IndieBeers
London's #1 Indie Hackers pub meetup.
After running 12 successful meetups bringing together London Indie Hackers, we merged with our good friends Indie London to create a fully integrated community experience.
Under the banner of Indie London we now have:
- a newsletter
- a Slack
- 2x events
- and much more to come.
Read the full story here:
https://www.indiehackers.com/product/indie-london/indie-london-indiebeers--MBcgFdu-B4cZbfEY-3W
EDIT: https://ramenclub.so
This week The IndieBeers Gazette (our newsletter) went out to 178 people, along with our latest London founder and Indie Hacker interview with @sabba, Co-founder of VEED.IO along with @timurmamedov.
Find out how he got to $52k MRR below: https://www.indiebeers.co/interviews/sabba-keynejad-veed-interview.
These two were coming to our IndieBeers meetup when they had $0 MRR, so it's been incredible to watch their journey.
For more content and interviews like this, you can also sign up to the IndieBeers Gazette here:
https://indiebeers.us19.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=013f8c415985920d4809b92cf&id=51a988b275
Any questions? Sabba and I will be in the comments all day 👇
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Great read. Long live Indie Beers. Inspiring numbers Sabba and Tim.
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Thanks Harry!
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Any questions? @sabba and I will be in the comments all day 👇
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Thanks for doing the interview @charlierward
My co-founder @timurmamedov and I have been going to @charlierward event indie beers for over a year. We have received a lot of help and support from the London IH community. If anyone has any questions please ask away, I am will be checking in here all-day! Have a good weekend! Sabba
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Awesome interview! Really inspirational journey and plenty of actionable advice included in @sabba's answers. Great job @charlierward! 🤟
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Thanks @EdwardThomas. Grateful to have strong subject matter for these interviews!
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Great interview and incredible what the team have built. I like to think of VEED as the quickest way to create GaryVee style videos, I remember using some stitch-together method before I found this
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Thanks mate. It's a great tool isn't it?
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Great story thanks for sharing
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My pleasure!
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This week The IndieBeers Gazette (our newsletter) went out to 167 people, along with our latest London founder interview.
@Ramy is the founder of PageFlows.com, providing best in class user flow examples and ScreenJar.com, letting you request screen recordings from users & teammates with a simple link.
Find out how he got to £4,000 MRR already below:
https://www.indiebeers.co/interviews/page-flows-ramy-khuffash-indiebeers
For more content and interviews like this, you can also sign up to the IndieBeers Gazette here:
https://indiebeers.us19.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=013f8c415985920d4809b92cf&id=51a988b275
(Full disclosure - Ramy has previously had an Indie Hackers interview, before he'd built Screen Jar. It may cover some similar ground regarding Page Flows)
IndieBeers is London's #1 Indie Hackers pub meetup. Due to COVID-19, we've made it remote for the foreseeable future, with details announced today. You can sign-up here:
https://live.remo.co/e/indiebeers-remote-london-meetup-/register
We're using Remo.co, as we think it best re-creates the experience of attending IndieBeers, which is always an informal event with no speakers, bells or whistles.
All you need to do is grab a (virtual) drink, join a table and get involved.
Conversation starters:
1/ How makers can create tools to help local communities and hospitals deal with COVID-19.
2/ The future opportunities and challenges of remote work.
Key details:
- Thursday March 26th
- 6pm-8pm GMT
- Free entry
- Max 50 attendees
- BYOB :)
Remember to RSVP! Catch you there friends.
All sponsorship profits will be donated to https://covid19responsefund.org/ EDIT - I couldn't find a paying sponsor, so donated $100 of my own money.
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This comment was deleted 6 years ago
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Hey Shiva! Nothing that does specifically what I want so far, but I’m open to suggestions.
I could host some kind of video conferencing session on Zoom/Whereby for pretty cheap, but it’s difficult to manage when you exceed like 15 people.
Tools like Remo and Hopin are built more specifically for managing events, including extras like:
- registration pages
- reminders
- virtual tables you can move between
- sponsorship opportunities
- broadcasting with chat
- customisable branding
I’d love a cheaper platform that does these things, but haven’t found one so far.
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This comment was deleted 6 years ago
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Yesterday the IndieBeers newsletter went out to 156 people, along with our latest London founder interview.
wellpaid.io is a transparent jobs board for high paying tech roles, and Chris Villa's already reached 4,500 job applications per month.
Find out how he did it below:
You can also sign up to the IndieBeers Gazette below, our monthly newsletter containing:
- London founder interviews
- news on upcoming events
- products and content from London Indie Hackers
The only constant is change.
After sending the first IndieBeers newsletter in November 2018, much is different. We've gone from:
2 events completed -> 16
7 newsletter subscribers -> 135
20 Meetup members -> 475
The sheer volume of great conversations and stories since it begun is harder to quantify. And that's where the future lies.
The vision is for IndieBeers to be not only a meetup, but also a hub for information, inspiration & tools for bootstrapped London founders.
The initial updates include:
🛠 Monthly interviews with London founders - starting with Andy Cloke of Influence Grid on how he built a TikTok influencer search engine. https://www.indiebeers.co/interviews/building-a-808-mrr-tiktok-influencer-search-engine
🤖 New IndieBeers.co website built in Webflow - I used Carrd previously (and still love it), but needed a CMS for the new version. Plus I just wanted to learn it.
👄 Prettier newsletter - nicer layout, more of an IndieBeers community focus and messaging board for local makers e.g. looking to hire someone. Check it out:
https://mailchi.mp/4f57f837ae18/indiebeers-monthly-february?e=[UNIQID]
I'm setting myself a target of 1,000 subscribers by end of year, but ultimately if it doesn't help inform, inspire and engage the London community, none of it matters.
So any feedback you have, big or small, let me know ❤️️
I'm delighted to announced we've secured our first corporate sponsor - FE International (we had an indie sponsor, Folloh, a few months ago).
FE International is the market leading SaaS M&A advisory firm. You may know them from the recommendations of Patrick McKenzie (Patio11 on Hacker News) and other Indie Hacker members. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/12/30/kalzumeus-software-year-in-review-2016
Nikita Pashkin of FE International has been a friend of IndieBeers since the very beginning, attending nearly every month so far. In addition to being very supportive and knowledgeable, he's just good fun to have around. So shout out to Nikita for helping me put this together. Plus the wonderful Andrea Ferguson for guiding me through the process.
The sponsorship is $500 to cover:
- a round of drinks for December attendees (booked for Thursday 19th)
- costs to put on IndieBeers
- future investment in growth and improvements
Happy to answer any questions.
Last week we hit a cool new milestone - 400 members on Meetup.
While we're not exactly SXSW just yet, when I started this in September 2018 I never imagined we could reach anywhere close to this many people.
Here's to the next 400 members :D
Also, remember to RSVP to the next IndieBeers if you're in London this Thursday: https://www.meetup.com/Indie-Beers/events/266104158/
WHAT
On many occasions, people have told me they want to work together more in IRL.
So today, I’m pleased to introduce Weekend Club. A new experiment by IndieBeers.
It isn't a hackathon. It's more working on your own projects, with other Indie Hackers there.
To stay accountable, to help each other, to meet like-minded people.
London’s already one of the world's most active cities for Indie Hackers, but it has so much further to grow.
I’m hoping by working together more often, we can build stronger connections, and increase this early momentum we have.
HOW
I'm treating the first version as an experiment, so created a simple landing page using Carrd and Mailchimp.
I'll see how many sign-ups I get to gauge interest, and also help me decide what sort of venue is suitable.
To market it, I went through 4x main channels:
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IndieBeers Newsletter: This currently goes out to 93 people each month, including 5x interesting/useful links I think my audience would like. I included a summary and link to the landing page here.
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IndieBeers Twitter: I wrote a tweetstorm about what we've made and why, which I also retweeted with my personal account.
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Personal Connections: I just sent it to some of my friends who I thought would be interested.
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Indie Hackers: Well, I'm posting here too :)
I'll provide an update as things progress of course.
ADDENDUM:
There is more I could do to market this, but I want to restrict it to channels that are Indie Hackers heavy, especially early on.
The whole point is that Indie Hackers want to work with... other Indie Hackers.
So it would be foolish to cast the net too wide. Which is why I avoided Linkedin, despite the fact I probably have the most reach there.
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Signed up, I like the idea!
I've never been available to join you guys at IndieBeer, unfortunately. This may help :-)-
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Shame you haven’t been able to make it so far, looking forward to (hopefully) meeting :)
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Nice, immediate thought looking at this is - when will people be able to host other local weekend clubs?
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Sweet. Signed up. Also RSVP'd to the next London meetup. Looking forward to meet folk here.
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Awesome - looking forward to meeting.
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Excited by this.
Where you're going to find the space 👀That'll be interesting
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Me too dude!
I’m looking into it and have some leads. I don’t think it’ll be an issue, especially while it’s small.
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Like coworking for indie hackers? Just on the weekend? I've been thinking of similar for IH Brighton, can't do weekends though (kids stuff), but was thinking of doing coworking days during the week.
Keep us posted!
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Yeh kinda :) Focused on people who work odd hours or haven’t made the leap to full time on their side project yet.
I think it could work during the week also. Have seen more enthusiasm for this than I honestly expected.
Will defo keep you updated!
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After 10 months of existence, we've hit 300 members on Meetup.
The main channels for marketing IndieBeers are as follows:
Acquisition:
- Slack channels
- Indie Hackers
- Linkedin (rarely)
Retention:
- Email newsletter
Both:
- Meetup.com
- Instagram (rarely)
My next goal is to grow email newsletter subscriptions to a similar number by end of year, so I'm less reliant on a particular third party (Meetup).
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Nice! I've been consuming your meetup info because I started one in my area.
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Oh cool, an Indie Hackers one? Is there anything in particular you wanted to know?
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Yes, Indie Hackers, but the area doesn't have too many of us so I'm trying to get any hacker/maker type people interested. Do you have the same location each time?
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Great! Where if you don't mind me asking? I've tried to consolidate my thinking here: https://makermag.com/2019/03/18/growing-an-indie-hackers-meetup
We do host it in the same place consistently now. We moved a couple of times because the previous venues wouldn't let me book an area or were too busy/loud. I'd suggest experimenting with a few until you find the 'right' spot (within reason).
For smaller areas it'll always take time to get going, but don't let it dishearten you. I'd say focus on quality first, and size will come with time. Better to have 5 attendees who enjoy the meetup and help each other than 20+ attendees who don't really care.
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I'm in the Sacramento, California area. Right now I'm testing different areas and hosting twice a month to stay in members minds. I'm also for quality over quantity.
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