How we indie hacked from Brazil to Silicon Valley

My husband and I have been together for almost fifteen years. And for thirteen years of those, we have been working together.

We are both Brazilians. He is a software engineer, and I'm a writer with a business degree in the drawer, as we say in Brazil. That means you graduated, worked in your field for a while, and went off-road at some point — so your diploma sits nicely in a drawer somewhere.

Eduardo's passion for developing products and solving problems is contagious, so it didn't take long for us to start working on some ideas together. I come from a corporate 9-5 background, so the idea of working from home and making my schedule was mind-blowing and life-changing.

Our two-person enterprise launched a few products over the years, and slowly we learned more tricks about how to be indie hackers. I will share a timeline of our projects with you, but for now, I will focus on Mentaway, the idea that opened the doors for us to move to the USA - we are both Brazilians.

Mentaway, which we launched around October of 2010, was a geolocation-based service that gathered check-ins from Foursquare, Twitter, Flickr, and Posterous and turned them into beautiful personalized travel maps. Everything was automated and worked seamlessly. Remember that this was back when geolocation started to make the headlines.

We had the idea for Mentaway when we were on vacation in Santa Cruz, CA, in 2009, and I told my husband how amazing it would be to have a virtual map with pins marking the places we visited on our trip. Somewhere where we could have pictures and a few notes, something easy and low keep. He was interested right away, and we brainstormed until settling that we would tackle the idea and develop something. Certainly, more travelers would like to use something like that.

Eduardo started coding not long after our first chat in Sep 2009. After months of coding, tuning, and working on visuals, we launched Mentaway in October of 2010. We timed our launch to apply for YCombinator.

Unfortunately, they were not interested in our project, which stung slightly. But that rejection inspired me to write to TechCrunch, and I'm so glad I did. I emailed them late at night and mentioned that after rejection and a couple of doses of whisky, we decided to keep walking and launch our idea anyway. That, my friends, got their attention.

The next day, while I was getting in line in a coffee shop, I jumped for joy when I saw that not only TC replied to my email, but it was Michael Arrington himself who did. Even after almost twelve years, I still remember the excitement that that reply brought. It wasn't only validation that our idea was good, but it was an opportunity to spread the word about Mentaway to a massive audience. And an audience that would get it. Also, back in the day, being featured on TC was similar to making the Hacker News front page today.

So I exchanged a few emails with them, and after one day, they published Turn All Your Location Check-Ins Into A Travel Map with Mentaway, which changed the whole outcome of Mentaway and our indie hacker life.

After that article was published, we gained momentum, and many people got in touch with us. We got investors reaching out in Brazil, which never happened before, even though we tried. We also had several publications reaching out to cover our story and idea. That was already incredible. But when hubby approached a travel-related startup, and they offered him a job, we were beyond ourselves. Was that happening? Were we living the ultimate tech dream?

Yes, it did happen. After two weeks, we packed our bags and moved from Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil, to Santa Clara, CA, USA. Those two weeks are still a blur of paperwork, adrenaline, and important decisions. And the most fantastic thing is that looking back, I wouldn't change anything.

Once we settled in the U.S., Eduardo was giving his all at work, and we stopped our side projects. He was doing his thing, and I was writing for a few web design blogs. After the startup that brought us here was sold and hubby had more time, we got back into creating things.

Now I can see that this is what we are and how we operate. We talk about things we can do and ideas we can pursue all the time. And we are always trying to solve something. Of course, we can't ship everything we would like to unless I learn how to code to help out more. But since that is not happening anytime soon, I will keep wearing all hats and figuring random things while Eduardo codes. That's how our enterprise works.

So my two cents for you. Keep working hard and put your heart into it. Results will come.

Happy hacking.

And here is a timeline of our projects:

H3 2009 - Refilmagem

Launched in 2010, when geolocation was still not as popular as today, Refilmagem would show you movie showtimes near you in a clean way. Everything was automated and we would aggregate movie data from different sources.

H3 2010 - Mentaway

The project that opened all doors.

H3 2014 - Trip Compass

A compass app that helped you find your way around easily and was 100% offline.

H3 2020 - Bullish

A beautifully designed stock market newsletter that delivers market insights to you daily.

H3 2021 - Hotstoks

A stock market API powered by SQL. You can use Hotstoks to screen stocks, track performance, identify trends, and much more.

H3 2022 - Neologin

Coming soon! We are developing a passwordless user authentication service using Stripe. Stay tuned.

H3 March 2022 - Is Password! your password?

My latest solo project: an ebook about password security and how to get started with a password manager.