Code and Bootstrapping Podcast
from offline smallbiz founder to dev to tech founder
There are things to share about coding (and bootstrapping) that don't fit very well into my normal screencasting format.
For my 3rd interview, I had a guest who aligned with the very core of both the podcast's and Alchemist Camp's audience of Elixir developers!
@arvidkahl was the technical half of a two person team that bootstrapped a SaaS written in the tech stack I teach from 0 to 55k MMR and then an successful acquisition in two years. I've had good feedback from all of my interviews, but this time it was overwhelming! Multiple Alchemist Camp customers emailed me about it, someone else shared it on a subreddit I don't follow and the average watch time on YouTube is over 10 minutes.
I think there were a few keys to setting up this interview and then it being such a success.
- Arvid and I had previously argued (amicably) about how much time to invest in devops for an indiehack. This was a great entry point into talking about the startup.
- I've already got a decent luck surface area when it comes to the Elixir dev world because I've been producing educational resources for almost two years.
- Feedback Panda also had a large luck surface area on IH, due to Arvid's partner Danielle interviewing on the huge IH podcast. That's a major reason they were on my radar.
- Due to chance, the company Arvid and Danielle built targeted the one market I know better than any other in the world.
- Seeing this great opportunity, I leapt at it right away!
I recorded a 2nd interview. This time, my guest was Mubashar Iqbal—a multi-time Product Hunt maker of the year. At the time of the recording, he had already released 67 products and most had 100+ upvotes!
This was a milestone because I didn't know Mubs. He's exactly the kind of person I wanted to meet and talk to, and I wouldn't have had an excuse to if I didn't have a podcast! Meeting like-minded, interesting people is the primary reason I started a podcast at all!
The way I reached out to him is I saw him post an open invitation on IH to go on podcasts and I took him up on it. That was it!
I recorded a 7th episode. The previous one, on using heatmaps and surveys was the first that didn't really feel like a milestone.
This time was, though. I interviewed my friend @jklepatch. Like me, he entered the tech industry mid-career and like me, he runs a YouTube channel and educational site for engineers. His focus is blockchain, but his experience picking up numerous new technical skills is great for my audience.
I finished a 5th episode. It's about feeling confused as a developer, why the feeling continues despite gaining technical skills and why a lack of confusion could be a bad sign.
This was a fairly key insight for me when I was working at Groupon and realizing that as I learned more, I still spent nearly the same percentage of my time confused as I had months or even years earlier.
I finished a 4th episode. This time it was about some ideas drawn from PG's "do things that don't scale", seeing the early Teespring team and listening to Jason Roberts on the Techzing podcast talk about building out the early versions of Uber on an incredibly simple server setup (and incrementally rebuild it as they grew into a gigantic company).
I think the concept "Scalability Arrogance" can help a lot of indie hackers who would otherwise waste their limited resources on problems they'll never have.
https://alchemist.camp/code-bootstrapping/scalability-arrogance
I finished a 3rd episode. This time it was about some ideas from the classic Kernighan and Pike book, The Practice of Programming. I've also changed some settings in Audacity and managed to get much better sound quality without changing mics.
Automation has played a pretty key role in my ability to get Alchemist Camp off the ground while broke and with serious repetitive stress injuries that stop me from spending anywhere near as much time at the computer as I could a couple of years ago.
I finished a 2nd episode. I definitely need a better microphone for podcasting than screencasting.
In this one, I talk about the single largest reason Alchemist Camp has worked—frugality.
Leaving the San Francisco / Silicon Valley area to be a digital nomad and drastically cut rent, using open source and very inexpensive equipment and spending under $10/month total for a revenue-generating site... it was about as lean an operation as it gets.
It's been a year since starting the Alchemist Camp YouTube channel and about half a year since starting the paid service. It's time for a new experiment.
In this episode, I give a brief introduction and share my motivations and plans for this podcast.
This podcast is an experiment. I've created three feeds, of which one is Code and Bootstrapping.