How Wilhelm Klopp built Simple Poll, one of the most popular Slack apps

I interviewed Wil on the latest episode of Indie Bites! He'shas had an interesting journey as an indie hacker, leaving his comfortable job as a software engineer at GitHub, to creating one of the most popular Slack apps of all time, Simple Poll.

The app has been installed on over 600,000 workspaces and is supporting a full-time income for Wil and his small team. I discuss the story of how he built and grew Simple Poll and what it's like living the dream as a full-time indie hacker.

The episode is kind of split into 2 here, half on building one of the most popular slack apps ever, and half how to address the challenges of being a full-time indie hacker.

The truth is, the growth of Simple Poll was down to the strength of the idea. It’s viral in its nature and the Slack Directory has been responsible for the consistent number of signups over the 4 years since it launched.

Wil admits that he’s done very little traditional marketing, which speaks to how powerful it is to solve a problem and have a market looking for a solution.

Simple Poll was hard to monetise because it’s so simple! But Wil had some clever ideas of evolving the app for larger teams which has led to it being a full-time income for him and now his team.

Which leads us on to the second half of the conversation. After leaving his job as GitHub he thought;

“So now I can just lie in bed and watch YouTube all day. And I did that for a day or two, and then I just felt completely miserable because I was like, wow, this is not what life is about. This is completely unfulfilling.”

“You need to build up this structure for yourself, like set goals for yourself, where you want to go figure out how you want to spend your day to day.”

I liked talking to Wil about this, because he pointed something out that we don’t usually talk about; it’s hard to work full-time on your side project.

Working alongside a full-time job not only gives a reliable income, but it also gives you structure to your day and a support network of colleagues keeping you accountable to get stuff done.

So sometimes it can be quite good to have a job while working on your side projects, until you’re earning enough for it to sustain you.

Full episode here:
indiebites.co/wil