I was frustrated with how hard it was to find real information about starting an online business. Everyone talked about raising venture capital, but I wanted to bootstrap. I wanted to see real numbers from real founders.

The Insight

Founders love to share their stories, but there was no central place for bootstrapped businesses to do so. Hacker News celebrated VC-funded startups. I wanted to celebrate profitable indie businesses.

The MVP

I started by interviewing founders and publishing their stories with real revenue numbers. The format was simple: tell me about your business, how you got your first customers, and share your revenue. No fluff, just facts.

SEO as the Growth Engine

Each interview was optimized for search. "How [Founder] built [Product] to $X/month" became a template that performed incredibly well. Within months, I was getting thousands of organic visitors.

The Stripe Acquisition

After about a year, Stripe acquired Indie Hackers. They saw it as a way to support the entrepreneurial community that often used Stripe for payments. I continued running it independently within Stripe.

The Community

Today, Indie Hackers has millions of monthly visitors and an active forum where founders help each other. It's become the go-to place for bootstrapped founders to learn and connect.