31.040] Like, why not just stay working that job at Cisco for the rest of your life?
[00:08:31.360 --> 00:08:34.640] Didn't want to be an Indie hacker, just to be honest.
[00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:37.440] I was kind of forced to become an Indie hacker.
[00:08:38.320 --> 00:08:40.960] I was a software engineer in Silicon Valley.
[00:08:40.960 --> 00:08:45.880] So like many other software engineers here, I was coming my career ladder.
[00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:51.840] Like you said, I applied jobs for working for fan companies, the first tier companies.
[00:08:51.840 --> 00:08:56.400] That's the path that most of my friends and colleagues followed.
[00:08:56.400 --> 00:08:58.000] But things changed.
[00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:04.280] In 2018, we had our first kid, and changing my job desire became super strong.
[00:09:04.840 --> 00:09:10.040] I used to work for Cisco, and it's definitely not the first year, and the pay is definitely not the first year as well.
[00:09:10.040 --> 00:09:17.320] I just wanted to get a better job with higher salary so that I can provide my family a better life.
[00:09:17.320 --> 00:09:21.320] And I did spend many, many months preparing for the job interview.
[00:09:21.320 --> 00:09:29.160] If you're familiar, I prepared the coding interview, doing the lead coding, basically those kind of coding puzzles.
[00:09:30.200 --> 00:09:33.400] You just told things didn't go well as I expected.
[00:09:33.400 --> 00:09:35.800] I failed all interviews from fan.
[00:09:35.800 --> 00:09:38.760] And it's pretty devastating to my confidence.
[00:09:38.760 --> 00:09:45.080] And to be honest, spending a month just preparing those coding puzzles is not a fun thing.
[00:09:45.080 --> 00:09:47.800] It's pretty painful and boring process.
[00:09:47.800 --> 00:09:50.040] It just makes me think, what's the point, right?
[00:09:50.040 --> 00:09:56.520] So even if I get a job, maybe the salary will be better, but it won't be drastically different.
[00:09:56.520 --> 00:10:00.120] It's still a nine-to-five job from a big corporation.
[00:10:00.120 --> 00:10:08.440] So I decided to quit that route because I literally have no confidence in acing a job interview.
[00:10:08.440 --> 00:10:18.680] And after that, the only trust is left are either, you know, being a lifer at my current company or make some money elsewhere because I work for Cisco as my first job.
[00:10:18.680 --> 00:10:23.000] I worked there since 2012 after I graduated from college.
[00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:26.280] And it's been eight plus years and things got boring.
[00:10:26.280 --> 00:10:30.520] And I literally had no motivation to continue.
[00:10:30.520 --> 00:10:33.880] So the only thing left for me is to make some money elsewhere.
[00:10:34.040 --> 00:10:37.320] So I started to do some moonlighting stuff.
[00:10:37.320 --> 00:10:40.360] My goal is always to make more money for my family.
[00:10:40.360 --> 00:10:55.760] And I even tried being an Uber driver on my way to commute to work and off from work to go back home and trying to be a part-time Uber driver and start selling some stuff on eBay and being a photographer.
[00:10:55.760 --> 00:11:01.360] I did make a bit of money, but it's definitely not the same level as being a software engineer.
[00:11:01.360 --> 00:11:03.680] And not to mention, it costs my time, right?
[00:11:03.680 --> 00:11:08.240] I had to trade my time to make money from those part-time jobs.
[00:11:08.480 --> 00:11:10.400] It's definitely not going to work.
[00:11:10.400 --> 00:11:13.680] But I was very lucky to find the indie hackers community during that time.
[00:11:13.680 --> 00:11:21.360] And that totally opened up my mind that people can make some internet projects to make a living.
[00:11:21.360 --> 00:11:23.280] And I don't need to trade my time for money.
[00:11:23.280 --> 00:11:28.480] And I can basically work from home or even wherever I want, whenever I want.
[00:11:28.480 --> 00:11:36.240] So if you ask what inspired me to become an indie hacker, so the short answer would be indie hackers inspired me to become an indie hacker.
[00:11:36.240 --> 00:11:37.120] Very cool.
[00:11:37.120 --> 00:11:42.160] I don't think I've ever had anybody on the show before who's talked about becoming an Uber driver.
[00:11:42.160 --> 00:11:45.840] And I think the other parts of it are like some of the stuff you talked about.
[00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:46.960] I could see myself in.
[00:11:46.960 --> 00:11:54.320] I could see a lot of indie hackers basically being unemployable, either because they don't want to work for the man or because they're struggling at interviews and they don't like being judged.
[00:11:54.320 --> 00:11:58.880] Like I had that same thing in college where I was studying for coding interviews and it wasn't fun.
[00:11:58.880 --> 00:12:02.880] I'm learning all these algorithms and I interview somewhere and they reject me.
[00:12:02.880 --> 00:12:03.680] It doesn't feel good.
[00:12:03.680 --> 00:12:04.720] And it's just like, fuck it.
[00:12:04.720 --> 00:12:05.920] I'd rather work for myself.
[00:12:05.920 --> 00:12:07.040] I don't have to go through this crap.
[00:12:07.040 --> 00:12:08.640] I can just build my own thing.
[00:12:08.640 --> 00:12:10.560] I think a lot of indie hackers have that attitude.
[00:12:10.560 --> 00:12:16.320] But reaching out to these different freelance jobs to fund yourself is really interesting.
[00:12:16.320 --> 00:12:18.080] What was it like being an Uber driver?
[00:12:18.080 --> 00:12:22.960] Was it lucrative enough that you could support yourself and sort of supplement your income to the degree you wanted?
[00:12:22.960 --> 00:12:27.120] Because I'm curious how it felt being a software engineer and an Uber driver at the same time.
[00:12:27.120 --> 00:12:30.000] For Uber, it's just for the local community.
[00:12:30.520 --> 00:12:41.160] But I was kind of thinking that I'm browsing Quicksly and people will send a lot of requests saying, you know, doing some carporting from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
[00:12:41.160 --> 00:12:46.360] This kind of mid-to-long distance carporting, and there's no such kind of app.
[00:12:46.600 --> 00:12:53.640] And in my mind, I was thinking that probably I could build an app for the mid-to-long distance carporting.
[00:12:53.640 --> 00:13:00.760] And being an Uber driver is kind of like an experience that I just want to experience how to request a Uber drive.
[00:13:00.760 --> 00:13:03.720] And if I'm an Uber driver, and what that experience looks like.
[00:13:03.720 --> 00:13:08.360] And I actually spent several weekends being a full-time Uber driver.
[00:13:08.360 --> 00:13:17.880] And I made something like $200 to $300 just by driving Uber for eight hours, I would say, compared to the minimum pay in California.
[00:13:17.880 --> 00:13:20.680] And that's still above the minimum pay.
[00:13:20.680 --> 00:13:25.960] And I think that driving Uber, while I'm commuting to work, I'm not wasting too much time.
[00:13:26.120 --> 00:13:35.240] Well, I can make a more side income that we'll have our first kit and I can make some extra money to support my family.
[00:13:35.240 --> 00:13:37.240] So that's another reason.
[00:13:37.240 --> 00:13:42.040] I'm curious, I mean, I know that you worked on multiple products that didn't work out before Testimonial.
[00:13:42.040 --> 00:13:48.440] And a common challenge that founders run into is they invest a lot of time in projects and they get emotionally attached to them.
[00:13:48.440 --> 00:13:53.240] And then it becomes really hard to pull the plug when things clearly aren't working out.
[00:13:53.240 --> 00:13:56.360] In fact, there's like an official term in psychology for this phenomenon, right?
[00:13:56.360 --> 00:14:03.000] They call it the sunk cost fallacy, where you just invest emotionally and then it's like this cost that you just feel invested in and you don't pull out.
[00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:05.000] So, like, is that something that you struggled with?
[00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:07.960] Because I know that you eventually moved on from those.
[00:14:07.960 --> 00:14:08.680] Yeah, for sure.
[00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:13.000] I did struggle with those existing projects.
[00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:26.640] And actually, for the first project that I built, the Lonely Dev, to someone who didn't know, Lonely Dev is a community where makers around the world can just post a short video about what they're up to.
[00:14:26.640 --> 00:14:33.200] And it just gives people more personal feeling when connecting with other makers as everything is in the video.
[00:14:33.200 --> 00:14:38.080] But it's a community, it is still far, far away from being successful.
[00:14:38.080 --> 00:14:44.400] I don't have to put a ton of effort into injecting new fields to make the community active.
[00:14:44.400 --> 00:14:46.000] You know, it's them hard.
[00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:47.840] You guys run community, and you might know it.
[00:14:48.560 --> 00:14:52.640] And Lonely Dev was still active by the time I launched Testimonial.
[00:14:52.640 --> 00:15:00.400] But after Testimony took off, I had to shift all my focus from the community to my SaaS.
[00:15:00.400 --> 00:15:06.720] One good thing is that I can reconnect with my community members to Twitter, so we never lose touch.
[00:15:06.720 --> 00:15:14.320] And after all, this kind of communication migrated from Lonely Dev to Twitter, the community thing gradually faded away.
[00:15:14.320 --> 00:15:17.600] It's just gradually less and less active.
[00:15:17.600 --> 00:15:22.560] And for other projects, it's relatively easy for me to just get out.
[00:15:22.800 --> 00:15:27.040] If it is not money making, I lose my motivation or I get burnout.
[00:15:27.040 --> 00:15:28.400] I just want to move on.
[00:15:28.640 --> 00:15:33.040] Normally within a few weeks, I just will get a sense whether it's a good product or not.
[00:15:33.040 --> 00:15:37.760] I think the other hard part for a lot of people is coming up with the initial idea, which obviously you solve that problem.
[00:15:37.760 --> 00:15:42.160] Testimonial is making more than $30,000 a month, so it was a good idea.
[00:15:42.160 --> 00:15:44.400] How did you come up with that idea?
[00:15:44.400 --> 00:15:50.560] I love to, you know, just bury myself into coding, this kind of stuff, but my marketing skill really sucks.
[00:15:50.560 --> 00:15:55.840] I just wanted to find a solution to solve my marketing weakness.
[00:15:55.840 --> 00:16:00.280] And as an engineer, as you know, we always love to find some life hacks.
[00:15:59.760 --> 00:16:07.160] And obviously to me, to convince people to buy my product, the shortcut is to just throw some testimonials on my website.
[00:16:07.480 --> 00:16:11.640] And like I said, I built Lonely Dev, which is a video-focused community.
[00:16:11.640 --> 00:16:16.840] So a quick idea that popped into my mind is to add video testimonials to the stuff.
[00:16:16.840 --> 00:16:22.040] And I feel that if it is a pain point for me, I guess it's also a pin point for many others.
[00:16:22.040 --> 00:16:25.400] You know, also the value proposition is pretty straightforward.
[00:16:25.400 --> 00:16:29.080] So I'm like, you know, let me just build an MAP and test it out.
[00:16:29.080 --> 00:16:31.240] And what does that testing process look like?
[00:16:31.240 --> 00:16:34.600] Because you build the MVP and then it might not actually work.
[00:16:34.600 --> 00:16:36.280] You haven't quite validated it.
[00:16:36.280 --> 00:16:38.680] And you mentioned that you're the kind of guy where it's easy for you to move on.
[00:16:38.680 --> 00:16:41.640] So if it doesn't make money quickly, you're going to move on, right?
[00:16:41.640 --> 00:16:45.000] So you've got some sort of process, I presume, to figure out, like, okay, is this going to work?
[00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:47.160] How did you validate that MVP?
[00:16:47.480 --> 00:16:51.720] I actually never validated the idea of the MAP from anywhere else.
[00:16:52.040 --> 00:16:54.760] I just thought it's a problem of mine.
[00:16:55.000 --> 00:17:01.320] And not to mention, I can quickly build the MVP by using some existing code from my previous projects.
[00:17:01.320 --> 00:17:03.400] So why not wasting time on the validation?
[00:17:03.400 --> 00:17:09.080] And to me, the ultimate validation is whether people will buy it or not.
[00:17:09.320 --> 00:17:13.880] If I can run some pre-sale campaign to buy this, that's totally fine.
[00:17:13.880 --> 00:17:25.560] But if I'm asking the feedback from just from this kind of service level, I'm going to probably waste a lot of time and probably even distracted by the people because people tend to be really nice.
[00:17:25.560 --> 00:17:28.600] People will say, great idea, just go for it.
[00:17:28.600 --> 00:17:31.560] Even nice people will say, oh, they will buy it.
[00:17:31.560 --> 00:17:34.840] But those kind of feedback is bullshit to me.
[00:17:34.840 --> 00:17:42.360] I definitely appreciate their kindness, but those kind of surface-level feedback validation, I don't think it really helps.
[00:17:42.680 --> 00:17:49.360] You mentioned earlier, actually, when we were talking about validation, you mentioned that you did your lifetime plan and you had a lot of interest.
[00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:52.800] Was that right around when you launched, or was that like later?
[00:17:52.800 --> 00:18:01.280] Because I mean, if you have a lifetime plan and a lot of people sign up, and then there's such an influx that you feel like, oh crap, I got to turn this off and just move to subscription.
[00:18:01.280 --> 00:18:05.520] Like, that seems like it might be good de facto validation, right?
[00:18:05.520 --> 00:18:07.520] Yeah, that's kind of like a validation for sure.
[00:18:07.520 --> 00:18:08.240] Yes.
[00:18:08.240 --> 00:18:09.280] I think that's the best value.
[00:18:09.280 --> 00:18:12.640] Like, the best validation is you put a product down to the world and people use it.
[00:18:12.640 --> 00:18:13.680] Or they don't use it, right?
[00:18:13.680 --> 00:18:14.720] And you talk about why.
[00:18:14.720 --> 00:18:25.120] And I've seen so many people who go through this grueling process of calling up hundreds of customers and interviewing them and trying to find out all the right perfect information about whether they will or won't buy.
[00:18:25.120 --> 00:18:27.680] And it takes them six months and they're doing everything by the book.
[00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:29.600] And then they think they have a good plan.
[00:18:29.600 --> 00:18:31.600] And then they launch their product and get smacked in the face.
[00:18:31.600 --> 00:18:33.120] And none of the stuff they learned is true.
[00:18:33.200 --> 00:18:34.000] None of it works.
[00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:35.440] So I like your approach.
[00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:39.360] Just build it, get it out the door, get it in the real people's hands as quickly as possible.
[00:18:39.360 --> 00:18:40.880] That's all the validation.
[00:18:41.520 --> 00:18:48.960] I think I saw this tweet by Sahil, and he said, It's not that you learn and then you do, it's that you do and then you learn.
[00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:51.440] And it seems like you have kind of that approach.
[00:18:51.440 --> 00:18:55.040] But okay, what if you do and then what you learn is that it doesn't work?
[00:18:55.040 --> 00:18:58.240] So, I mean, you already had like a few products that didn't work out.
[00:18:58.240 --> 00:19:03.600] Like, did you have a backup plan here if Testimonial didn't have all those lifetime signups?
[00:19:03.600 --> 00:19:06.800] Like, what would you have done if Testimonial hadn't paid the bills?
[00:19:07.120 --> 00:19:09.440] I actually don't have any backup plan.
[00:19:09.440 --> 00:19:15.600] Maybe the only backup may be my working wife, which I prepared for many, many years.
[00:19:15.920 --> 00:19:20.080] And she paid our bills and mortgage in the first one and a half years.
[00:19:20.080 --> 00:19:28.160] And yeah, I really, you know, appreciate her support mentally, you know, financially, everything.
[00:19:28.400 --> 00:19:32.920] I wish my wife all forward the episode to my wife so that she can use it.
[00:19:29.840 --> 00:19:34.840] Yeah.
[00:19:35.160 --> 00:19:40.840] It's the biggest indie hacker hack is get married to someone who's gonna pay the bills while you mess around tinkering with apps.
[00:19:40.840 --> 00:19:46.920] Yeah, and we also have some decent savings from years of our engineering job in the Bay Area.
[00:19:46.920 --> 00:19:49.160] So things won't be that bad.
[00:19:49.160 --> 00:19:50.840] Like we can't pay our bills.
[00:19:50.840 --> 00:19:55.320] I wouldn't see this kind of thing happen in the next year or two.
[00:19:55.320 --> 00:19:59.080] Also, by the time I quit my job, I basically time box everything.
[00:19:59.080 --> 00:20:03.240] If within a year things won't work, I go back to find another job.
[00:20:03.240 --> 00:20:08.520] And if you are asking the backup plan, that's one of my backup plan.
[00:20:08.840 --> 00:20:12.280] So at this point, you've got the MVP built, you launch it.
[00:20:12.280 --> 00:20:15.960] I think this is also the other hard part for the vast majority of indie hackers.
[00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:18.360] It's how do you find your first customers?
[00:20:18.840 --> 00:20:22.280] You clearly had this cool audience that you had built because you built Lonely Dev.
[00:20:22.280 --> 00:20:23.640] It was a small community.
[00:20:23.640 --> 00:20:25.400] So they kind of knew what you were up to.
[00:20:25.400 --> 00:20:28.200] You had your Twitter account, which at that time I think was pretty small.
[00:20:28.200 --> 00:20:30.440] I don't think you had thousands of followers at that point.
[00:20:30.440 --> 00:20:33.880] Building is hard, but like finding these first customers is even harder.
[00:20:33.880 --> 00:20:36.040] How did you get your first paying customers?
[00:20:36.040 --> 00:20:42.360] Let's walk us through that process step by step because I think a lot of people struggle with how to get this to work, even if they do build a good product.
[00:20:42.360 --> 00:20:49.160] Yeah, I think I kind of set a good foundation with those connections from my early community, Lonely Dev.
[00:20:49.160 --> 00:20:52.440] We just basically support each other no matter what we do.
[00:20:52.440 --> 00:20:57.960] And if someone has a hard time, we're going to provide our help.
[00:20:57.960 --> 00:21:05.960] If someone wants to promote something, we kind of no-brainer for us to just you know do retweet and like on each other's tweet.
[00:21:05.960 --> 00:21:13.240] So yeah, in the early days, it's basically you know building public from those few hundred followers.
[00:21:13.240 --> 00:22:48.200] But those followers you know the the number is small but we are pretty engaging someone said you only need a thousand true fans to start every everything so i would say you know my initial few hundred followers friends are pretty super valuable for me in in the early days and I also share my updates on IndieHackers and for the launch I used the lifetime deal strategy I announced it on my Twitter and launched it on product hunt and even got someone to share the deal in some private martech groups on Facebook that I didn't expect you know I didn't plan to launch anything on private groups on Facebook that's probably another really valuable customer acquisition channel yeah all these channels give me you know 20 plus early adopters and after that you just you know collect feedback from initial customers you know use this kind of flywheel marketing strategy the more features that I added to the product the more stuff that I can you know tweet on on Twitter so that brought me more exposures to more potential customers and things started going like a snowball from there I love it so you're you're on product hunt you're on Twitter your customers are sharing everything is going well I think a lot of people have this this like grand plan for their launch right where they're sure it's gonna go well and they have you know ABC DEF they're gonna check all these boxes do all these things and it's gonna go well you clearly had some sort of a plan was there anything in your plan that didn't work out was there anything in like your sort of launch plan that didn't go how you expected, or was it just all perfect?
[00:22:48.240 --> 00:22:57.320] I remember that you know, when I launched on Product hunt, Ryan Hoover asked me a question why why not go with the subscription plan?
[00:22:57.320 --> 00:23:00.040] And by then, I was kind of you know naive and stupid.
[00:23:00.200 --> 00:23:10.840] I just replied, Ryan, that you know, I don't think a subscription model will work, and I'm just gonna stick with the lifetime deal and the usage-based pricing model.
[00:23:10.840 --> 00:23:18.920] But that's definitely something that I am planned to go the subscription model.
[00:23:18.920 --> 00:23:24.040] And you know, I thought that the lifetime deal may be just enough.
[00:23:24.040 --> 00:23:30.440] And you know, I'm not even expecting people to buy for the lifetime deal.
[00:23:30.440 --> 00:23:37.240] And I thought, you know, maybe like my previous projects that never make any money for Testimonial, maybe nobody will buy it.
[00:23:37.400 --> 00:23:41.800] Lifetime deal, if people buy it, that's like you know, that's like a dream.
[00:23:41.800 --> 00:23:46.760] But in the end, people buy the lifetime deal, and the demand is extremely high.
[00:23:46.760 --> 00:23:55.320] And I go back to check those product comments, and I revisit Ryan Hoover's comments.
[00:23:55.320 --> 00:24:03.800] And I kind of think that maybe Ryan made a good point, and I should give subscription a shot.
[00:24:03.800 --> 00:24:10.760] And so, yeah, changing to subscription model is definitely something not on my checklist.
[00:24:10.760 --> 00:24:14.280] And I'm lucky that I made the change.
[00:24:14.280 --> 00:24:16.120] Yeah, I'm reading his comment right now.
[00:24:16.520 --> 00:24:17.720] It's pretty crazy to see.
[00:24:17.800 --> 00:24:27.240] This is what's good about building in public and launching and getting stuff out because it's like you will give really intelligent, talented people who will then see what you're doing and offer suggestions.
[00:24:27.240 --> 00:24:34.760] And you never launched this on Product Hunt, then Ryan Hoover never would have seen it, and he never would have made a comment with a suggestion for the subscription fees.
[00:24:34.760 --> 00:24:39.320] And you maybe never would have charged subscription fees, and maybe Testimonial wouldn't be where it is today.
[00:24:39.320 --> 00:24:41.480] So, I mean, that was the launch.
[00:24:41.480 --> 00:24:46.800] And so, you had to do a little pivot-y things in your launch, you went from the lifetime to the subscription.
[00:24:46.800 --> 00:24:47.760] What about since then?
[00:24:47.760 --> 00:24:51.280] You've been growing for another year and a half or more since then.
[00:24:51.280 --> 00:24:55.280] I know you're really active on Twitter, and you mentioned that you've got like a flywheel.
[00:24:55.280 --> 00:24:57.520] So, how does do you have a growth strategy?
[00:24:57.520 --> 00:24:58.320] What has worked?
[00:24:58.320 --> 00:24:59.520] What hasn't worked?
[00:24:59.520 --> 00:25:00.880] Yeah, I want to hear about this flywheel.
[00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:02.800] I love marketing flywheels.
[00:25:02.800 --> 00:25:05.280] Yeah, the marketing strategy, I would say, is pretty simple.
[00:25:05.280 --> 00:25:10.000] Two weeks ago, I hired my first employee, but before that, I did everything just by myself.
[00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:15.280] And I try to leverage, you know, try to maximize my effort as much as possible.
[00:25:15.280 --> 00:25:19.200] So, I pretty much just use social media to build the word of mouth.
[00:25:19.200 --> 00:25:21.920] That's a more scalable approach to me.
[00:25:21.920 --> 00:25:24.080] And it worked pretty well.
[00:25:24.080 --> 00:25:29.120] And also, I use a lot of product-led growth strategy for testimonials.
[00:25:29.120 --> 00:25:35.360] User can always start with the premium plan from which they don't need to pay anything.
[00:25:35.360 --> 00:25:38.080] They can just start collecting testimonials right away.
[00:25:38.080 --> 00:25:41.680] But premium plan always comes up with some limitations.
[00:25:41.680 --> 00:25:51.360] And if they collect more testimonials, they're gonna hit a paywall that prompts them to upgrade so that they can access more additional testimonials.
[00:25:51.680 --> 00:25:54.480] And yeah, I just love this kind of growth hacks.
[00:25:54.480 --> 00:26:01.760] And another growth hack definitely works: I will put the testimonial logo inside the embedding widget for those users who are still in the free plan.
[00:26:01.760 --> 00:26:09.680] And some users who don't like our logo and prefer a white label solution, they normally will choose to upgrade to a pay plan.
[00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:13.840] And for things that didn't work, I would say maybe code outreach.
[00:26:13.840 --> 00:26:20.800] I wouldn't say that it's not 100% not worth, but it might work if I send more code emails.
[00:26:20.800 --> 00:26:23.120] And in the end, it's just the volume gain.
[00:26:23.200 --> 00:26:29.800] And for me, by then, I was just a solo founder, and doing the code outreach took me a lot of time.
[00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:36.440] And I have to build a sequence to start sending the code emails, follow up with them, and set up the demo calls.
[00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:42.280] And the return from it just couldn't really justify my effort.
[00:26:42.280 --> 00:26:46.040] I would say, you know, doing the code outreach didn't work really well for me.
[00:26:46.600 --> 00:26:51.080] So that's why I prefer to stick with my product-led growth strategy.
[00:26:51.400 --> 00:26:59.720] How much of your growth is like product-led growth, where people are seeing the product and then it sort of advertises itself, versus Twitter?
[00:26:59.720 --> 00:27:05.720] Because you've grown from like a few hundred followers in the early days to over 40,000 followers now.
[00:27:05.720 --> 00:27:11.000] And it seems like the sort of building in public tweeting a lot thing goes hand in hand with your growth.
[00:27:11.000 --> 00:27:22.840] I would say initially nearly 80% or 90% customers are from Twitter because I'm pretty all in social media and I didn't focus on any other acquisition channels.
[00:27:22.840 --> 00:27:27.960] But one good thing is that the wave will rise all out of both.
[00:27:27.960 --> 00:27:35.320] So if you go to Twitter and just search testimonial, you probably see that testimonial rank really high on Twitter.
[00:27:35.320 --> 00:27:41.880] And also it just affects the word of mouth and some organic traffics from Google.
[00:27:41.880 --> 00:27:54.920] So if I check the customer acquisition channel nowadays and Twitter is no longer the top acquisition channel and the top one is from the SEO, from Google, that's the thing that I'm pretty proud of.
[00:27:54.920 --> 00:28:01.160] I'm still super curious about Twitter though, because even in the beginning, the fact that it was 80 or 90% of your customers is amazing.
[00:28:01.160 --> 00:28:08.600] And I think most indie hackers, when they try to grow on social media, they'll send out like one or two tweets, you know, maybe five or six.
[00:28:08.600 --> 00:28:14.120] It won't work well, it won't catch fire, they won't go viral, they won't see any returns, and they'll just stop.
[00:28:14.120 --> 00:28:20.720] For whatever reason, like you kept going and you kept tweeting, and you got tons of customers from Twitter, and now you get customers from a different source.
[00:28:20.720 --> 00:28:23.760] But what's your advice for somebody trying to make Twitter work?
[00:28:23.760 --> 00:28:25.200] What kinds of things can they tweet about?
[00:28:25.200 --> 00:28:27.280] How do they keep going when it's not working?
[00:28:27.280 --> 00:28:31.440] And why do you think Twitter works for you so well in the early days?
[00:28:31.760 --> 00:28:39.120] Yeah, in the early days, I kind of still really engaged with my lonely dev community members.
[00:28:39.440 --> 00:28:54.960] The beautiful part of Lonely Dev is it accidentally pushed me to go in public because I'm the maker of my community and I have to be super active like you, Courland and Jenny, you have to be super active on indie hackers.
[00:28:54.960 --> 00:28:59.440] And you know, if you don't be the driver, and nobody will take the drive.
[00:28:59.440 --> 00:29:09.520] And after testimonial took off and I shifted all my focus from lonely dev to Twitter, I still got my community members support.
[00:29:09.520 --> 00:29:20.800] And for testimonial, actually, another strategy that I use is just give away the access to my friends from Lonely Dev.
[00:29:21.120 --> 00:29:23.440] Let them give it a try for free.
[00:29:24.240 --> 00:29:25.520] I don't charge them anything.
[00:29:25.520 --> 00:29:30.720] And they can start collecting testimonials and embed the testimonials onto their website.
[00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:40.400] So that kind of contributes quite a lot for the initial word of mouth because they will tweet, hey, I use this kind of testimonial tool to collect testimonials.
[00:29:40.400 --> 00:29:44.160] And here is how I put it on my website.
[00:29:44.160 --> 00:29:49.360] So by now, you're like an expert in testimonials, an industry expert, so to speak.
[00:29:49.360 --> 00:29:53.680] What have you learned about testimonials that other people might not know?
[00:29:53.680 --> 00:29:59.440] For example, like what makes for a good versus a bad testimonial, or where should testimonials go on people's websites?
[00:29:59.440 --> 00:30:00.000] These kinds of things.
[00:30:00.760 --> 00:30:03.720] What do you know about testimonials that other people should know?
[00:30:04.040 --> 00:30:09.240] I think testimonials are always personalized and tells its own story.
[00:30:09.240 --> 00:30:24.280] People share their own stories, and if I am a potential customer, and those unique stories might resonate with me, unlike some bad ones, if it's just saying, oh, great product, great service, five-star.
[00:30:24.280 --> 00:30:44.120] I would say, you know, if you build a product and if you have one factor that really stands out, the factors can be, you know, if the product is really good or you provide great service or support, if you can offer all of them, and it probably can have many, many happy customers.
[00:30:44.360 --> 00:30:50.680] For me, you know, I like to ask my customers for testimonials if I ship anything that they desperately want.
[00:30:50.680 --> 00:30:54.040] And, you know, that's my strategy to collect testimonials.
[00:30:54.040 --> 00:30:57.880] And I know that they are super happy at the moment.
[00:30:57.880 --> 00:31:02.040] And, you know, it would be highly possible that I get a shout-out from them.
[00:31:02.360 --> 00:31:03.160] Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:31:03.160 --> 00:31:07.240] I like the idea of testimonials telling a story that audiences can relate to.
[00:31:07.240 --> 00:31:12.440] Because people ask me for testimonials sometimes that'll go on their websites, and I have no idea what to say.
[00:31:12.440 --> 00:31:13.960] I'm like, oh, yeah, it was great.
[00:31:13.960 --> 00:31:15.320] I enjoyed using it.
[00:31:15.320 --> 00:31:16.120] That's not a good testimonial.
[00:31:16.200 --> 00:31:21.880] But it's much better if I'm like, oh, you know, my website was on fire and I couldn't keep it up.
[00:31:21.880 --> 00:31:23.240] And then I started using render.
[00:31:23.320 --> 00:31:25.880] Now it's so much easier than using AWS or something like that.
[00:31:26.520 --> 00:31:27.320] That's good.
[00:31:28.440 --> 00:31:32.920] Like my testimonial is on the front page of render.com, or at least it used to be.
[00:31:32.920 --> 00:31:44.880] And what's kind of funny about it is, as a result of having my testimonial there, I get a lot of researchers who email me and say, oh, hey, we're trying to research this particular industry.
[00:31:44.880 --> 00:31:47.120] We see you have a testimonial on this website.
[00:31:44.680 --> 00:31:48.400] You seem like an expert.
[00:31:48.560 --> 00:31:50.560] Why don't we interview you?
[00:31:50.560 --> 00:31:58.400] And sometimes they will literally pay $500 to $1,000, like an hour-long call, just to interview you because they put a testimonial on somebody's site.
[00:31:58.400 --> 00:32:04.320] So I think that's one reason to give testimonials too, is because you kind of appear on people's radar and they want to come and talk to you.
[00:32:04.320 --> 00:32:13.840] That leads to something that might be kind of an issue of availability bias on my part because I just see founders constantly posting about their ideas on indie hackers.
[00:32:13.840 --> 00:32:22.080] But one type of product that I've seen a lot of, and Damon, you've probably seen a lot of it too, is like there are a lot of other testimonial products.
[00:32:22.080 --> 00:32:24.240] Like that seems to be like the hot thing.
[00:32:24.480 --> 00:32:28.560] Maybe they see you on Twitter or who knows what their inspiration is.
[00:32:28.560 --> 00:32:30.480] But how do you feel about competition?
[00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:36.400] Do you feel like you gotta keep your secrets hidden behind the curtain or do you feel like the more the better?
[00:32:37.360 --> 00:32:40.640] How do you kind of like approach the competitors' landscape?
[00:32:41.200 --> 00:32:54.400] I'm a human being and sometimes that my Twitter friends just DM me, oh, found a very similar product like Tasmonio and oh, and some, or even some coffee cats just trying to rip off Testmonio.
[00:32:54.400 --> 00:33:01.360] And you know, I'm a human being and I want to feel happy, just to be honest, in the beginning.
[00:33:01.360 --> 00:33:03.840] But I try not to focus too much on competitors.
[00:33:03.840 --> 00:33:07.440] In the end, I'm not trying to provide service to them.
[00:33:07.440 --> 00:33:11.840] What I'm providing service to is my own customer.
[00:33:11.840 --> 00:33:19.600] My goal is always to get my customers' feedback and they're injecting their feedback into my product.
[00:33:19.920 --> 00:33:23.360] And that's the thing that I try to focus myself on.
[00:33:23.360 --> 00:33:31.800] If I focus too much on the competitors, my mentor is not healthy and that's not some good feeling.
[00:33:32.120 --> 00:33:39.880] And up until now I still do several demo calls and I'm also in the front line with doing the customer support.
[00:33:39.880 --> 00:33:41.720] So I know what they really want.
[00:33:41.720 --> 00:33:46.360] And I think my job is to turn my customers feedback into the product.
[00:33:46.360 --> 00:33:56.680] I would say, you know, some customer feedback is pretty valuable and they do have the potential to open a lot of new opportunities for us.
[00:33:56.680 --> 00:33:59.960] I would say that's kind of like our competitive advantage.
[00:33:59.960 --> 00:34:09.480] And in the end, it all comes down to the feedback loop, whether or not we can take our customers' feedback and turn it into the product in the way that they like.
[00:34:09.800 --> 00:34:14.680] And I would say the whole market is not like social media.
[00:34:15.560 --> 00:34:19.400] It's not definitely not something that one winner takes all.
[00:34:20.120 --> 00:34:22.360] In the end, we all serve our own customers.
[00:34:22.360 --> 00:34:29.080] And I'm happy that social proof, this kind of niche vertical is growing nowadays.
[00:34:29.480 --> 00:34:30.680] It's still new.
[00:34:30.680 --> 00:34:38.120] And sometimes I think that our competitors and we all together help increase the total addressable market.
[00:34:38.120 --> 00:34:43.000] And if I think that way, and I think that's kind of like a bonus.
[00:34:43.320 --> 00:34:43.720] Right.
[00:34:43.720 --> 00:34:53.320] Yeah, in a way, like their advertising is sort of increasing general awareness that testimonials are a thing and then people might you know sort of window shop and and find you because of your competitors.
[00:34:53.320 --> 00:35:05.640] I have a another question that's related to that about the industry which is that I think one of the challenges for a lot of indie hackers, especially programmers, is that it's easy to believe, like, oh, I don't want to build this simple tool because people could just build it themselves.
[00:35:06.040 --> 00:35:10.920] So, if somebody's making a to-do list app, they might just say, oh, you know, my number one competitor isn't other to-do list apps.
[00:35:10.800 --> 00:35:14.680] It's, it's people writing down their, you know, their to-dos on a sticky note.
[00:35:14.880 --> 00:35:23.040] For a testimonial app, you remember, a competitor isn't other testimonial apps, it's people just bringing up their own testimonials on their website without using you.
[00:35:23.040 --> 00:35:25.280] And I think that can discourage people from building ideas.
[00:35:25.280 --> 00:35:34.800] But then I look at what you're doing, you're making over 30 grand a month, and look at your pricing page, and it's like 50 bucks a month, 150 bucks a month, $300 a month for your pricing tiers.
[00:35:34.800 --> 00:35:40.320] Like, these are not small price points, they're really big, and that's probably part of why you're making so much money.
[00:35:40.880 --> 00:35:43.520] Why do you think people are willing to pay so much money?
[00:35:43.520 --> 00:35:46.960] I mean, it's very counterintuitive that people will pay for this kind of thing.
[00:35:46.960 --> 00:35:56.000] And I like talking about pricing decisions because I think it helps other indie hackers gain the confidence to charge more for what they're doing and realize the value and what they're building.
[00:35:56.000 --> 00:36:00.560] I'm kind of afraid to offer those pricing, different pricing tiers.
[00:36:00.560 --> 00:36:04.800] And that's why I only offered a lifetime deal when the product was just launched.
[00:36:04.800 --> 00:36:21.200] After I saw the high demand for the lifetime deal, I wanted to try the subscription model, which I think is more sustainable for me because Testimony is a lot of cost comes from the video stuff, and hosting video is a very costly infrastructure.
[00:36:21.200 --> 00:36:27.680] And I was scared by making this kind of pricing model shift.
[00:36:27.680 --> 00:36:32.320] And I would say the only way to overcome the fear is just to give a little bit more time.
[00:36:33.120 --> 00:36:37.120] You will see new customers pay for the new pricing in a few days.
[00:36:37.120 --> 00:36:45.440] And in the end, if I see the revenue growth isn't changed or even gets better, by that time, I will know that I made the right decision.
[00:36:45.440 --> 00:36:54.960] And also, I believe that if I keep adding new features, and the product will become more valuable, and there's no reason that I just devalue my product, I should charge more.
[00:36:54.960 --> 00:36:59.800] Yeah, I think that's one of the cool things about charging more: it's almost like the self-fulfilling prophecy.
[00:36:59.520 --> 00:37:06.440] Like, if you charge $5 a month or something tiny, you're never going to find those customers who are willing to pay more.
[00:37:06.680 --> 00:37:09.880] They're not even going to consider your thing, they're looking for heavy-duty things.
[00:37:09.880 --> 00:37:18.120] If you charge $150 a month for your thing, then you're going to find customers who essentially are like, okay, I might pay this, but I really need this feature.
[00:37:18.120 --> 00:37:19.080] I really need this work.
[00:37:19.400 --> 00:37:23.000] You start finding different customers and attending to their needs.
[00:37:23.000 --> 00:37:29.000] And suddenly, it's like, you know, you've sort of made it true that you know who's willing to pay all this money and what they need.
[00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:33.000] And you start building for them instead of building for the people who are only going to pay $5 a month.
[00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:38.440] And those people are way more lucrative because they're worth 30 people who are paying $5 a month.
[00:37:38.440 --> 00:37:42.120] And so it's cool to see you've got these bigger customers who have huge budgets at big companies.
[00:37:42.120 --> 00:37:48.200] And I think it would have been probably hard for you to find them if you didn't do the scary thing and charge a lot of money.
[00:37:48.200 --> 00:37:48.680] True.
[00:37:48.680 --> 00:37:49.400] So true.
[00:37:49.400 --> 00:37:56.520] Something that I can strongly relate to about this life as an Indie Hacker is that you're not surrounded by a bunch of co-workers.
[00:37:57.880 --> 00:38:03.000] You don't have this cultural constraint that has you socialize constantly.
[00:38:04.040 --> 00:38:06.520] It can be a very lonely way to work.
[00:38:06.840 --> 00:38:08.680] Number one, do you feel that personally?
[00:38:08.680 --> 00:38:11.720] I mean, you've got a wife and kids, so maybe I can't relate because I'm a single dude.
[00:38:11.720 --> 00:38:13.400] But do you feel that?
[00:38:13.400 --> 00:38:17.320] And if you do, is there anything that you do to kind of alleviate that?
[00:38:17.720 --> 00:38:20.600] Do you find ways, do you go to meetups or any of that kind of thing?
[00:38:20.600 --> 00:38:21.240] Yeah, for sure.
[00:38:21.240 --> 00:38:22.200] I definitely feel lonely.
[00:38:22.200 --> 00:38:26.040] So that's why I built the first project that I built is called Lonely Dev.
[00:38:26.040 --> 00:38:29.000] And I built it to solve my own loneliness problems.
[00:38:29.000 --> 00:38:31.160] It is literally called Lonely Dev.
[00:38:31.160 --> 00:38:32.120] And you know what?
[00:38:32.120 --> 00:38:36.440] The parent company behind Test Monio is Lonely Dev Inc.
[00:38:36.520 --> 00:38:41.080] that I just registered in Delaware and named it Lonely Dev Inc.
[00:38:41.320 --> 00:38:47.440] So just name it to just memorize my starting point of my solar journey.
[00:38:47.760 --> 00:38:54.960] So yeah, building Lonely Dev is just accidentally opened up a new world to me that I don't feel lonely anymore.
[00:38:54.960 --> 00:39:00.960] And I know that many founders like me are doing our own stuff and trying to make a living.
[00:39:00.960 --> 00:39:13.040] And after I get to know some awesome friends from my community, maybe I just want to name a few here, like Jean from Japan, Andre from Norway, and Brendan from the States.
[00:39:13.040 --> 00:39:18.400] And we basically share our updates every single day.
[00:39:18.400 --> 00:39:22.320] And I see their face and they see my face.
[00:39:22.320 --> 00:39:25.600] But by doing that, I never feel lonely anymore.
[00:39:25.600 --> 00:39:38.240] And I would say to many other makers who are listening to this, and you gotta find your community, a community like Indie Hackers or any other Discord channels.
[00:39:38.240 --> 00:39:39.920] It doesn't have to be super big.
[00:39:39.920 --> 00:39:42.320] You can keep it very small and intimate.
[00:39:42.720 --> 00:39:47.680] If you find that, like me, and I bet you won't feel lonely anymore.
[00:39:47.680 --> 00:39:51.360] I love that as sort of advice to end the episode for other indie hackers.
[00:39:51.360 --> 00:39:52.160] Find your community.
[00:39:52.160 --> 00:39:53.280] It doesn't have to be big.
[00:39:53.280 --> 00:39:55.840] Or in Damon's case, build your own community.
[00:39:55.840 --> 00:39:56.640] I love that.
[00:39:56.640 --> 00:39:58.640] You build a community of people, you're like-minded people.
[00:39:58.640 --> 00:40:00.160] There are other indie hackers.
[00:40:00.640 --> 00:40:03.440] It takes care of the sort of loneliness working by yourself problem.
[00:40:03.440 --> 00:40:05.120] You get great ideas from others.
[00:40:05.120 --> 00:40:08.480] And then you have an audience to launch to once you come up with an even better idea.
[00:40:08.480 --> 00:40:10.240] So I think that's brilliant advice.
[00:40:10.240 --> 00:40:13.200] Damon Chen, thanks a ton for coming on the show.
[00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:17.680] Can you let listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and about Testimonial?
[00:40:17.920 --> 00:40:21.280] You can check out testimonial.to or testimonial.io.
[00:40:21.280 --> 00:40:26.400] And I bought several other you know types of domains, redirect to testimonial.to.
[00:40:26.400 --> 00:40:33.560] And for me, if you want to follow my bootstrap journey, and you can check out my Twitter at D-A-M-E-N-G-C-H-E-N.
[00:40:33.560 --> 00:40:33.960] Nice.
[00:40:33.960 --> 00:40:34.440] All right.
[00:40:34.440 --> 00:40:34.840] Sweet.
[00:40:29.920 --> 00:40:35.800] Thanks so much Damon.

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

[00:00:07.520 --> 00:00:09.760] Okay, we're here with Damon Chen.
[00:00:09.760 --> 00:00:10.320] What's up, Damon?
[00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:10.800] How's it going?
[00:00:10.800 --> 00:00:11.680] Yo, yo.
[00:00:11.680 --> 00:00:13.040] Good, what's up, guys?
[00:00:13.360 --> 00:00:15.840] You are an indie hacker.
[00:00:15.840 --> 00:00:19.920] You're the founder of a company called Testimonial.
[00:00:20.240 --> 00:00:22.640] And I think you have a super inspirational story.
[00:00:22.640 --> 00:00:26.240] So you were like a developer at Cisco for eight years.
[00:00:26.240 --> 00:00:30.080] You saw a lot of other people take lucrative jobs elsewhere.
[00:00:30.080 --> 00:00:36.640] And you eventually started interviewing all the major tech companies, Amazon, Google, Facebook, all of them.
[00:00:36.640 --> 00:00:39.360] Today they're all just doing a bunch of layoffs, but at the time they weren't.
[00:00:39.360 --> 00:00:40.720] They were like hot shit.
[00:00:41.040 --> 00:00:42.480] And they turned you down.
[00:00:42.480 --> 00:00:44.720] But then you started building lots of apps.
[00:00:44.720 --> 00:00:49.440] I think you built like five apps in 2020 alone, most of which generated $0.
[00:00:50.080 --> 00:00:52.320] But you quit anyway and became an indie hacker.
[00:00:52.320 --> 00:00:54.800] And you launched Testimonial.
[00:00:54.800 --> 00:00:57.920] And eventually that made like, I think, $3,000 in the first 10 days.
[00:00:57.920 --> 00:01:00.480] What's your revenue at today?
[00:01:01.360 --> 00:01:04.800] The monthly recurring revenue is at 30K MRR.
[00:01:04.800 --> 00:01:09.920] And the annual recurrent revenue is almost approaching half a million dollars.
[00:01:09.920 --> 00:01:10.480] Dang.
[00:01:10.800 --> 00:01:12.240] That's crazy.
[00:01:12.240 --> 00:01:17.520] So from working a corporate job, making apps aren't making any money to making almost half a million dollars on your own.
[00:01:17.520 --> 00:01:18.720] Do you have any employees?
[00:01:18.720 --> 00:01:20.400] Do you have a co-founder?
[00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:23.840] How many people are working on Testimonial with you, splitting that revenue?
[00:01:23.840 --> 00:01:37.440] Well, actually, two weeks ago, I had my first employee who will be handling the marketing and sales, all those kind of code outreach, running a paid ads campaign, doing some social media stuff.
[00:01:37.440 --> 00:01:39.840] And I had a guy to complement my skill.
[00:01:40.160 --> 00:01:40.960] Very cool.
[00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:42.400] Let me just get some clarity.
[00:01:42.400 --> 00:01:45.200] So you're at 30K MRR now.
[00:01:45.840 --> 00:01:47.600] And you started these apps in 2020.
[00:01:47.600 --> 00:01:49.640] So how long, just Testimonial?
[00:01:49.640 --> 00:01:51.280] How long ago did you build Testimonial?
[00:01:51.280 --> 00:01:54.160] Like, how long did it take you to ramp that up to 30K?
[00:01:54.480 --> 00:01:57.280] Testmona, I launched Testmona December 2020.
[00:01:57.280 --> 00:02:00.000] So it's almost a two years anniversary.
[00:02:00.360 --> 00:02:10.040] Initially, I launched Testimony with the Lifetime Deal, which you know, a lot of indie hackers use this kind of a strategy to just attract some initial users.
[00:02:10.040 --> 00:02:17.240] And after I saw some initial traction from the lifetime deal, I saw a huge demand, people asking for lifetime deals.
[00:02:17.320 --> 00:02:23.000] Even I, you know, shift my pricing model from lifetime deal to subscription model.
[00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:30.600] People still asking for lifetime deal, and I'm saying, no, sorry, the lifetime is gone, and you gotta subscribe, pay me monthly, or anyway.
[00:02:30.920 --> 00:02:32.920] So, yeah, starting going from there.
[00:02:32.920 --> 00:02:37.560] So, the lifetime deal campaign only lasted two weeks.
[00:02:37.560 --> 00:02:50.280] And after I earned 5K, 6K from 20 lifetime customers, I just stopped lifetime and focused on the subscription and growing the recurrent revenue from there.
[00:02:50.280 --> 00:02:50.840] Nice.
[00:02:50.840 --> 00:02:58.600] I see on your Twitter, you've got a little progress bar in your bio saying that you're aiming for a million dollars in revenue from Testimonial.
[00:02:58.840 --> 00:03:03.880] I think one thing I notice a lot of indie hackers doing is thinking about these revenue milestones they want to hit for themselves.
[00:03:03.880 --> 00:03:08.520] So, maybe it's like, okay, once I make $100, an MIID has legs, and I'm going to keep working on it.
[00:03:08.520 --> 00:03:11.480] And once I make a couple thousand dollars in a month, I can quit my job.
[00:03:11.480 --> 00:03:16.440] And once I make $10,000 a month, I know I've made it, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:03:16.440 --> 00:03:20.520] What milestones do you have for Testimonial?
[00:03:20.520 --> 00:03:23.480] And why did you pick that $1 million a year milestone?
[00:03:23.480 --> 00:03:25.400] Like, what do you expect to happen when you hit that?
[00:03:25.400 --> 00:03:33.000] Yeah, if you check my Twitter profile again, and you will not be able to see the $1 million, you know, the progress bar anymore.
[00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:35.320] I just took it off because the one million.
[00:03:35.400 --> 00:03:37.080] Oh, you see, it just goes to one dollar now.
[00:03:37.080 --> 00:03:38.680] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.
[00:03:38.760 --> 00:03:47.840] Because, you know, I used to have the $1 million a year ago for myself, and I made myself made 40% there towards the $1 million goal.
[00:03:44.840 --> 00:03:50.560] And it's really fun to document my solo journey.
[00:03:50.720 --> 00:03:53.600] And all the effort is just by myself.
[00:03:53.600 --> 00:03:58.560] But as I said, two weeks ago, I had my first employee, so it's no longer my own effort.
[00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:01.280] It's kind of like a team joint effort.
[00:04:01.280 --> 00:04:03.120] So I kind of removed the progress bar.
[00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:05.680] But I still want to show some progress bar there.
[00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:12.960] So as you said, now the progress bar on the left side is just $0, and on the right side is $1.
[00:04:13.280 --> 00:04:18.480] And I think it just says something like, I made it by making my first online dollar.
[00:04:18.480 --> 00:04:21.440] And that's actually my biggest milestone.
[00:04:21.440 --> 00:04:26.000] And always the first online dollar is the most difficult.
[00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:33.280] And after the first dollar, I set my goal to next goal to 100K ARR.
[00:04:33.280 --> 00:04:35.600] That's actually the number that I promised to my wife.
[00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:42.960] Before quitting my day job, I told my wife, if I can't make 100K in a year, I'm going to go back to find another job.
[00:04:42.960 --> 00:04:44.400] So luckily, I made it.
[00:04:44.560 --> 00:04:50.000] Now, is that the number that you promised to your wife, or is that the number that your wife demanded of you?
[00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:55.440] Both myself and her had no choice because we live in the most expensive area.
[00:04:55.440 --> 00:04:56.960] I had to make some money.
[00:04:56.960 --> 00:05:04.720] So 100K is not even the average software engineer's salary in Silicon Valley, but at least it's nothing.
[00:05:04.960 --> 00:05:15.280] It is something to prove, to give both her and myself some confidence that this app could be a thing so that I can stick with it for the long term.
[00:05:15.280 --> 00:05:18.640] So, let me try to describe testimonial to the audience.
[00:05:18.960 --> 00:05:25.680] Testimonial is a tool that allows your customers to collect testimonials from their customers.
[00:05:25.680 --> 00:05:28.560] And it can be both text and video testimonials.
[00:05:28.560 --> 00:05:33.880] And then it gives them a copy, kind of a code snippet, that lets them display all of those testimonials on their website.
[00:05:34.040 --> 00:05:37.720] So, let's say I'm an indie hacker, I've got a business, I want a slick website.
[00:05:37.720 --> 00:05:42.040] I want that website to be covered in testimonials from happy customers who all say they love my product.
[00:05:42.040 --> 00:05:46.520] Or maybe if I'm just getting started, I'll get some fake testimonials from my friends and my family.
[00:05:46.520 --> 00:05:47.160] It doesn't matter.
[00:05:47.160 --> 00:05:48.280] I just want my thing to look cool.
[00:05:48.280 --> 00:05:52.680] So that when my customers come, they think that people are using my product.
[00:05:52.680 --> 00:05:54.440] But maybe I suck at asking for testimonials.
[00:05:54.440 --> 00:05:57.560] Maybe I don't know how to code, so I don't know how to add the testimonials to my website.
[00:05:57.560 --> 00:06:01.880] I see all these other websites that have these super slick video testimonials, and I'm not sure how to do that myself.
[00:06:01.880 --> 00:06:05.800] They have tweet testimonials, they have other testimonials, and all these fancy things.
[00:06:05.800 --> 00:06:07.400] That's where your product comes in.
[00:06:07.400 --> 00:06:09.480] I go to testimonial.to.
[00:06:09.480 --> 00:06:10.280] You make it easy.
[00:06:10.280 --> 00:06:11.080] I just sign up.
[00:06:11.080 --> 00:06:15.880] You give me all the stuff that I want, and you just make it easy for me to collect testimonials and put them on my website.
[00:06:15.880 --> 00:06:17.640] Is that an accurate description?
[00:06:17.640 --> 00:06:19.640] Are I missing anything, leaving anything out?
[00:06:19.960 --> 00:06:22.600] Yeah, you just wire it perfectly.
[00:06:22.600 --> 00:06:23.240] Thanks.
[00:06:23.240 --> 00:06:26.520] I probably can use it as one of the copy my answers.
[00:06:27.800 --> 00:06:30.040] I'm just trying to sell it for you here.
[00:06:30.040 --> 00:06:32.840] I think it's a great idea because pretty much every indie hacker wants this.
[00:06:32.840 --> 00:06:35.880] There's almost no business that doesn't want testimonials.
[00:06:35.880 --> 00:06:37.240] Everybody has a website.
[00:06:37.240 --> 00:06:38.840] And so your market is humongous.
[00:06:38.840 --> 00:06:41.160] You can sell to basically all of your people.
[00:06:41.160 --> 00:06:42.120] You can sell to your audience.
[00:06:42.120 --> 00:06:43.480] You can sell to your fellow indie hackers.
[00:06:43.480 --> 00:06:45.160] You can sell to your peers.
[00:06:45.160 --> 00:06:48.760] And if people are going to have testimonials, they're going to want to have good ones.
[00:06:48.760 --> 00:06:51.640] So they might as well just come to you because you're like the extracurriculars.
[00:06:51.880 --> 00:06:53.720] Also, it's like no code is on the rise, right?
[00:06:53.720 --> 00:07:01.240] So a lot of people don't have the technical competence to get this slick new element of their UI in place.
[00:07:01.960 --> 00:07:06.440] And I think testimonial also is a valid proposition.
[00:07:06.440 --> 00:07:07.720] It's pretty straightforward.
[00:07:07.720 --> 00:07:10.520] Like Courtney said, every business needs testimonials.
[00:07:10.520 --> 00:07:13.160] So people just get, people get it.
[00:07:13.160 --> 00:07:26.000] And, you know, it's somehow reminds me, recently, if you guys on Twitter and Peter Levels and many other makers launched an AI-powered tool to generate Avatar.
[00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:28.480] And the tool is a pretty simple idea.
[00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:32.160] And I guess that Peter and others don't need to do too much marketing.
[00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:33.120] People just get it.
[00:07:33.120 --> 00:07:34.640] And for Testimonial, the same.
[00:07:34.640 --> 00:07:37.760] It's just a tool that you can use to collect testimonials.
[00:07:37.760 --> 00:07:40.400] It saves you effort managing your test models.
[00:07:40.400 --> 00:07:45.120] And also, most of my customers are not really tech-savvy.
[00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:56.880] They are marketing folks and they can easily just use it as a no-code tool to plug in Testimonial as a widget on their website without too much developer effort.
[00:07:56.880 --> 00:07:57.520] Right.
[00:07:57.840 --> 00:08:01.760] So let's talk about how you got started here because I sort of alluded to it.
[00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:03.600] You were applying to all these tech jobs.
[00:08:03.600 --> 00:08:08.880] But most people on Earth are like they're pretty happy just working their job.
[00:08:08.880 --> 00:08:10.000] It's stable to work a job.
[00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:11.280] It's easy to work a job.
[00:08:11.280 --> 00:08:16.720] Frankly, you generally make more money working a job than trying to be an Indie hacker.
[00:08:16.960 --> 00:08:18.720] And being an Indian hacker is challenging, right?
[00:08:18.720 --> 00:08:20.320] It's risky, it's uncertain.
[00:08:20.320 --> 00:08:23.440] You might spend years working on projects that make zero dollars.
[00:08:23.440 --> 00:08:24.320] I know I did.
[00:08:24.320 --> 00:08:25.920] What inspires you to become an indie hacker?
[00:08:25.920 --> 00:08:31.040] Like, why not just stay working that job at Cisco for the rest of your life?
[00:08:31.360 --> 00:08:34.640] Didn't want to be an Indie hacker, just to be honest.
[00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:37.440] I was kind of forced to become an Indie hacker.
[00:08:38.320 --> 00:08:40.960] I was a software engineer in Silicon Valley.
[00:08:40.960 --> 00:08:45.880] So like many other software engineers here, I was coming my career ladder.
[00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:51.840] Like you said, I applied jobs for working for fan companies, the first tier companies.
[00:08:51.840 --> 00:08:56.400] That's the path that most of my friends and colleagues followed.
[00:08:56.400 --> 00:08:58.000] But things changed.
[00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:04.280] In 2018, we had our first kid, and changing my job desire became super strong.
[00:09:04.840 --> 00:09:10.040] I used to work for Cisco, and it's definitely not the first year, and the pay is definitely not the first year as well.
[00:09:10.040 --> 00:09:17.320] I just wanted to get a better job with higher salary so that I can provide my family a better life.
[00:09:17.320 --> 00:09:21.320] And I did spend many, many months preparing for the job interview.
[00:09:21.320 --> 00:09:29.160] If you're familiar, I prepared the coding interview, doing the lead coding, basically those kind of coding puzzles.
[00:09:30.200 --> 00:09:33.400] You just told things didn't go well as I expected.
[00:09:33.400 --> 00:09:35.800] I failed all interviews from fan.
[00:09:35.800 --> 00:09:38.760] And it's pretty devastating to my confidence.
[00:09:38.760 --> 00:09:45.080] And to be honest, spending a month just preparing those coding puzzles is not a fun thing.
[00:09:45.080 --> 00:09:47.800] It's pretty painful and boring process.
[00:09:47.800 --> 00:09:50.040] It just makes me think, what's the point, right?
[00:09:50.040 --> 00:09:56.520] So even if I get a job, maybe the salary will be better, but it won't be drastically different.
[00:09:56.520 --> 00:10:00.120] It's still a nine-to-five job from a big corporation.
[00:10:00.120 --> 00:10:08.440] So I decided to quit that route because I literally have no confidence in acing a job interview.
[00:10:08.440 --> 00:10:18.680] And after that, the only trust is left are either, you know, being a lifer at my current company or make some money elsewhere because I work for Cisco as my first job.
[00:10:18.680 --> 00:10:23.000] I worked there since 2012 after I graduated from college.
[00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:26.280] And it's been eight plus years and things got boring.
[00:10:26.280 --> 00:10:30.520] And I literally had no motivation to continue.
[00:10:30.520 --> 00:10:33.880] So the only thing left for me is to make some money elsewhere.
[00:10:34.040 --> 00:10:37.320] So I started to do some moonlighting stuff.
[00:10:37.320 --> 00:10:40.360] My goal is always to make more money for my family.
[00:10:40.360 --> 00:10:55.760] And I even tried being an Uber driver on my way to commute to work and off from work to go back home and trying to be a part-time Uber driver and start selling some stuff on eBay and being a photographer.
[00:10:55.760 --> 00:11:01.360] I did make a bit of money, but it's definitely not the same level as being a software engineer.
[00:11:01.360 --> 00:11:03.680] And not to mention, it costs my time, right?
[00:11:03.680 --> 00:11:08.240] I had to trade my time to make money from those part-time jobs.
[00:11:08.480 --> 00:11:10.400] It's definitely not going to work.
[00:11:10.400 --> 00:11:13.680] But I was very lucky to find the indie hackers community during that time.
[00:11:13.680 --> 00:11:21.360] And that totally opened up my mind that people can make some internet projects to make a living.
[00:11:21.360 --> 00:11:23.280] And I don't need to trade my time for money.
[00:11:23.280 --> 00:11:28.480] And I can basically work from home or even wherever I want, whenever I want.
[00:11:28.480 --> 00:11:36.240] So if you ask what inspired me to become an indie hacker, so the short answer would be indie hackers inspired me to become an indie hacker.
[00:11:36.240 --> 00:11:37.120] Very cool.
[00:11:37.120 --> 00:11:42.160] I don't think I've ever had anybody on the show before who's talked about becoming an Uber driver.
[00:11:42.160 --> 00:11:45.840] And I think the other parts of it are like some of the stuff you talked about.
[00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:46.960] I could see myself in.
[00:11:46.960 --> 00:11:54.320] I could see a lot of indie hackers basically being unemployable, either because they don't want to work for the man or because they're struggling at interviews and they don't like being judged.
[00:11:54.320 --> 00:11:58.880] Like I had that same thing in college where I was studying for coding interviews and it wasn't fun.
[00:11:58.880 --> 00:12:02.880] I'm learning all these algorithms and I interview somewhere and they reject me.
[00:12:02.880 --> 00:12:03.680] It doesn't feel good.
[00:12:03.680 --> 00:12:04.720] And it's just like, fuck it.
[00:12:04.720 --> 00:12:05.920] I'd rather work for myself.
[00:12:05.920 --> 00:12:07.040] I don't have to go through this crap.
[00:12:07.040 --> 00:12:08.640] I can just build my own thing.
[00:12:08.640 --> 00:12:10.560] I think a lot of indie hackers have that attitude.
[00:12:10.560 --> 00:12:16.320] But reaching out to these different freelance jobs to fund yourself is really interesting.
[00:12:16.320 --> 00:12:18.080] What was it like being an Uber driver?
[00:12:18.080 --> 00:12:22.960] Was it lucrative enough that you could support yourself and sort of supplement your income to the degree you wanted?
[00:12:22.960 --> 00:12:27.120] Because I'm curious how it felt being a software engineer and an Uber driver at the same time.
[00:12:27.120 --> 00:12:30.000] For Uber, it's just for the local community.
[00:12:30.520 --> 00:12:41.160] But I was kind of thinking that I'm browsing Quicksly and people will send a lot of requests saying, you know, doing some carporting from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
[00:12:41.160 --> 00:12:46.360] This kind of mid-to-long distance carporting, and there's no such kind of app.
[00:12:46.600 --> 00:12:53.640] And in my mind, I was thinking that probably I could build an app for the mid-to-long distance carporting.
[00:12:53.640 --> 00:13:00.760] And being an Uber driver is kind of like an experience that I just want to experience how to request a Uber drive.
[00:13:00.760 --> 00:13:03.720] And if I'm an Uber driver, and what that experience looks like.
[00:13:03.720 --> 00:13:08.360] And I actually spent several weekends being a full-time Uber driver.
[00:13:08.360 --> 00:13:17.880] And I made something like $200 to $300 just by driving Uber for eight hours, I would say, compared to the minimum pay in California.
[00:13:17.880 --> 00:13:20.680] And that's still above the minimum pay.
[00:13:20.680 --> 00:13:25.960] And I think that driving Uber, while I'm commuting to work, I'm not wasting too much time.
[00:13:26.120 --> 00:13:35.240] Well, I can make a more side income that we'll have our first kit and I can make some extra money to support my family.
[00:13:35.240 --> 00:13:37.240] So that's another reason.
[00:13:37.240 --> 00:13:42.040] I'm curious, I mean, I know that you worked on multiple products that didn't work out before Testimonial.
[00:13:42.040 --> 00:13:48.440] And a common challenge that founders run into is they invest a lot of time in projects and they get emotionally attached to them.
[00:13:48.440 --> 00:13:53.240] And then it becomes really hard to pull the plug when things clearly aren't working out.
[00:13:53.240 --> 00:13:56.360] In fact, there's like an official term in psychology for this phenomenon, right?
[00:13:56.360 --> 00:14:03.000] They call it the sunk cost fallacy, where you just invest emotionally and then it's like this cost that you just feel invested in and you don't pull out.
[00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:05.000] So, like, is that something that you struggled with?
[00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:07.960] Because I know that you eventually moved on from those.
[00:14:07.960 --> 00:14:08.680] Yeah, for sure.
[00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:13.000] I did struggle with those existing projects.
[00:14:13.000 --> 00:14:26.640] And actually, for the first project that I built, the Lonely Dev, to someone who didn't know, Lonely Dev is a community where makers around the world can just post a short video about what they're up to.
[00:14:26.640 --> 00:14:33.200] And it just gives people more personal feeling when connecting with other makers as everything is in the video.
[00:14:33.200 --> 00:14:38.080] But it's a community, it is still far, far away from being successful.
[00:14:38.080 --> 00:14:44.400] I don't have to put a ton of effort into injecting new fields to make the community active.
[00:14:44.400 --> 00:14:46.000] You know, it's them hard.
[00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:47.840] You guys run community, and you might know it.
[00:14:48.560 --> 00:14:52.640] And Lonely Dev was still active by the time I launched Testimonial.
[00:14:52.640 --> 00:15:00.400] But after Testimony took off, I had to shift all my focus from the community to my SaaS.
[00:15:00.400 --> 00:15:06.720] One good thing is that I can reconnect with my community members to Twitter, so we never lose touch.
[00:15:06.720 --> 00:15:14.320] And after all, this kind of communication migrated from Lonely Dev to Twitter, the community thing gradually faded away.
[00:15:14.320 --> 00:15:17.600] It's just gradually less and less active.
[00:15:17.600 --> 00:15:22.560] And for other projects, it's relatively easy for me to just get out.
[00:15:22.800 --> 00:15:27.040] If it is not money making, I lose my motivation or I get burnout.
[00:15:27.040 --> 00:15:28.400] I just want to move on.
[00:15:28.640 --> 00:15:33.040] Normally within a few weeks, I just will get a sense whether it's a good product or not.
[00:15:33.040 --> 00:15:37.760] I think the other hard part for a lot of people is coming up with the initial idea, which obviously you solve that problem.
[00:15:37.760 --> 00:15:42.160] Testimonial is making more than $30,000 a month, so it was a good idea.
[00:15:42.160 --> 00:15:44.400] How did you come up with that idea?
[00:15:44.400 --> 00:15:50.560] I love to, you know, just bury myself into coding, this kind of stuff, but my marketing skill really sucks.
[00:15:50.560 --> 00:15:55.840] I just wanted to find a solution to solve my marketing weakness.
[00:15:55.840 --> 00:16:00.280] And as an engineer, as you know, we always love to find some life hacks.
[00:15:59.760 --> 00:16:07.160] And obviously to me, to convince people to buy my product, the shortcut is to just throw some testimonials on my website.
[00:16:07.480 --> 00:16:11.640] And like I said, I built Lonely Dev, which is a video-focused community.
[00:16:11.640 --> 00:16:16.840] So a quick idea that popped into my mind is to add video testimonials to the stuff.
[00:16:16.840 --> 00:16:22.040] And I feel that if it is a pain point for me, I guess it's also a pin point for many others.
[00:16:22.040 --> 00:16:25.400] You know, also the value proposition is pretty straightforward.
[00:16:25.400 --> 00:16:29.080] So I'm like, you know, let me just build an MAP and test it out.
[00:16:29.080 --> 00:16:31.240] And what does that testing process look like?
[00:16:31.240 --> 00:16:34.600] Because you build the MVP and then it might not actually work.
[00:16:34.600 --> 00:16:36.280] You haven't quite validated it.
[00:16:36.280 --> 00:16:38.680] And you mentioned that you're the kind of guy where it's easy for you to move on.
[00:16:38.680 --> 00:16:41.640] So if it doesn't make money quickly, you're going to move on, right?
[00:16:41.640 --> 00:16:45.000] So you've got some sort of process, I presume, to figure out, like, okay, is this going to work?
[00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:47.160] How did you validate that MVP?
[00:16:47.480 --> 00:16:51.720] I actually never validated the idea of the MAP from anywhere else.
[00:16:52.040 --> 00:16:54.760] I just thought it's a problem of mine.
[00:16:55.000 --> 00:17:01.320] And not to mention, I can quickly build the MVP by using some existing code from my previous projects.
[00:17:01.320 --> 00:17:03.400] So why not wasting time on the validation?
[00:17:03.400 --> 00:17:09.080] And to me, the ultimate validation is whether people will buy it or not.
[00:17:09.320 --> 00:17:13.880] If I can run some pre-sale campaign to buy this, that's totally fine.
[00:17:13.880 --> 00:17:25.560] But if I'm asking the feedback from just from this kind of service level, I'm going to probably waste a lot of time and probably even distracted by the people because people tend to be really nice.
[00:17:25.560 --> 00:17:28.600] People will say, great idea, just go for it.
[00:17:28.600 --> 00:17:31.560] Even nice people will say, oh, they will buy it.
[00:17:31.560 --> 00:17:34.840] But those kind of feedback is bullshit to me.
[00:17:34.840 --> 00:17:42.360] I definitely appreciate their kindness, but those kind of surface-level feedback validation, I don't think it really helps.
[00:17:42.680 --> 00:17:49.360] You mentioned earlier, actually, when we were talking about validation, you mentioned that you did your lifetime plan and you had a lot of interest.
[00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:52.800] Was that right around when you launched, or was that like later?
[00:17:52.800 --> 00:18:01.280] Because I mean, if you have a lifetime plan and a lot of people sign up, and then there's such an influx that you feel like, oh crap, I got to turn this off and just move to subscription.
[00:18:01.280 --> 00:18:05.520] Like, that seems like it might be good de facto validation, right?
[00:18:05.520 --> 00:18:07.520] Yeah, that's kind of like a validation for sure.
[00:18:07.520 --> 00:18:08.240] Yes.
[00:18:08.240 --> 00:18:09.280] I think that's the best value.
[00:18:09.280 --> 00:18:12.640] Like, the best validation is you put a product down to the world and people use it.
[00:18:12.640 --> 00:18:13.680] Or they don't use it, right?
[00:18:13.680 --> 00:18:14.720] And you talk about why.
[00:18:14.720 --> 00:18:25.120] And I've seen so many people who go through this grueling process of calling up hundreds of customers and interviewing them and trying to find out all the right perfect information about whether they will or won't buy.
[00:18:25.120 --> 00:18:27.680] And it takes them six months and they're doing everything by the book.
[00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:29.600] And then they think they have a good plan.
[00:18:29.600 --> 00:18:31.600] And then they launch their product and get smacked in the face.
[00:18:31.600 --> 00:18:33.120] And none of the stuff they learned is true.
[00:18:33.200 --> 00:18:34.000] None of it works.
[00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:35.440] So I like your approach.
[00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:39.360] Just build it, get it out the door, get it in the real people's hands as quickly as possible.
[00:18:39.360 --> 00:18:40.880] That's all the validation.
[00:18:41.520 --> 00:18:48.960] I think I saw this tweet by Sahil, and he said, It's not that you learn and then you do, it's that you do and then you learn.
[00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:51.440] And it seems like you have kind of that approach.
[00:18:51.440 --> 00:18:55.040] But okay, what if you do and then what you learn is that it doesn't work?
[00:18:55.040 --> 00:18:58.240] So, I mean, you already had like a few products that didn't work out.
[00:18:58.240 --> 00:19:03.600] Like, did you have a backup plan here if Testimonial didn't have all those lifetime signups?
[00:19:03.600 --> 00:19:06.800] Like, what would you have done if Testimonial hadn't paid the bills?
[00:19:07.120 --> 00:19:09.440] I actually don't have any backup plan.
[00:19:09.440 --> 00:19:15.600] Maybe the only backup may be my working wife, which I prepared for many, many years.
[00:19:15.920 --> 00:19:20.080] And she paid our bills and mortgage in the first one and a half years.
[00:19:20.080 --> 00:19:28.160] And yeah, I really, you know, appreciate her support mentally, you know, financially, everything.
[00:19:28.400 --> 00:19:32.920] I wish my wife all forward the episode to my wife so that she can use it.
[00:19:29.840 --> 00:19:34.840] Yeah.
[00:19:35.160 --> 00:19:40.840] It's the biggest indie hacker hack is get married to someone who's gonna pay the bills while you mess around tinkering with apps.
[00:19:40.840 --> 00:19:46.920] Yeah, and we also have some decent savings from years of our engineering job in the Bay Area.
[00:19:46.920 --> 00:19:49.160] So things won't be that bad.
[00:19:49.160 --> 00:19:50.840] Like we can't pay our bills.
[00:19:50.840 --> 00:19:55.320] I wouldn't see this kind of thing happen in the next year or two.
[00:19:55.320 --> 00:19:59.080] Also, by the time I quit my job, I basically time box everything.
[00:19:59.080 --> 00:20:03.240] If within a year things won't work, I go back to find another job.
[00:20:03.240 --> 00:20:08.520] And if you are asking the backup plan, that's one of my backup plan.
[00:20:08.840 --> 00:20:12.280] So at this point, you've got the MVP built, you launch it.
[00:20:12.280 --> 00:20:15.960] I think this is also the other hard part for the vast majority of indie hackers.
[00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:18.360] It's how do you find your first customers?
[00:20:18.840 --> 00:20:22.280] You clearly had this cool audience that you had built because you built Lonely Dev.
[00:20:22.280 --> 00:20:23.640] It was a small community.
[00:20:23.640 --> 00:20:25.400] So they kind of knew what you were up to.
[00:20:25.400 --> 00:20:28.200] You had your Twitter account, which at that time I think was pretty small.
[00:20:28.200 --> 00:20:30.440] I don't think you had thousands of followers at that point.
[00:20:30.440 --> 00:20:33.880] Building is hard, but like finding these first customers is even harder.
[00:20:33.880 --> 00:20:36.040] How did you get your first paying customers?
[00:20:36.040 --> 00:20:42.360] Let's walk us through that process step by step because I think a lot of people struggle with how to get this to work, even if they do build a good product.
[00:20:42.360 --> 00:20:49.160] Yeah, I think I kind of set a good foundation with those connections from my early community, Lonely Dev.
[00:20:49.160 --> 00:20:52.440] We just basically support each other no matter what we do.
[00:20:52.440 --> 00:20:57.960] And if someone has a hard time, we're going to provide our help.
[00:20:57.960 --> 00:21:05.960] If someone wants to promote something, we kind of no-brainer for us to just you know do retweet and like on each other's tweet.
[00:21:05.960 --> 00:21:13.240] So yeah, in the early days, it's basically you know building public from those few hundred followers.
[00:21:13.240 --> 00:22:48.200] But those followers you know the the number is small but we are pretty engaging someone said you only need a thousand true fans to start every everything so i would say you know my initial few hundred followers friends are pretty super valuable for me in in the early days and I also share my updates on IndieHackers and for the launch I used the lifetime deal strategy I announced it on my Twitter and launched it on product hunt and even got someone to share the deal in some private martech groups on Facebook that I didn't expect you know I didn't plan to launch anything on private groups on Facebook that's probably another really valuable customer acquisition channel yeah all these channels give me you know 20 plus early adopters and after that you just you know collect feedback from initial customers you know use this kind of flywheel marketing strategy the more features that I added to the product the more stuff that I can you know tweet on on Twitter so that brought me more exposures to more potential customers and things started going like a snowball from there I love it so you're you're on product hunt you're on Twitter your customers are sharing everything is going well I think a lot of people have this this like grand plan for their launch right where they're sure it's gonna go well and they have you know ABC DEF they're gonna check all these boxes do all these things and it's gonna go well you clearly had some sort of a plan was there anything in your plan that didn't work out was there anything in like your sort of launch plan that didn't go how you expected, or was it just all perfect?
[00:22:48.240 --> 00:22:57.320] I remember that you know, when I launched on Product hunt, Ryan Hoover asked me a question why why not go with the subscription plan?
[00:22:57.320 --> 00:23:00.040] And by then, I was kind of you know naive and stupid.
[00:23:00.200 --> 00:23:10.840] I just replied, Ryan, that you know, I don't think a subscription model will work, and I'm just gonna stick with the lifetime deal and the usage-based pricing model.
[00:23:10.840 --> 00:23:18.920] But that's definitely something that I am planned to go the subscription model.
[00:23:18.920 --> 00:23:24.040] And you know, I thought that the lifetime deal may be just enough.
[00:23:24.040 --> 00:23:30.440] And you know, I'm not even expecting people to buy for the lifetime deal.
[00:23:30.440 --> 00:23:37.240] And I thought, you know, maybe like my previous projects that never make any money for Testimonial, maybe nobody will buy it.
[00:23:37.400 --> 00:23:41.800] Lifetime deal, if people buy it, that's like you know, that's like a dream.
[00:23:41.800 --> 00:23:46.760] But in the end, people buy the lifetime deal, and the demand is extremely high.
[00:23:46.760 --> 00:23:55.320] And I go back to check those product comments, and I revisit Ryan Hoover's comments.
[00:23:55.320 --> 00:24:03.800] And I kind of think that maybe Ryan made a good point, and I should give subscription a shot.
[00:24:03.800 --> 00:24:10.760] And so, yeah, changing to subscription model is definitely something not on my checklist.
[00:24:10.760 --> 00:24:14.280] And I'm lucky that I made the change.
[00:24:14.280 --> 00:24:16.120] Yeah, I'm reading his comment right now.
[00:24:16.520 --> 00:24:17.720] It's pretty crazy to see.
[00:24:17.800 --> 00:24:27.240] This is what's good about building in public and launching and getting stuff out because it's like you will give really intelligent, talented people who will then see what you're doing and offer suggestions.
[00:24:27.240 --> 00:24:34.760] And you never launched this on Product Hunt, then Ryan Hoover never would have seen it, and he never would have made a comment with a suggestion for the subscription fees.
[00:24:34.760 --> 00:24:39.320] And you maybe never would have charged subscription fees, and maybe Testimonial wouldn't be where it is today.
[00:24:39.320 --> 00:24:41.480] So, I mean, that was the launch.
[00:24:41.480 --> 00:24:46.800] And so, you had to do a little pivot-y things in your launch, you went from the lifetime to the subscription.
[00:24:46.800 --> 00:24:47.760] What about since then?
[00:24:47.760 --> 00:24:51.280] You've been growing for another year and a half or more since then.
[00:24:51.280 --> 00:24:55.280] I know you're really active on Twitter, and you mentioned that you've got like a flywheel.
[00:24:55.280 --> 00:24:57.520] So, how does do you have a growth strategy?
[00:24:57.520 --> 00:24:58.320] What has worked?
[00:24:58.320 --> 00:24:59.520] What hasn't worked?
[00:24:59.520 --> 00:25:00.880] Yeah, I want to hear about this flywheel.
[00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:02.800] I love marketing flywheels.
[00:25:02.800 --> 00:25:05.280] Yeah, the marketing strategy, I would say, is pretty simple.
[00:25:05.280 --> 00:25:10.000] Two weeks ago, I hired my first employee, but before that, I did everything just by myself.
[00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:15.280] And I try to leverage, you know, try to maximize my effort as much as possible.
[00:25:15.280 --> 00:25:19.200] So, I pretty much just use social media to build the word of mouth.
[00:25:19.200 --> 00:25:21.920] That's a more scalable approach to me.
[00:25:21.920 --> 00:25:24.080] And it worked pretty well.
[00:25:24.080 --> 00:25:29.120] And also, I use a lot of product-led growth strategy for testimonials.
[00:25:29.120 --> 00:25:35.360] User can always start with the premium plan from which they don't need to pay anything.
[00:25:35.360 --> 00:25:38.080] They can just start collecting testimonials right away.
[00:25:38.080 --> 00:25:41.680] But premium plan always comes up with some limitations.
[00:25:41.680 --> 00:25:51.360] And if they collect more testimonials, they're gonna hit a paywall that prompts them to upgrade so that they can access more additional testimonials.
[00:25:51.680 --> 00:25:54.480] And yeah, I just love this kind of growth hacks.
[00:25:54.480 --> 00:26:01.760] And another growth hack definitely works: I will put the testimonial logo inside the embedding widget for those users who are still in the free plan.
[00:26:01.760 --> 00:26:09.680] And some users who don't like our logo and prefer a white label solution, they normally will choose to upgrade to a pay plan.
[00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:13.840] And for things that didn't work, I would say maybe code outreach.
[00:26:13.840 --> 00:26:20.800] I wouldn't say that it's not 100% not worth, but it might work if I send more code emails.
[00:26:20.800 --> 00:26:23.120] And in the end, it's just the volume gain.
[00:26:23.200 --> 00:26:29.800] And for me, by then, I was just a solo founder, and doing the code outreach took me a lot of time.
[00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:36.440] And I have to build a sequence to start sending the code emails, follow up with them, and set up the demo calls.
[00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:42.280] And the return from it just couldn't really justify my effort.
[00:26:42.280 --> 00:26:46.040] I would say, you know, doing the code outreach didn't work really well for me.
[00:26:46.600 --> 00:26:51.080] So that's why I prefer to stick with my product-led growth strategy.
[00:26:51.400 --> 00:26:59.720] How much of your growth is like product-led growth, where people are seeing the product and then it sort of advertises itself, versus Twitter?
[00:26:59.720 --> 00:27:05.720] Because you've grown from like a few hundred followers in the early days to over 40,000 followers now.
[00:27:05.720 --> 00:27:11.000] And it seems like the sort of building in public tweeting a lot thing goes hand in hand with your growth.
[00:27:11.000 --> 00:27:22.840] I would say initially nearly 80% or 90% customers are from Twitter because I'm pretty all in social media and I didn't focus on any other acquisition channels.
[00:27:22.840 --> 00:27:27.960] But one good thing is that the wave will rise all out of both.
[00:27:27.960 --> 00:27:35.320] So if you go to Twitter and just search testimonial, you probably see that testimonial rank really high on Twitter.
[00:27:35.320 --> 00:27:41.880] And also it just affects the word of mouth and some organic traffics from Google.
[00:27:41.880 --> 00:27:54.920] So if I check the customer acquisition channel nowadays and Twitter is no longer the top acquisition channel and the top one is from the SEO, from Google, that's the thing that I'm pretty proud of.
[00:27:54.920 --> 00:28:01.160] I'm still super curious about Twitter though, because even in the beginning, the fact that it was 80 or 90% of your customers is amazing.
[00:28:01.160 --> 00:28:08.600] And I think most indie hackers, when they try to grow on social media, they'll send out like one or two tweets, you know, maybe five or six.
[00:28:08.600 --> 00:28:14.120] It won't work well, it won't catch fire, they won't go viral, they won't see any returns, and they'll just stop.
[00:28:14.120 --> 00:28:20.720] For whatever reason, like you kept going and you kept tweeting, and you got tons of customers from Twitter, and now you get customers from a different source.
[00:28:20.720 --> 00:28:23.760] But what's your advice for somebody trying to make Twitter work?
[00:28:23.760 --> 00:28:25.200] What kinds of things can they tweet about?
[00:28:25.200 --> 00:28:27.280] How do they keep going when it's not working?
[00:28:27.280 --> 00:28:31.440] And why do you think Twitter works for you so well in the early days?
[00:28:31.760 --> 00:28:39.120] Yeah, in the early days, I kind of still really engaged with my lonely dev community members.
[00:28:39.440 --> 00:28:54.960] The beautiful part of Lonely Dev is it accidentally pushed me to go in public because I'm the maker of my community and I have to be super active like you, Courland and Jenny, you have to be super active on indie hackers.
[00:28:54.960 --> 00:28:59.440] And you know, if you don't be the driver, and nobody will take the drive.
[00:28:59.440 --> 00:29:09.520] And after testimonial took off and I shifted all my focus from lonely dev to Twitter, I still got my community members support.
[00:29:09.520 --> 00:29:20.800] And for testimonial, actually, another strategy that I use is just give away the access to my friends from Lonely Dev.
[00:29:21.120 --> 00:29:23.440] Let them give it a try for free.
[00:29:24.240 --> 00:29:25.520] I don't charge them anything.
[00:29:25.520 --> 00:29:30.720] And they can start collecting testimonials and embed the testimonials onto their website.
[00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:40.400] So that kind of contributes quite a lot for the initial word of mouth because they will tweet, hey, I use this kind of testimonial tool to collect testimonials.
[00:29:40.400 --> 00:29:44.160] And here is how I put it on my website.
[00:29:44.160 --> 00:29:49.360] So by now, you're like an expert in testimonials, an industry expert, so to speak.
[00:29:49.360 --> 00:29:53.680] What have you learned about testimonials that other people might not know?
[00:29:53.680 --> 00:29:59.440] For example, like what makes for a good versus a bad testimonial, or where should testimonials go on people's websites?
[00:29:59.440 --> 00:30:00.000] These kinds of things.
[00:30:00.760 --> 00:30:03.720] What do you know about testimonials that other people should know?
[00:30:04.040 --> 00:30:09.240] I think testimonials are always personalized and tells its own story.
[00:30:09.240 --> 00:30:24.280] People share their own stories, and if I am a potential customer, and those unique stories might resonate with me, unlike some bad ones, if it's just saying, oh, great product, great service, five-star.
[00:30:24.280 --> 00:30:44.120] I would say, you know, if you build a product and if you have one factor that really stands out, the factors can be, you know, if the product is really good or you provide great service or support, if you can offer all of them, and it probably can have many, many happy customers.
[00:30:44.360 --> 00:30:50.680] For me, you know, I like to ask my customers for testimonials if I ship anything that they desperately want.
[00:30:50.680 --> 00:30:54.040] And, you know, that's my strategy to collect testimonials.
[00:30:54.040 --> 00:30:57.880] And I know that they are super happy at the moment.
[00:30:57.880 --> 00:31:02.040] And, you know, it would be highly possible that I get a shout-out from them.
[00:31:02.360 --> 00:31:03.160] Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:31:03.160 --> 00:31:07.240] I like the idea of testimonials telling a story that audiences can relate to.
[00:31:07.240 --> 00:31:12.440] Because people ask me for testimonials sometimes that'll go on their websites, and I have no idea what to say.
[00:31:12.440 --> 00:31:13.960] I'm like, oh, yeah, it was great.
[00:31:13.960 --> 00:31:15.320] I enjoyed using it.
[00:31:15.320 --> 00:31:16.120] That's not a good testimonial.
[00:31:16.200 --> 00:31:21.880] But it's much better if I'm like, oh, you know, my website was on fire and I couldn't keep it up.
[00:31:21.880 --> 00:31:23.240] And then I started using render.
[00:31:23.320 --> 00:31:25.880] Now it's so much easier than using AWS or something like that.
[00:31:26.520 --> 00:31:27.320] That's good.
[00:31:28.440 --> 00:31:32.920] Like my testimonial is on the front page of render.com, or at least it used to be.
[00:31:32.920 --> 00:31:44.880] And what's kind of funny about it is, as a result of having my testimonial there, I get a lot of researchers who email me and say, oh, hey, we're trying to research this particular industry.
[00:31:44.880 --> 00:31:47.120] We see you have a testimonial on this website.
[00:31:44.680 --> 00:31:48.400] You seem like an expert.
[00:31:48.560 --> 00:31:50.560] Why don't we interview you?
[00:31:50.560 --> 00:31:58.400] And sometimes they will literally pay $500 to $1,000, like an hour-long call, just to interview you because they put a testimonial on somebody's site.
[00:31:58.400 --> 00:32:04.320] So I think that's one reason to give testimonials too, is because you kind of appear on people's radar and they want to come and talk to you.
[00:32:04.320 --> 00:32:13.840] That leads to something that might be kind of an issue of availability bias on my part because I just see founders constantly posting about their ideas on indie hackers.
[00:32:13.840 --> 00:32:22.080] But one type of product that I've seen a lot of, and Damon, you've probably seen a lot of it too, is like there are a lot of other testimonial products.
[00:32:22.080 --> 00:32:24.240] Like that seems to be like the hot thing.
[00:32:24.480 --> 00:32:28.560] Maybe they see you on Twitter or who knows what their inspiration is.
[00:32:28.560 --> 00:32:30.480] But how do you feel about competition?
[00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:36.400] Do you feel like you gotta keep your secrets hidden behind the curtain or do you feel like the more the better?
[00:32:37.360 --> 00:32:40.640] How do you kind of like approach the competitors' landscape?
[00:32:41.200 --> 00:32:54.400] I'm a human being and sometimes that my Twitter friends just DM me, oh, found a very similar product like Tasmonio and oh, and some, or even some coffee cats just trying to rip off Testmonio.
[00:32:54.400 --> 00:33:01.360] And you know, I'm a human being and I want to feel happy, just to be honest, in the beginning.
[00:33:01.360 --> 00:33:03.840] But I try not to focus too much on competitors.
[00:33:03.840 --> 00:33:07.440] In the end, I'm not trying to provide service to them.
[00:33:07.440 --> 00:33:11.840] What I'm providing service to is my own customer.
[00:33:11.840 --> 00:33:19.600] My goal is always to get my customers' feedback and they're injecting their feedback into my product.
[00:33:19.920 --> 00:33:23.360] And that's the thing that I try to focus myself on.
[00:33:23.360 --> 00:33:31.800] If I focus too much on the competitors, my mentor is not healthy and that's not some good feeling.
[00:33:32.120 --> 00:33:39.880] And up until now I still do several demo calls and I'm also in the front line with doing the customer support.
[00:33:39.880 --> 00:33:41.720] So I know what they really want.
[00:33:41.720 --> 00:33:46.360] And I think my job is to turn my customers feedback into the product.
[00:33:46.360 --> 00:33:56.680] I would say, you know, some customer feedback is pretty valuable and they do have the potential to open a lot of new opportunities for us.
[00:33:56.680 --> 00:33:59.960] I would say that's kind of like our competitive advantage.
[00:33:59.960 --> 00:34:09.480] And in the end, it all comes down to the feedback loop, whether or not we can take our customers' feedback and turn it into the product in the way that they like.
[00:34:09.800 --> 00:34:14.680] And I would say the whole market is not like social media.
[00:34:15.560 --> 00:34:19.400] It's not definitely not something that one winner takes all.
[00:34:20.120 --> 00:34:22.360] In the end, we all serve our own customers.
[00:34:22.360 --> 00:34:29.080] And I'm happy that social proof, this kind of niche vertical is growing nowadays.
[00:34:29.480 --> 00:34:30.680] It's still new.
[00:34:30.680 --> 00:34:38.120] And sometimes I think that our competitors and we all together help increase the total addressable market.
[00:34:38.120 --> 00:34:43.000] And if I think that way, and I think that's kind of like a bonus.
[00:34:43.320 --> 00:34:43.720] Right.
[00:34:43.720 --> 00:34:53.320] Yeah, in a way, like their advertising is sort of increasing general awareness that testimonials are a thing and then people might you know sort of window shop and and find you because of your competitors.
[00:34:53.320 --> 00:35:05.640] I have a another question that's related to that about the industry which is that I think one of the challenges for a lot of indie hackers, especially programmers, is that it's easy to believe, like, oh, I don't want to build this simple tool because people could just build it themselves.
[00:35:06.040 --> 00:35:10.920] So, if somebody's making a to-do list app, they might just say, oh, you know, my number one competitor isn't other to-do list apps.
[00:35:10.800 --> 00:35:14.680] It's, it's people writing down their, you know, their to-dos on a sticky note.
[00:35:14.880 --> 00:35:23.040] For a testimonial app, you remember, a competitor isn't other testimonial apps, it's people just bringing up their own testimonials on their website without using you.
[00:35:23.040 --> 00:35:25.280] And I think that can discourage people from building ideas.
[00:35:25.280 --> 00:35:34.800] But then I look at what you're doing, you're making over 30 grand a month, and look at your pricing page, and it's like 50 bucks a month, 150 bucks a month, $300 a month for your pricing tiers.
[00:35:34.800 --> 00:35:40.320] Like, these are not small price points, they're really big, and that's probably part of why you're making so much money.
[00:35:40.880 --> 00:35:43.520] Why do you think people are willing to pay so much money?
[00:35:43.520 --> 00:35:46.960] I mean, it's very counterintuitive that people will pay for this kind of thing.
[00:35:46.960 --> 00:35:56.000] And I like talking about pricing decisions because I think it helps other indie hackers gain the confidence to charge more for what they're doing and realize the value and what they're building.
[00:35:56.000 --> 00:36:00.560] I'm kind of afraid to offer those pricing, different pricing tiers.
[00:36:00.560 --> 00:36:04.800] And that's why I only offered a lifetime deal when the product was just launched.
[00:36:04.800 --> 00:36:21.200] After I saw the high demand for the lifetime deal, I wanted to try the subscription model, which I think is more sustainable for me because Testimony is a lot of cost comes from the video stuff, and hosting video is a very costly infrastructure.
[00:36:21.200 --> 00:36:27.680] And I was scared by making this kind of pricing model shift.
[00:36:27.680 --> 00:36:32.320] And I would say the only way to overcome the fear is just to give a little bit more time.
[00:36:33.120 --> 00:36:37.120] You will see new customers pay for the new pricing in a few days.
[00:36:37.120 --> 00:36:45.440] And in the end, if I see the revenue growth isn't changed or even gets better, by that time, I will know that I made the right decision.
[00:36:45.440 --> 00:36:54.960] And also, I believe that if I keep adding new features, and the product will become more valuable, and there's no reason that I just devalue my product, I should charge more.
[00:36:54.960 --> 00:36:59.800] Yeah, I think that's one of the cool things about charging more: it's almost like the self-fulfilling prophecy.
[00:36:59.520 --> 00:37:06.440] Like, if you charge $5 a month or something tiny, you're never going to find those customers who are willing to pay more.
[00:37:06.680 --> 00:37:09.880] They're not even going to consider your thing, they're looking for heavy-duty things.
[00:37:09.880 --> 00:37:18.120] If you charge $150 a month for your thing, then you're going to find customers who essentially are like, okay, I might pay this, but I really need this feature.
[00:37:18.120 --> 00:37:19.080] I really need this work.
[00:37:19.400 --> 00:37:23.000] You start finding different customers and attending to their needs.
[00:37:23.000 --> 00:37:29.000] And suddenly, it's like, you know, you've sort of made it true that you know who's willing to pay all this money and what they need.
[00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:33.000] And you start building for them instead of building for the people who are only going to pay $5 a month.
[00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:38.440] And those people are way more lucrative because they're worth 30 people who are paying $5 a month.
[00:37:38.440 --> 00:37:42.120] And so it's cool to see you've got these bigger customers who have huge budgets at big companies.
[00:37:42.120 --> 00:37:48.200] And I think it would have been probably hard for you to find them if you didn't do the scary thing and charge a lot of money.
[00:37:48.200 --> 00:37:48.680] True.
[00:37:48.680 --> 00:37:49.400] So true.
[00:37:49.400 --> 00:37:56.520] Something that I can strongly relate to about this life as an Indie Hacker is that you're not surrounded by a bunch of co-workers.
[00:37:57.880 --> 00:38:03.000] You don't have this cultural constraint that has you socialize constantly.
[00:38:04.040 --> 00:38:06.520] It can be a very lonely way to work.
[00:38:06.840 --> 00:38:08.680] Number one, do you feel that personally?
[00:38:08.680 --> 00:38:11.720] I mean, you've got a wife and kids, so maybe I can't relate because I'm a single dude.
[00:38:11.720 --> 00:38:13.400] But do you feel that?
[00:38:13.400 --> 00:38:17.320] And if you do, is there anything that you do to kind of alleviate that?
[00:38:17.720 --> 00:38:20.600] Do you find ways, do you go to meetups or any of that kind of thing?
[00:38:20.600 --> 00:38:21.240] Yeah, for sure.
[00:38:21.240 --> 00:38:22.200] I definitely feel lonely.
[00:38:22.200 --> 00:38:26.040] So that's why I built the first project that I built is called Lonely Dev.
[00:38:26.040 --> 00:38:29.000] And I built it to solve my own loneliness problems.
[00:38:29.000 --> 00:38:31.160] It is literally called Lonely Dev.
[00:38:31.160 --> 00:38:32.120] And you know what?
[00:38:32.120 --> 00:38:36.440] The parent company behind Test Monio is Lonely Dev Inc.
[00:38:36.520 --> 00:38:41.080] that I just registered in Delaware and named it Lonely Dev Inc.
[00:38:41.320 --> 00:38:47.440] So just name it to just memorize my starting point of my solar journey.
[00:38:47.760 --> 00:38:54.960] So yeah, building Lonely Dev is just accidentally opened up a new world to me that I don't feel lonely anymore.
[00:38:54.960 --> 00:39:00.960] And I know that many founders like me are doing our own stuff and trying to make a living.
[00:39:00.960 --> 00:39:13.040] And after I get to know some awesome friends from my community, maybe I just want to name a few here, like Jean from Japan, Andre from Norway, and Brendan from the States.
[00:39:13.040 --> 00:39:18.400] And we basically share our updates every single day.
[00:39:18.400 --> 00:39:22.320] And I see their face and they see my face.
[00:39:22.320 --> 00:39:25.600] But by doing that, I never feel lonely anymore.
[00:39:25.600 --> 00:39:38.240] And I would say to many other makers who are listening to this, and you gotta find your community, a community like Indie Hackers or any other Discord channels.
[00:39:38.240 --> 00:39:39.920] It doesn't have to be super big.
[00:39:39.920 --> 00:39:42.320] You can keep it very small and intimate.
[00:39:42.720 --> 00:39:47.680] If you find that, like me, and I bet you won't feel lonely anymore.
[00:39:47.680 --> 00:39:51.360] I love that as sort of advice to end the episode for other indie hackers.
[00:39:51.360 --> 00:39:52.160] Find your community.
[00:39:52.160 --> 00:39:53.280] It doesn't have to be big.
[00:39:53.280 --> 00:39:55.840] Or in Damon's case, build your own community.
[00:39:55.840 --> 00:39:56.640] I love that.
[00:39:56.640 --> 00:39:58.640] You build a community of people, you're like-minded people.
[00:39:58.640 --> 00:40:00.160] There are other indie hackers.
[00:40:00.640 --> 00:40:03.440] It takes care of the sort of loneliness working by yourself problem.
[00:40:03.440 --> 00:40:05.120] You get great ideas from others.
[00:40:05.120 --> 00:40:08.480] And then you have an audience to launch to once you come up with an even better idea.
[00:40:08.480 --> 00:40:10.240] So I think that's brilliant advice.
[00:40:10.240 --> 00:40:13.200] Damon Chen, thanks a ton for coming on the show.
[00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:17.680] Can you let listeners know where they can go to find out more about you and about Testimonial?
[00:40:17.920 --> 00:40:21.280] You can check out testimonial.to or testimonial.io.
[00:40:21.280 --> 00:40:26.400] And I bought several other you know types of domains, redirect to testimonial.to.
[00:40:26.400 --> 00:40:33.560] And for me, if you want to follow my bootstrap journey, and you can check out my Twitter at D-A-M-E-N-G-C-H-E-N.
[00:40:33.560 --> 00:40:33.960] Nice.
[00:40:33.960 --> 00:40:34.440] All right.
[00:40:34.440 --> 00:40:34.840] Sweet.
[00:40:29.920 --> 00:40:35.800] Thanks so much Damon.