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Interviewing indie founders about their journey and their products. itslaunchday.com
Dagobert (00:00)
Okay, I'm recording right away, not even say hi almost. Yeah, no warm up. Yeah, because it was more fun. So there's a thunderstorm coming to you, right? Is that it?
Maxime Dupré (00:02)
Damn, no warm up. Just straight up recording.
Yeah, I don't know if it's going to come though. It looks a bit too sunny right now for a thunderstorm. But I got the alert on my phone and I was like, this might be fun if it starts pouring.
Dagobert (00:18)
I see, I see.
you got alert just for rain? Who are you?
Maxime Dupré (00:27)
No, got alert for severe thunderstorm on my phone.
Dagobert (00:32)
wow, it's gonna, so it happens in Canada to have this? It's actually a thing.
Maxime Dupré (00:39)
Yeah, sure.
Dagobert (00:42)
I never had that in my life. In Lille, we have no crazy weather conditions.
Maxime Dupré (00:46)
Really,
there's no thunderstorms. Never.
Dagobert (00:49)
There
is, but nothing that requires you to do anything. Anyway.
⁓
Maxime Dupré (00:59)
How are you?
Dagobert (00:59)
Well, I'm good, I'm tired, you know, it's my, how much, seven? Yeah, seven call of the day. And you know, I realized it's so stupid. I do eight calls in the same day. I should just do a live stream instead of do eight recordings. And I think that would be, that makes sense, because you know, it's launch day.
Maxime Dupré (01:03)
that
Yeah, that's a great idea.
Yeah,
would also hype up the lunch date, which would be great. More marketing.
Dagobert (01:28)
Yeah, it's the launch day
and there's FOMO for the discount codes.
and the whole thing, because yeah, this count code should only work for a few days to create FOMO. I will tell that before the launch to make sure your code are good. yeah, I mean, it's cool to work on this project. Like it's always, I have new ideas all the time and it's moving fast. So it's really cool. So yeah, it's exciting. We'll see how it goes.
Maxime Dupré (01:56)
And you have like you have such a large audience and there are so many people replying to your tweets that you can almost validate an idea instantly because you can tell by the response.
Dagobert (02:06)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I noticed that.
Yeah, yeah, it's quick. It's quick. can see. I can see, for example, all these videos right now that we do. Not a crazy response like this podcast. It's not. mean, it's the beginning. Podcast is long term. Some people are starting. There's some guy I saw today that say he's listening to every episode already. So I mean, at least he's listening every day. So that's like cool. But.
Maxime Dupré (02:32)
What's his name?
Dagobert (02:34)
Oh, it's not a real name. It's some anime profile pic and shit. I forgot. I just saw him. Yeah, shout out to you, mister. Yeah, but so, you know, maybe that's not the right thing. Maybe podcast isn't the right thing. Maybe the right thing is live streaming. And it makes so much sense. It's a launch day. It's an event. So, yeah, I think for this launch day we'll do both because I'm already too deep, too deep, you know, anyway.
Maxime Dupré (02:39)
Alright, well shout out to you anime person.
Dagobert (03:03)
So I don't want to have some founders that have the video and some that don't have it would be unfair. So, you know, doing the video for everyone, but we'll do also live stream and get a feel for it. We'll see, you know, who shows up.
Maxime Dupré (03:15)
Okay,
so you're gonna do live streaming with everyone, like the 15 or 12 people that are part of the lunch date? Okay, yeah, I'm down for that.
Dagobert (03:22)
Yeah. Yeah. Like basically,
awesome. I don't know how well organized. Maybe it was just going to be like, there's going to be like a timeline and people can take a slot. Kind of like today. Basically today that's what it was. It just that me and you, but like it's basically people took a slot and then they talk about their product. So that's just literally, it's just, oh my God. I feel stupid now because I'm like, it's obvious. yeah. So yeah, man.
Maxime Dupré (03:35)
Yeah.
Alright.
Ha
I don't know if
you remember this, like two or three years ago, we had a call together. You were doing like those random calls with people. Just, I don't know, maybe you felt lonely or something or just wanted to talk with other indie makers. But yeah, we had a call. Crazy, it feels like another era, yeah.
Dagobert (03:55)
Yeah, yeah, I do.
You know that's-
Timeline.
That is, but you know, that's one of the secrets. You know, cause there's always like,
secret play happening, I mean and One of the reason I grew on Twitter was that I did that thing three years ago I was calling people a lot and I probably went on to 50 or 100 calls few per week just with people I started befriending on Twitter and I mean I just Yeah, I did I think 50 I don't know then it was exhausting but the
Maxime Dupré (04:44)
I didn't know you did that much.
Dagobert (04:54)
The secret thing that happened that I didn't realize back then because I was just wanting to meet people because yeah, I felt lonely. I have no indie maker friend here. So it's fucking annoying. So yeah. And so the secret thing is once you connect to people on that level on social, it's a completely different game. You know, it's not the same when you see someone you talk to, you speak to, you have a connection with. You know, the reaction to their content is completely different.
Maxime Dupré (05:13)
Right.
Dagobert (05:24)
⁓ that
Maxime Dupré (05:24)
So do you think
your growth was because of that or because I felt like it was because you had this mean niche, you were the only one doing it and memes are very engaging. So it was.
Dagobert (05:36)
Yeah, it's both. It's
everything. It's everything. like, you know, in my Twitter course, I used to say it's really about being social. It's social media. And so I tell people you should just be friends with people. And I give this example. Imagine you go to a party and you know nobody and you start talking about your ideas. Nobody gives a shit. It's not because your ideas are bad. It's because you don't know anybody.
Maxime Dupré (05:40)
Right.
Dagobert (06:01)
But if you make friends and you talk about your idea, then even if your ideas are shit, people will support you. It's terrible, but it's a bit true. And of course you need to have both. And I'm just saying, once you really have a connection with someone. So anyway, the secret play here is like, even if launch day fails, if I interview 100 founders, let's say half of them are active on Twitter, that's 50 people who help my engagement long-term. Just like the secret kind of like interesting thing.
secondhand benefit that I get from doing lunch day and these interviews and people don't think about that. So I think that's interesting.
Maxime Dupré (06:41)
Just making friends. That's the key.
Dagobert (06:44)
Yeah,
that's, and you know, I've never been this person. I was always alone in school, like really, like lonely as fuck. And even here, I'm lonely as fuck here. I'm not kidding. I have one friend, I didn't see him in two weeks. ⁓
Maxime Dupré (06:53)
Really?
Where, so
is this a small city where you're?
Dagobert (07:04)
Not too small, it's like ⁓ 250... 1000? ⁓
Maxime Dupré (07:09)
Okay.
Are you but are you near a big city? Like isn't just like the suburbs but the big city is right next to you? ⁓ okay.
Dagobert (07:13)
No, it's the big city. It's the big city. Yeah. In France, big
cities are like maximum, I mean, except Paris, it's going to be 500, 1 million for the biggest. Paris is like way more, but that's Paris. Paris is very unique. So, no, it's a big city. It's a number five or number seven city in terms of like importance. So, yeah, it's quite a big city. ⁓ It's just that it's smaller because it's France.
But yeah, so yeah, have basically no... But that's why I spend so much time on Twitter, because I have friends. That's where I have my friends basically. And in a way, it's sad, and in a way it's cool.
Maxime Dupré (07:56)
It's also
addictive. That's one reason why people spend their days on Twitter. It's is because it's addictive. You get a dopamine spike every tweet, every like every comment. It's like an endless little rat wheel. I'm starting to get in that rat wheel again. I remember I was in that rat wheel like two or three years ago. Yeah.
Dagobert (08:03)
Yeah, we're lonely and
Fuck yeah.
Yeah, yeah it is.
Three years ago, two years ago. Yeah,
So how... And so you... Yeah, I remember you... Like I came back before you, because I left for six months or so, you left for longer. How was it for you?
Maxime Dupré (08:31)
Yeah, yeah, I left for like, I don't know if it's two or three years, but yeah, I completely stopped building completely stopped posting on Twitter. I think you kept posting on Twitter the whole time, right?
Dagobert (08:45)
I stopped for 6 months and for 6 other months I was just posting...
kind of boring things, like I wasn't inspired. I was just still trying to make some memes, but it was completely, my heart wasn't into it. So I had basically one year of mostly on and off, not really there, not really active. Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (09:07)
I see. You don't seem to have lost a lot of momentum. I remember when I came back on Twitter, was like I had, I still had like 10 K followers, but it doesn't mean anything. Like if you, if you stop posting for, for two, three years, you might as well have zero followers because I was posting in the void. And to some extent, I still like, I'm still posting in the void. I'm nowhere near the, but it's like, it's fine.
Dagobert (09:21)
no, yeah it doesn't.
Yeah, you know what helped me, because I burned out from Inpart Twitter last time.
Yeah, you know what helps me? The shitposting now. Yeah, shitposting, that helps me so much, Yeah, because like, you know...
Maxime Dupré (09:48)
Ha
Yeah, you just,
when you start posting, like post one tweet a minute for like 10 minutes straight. And then I see you the next day. ⁓
Dagobert (09:58)
Yeah. yeah,
how is it for you? I have no idea how it is for other people, the experience.
Maxime Dupré (10:07)
Yeah, it seems like you're just posting a bunch of tweets in a row and then I don't know you go to sleep and then I don't hear about you for like eight hours and then it's shit posting again.
Dagobert (10:17)
Yeah,
Yeah. Yeah, you know, I basically swing the pendulum, how we say. Like, I used to be so, like with my course, it's all about strategy. And it's awesome. When you're starting, I think it's very helpful because it's scary to just jump into, know, like I do now. Just like, yeah, you know, I just... Yeah, it's scary. It's very scary to do.
Maxime Dupré (10:31)
Right.
just brain vomiting on the internet.
Good.
Dagobert (10:45)
It's very, very scary. So at first it's good to have a strategy like I used to do, but I was so obsessed with strategy. I was doing like two posts a day at the perfect time, replying in the morning, replying to everybody, you know, and that was awesome. like, eventually that becomes very stressful. And the only way to keep my addiction to social media without burning out is to real post, real post in...
shitpost a little bit. I mostly try to real post. I don't really like shitposts but ⁓ I don't lie, don't invent things, I don't troll.
Maxime Dupré (11:21)
So
tell me what's the difference between real post and shit both. Never heard this term.
Dagobert (11:28)
No, I just made it, but I guess shitposts can be somebody trolling. Shitposts can be somebody lying. know, peaks, just to get engagement, you know? ⁓ And for me, it's more like saying things that might make me look stupid or make people uncomfortable, but that I really think, you know, ⁓ or that are silly, but that are real experiences.
Maxime Dupré (11:34)
I see.
Thank
Right.
Dagobert (11:58)
and
Maxime Dupré (11:59)
That's
true. There are definitely some of your tweets that made me cringe. But then you have to ask yourself like, why am I cringing at this? What about myself? Am I afraid to say that this makes me cringe? I think if you cringe, it's a problem you have not not a problem about the other person.
Dagobert (12:15)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. 100%.
my God. Yeah. And so what helps is that once you start doing that,
I don't know, it's not scary for me anymore to be on social media. It's not scary. And you know, I had a lot to lose because I had all these followers and you think it means something, but it's awesome. Like I was really ready to lose. That's why I started posting like this, because I'm like, you know what? Fuck this. Like it's not going to save me and it's going to change my life. Like it's okay if I lose everything. If everybody hates me, it's okay. And once I became comfortable with that, I just started real posting.
And now, I had never enjoyed social media basically before now. It wasn't... Yeah. Like, it was cool. I like making memes. I really liked it. But what I didn't enjoy is like, I was always stressed. I was always afraid what people are going to think. Am I getting engagement? And I still think about it, of course. But what I'm saying is like...
Maxime Dupré (13:03)
Really. Creating memes was
Dagobert (13:27)
What I noticed when I'm 100 % real and opening up whatever I think, sometimes it's going to be more silly, sometimes it's to be more deep. But when I do that, then I don't know, like when you're being real, people will respond to you real a lot. And like it doesn't matter to have a billion people seeing your tweets because if five people appreciate it or even one person appreciate it, you feel seen, you feel connected.
Maxime Dupré (13:47)
Yeah, for sure.
Dagobert (13:57)
And I think what drives you crazy on social media is you keep posting, but you always feel alone. But when you start being real, you can actually bridge that. At least that's what I feel now. And so even with a few connections, you're like, wow, this is cool. Like, this is making you feel good. But what's difficult is when you try to go viral, you think of like, I'm going to make this thread. It's going to take five hours. And you post this shit and it gets zero views. Then it's fucking annoying.
⁓ You know? So yeah.
Maxime Dupré (14:27)
Right.
Yeah, that's those are two different ways of posting. But I think let's say let's say you weren't feeling lonely or you had a I don't know, a really good ⁓ real life group of friends that you saw that you saw off. I don't think the like strategy approach would feel that lonely because that is just a game you're playing online and you have like your real
Dagobert (14:44)
Imagine you had a good life.
Maxime Dupré (15:01)
social life connections.
Dagobert (15:02)
wow,
yeah, that makes sense. never thought of that. Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (15:08)
But to be honest, I haven't thought about it that deep, that deeply for me. It's just like, it's just a great way to keep myself motivated by seeing other people post about their businesses, getting results. And then it makes you like, some people don't like comparing themselves to like more, more successful people. But I think it's actually good for you as it drives you to do more.
Dagobert (15:19)
Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (15:37)
And ⁓ it expands your horizons and makes you think larger because sometimes you're stuck in your little bubble and you think that you're doing the right thing.
but you could be doing so much more. It's just you don't realize it.
Dagobert (15:54)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, following Peter Lavol's does that for me 100%. Every time I'm like, holy shit, he went further than I thought was possible. You know? That's crazy. Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (15:58)
I mean, there's a dark side to it as well, but.
Right. You're probably thinking
of the five coded game he did.
Dagobert (16:15)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the fly thing.
Maxime Dupré (16:16)
like the airplane thing.
Cause I remember
when he did that, you started posting about him a lot.
Dagobert (16:24)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, that was insane. But that was also because I was more depressed and I was triggering. That was so triggering. And so I posted about that, about being triggered. I'm like, I'm jealous, I'm jealous, I'm jealous. I made a big post about that. Because I think a lot of us are, and it's good to say it. It's like helping people heal or something. ⁓
Maxime Dupré (16:26)
It is insane.
Am
I jealous?
Dagobert (16:49)
I mean, envious, you know, I was envious of him 100%. And I made a post about I'm envious because of this. And I made a post saying I'm envious like 20 times.
Maxime Dupré (16:51)
Envyous?
Yeah, I remember that tweet. But is envy bad? I mean, guess jealousy is bad, but envy could
Dagobert (17:06)
I mean I said jealousy but
that's because in France jealousy is the English word for envy and envy is the reverse. I said jealousy but I meant envy.
Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (17:24)
I just think all of it is motivating.
Dagobert (17:29)
Yeah, sometimes I'm just annoyed though, but I see what you mean. Yeah, sometimes I'm just like, my God, shut up. Not with him especially, but like, you know, yeah.
Maxime Dupré (17:39)
I mean, sometimes I'm frustrated, but it's never ⁓ directed outwards. It's always like, I'm always like, if I'm frustrated, it's against me or my inabilities or somehow some limiting belief that I have that is blocking me or whatnot.
Dagobert (17:59)
Yes,
that's the wise way to look at it because it's always that, 100%. Yeah. But sometimes, you know, when you see...
Maxime Dupré (18:10)
Yeah, at end of the day, just
think it's like volume will negate all of that. That is a famous saying from Alex Ramozzi. Like if you just keep doing it and you don't stop, which I did for two years. Anyway, that's a different story. But let's say I did not stop for that two years. I'd be having crazy momentum right now. Crazy momentum.
Dagobert (18:23)
Oh, I hate him.
Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (18:39)
and I'd
probably be much further along. But anyway, I don't regret at all the two years break period I took. just saying that's the reality. If I did not stop, I'd be...
Dagobert (18:48)
So you took a break from
indie hacking as well.
Maxime Dupré (18:52)
Yeah. All, yeah. All indie hacking, all Twitter. I was just working at my job.
Dagobert (18:57)
So to
just giving the story, you were one of the victims of Elon's API price change. ⁓ You had a Twitter, ⁓ not just API price change, but also kicking out half of the people. Not kicking out, but making them ⁓ leave. Because you had an A-B testing tool for Profile Bio.
Maxime Dupré (19:03)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dagobert (19:26)
What a time it was three years ago when this kind of idea had traction. my God.
Maxime Dupré (19:27)
Hahaha
Yeah,
this was the time where there was so many Twitter tools because you know, the Twitter API was free. That's a big part of it. Because I don't think less people want to grow on X now than people were trying to grow on Twitter back then. It's just that there are
There were lot, a lot more tools back then because the API was completely free. Yeah. And then he changed the pricing from free to 42,000 a month. were some lower tiers, but
Dagobert (19:54)
Open API, yeah.
You can see
this guy is maybe a billionaire and disconnected from the price of things. Okay, entry level 42k. And then what I think was shitty is then a few months later, okay, we have an actually good tier at 5k, which could have saved maybe not yours, but a lot of products. But it was too late. Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (20:11)
Yeah.
Yeah, I
remember it would have saved ⁓ Tony Dinh's Black Magic. Yeah, same. It was so good.
Dagobert (20:28)
I loved Blackmagic so much, I was using it heavily. You could
see, just for people, you could click on somebody's profile and see every interaction you had with that person. I loved that. You could see all of their likes, replies, retweets in the past. So when you had some engagement, you could see who the fuck is that person again. yeah, they commented on my post six months ago. That's who I knew them from. That was fucking brilliant.
Maxime Dupré (20:55)
And you had also
crazy analytics on your own stats, like way better than what the Twitter analytics was providing at that time. And so I had like this crazy Twitter tool stack. I was using my own tool, Birdie. I had Blackmagic. I had this other one called Engagement Builder, which allowed you to reply and like, it was crazy.
Dagobert (21:02)
Yeah.
Engagement builder man! Everybody who bought my
course they were like, what can we do without engagement builder? Because they went down, because of this they went down. And it was just the best tool, it was just like a... I mean I didn't use it because I was such a power user, I just used Twitter with keyboard shortcuts. And I replied like a madman. But that's like ultimate. But for a normal person who just want to engage more, engagement builder was insane.
I had NPM scripts for me, so you can't imagine the level I was at. I had NPM scripts every day to check my top 300 people to engage with, see who had tweeted in the past 24 hours, excluding retweets, and then it would tell me who I didn't interact with recently, and then opening 20 tabs in Chrome so I could interact with them and build up my replies. You can't imagine. That was my small NPM tool I had made.
Maxime Dupré (21:46)
That was nice. Really? What?
Ahem.
but.
That's insane.
Dagobert (22:14)
using the free API. Yeah, yeah.
Maxime Dupré (22:15)
Yeah. You created your own Twitter stack instead of using all those tools. Like I did, you just created your own like NPM script. So I had like five, five or six of these tools and I, I had like crazy system that I would run daily. Yeah. What a time. I think that maybe I'm just being, ⁓
Dagobert (22:23)
Yeah, yeah.
Maxime Dupré (22:36)
nostalgic or sentimental, but I feel like this was the golden era of indie hacking.
Dagobert (22:41)
No, you're right, because I remember when I was in it, because back then I already had experience in my life of things ending, death, things like that. And I remember thinking, sorry for going dark, I remember thinking, this is an amazing time. I remember thinking that for one year. This is an amazing time and it will not last because nothing lasts.
And I'm like, I wasn't worried, but I know things don't last. know, it's not bad. It's life. You know, things die. And I was like, I was hoping it would last 10 years. You know, it lasts just one or two. But yeah, it was indeed an amazing time. I mean, you could make money with fucking A-B testing profile bios, man. What the fuck is that? What the fuck is that?
Maxime Dupré (23:12)
Alright.
Yeah, but
whoa, it wasn't only profile banner. It was your whole profile, profile banner, profile picture, description, the location, text, everything. Everything that was in your profile, could A, be tested.
Dagobert (23:41)
don't know what you got yet.
my god.
Maxime Dupré (23:45)
But yeah, that was like so niche and I can't believe it actually worked. And I don't know if I told you this, but it was gonna work like even better. I was gonna make like, okay, this is speculation, but I had the... ⁓
Dagobert (24:02)
How much were you making
before speculating?
Maxime Dupré (24:05)
I was making 1.2 kmr.
Dagobert (24:08)
Okay, with just that tool. But then I think you
found that it was like, if you worked with the big account, you could make way more money or something.
Maxime Dupré (24:20)
⁓ no, that's not, I mean, yeah, that's probably the strategy I should have taken honestly, because the tool was useless for smaller accounts. But yeah, that's not the path I chose, unfortunately. But with all the free trials I had and with the known conversion rate from free trial to paid, I was going to make 5k MRR with birdie, but, ⁓ yeah, the API thing happened. So obviously I.
Dagobert (24:28)
Yeah.
my
god.
Maxime Dupré (24:48)
I
don't know if that would have actually materialized, but it would have been crazy. Yeah, at least half.
Dagobert (24:53)
Let's say at least half.
I like when you speak... Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (24:59)
So, and this was my ultimate dream come true. Like this,
this would have been crazy.
Dagobert (25:07)
basic
as SAS that you enjoy working on, but that's cool. I'm not criticizing, I'm just saying, know, just a cool idea and we just have fun and we make money. That's what it's supposed to be, you know, and now it's become so hard. Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (25:20)
Yeah, but looking back, it was actually a shitty idea. It was a terrible idea.
Dagobert (25:25)
Well, it's an idea that works when the market is very good.
Maxime Dupré (25:31)
Yeah, I guess if the market is excellent, then you can have a shitty idea and it's it's still going to work. This is like.
Dagobert (25:31)
because people have money for...
It's not a shitty idea,
but I'm a big fan of A-B testing and I know a few people actually. A lot of people think you need so much data, so they never even try. But I had experience with A-B testing for a long time and I use it a lot, so I know it's cool.
Maxime Dupré (25:47)
Right, that's not true.
Yeah. And I went through a whole statistics course, literally like level one university statistics course on Udemy. It took me like three months because I was like working at the same time just to like have statistical, like rigorous statistical information on birdie.
Dagobert (25:57)
yeah, remember that! You were working so hard for this.
Good. I remember.
Maxime Dupré (26:16)
I was really
committed to this.
Dagobert (26:20)
It sounds so silly now, it's so funny. And you know, at this time I remember this poor guy, he was a young French guy, I think 15 or 16, Lilian, do you remember Lilian? Remember this guy? And he had made this small Twitter scheduler that was actually a better UX than all of these big guys, than hypefury, than everybody. Very simple, just for Twitter, that's why the UX was better, because they had less things to support.
Maxime Dupré (26:23)
Fuck
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dagobert (26:50)
And I remember actually, I used it and the first time I tried it.
30 minutes after my post is deleted and it's going viral and my post is deleted. I completely trashed him in the DMs. I'm like, dude, what the fuck? And then two hours later, we realized, no, it's an outage on Twitter. It's not his tool. It's just that this outage happened the first time in three years, the day I switched tools to use his tool. So I completely, I was so mad in the DMs. But anyway.
Maxime Dupré (27:08)
Thank you.
⁓ shit.
Hahaha
Dagobert (27:26)
And of course, you know, he was making I think seven or maybe one K per month with this and he was 16 or 17 and then API prices and he didn't say a word. He didn't delete his accounts. He didn't change anything, but we never see him again. That's so sad.
Maxime Dupré (27:44)
Actually
after that he created this other product that was creating ads automatically like some kind of... I'm not sure what it was but then it actually got bought out by Cebu. You know Cebu?
Dagobert (27:52)
Yeah?
No. ⁓ it's Ybo, yeah.
Maxime Dupré (28:03)
Yeah. And then he transformed that into like another one of his businesses. And then he disappeared and we never saw him again. And I actually bought a lifetime deal on his last app, but then he got shut down and then I'm just like, well.
Dagobert (28:21)
yeah, that's one of the problems with indie making and lifetime deals. And I think a lot of people that go on AppSumo to sell lifetime deals, it's just like they know they're gonna quit. So they're like, okay, let's go out with a bang. Lifetime deal. Let's make 20k and then give up on this product. I don't know, I just get this vibe sometimes. Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (28:46)
sounds like a micron.
Dagobert (28:48)
Yeah, so this is another story. my god. So Vikram is this 13 year old Indian boy That was talking with us on Twitter two or three years ago He was always kind of like part of the I mean we were like a team of three people It was weird every time I was tweeting or you we were all interacting all the time and he was super spicy and super like You know always bantering and everything
Maxime Dupré (28:49)
When you know, know.
Dagobert (29:14)
And one day I think he launched a product on IndieHackers, an early access you could pre-buy. And I don't want people to think I think this is cool because we are laughing at this, but it's just laughing at how ridiculous this is. It's not good. I will never do something like this. It's disgusting. But I'm just, it's ridiculous like the situation. And so he launched this early access thing and I think he made like what, $200 or something. I don't know exactly.
Maxime Dupré (29:28)
Ridiculous.
Dagobert (29:43)
But was a few hundred, right? He sold a few spots for his product. And then he disappeared. He had spent months. We were talking with him. I almost retweeted him to support him. We were friends and shit. But you know, he's 13, so you also understand that things change quickly. And they don't really know about any loyalty or shit. But so...
Maxime Dupré (30:11)
Well, because he was so young, he was probably like, I can live like a king for the rest of my life with this amount. He just disappeared.
Dagobert (30:17)
He made $200
and we never saw him again. 99 % chance people never got this product and never got their money back for sure. I mean, it would be unlikely. But sometimes when we DM you and me, we'll think, oh, Vic, and now he must be so different because he was 13, he must be 16 now. Between 13 and 16, you're a completely different person. So, oh my God.
Maxime Dupré (30:35)
You
Dagobert (30:45)
V-Kan, fucking V-Kan.
was funny. So yeah, that was one of the first grifters, know, because now there's a lot of them, but you know, he was one of the original. No, I'm kidding, but you I feel like there's more now. There's way more people now. Like you saw this 10 year old guy who was giving away $100 if you retweeted him and who launched on product hunt. I mean, come on. my God.
Maxime Dupré (30:57)
Really?
No, I didn't see that,
but that's hilarious. I respect the hustle though. You're like, it's disgusting. I'm like, I respect the hustle.
Dagobert (31:19)
yeah. Yeah, that's disgusting. Yeah, but it doesn't sound like him, you know.
That's the difficulty. And one of problems I think with this community sometimes is we so want to respect the household and support each other. Sometimes we don't say, okay, you shouldn't do that. ⁓
Maxime Dupré (31:43)
Right,
well obviously it's bad. If he knew better, he would never do that because it's going to taint his reputation and it's going to be bad for him long term. But the only reason he did that is because he doesn't know that. Because if he knew better, he wouldn't have done it. So all we can do about it is laugh. It's just hilarious. One day he'll learn.
Dagobert (31:53)
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, now you're high to high.
Maxime Dupré (32:06)
He's probably going to get like consequences from that.
Dagobert (32:12)
It's possible I would have done the same at his age. Because I didn't see other people as like... When you're this young, at least for me, I didn't have much empathy. Like now I have lot of empathy, I used to like... I wasn't connected. I was just... I remember doing something that was, I think, quite horrible when I was 13. I just remember now. I was playing this fantasy star online, which is kind of like MMORPG.
but like that was on Dreamcast something and
some guy had accumulated super rare weapons that took him dozens of hours of work and I convinced him to show it to me but when you show it to someone you know I can just get away with it I basically he drops the weapon yeah
Maxime Dupré (33:02)
⁓ he dropped it on the floor and then you picked it
up.
Dagobert (33:05)
And I just picked it and I remember I was running away out of the lobby because you have to go and it was just this funny scene when I was with a friend and was like, we got him, we got him. And I was running out of the lobby and this guy was like, hey, what are you doing? And then I'm just like leaving. And then I had this.
Maxime Dupré (33:07)
Ha ha!
Dude, I did
this so many times. I don't know if you know about this platform called Neopets. It's like, I was addicted to this when I was a kid and you could create a guide, like a clan, that people would join your clan. That's actually where I learned ⁓ to code, because I had to build like, the guides were like HTML pages and I was doing like all those.
Dagobert (33:28)
I've heard about it.
Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (33:50)
animations and stuff. And then I wanted my clan to be like the best clan. So what I did is I created a fake account and then I befriended all those other clan people and I somehow convinced them to put me admin. And then as soon as this person would put me admin, I'd kick everyone out of their clan. So their clan would be empty. And then I just, I just have my
Dagobert (33:51)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
god. How old were you?
Maxime Dupré (34:20)
I don't know, might have been like
Dagobert (34:21)
⁓ 28.
Maxime Dupré (34:24)
last year. No, thought it was like, I think it was like, let me think, probably like 12.
Dagobert (34:33)
Yeah, yeah.
So that's what Vikram did, let's be honest. For him that's the same thing.
Maxime Dupré (34:38)
Yeah, he's just being
young. He's being a young person. And he doesn't feel like there's any consequences of doing shitty stuff online.
Dagobert (34:41)
Young piece of shit. Exactly. Yeah.
So yeah, don't trust 12 year old indie makers. ⁓ Okay, so back to your story. Break from trailer, traumatized by Elon Musk, and then what?
Maxime Dupré (35:02)
Yeah, traumatized by... Actually, no, I didn't really... I was just rolling with the punches. I wasn't... I wasn't that sad about it. What really destroyed me is that at that time I broke up with my ex and that completely fucked me up. And then... And so...
Dagobert (35:17)
my god. Don't jump.
Maxime Dupré (35:22)
What do you mean? behind me? Yeah. But honestly, that's the best thing that ever happened to me because, you know, when something this bad happens to you, you either like become very depressed or there's a big period of growth. And that's what happened to me. And so if. And like at the end of that relationship anyway, I was a shell of myself. So if that didn't happen.
Dagobert (35:22)
No, I see you on the balcony, I'm like, don't jump. Yeah.
Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (35:51)
more bad things would have happened in my life. But anyway, at that time I was really destroyed. And so when that happened, I still continued building on Birdie. They kind of happened at the same time, like Elon Musk raising the prices and me breaking up with my ex. But then I still continued working on Birdie because there was still a light version that had less features, but.
Dagobert (36:19)
Hmm.
Maxime Dupré (36:19)
It was my baby, so I was just keeping it alive even though it was garbage.
Dagobert (36:22)
The denial,
yeah, and also ⁓ grief, but also your use of the API was a bit different. It wasn't about posting. So maybe the limits weren't applying the same to you. Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (36:34)
Right.
Oh
yeah, I needed so much. I was reading so many tweets. I think I would have had troubles even with the 42K per month plan. It was crazy the amount of tweets I was reading. Like 30,000 tweets a minute per account or something like that. I don't quite remember, but it was something ridiculous.
Dagobert (36:50)
yeah, okay, okay, okay.
Why? because you were estimating
the impact of the A-B test. There was a lot of reading.
Maxime Dupré (37:07)
Yeah, so I was calculating
the profile clicks via the tweets.
Dagobert (37:15)
I Yeah. ⁓
Maxime Dupré (37:17)
because there was
no endpoint that was exposing the number of profile clicks other than via the tweets. So was reading all the tweets of this account.
Dagobert (37:26)
so
you could know the, just to know the number of profile clicks. my God.
Maxime Dupré (37:30)
Yeah, I had to aggregate that from the tweets. But.
Dagobert (37:34)
⁓ I see, I see. OK,
so this didn't. So what did you do then after this breakup and everything?
Maxime Dupré (37:40)
Yeah, so I kept working on Birdie, kept working on my job. Like was just really depressed. Like for six months it was, it was hell. Like, like the first three months I was literally feeling like pain in my body because it was so intense. But yeah, eventually I started, I was like, okay, I don't have a girlfriend right now. I'm kind of isolating myself because
Dagobert (37:56)
Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (38:07)
I feel shitty all the time so I don't really want to see my friends. So I was like, okay, I need to find something. So then I started like getting into dating really, like really intensely. So I started, you know, there's this kind of subculture about pickup and game as they call it. So I started like, there was a game group.
Dagobert (38:11)
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
Oh for sure, yeah, 100 % yeah.
Maxime Dupré (38:36)
in my city in Montreal. And so I made really good friends that I'm still friends with to this day. And I was, I started going out and bars and clubs, just talking to women for like two years straight. Like that's basically all I did. And it's not it. Yeah. Cause when I'm obsessed with something, I just go all in. So I was working like two hours a day. Like sometimes I didn't work at all and I was, I was
Dagobert (38:52)
Wow, that was your side project, okay.
Maxime Dupré (39:05)
just go crazy, talking to like, for some people that might sound ⁓ creepy, but I mean, maybe it is, I don't know. But when you're in that, like the state that I was in at the time, it was like incredible. was so invigorating to like not be sad and just working on your social skills. you know, there are many vehicles for growth. could grow by just with business.
Dagobert (39:22)
Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (39:35)
uh, social skills is another type of growth and it's not just about like, uh, I don't know, having sex with women. mean, that's part of the goal is having sex with women, but it's more about like, uh, you know, getting rid of your insecurities just because it like, okay, the amount of courage it takes to approach a woman that doesn't know you and, and just like,
Dagobert (40:02)
Yeah, yeah. Super scary, yeah.
Maxime Dupré (40:05)
⁓ just talk with her and then not care about a rejection that like this took me a such like, I was so afraid of talking to women. It was crazy. And so yeah, that, that two year period was one of the best thing I've ever done in my life. I met so many new friends. met so many amazing women. Like it was crazy.
But now, like after two years, it's like at some point you're like, okay, like I'm not afraid of talking to women anymore. I can pretty much go to any woman and start having a conversation with her and not be or feel creepy and just have a nice conversation. if it, you know, if we vibe, we vibe. If we don't, we don't just walk away. So at some point it's like,
Dagobert (40:56)
Yeah, yeah.
Maxime Dupré (41:02)
Like what, what, what am I going to do? Am I just going to keep doing that forever? And for me, like some people do that. They just, you know, they just came forever and, ⁓ some people are not into monogamy and that's fine, but I really want kids and a family later. So for me, the next logical step was just to settle down with a girlfriend. And I got to pick my girlfriend from like, you know, from during this two years.
I tasted the rainbow so I got to pick someone that I really, really enjoy like her personality ⁓ and looks-wise. And now, yeah, now I have an amazing girlfriend and now just on my next quest, I guess, which is building a business. And now I'm just obsessed with it.
Dagobert (41:37)
Yeah, that's awesome.
But that's it man, that's all
about the quests. And so once you have...
Maxime Dupré (41:55)
Yeah, if you don't have a quest, if you
don't have a main project in your life, it's like there's nothing to wake up to in the morning.
Dagobert (42:02)
Exactly. Yeah, you need a quest. And that's what irks me sometimes with some posts about, yeah, just ship fast and just don't think about it and avoid things that are too risky, just go with easy ideas. But it's boring also sometimes. It's the danger. I mean, it depends at what level you are in your life and what quest you need. Some people just shipping fast, maybe that's their quest.
100%. But sometimes your quest is like something else. And you know, it depends. And so, for example, for me, I was trying to solve my problem of my previous startup with, I'm just going to ship faster, do small ideas and build from that. But I never got anywhere for one year because I was always bored with it, because it's not inspiring me. So it wasn't a quest.
And but working on this product hunt competitor is more of a quest. It's more interesting to me because it's challenging. Like it's hard. You know, and it's also and when you share on social media, it's also cooler when you have a quest because when you talk about it, people care. If you just talk about, hey, look, I have a new to do list app. It's not a quest. So nobody gives a shit. But if you're like, I'm taking down product hunt. Fuck this. Like, it's like crazy. It's scary. Maybe you're not going to make it.
Maxime Dupré (43:11)
Right.
Ahem.
Dagobert (43:31)
Or me, talk about not shipping or whatever. That's a quest and that's interesting. You're fighting demons, you're fighting dragons, it's cool. And if you don't have that, you're bored and it's harder also for people to be interested. If you're bored, they are bored. So it's cool to have a quest, man. So what's your quest now?
Maxime Dupré (43:42)
Agreed.
Yeah. So it's been like, uh, I don't know, like six months that I've slowly ramped up to starting to work on business again. And now I feel like at this point, I'm not, I'm not ramping up anymore. I'm working like 12 to 16 hours a day and I'm fully obsessed. So I don't think I can ramp up more. Also I've, I have.
Dagobert (44:11)
Yeah.
Amazing.
Maxime Dupré (44:26)
I told you that I have 10k in debt and I have no job and I don't want a job. There's no way like I'd rather I'd rather die than have a job right now. Like like there's like I'd rather live on the streets. I I was I was going to go live with my parents in there. They have like this basement thing. But my girlfriend was like.
Dagobert (44:32)
Nice.
Shit man, I love this. That's how I feel now. Yeah. Not die, but yeah. Yeah, same.
Maxime Dupré (44:51)
Cause they live like two hours away. So she'd have to drive two hours to see me. So she was like, no, let's not do that. So right now she's paying the rent. So, but.
Dagobert (45:00)
Yeah. I wanted to move and
live with Alex Isora in Georgia, the country, not the state. And my girlfriend said, please no. So yeah, I get it. I get it. Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (45:13)
Yeah.
Yeah. So, I mean, she's very supportive. She knows that I'm doing this for our future because, you know, so yeah, I have, so I have this part taken care of and now I can just focus on building every day. That's all I do. That's all I want to do. And
To me, the way I feel about this is that success is inevitable. I don't care how much time it's gonna take. It could take six months, one year, two years, but it's just inevitable. Also because I'm, bro, I'm learning so much right now. I'm reading all those books and I'm actually executing. And yeah, there's no way I'm not gonna make this work.
Dagobert (46:07)
So what are you executing? Show me.
Maxime Dupré (46:10)
Yeah, so right now I'm working on Champs signal, which is a platform to monitor your competitors. And so there are many ⁓ competitors like competition monitoring platforms right now, but they're very like enterprisey. And they're just they're not simple. They're not lightweight. And what they give you is a bunch.
Dagobert (46:32)
You need to contact
sales, I guess, every time.
Maxime Dupré (46:35)
Yeah,
you need to contact sales and what they're giving you is a bunch of information rather than intelligence. So what you want is not like, you don't want to be overwhelmed by all those new information. Like, this website is, have this Google ad or new backlinks or new keywords. What you want is like the top 10 % most important information. Like you don't want all the rest.
Dagobert (46:48)
Yeah, yeah.
Maxime Dupré (47:05)
So that's basically what Champs signal. So, okay. So let's say on Champs signal right now, there are four trackers. There's a Google ads tracker, backlinks tracker, keywords tracker, and a website tracker. So if you take the Google ads tracker, I could send you a signal or this just terminology of my app. I could send you an email for every ad they have or every new ad they're posting or
Dagobert (47:05)
Can you show an example?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I see.
Maxime Dupré (47:34)
I could just send you when an email, when an ad has reached, has been up for like a hundred days. So, you know, this is an ad that's performing. Otherwise they would never leave it up and lose money on this ad. So I could only send you the information that's important and actionable. And so you don't get drowned out by all the information. And so you can actually focus on your business instead of focusing on your competitors. Cause
Dagobert (47:43)
Yeah.
Yeah, I see.
Yeah, yeah.
And how does that work? Do
you have to input your competitors? Do you do the research of the competitors?
Maxime Dupré (48:09)
Yeah. So you just, ⁓ input their URL and that's it. You have a place on the dashboard where you can just put all your competitors and then it's going to start tracking them on every level. And eventually now I have four trackers. Eventually I'll add more trackers. And yeah. So the idea is that you don't like focusing on your competitors is bad because you don't want to
Dagobert (48:21)
Yeah, I see.
Maxime Dupré (48:38)
focus on your competitors, you want to focus on your own business, but you also don't want to ignore like the important stuff. So that's where champ signals comes in, like just, just a tip the iceberg.
Dagobert (48:38)
Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
That's a very good selling,
that's a very good value proposition the way you put it. I like it. ⁓
Maxime Dupré (48:56)
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not launched yet, so I might be completely out.
Dagobert (49:04)
my god, Nikhil, you're early! Wait, I'm finishing another call!
Nikhil Agrawal (49:05)
Okay,
me leave the call for now.
Dagobert (49:11)
my god. First time it happened. I thought Riverside was protecting me against this because the whole day it didn't happen for 7 calls. my god. Nikhil was so early. He's 8 minutes early. my god. ⁓ He's in India, so maybe he's a late bird. I think it's 9pm for him, that's why he's early.
Maxime Dupré (49:13)
We had a visitor.
Ha
That's hilarious. He's an early bird.
Dagobert (49:34)
he wants to get it over with. Okay, so it's not live yet you said, okay. ⁓
Maxime Dupré (49:39)
Yeah, it's
not live yet, so I don't know. there's many pivots ahead of me. Who knows? Maybe no one cares about what I'm offering right now. But, yeah. ⁓
Dagobert (49:46)
Yeah.
Yeah, but it doesn't matter. You will
pivot until you fuck everybody and you win.
Maxime Dupré (49:55)
Yeah. So, right. So I just have one quick story before we end this. This is the way I have an interesting story on how champs, champs signal got started. I was like, I was done with a previous SAS I was building. It was called ⁓ zero face. I was really interested in that faceless YouTube industry because I have a friend.
Dagobert (49:56)
in a good sense.
Yeah.
yeah, yeah, I saw that.
To be honest, when you applied, I thought that was going to be this product. Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (50:27)
Yeah, cause I have a friend making 30 K a month doing that. And when I started getting into business, I like dabbled in it and then I get, I got to know like the, guess the customers. I thought, okay, I know, I know the problems really well. Let me start a SaaS in that niche, but that didn't work out. anyway, after that, I was like, fuck B2C. I'm not doing B2C ever again in my entire life. Cause this market had so many problems. Like, first of all, people were broke.
Dagobert (50:41)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (50:56)
So
like no one was wanted to spend any money. And so I reached out to ⁓ Wilson from Senja. You know, Wilson from Senja. And bro, this guy is like the most helpful guy I've ever seen. Like if you look at his tweets, every single tweet he posted like full of value and he's just helping people. Yeah. He's.
Dagobert (50:59)
to see.
yeah, Wilson, yeah, yeah.
He seems nice in the best way, know, not fake nice, just like a genuine... Yeah.
Maxime Dupré (51:22)
And he spent like, he was in the middle of lunching FernDesk, his new SaaS. He was like super busy onboarding people. And I was asking him questions about like what new business I should start. And he was like giving me those long replies. So anyway, so in the end, he gave me a full like SaaS he had started. Like he, he had done like 20 % of Champ signal. And he just gave me the code base and he gave me the domain name.
And so I just started building what like with 20 % already done. And he was like, I'm I know for sure. He was like, I know for sure this is a viable business idea. I was like, damn, all right, let me try this.
Dagobert (51:54)
Wow. Wilson from Sanger. my god.
my god, that's brilliant. That's the most beautiful indie hiking story ever. That's the opposite of Vikram. my god. He just gave you something. Wow, this is so beautiful. Wow. I'm sorry, I'm a bit stressed because I'm afraid Nikhil will show up again. But... No, no.
Maxime Dupré (52:17)
super helpful.
Yeah, no worries. Let's end this.
Also your camera's off or something.
Dagobert (52:28)
shit my camera is off, ok, hope it's ok in the recording. Well, we'll see. Ok, wait, let's just do a fake goodbye for the YouTube. Ok, bye man, cheers.
Maxime Dupré (52:39)
All right. See ya.