Indie Bites

Ben Stokes is the indie hacker behind Tiny Projects, where he shares the ups and downs of starting small indie businesses. He's created a ice cream business and a cookie dough business amongst other things and his most recent project, Mailoji, made $10k in a weekend. We speak about what it's like to be a founder running a physical business, how to sell your project, the joy in starting small things and how to go viral on hacker news.

Show Notes

Ben Stokes a full stack developer and entrepreneur based in Bristol in the UK, who's started an ice cream business and cookie dough business amongst other things. Ben, like many indie hackers, has a bunch of small side project ideas, but not enough time to do them. So he started Tiny Projects. Tiny Projects documents his progress with these small ideas, launching 6 projects since May last year, including One Item Store, which he sold, and his most recent, Mailoji, which has just crossed $10k in revenue.

Sponsor
Thank you to today's sponsor, VEED.io, who are hiring developers, designers, product people and more. So if you're looking to join a growing bootstrapper-friendly business, reach out to their CEO, Sabba (s@veed.io), or take a look at their published roles here.

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What we covered in this episode:
  • Why Ben started an ice cream business
  • Buying an ice cream machine for £700 after a few pints
  • Growing a cookie dough business to £13k a month
  • Why Ben started Tiny Projects
  • The six projects he's worked on
  • How to sell a project for $5,000, that only made $2
  • Selling $10k of emoji domain names
  • How to go viral on hacker news
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What is Indie Bites?

Short, bite-sized conversations with indie hackers that have started small, profitable and bootstrapped businesses. You'll learn how they come up with ideas, what they do to validate, find those first customers and make a sustainable income. Episodes every Tuesday.