Going bankrupt: How I became an indie hacker

It’s now been almost 10 months since I quit my job to go it alone and become an indie hacker. Here’s my story so far.

My guess is that people become indie hackers in a way similar to the famous quote about going bankrupt: gradually, then suddenly. It was certainly that way for me. The gradual part involved a growing frustration with my situation, the sudden part involved the death of a loved one.

Gradually becoming an indie hacker

2 areas of my life where frustration had slowly been building were my work and a successful side project. I felt like a frog in water that was gradually getting hotter. I knew that I had to get out before the water boiled, but I also felt that there was still some way to go in the “more-or-less” comfortable range.

Let’s start with my job. I was a product owner at a German tech company. In the first few years, my employer was excellent. I learned a ton, enjoyed numerous perks, and loved taking responsibility for various initiatives. But then 3 things happened within a very short space of time: COVID hit, the company was forced to move its office and (most importantly) the company culture began to turn. I’m not going to get into it here, but it rapidly became clear to me that things were not going to improve in the near future.

The other growing source of frustration was a side project in which I was heavily invested — emotionally not financially. The project had been going for 8 years and was fairly successful in a crowded space. The team, however, had turbulence over the years, including some broken friendships. We were now 5 people but it was becoming obvious to me that we had no real future. Only 3 of us could actively code the app because it was written in Elixir, a fairly obscure language at the time. We were also fundamentally misaligned on how to do product development, our perspectives on risk, and our time investments. Most importantly, the money coming in was too little to significantly share between 5 of us. It would have taken a sustained and concerted effort by the team to fix all of this.

One important thing I learned from my side project was that having other people on board is a massive risk. It’s like what the Russian author Leo Tolstoy said about happy families: they are all the same, but the unhappy ones are all unhappy in different ways. There are a lot of ways in which a team can be unhappy, because there are so many variables. It seemed to me that going solo was just so much easier.

Products, products, products

So what product was I going to build?

Actually I had already built up quite a portfolio of other side projects, most of them failures. You can find them on my homepage.

In 2016, when I started working on my latest side-project, it was my most ambitious effort to date. I finally wanted to tackle … drum-roll 🥁 … a database-driven web app. Up until then, I had made static sites and simple Android apps.

This project was Keepthescore.co, which I am now developing full-time as an indie hacker.

In October 2016, I posted the first version of my app on Reddit and was thrilled when my usage numbers went up and to the right from day 1. This continued — very slowly — for the next 4 years. All growth has been organic.

In 2020, whilst still employed at my last job, I took 2 months off from work to focus on Keepthescore.co. This is quite easy to do in Germany. Amongst other things I added a Stripe integration. I guess it was a kind of trial run for what was to come.

Almost immediately revenue was at $500 per month, which was mind-blowing to me. It told me that people were prepared to pay for my product, which was still very rudimentary and didn’t even have a login. Going back to work in a deteriorating culture was extremely painful.

The gradual part was done. Now I just needed an impulse.

Taking the plunge

One of my favourite quotes goes like this:

“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realise we only have one.” – Confucius

My second life began on March 16th, 2020 when my mother unexpectedly died. My father had died of cancer three years earlier. It caused me to radically reassess what I cared about and what I didn’t care about. I realised that I spent a lot of time on things I didn’t really care about.

I decided to clean up my life, to no longer tolerate simmering frustration and bullshit. I decided to quit my job and go it alone. I also decided to sell my share in my side-project and walk away.

Hang on! I hear you call. That’s all very inspiring and commendable, but what about the Benjamins? What about cash? What about a runway?

Well, I inherited enough money to fund myself for 12 months without worrying about paying the bills.

The first 10 months as an indie hacker

In the 10 months that have passed since I quit my job, I have managed to increase revenue to $2,000 per month. My goal for the remaining 2 months is to reach $2,500 per month. My revenue jumps around a lot because I also make custom scoreboards for B2B customers. This is obviously not scalable, but a good way of earning more money. Also, it’s a great way of learning what customers want and are prepared to pay for.

In the next 2 months I also aim to double down on marketing, which I have completely neglected so far.

So far I’ve had some wins worth mentioning, such as:

• Metallica uses my product on their webpage
• I built a B2B scoreboard for Guinness World Records and was mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records
• And I discovered one of my competitors was an SEO scammer, writing a post, and having the post go viral on Hacker News

Anyway, I plan on writing all of this up in another post looking back at the first 12 months. Stay tuned.

Overall, I love my new life in so many ways. I have never been happier or more productive. I am also exercising more than ever before.

I realise that I have been unreasonably lucky so far. I also know that the next 12 months are going to be make-or-break because my runway will be gone and I need to reach “ramen profitability”. Right now I feel confident that I can do it.

Follow me on Twitter and follow my journey.