From Anxiety to Freedom: How Everyone Can Have Their Own Small Business in the AI Era | A Conversation with Saito, Co-founder of Indie Hacker and Podwise
June 16, 2024
"Crossroads" seeks out, interviews, and brings together proactive actors in the AI era. This episode's guest, Saito, is exactly such a person — he hosts podcasts, builds startups, writes books, and has built one of China's most active indie developer communities, gathering a large group of similarly proactive individuals.
Saito is the co-founder of the podcast Hardcore Hackers and the AI-powered podcast product Podwise. Hardcore Hackers is a podcast about indie hacker stories, featuring many compelling tales of independent developers. Podwise, meanwhile, is an AI-based podcast product that, according to public information, reached $12,000 in ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) within just two months. Not long ago, Saito and his team distilled their entrepreneurial insights into a book: Hardcore Hackers: The Journey to $12,000 ARR in Two Months.
In this podcast episode, we spoke with Saito about the Hardcore Hackers team's experiences with podcasting, building an AI-powered podcast product, and writing a book. What left the deepest impression on us was Saito and his team's synthesis of how indie developers should approach marketing — extraordinarily valuable for anyone in this space.
We also discussed Saito's observations on the indie developer community and asked him to share some success stories, hoping these narratives might encourage more people while offering rational analysis and positive energy. If you're looking to build your own small business in the AI era, this episode offers plenty of inspiration.
🎬 Timeline:
02:06 Part 1: Introducing Hardcore Hackers
02:42 How the three founders met and their first entrepreneurial experience
04:32 Why they decided to start Hardcore Hackers
06:25 What changed, and finding inner peace in starting up again
07:00 Where to observe the daily lives of indie developers
09:07 The origin of "Hardcore Interviews," their indie developer story series
10:23 Part 2: Writing a book from entrepreneurial experience
11:55 A small book distilled from real experience: how the podcast app Podwise reached $12,000 ARR in two months
13:40 What is the podcast app Podwise?
15:55 Deep dive into the book's contents — which experiences were learned from scratch
16:25 Key lessons on marketing and growth for indie developers
17:00 Go where leverage is low for marketing
17:31 Go where there's a forum: engage, reply with substantive content, capture long-tail traffic
25:08 Three principles of content marketing: delightful, relatable, useful to me
26:23 Five must-know things about large language models
28:45 The process of finding inspiration for Podwise
29:51 Ideas abandoned during product consideration
32:18 Why Podwise was ultimately built
37:40 Key steps in Podwise's search for product-market fit
40:05 Do indie hackers no longer need product managers?
41:42 For an AI product, it first has to be a product
42:32 Part 3: Observations on the indie developer community
43:37 How much can China's highest-earning indie developer make in a year?
44:27 Anxiety and freedom — the state of being an indie developer
45:44 Indie developer success story: Owen, founder of Immersive Translate
46:31 Indie developer success story: Daoge, founder of Minimalist Clock
47:54 Common traits among indie developers
50:00 The biggest challenges indie developers face and how to overcome them
53:42 Great products that haven't yet been discovered
55:34 Common characteristics of products with insufficient marketing
57:07 The benefits of becoming a KOL yourself
58:56 On the fence about becoming an indie developer KOL? Start outputting content immediately, then build in public
1:02:07 Classic cases of building in public
1:05:50 @levelsio — practitioner of indie developer spirit and commerce
🚦 Welcome to subscribe to "Crossroads," where we follow the industry transformations and new entrepreneurial opportunities brought by the new wave of AI technology. Crossroads is Steve Jobs's metaphor for Apple — standing at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, where great products are born. AI is transforming industries across the board. We seek out, interview, and bring together "proactive actors" in the AI era, exploring and embracing new changes and new possibilities alongside them.
👦🏻 Host Koji: Co-founder of The Fair and Tangdao, and someone actively diving into AI. Follow him on Jike: [A Self-Introduction from Koji]
👧🏻 Host Ronghui: Works at a tech VC, former Silicon Valley correspondent for Yicai Weekly. Follow her on Jike
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