I interviewed Courtland Allen on the Indie Bites podcast

So many members of the indie maker community look up to Courtland, me included. He’s one of the first people to nurture a truly welcoming community around something where we all usually work hours on our own.

Courtland was at the top of my list to join as a guest on the podcast and he didn't disappoint. He was generous with his time and gave excellent answers to my questions.

We covered a lot of ground in the 15-minute episode.

The episode starts off with something I didn't know too much about, which is how Indie Hackers started. I was also interested in finding out what Courtland viewed as an 'indie hacker' which he defined really well.

Just 9 months into starting IH, Courtland sold the business to Stripe. This raised the question; is he still an indie hacker? We cover this off a little bit, but I was interested in what it's like to build a business like this from within Stripe. Courtland spoke about how it was a mutually beneficial relationship where the goals are completely aligned. If IH inspires people to start profitable businesses and uses Stripe, then Stripe makes money.

We then turned to how we can make our businesses successful as indie hackers. Mainly choosing and validating our ideas by finding problems that need to be solved. Courtland goes into quite a bit of detail in this section and I found it the most interesting.

The conversation rounds off talking about how to stay motivated as a one-person team, which generally revolves around having social accountability. This is where paid communities have started becoming popular. Places like Weekend Club have been instrumental in me shipping my side projects.

I enjoyed the process of researching, recording and editing this podcast. I think you'll enjoy listening:

https://share.transistor.fm/s/85d2eb9c

Let me know what you think!