What was the spark that pushed you to become an indie maker?

I grew up in a family of founders; not internet founders, but all of my ancestors as far back as I can trace ran their own business. So, in a way, it's in my blood.

Long story short, I've slowly come to realize that I too would prefer to answer to myself, chart my own course, and not rely on others for my financial security. While I am not even close to being there, I'm working on it!

The beauty to create code and produce income with solutions that can help people with low barrier to entry.

jQuery and JS frameworks, definitely.

Reading Sahil Lavingia on how he failed to build a billion dollar company.
That level of "failure" after launching a product with a weekend of development in Python? Yes, I'm a software engineer and it led me to go learn Python(Never cared to much for the advice to build things with tech that you already know. Learning a new language was another motivation to start things), have a mindset change about what I can accomplish, and most importantly, it got me to start!

For me, the biggest push was seeing another developer create a successful service that they made to solve their own problem - but also successfully generates revenue by selling it to other developers! That project was Inkdrop, but I've seen multiple others that keep me motivated since, including Fman, MailMate, TablePlus. The list goes on!

Great question! Probably working in a startup company and having autonomy to create and build things that directly impacted business. That experience gave me the taste and as the company grew, the building opportunities plummeted. So away I went. I now work for Zapier where building is integral to my job. Zapier also fits quite nicely with my indie maker ideas 👌🏻

After years of freelancing (making stuff for others) and being active in open source (making stuff for free) I figured I could make a product of my own for a change.

Turns out you need more than programming skills to be a maker. I suck at design and marketing is hard! Well, I'm here now, so I might as well learn :)

I always was doing side projects on my own because I loved the autonomy I got. It helped me learn at my own pace and make mistakes that I could blame only on myself. This summer though was the first time I was completely on my own as a maker, and I was pushed to do that because I created thegoodstartup.com, which is a blog that helps people learn about companies that make a difference and do what matters