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Interviewing indie founders about their journey and their products. itslaunchday.com
Dagobert Renouf (00:01)
Okay, we can finally start recording. Hello, Dominique, and welcome to launch day.
Dominik (00:08)
Daggo, thanks for having me and nice to finally talk with you after so many years of chatting on Twitter.
Dagobert Renouf (00:16)
Yeah, so we've been, I think, well, I guess four years when we've been following each other. And you used to work on the product that I really remember that way.
Dominik (00:23)
to do something like that.
Dagobert Renouf (00:33)
I want to get this right. It was screenshots, but incredibly advanced. You could do like, yes, for developers, like you could like pick the language. There was like syntax and coloring. It was the most, can you show us like, cause I'm just like remembering it. And I remember this part, that was so cool.
Dominik (00:43)
and for developers.
Yeah, sure,
sure, Just quickly show the landing page. Maybe some of you know it. It's still out there. It's still a product that is working quite well. And yeah, it's since the early Twitter days when I worked on this. Just quickly sharing my screen. And here it is. It is Snappy file.
Dagobert Renouf (01:20)
Yes, Snapify. Man, I really like the attention to details. That's what I remember. That's what when I see you were working on something else, I'm you need to come on launch day because there is just, I just like, ⁓ I'm a bit fascinated by Snapify, which seems so simple. you know, you're just like, like it's so niche. It's gonna be like.
Dominik (01:23)
Thank
Dagobert Renouf (01:43)
create screenshots, but only for developers. And then you made the most insane ⁓ product with so many, like, can you show us the features you did for that? Because I remember that was some pretty cool things.
Dominik (01:55)
Yeah,
sure. When I go to the editor real quick, then you can see you can drag around things and a lot of ⁓ stuff happens right here when you snap arrows onto elements and you can basically it's just like a little figma, but for developers that want to describe their code snippets. And as you said, it started out as a really simple tool.
And at the moment actually I'm marketing it as a PowerPoint alternative for developers. So can really create several slides, create animations between the slides. And I can also quickly show it to you on the templates here because I have quite some templates. And this is a presentation that was created with Snapify. So yeah, a lot of ⁓ effort. Yeah. Yeah. I mean.
Dagobert Renouf (02:46)
Wow, I didn't even know. Wow.
Dominik (02:50)
As you said, spent a lot of time on this product and extending it over the years. I had a lot of fun there.
Dagobert Renouf (02:59)
You know, I think, you know, there's something with that because, ⁓ well, you know, I was a bit fighting against the ship fast mentality recently. ⁓ And, you know, because you make something so precise and so deep, then I think, I don't know, like, you know, when you put so much attention and so much care on something,
And you can stop sharing your screen now. ⁓ Once you put all this attention on something, you can unlock something kind of new. You know what I mean? Like, if you just ship something in one weekend and you get some feedback and people don't care, then you give up or like, you know, it's kind of... But like, when you put so much attention on it, it can also expand what people think that you could do with this product, you know, like...
then it turned out into slides. It wouldn't have turned into slides if it was just a screenshotting tools and you didn't find a special angle and you didn't find this thing for developers and you didn't put all your attention on it. You wouldn't have had this bridge to like, I can make PowerPoint. You know what I mean?
Dominik (04:19)
Definitely. I wouldn't have started probably with Snapify in the first place if I would have started with it as a PowerPoint alternative or something like this. It really grew into that over the years. yeah, I also think that just shipping something fast and getting it out and then give up after two weeks, that's, I mean, you can try to do that and you can try to do that several times and
probably or maybe sometimes it will work, but in the end, I think it still makes sense to find something you can work on over a longer period of time. And also put your dedication into that because I think, yeah, my time is spent better in trying to put my effort into one idea instead of just quickly trying things.
Dagobert Renouf (04:59)
Yeah.
Dominik (05:18)
Then I think what's also a bit, or what's good to do before doing that is thinking about it and see if you're willing to do it over a longer period of time. If that's an idea that you want to focus on over a longer period of time. At least I think that's a good idea.
Dagobert Renouf (05:34)
Yeah.
But that's related, because for a lot of people, the joy is in doing it, and it's obvious with your products. It's just like, you just have this craft that you want to express, you want to create something, and then you can see how much attention you put on it.
And this is why you do it for the long term, because it brings you happiness to do it also. You know, it's connected. And so that's why I think there's like two ways. Like I think some people, don't really have that and they don't care and it's fine. But if you're just like business and you don't really care about that, you can just ship fast, launch something, see what works. That makes total sense. But when you're like this personality that wants to...
Dominik (06:07)
Absolutely, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (06:28)
that finds happiness in making it and wants to create and kind of like this child kind of thing of like, you know, making something, then it's a different approach. Yeah.
Dominik (06:40)
Yeah, but maybe also this ship fast movement is kinda misinterpreted by some people or I'm not sure if it's really just about making 12 products in 12 months or if it's more like still try to get your product in front of other people as early as possible or try to iterate fast. You can also do that with one product over a longer period of time without just
Dagobert Renouf (07:04)
Yeah.
Dominik (07:09)
spending a year without telling anyone about it. I think there are nuances to that that you can ship fast but still work on one idea for a longer period of time.
Dagobert Renouf (07:17)
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah, on Twitter, the new ones usually get removed. But yeah, I agree. mean, the faster you go, the better in any situation for that. Of course, it's better to go faster. It's just like, how fast can you go?
while keeping the integrity of the product and making sure the vision is there and you did something good. Going as fast as you can while making something cool. I think the backlash about ShipFast is like people who just shit actual shit, actual shitty products, vibe coded in one weekend and it has no...
no point or anything, they're just hoping to go viral and that's kind of like, kind of like not a super inspiring thing. But beyond that, yeah, faster is always better for sure.
So now that we know kind of like what kind of stuff you build, I want to know more about you, you know, what your journey is, because I guess you've been in the hacking for at least four years, because that's how long I know you. But can you tell me, you know, how you got into that in the first place, you know, and your story a little bit?
Dominik (08:42)
Sure, So yeah, exactly I started indie hacking about four years ago when we all were in lockdown and in corona and then we had enough time. And yeah, before I already was a professional software developer, I finished school in 2013 and then immediately started to work as a software developer because...
Dagobert Renouf (08:52)
Yeah.
So you're
a developer, because that's interesting because you look also like a designer when I see the work.
Dominik (09:11)
⁓ thank you very much. think that's, yeah, maybe like I got a bit of the feeling because I worked a lot in the front end in the past years in different projects, also in professional projects. So I think because of that, I also earned a bit of skill in the design direction. in general, I would say the front end is my ⁓ biggest or what I like to do the most.
I just love to spend times on the details, like you said before, crafting a nice experience for the end user. And that's why I also always struggled with the other sides like marketing and getting my products out there. to come back, I started my career in 2013, worked in different companies. And then around 2020 and 2021, I founded my own company.
started to do freelancing and started.
Dagobert Renouf (10:13)
That was because
of COVID, you said, or before, or how that happened.
Dominik (10:18)
Yeah, it was because of COVID, because then we all had a lot of time, basically. And back then I were together with my friend Anki, maybe you remember him, because we started Snapify together and we were working on it together for a long time. And then we decided to just try freelancing and because we already had quite some experience in the space of software development and we thought, yeah, maybe with freelancing.
Dagobert Renouf (10:34)
Yeah.
Dominik (10:47)
we get a bit of more freedom and then could also start working on our own products. And yeah, that's what I'm actually doing since then. So freelancing.
Dagobert Renouf (10:58)
And so you
worked with him for a few years and now he's not on the snapify anymore.
Dominik (11:04)
Exactly. We split it and also split our company. I'm now alone in the company and working on Snapify alone. And yeah, that's basically since about one and a half years already. I'm now alone, but we're still good friends. And I think it was a very nice way of splitting the company. We're still in contact almost every week. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (11:21)
Okay.
How was it? What was the reason? How was it?
Dominik (11:31)
Basically because Anki wanted to focus more on this freelancing and agency side of things and I wanted to focus more on products. That was the main reason and then we thought, okay, doesn't make sense if we want to go into different directions then yeah, just go our own way. We're still friends, we're still giving each other tips and have a very good relationship, which I...
Dagobert Renouf (11:59)
Yeah.
Dominik (12:00)
absolutely love about that situation. But yeah, still we just decided to go our own way.
Dagobert Renouf (12:03)
That's awesome.
And so right
now you are, I mean like, you could also have like, he could do freelance to bring cash and you could build a product to be like more long-term revenue. Wasn't that something you could have done or something?
Dominik (12:22)
Yeah, I think we then were just at a point where we said, okay, let's just try to focus really on our own stuff at that point. I mean, we could have done that, that's true. But then still, you know, the one has the more focus on customers with the agency and freelancing, the other one has the head in the products and so on. And then, yeah, we thought it's maybe not so good and just really, yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (12:30)
Yeah.
It didn't really make sense, yeah.
Dominik (12:51)
Really, go focus on what you want to achieve.
Dagobert Renouf (12:55)
And so basically you're freelancing. That's how you make money and you build like your products on the side or your products make enough money now to not freelance. How is it looking?
Dominik (13:06)
I still need to freelance, but I actually built up quite some runway in the past years thanks to freelancing. So for example, since the whole year of 2025, I didn't do any freelancing. So at the moment I was only working on my own products, but I'm slowly, I will probably take a new freelance project soon. Even if I have enough runway, I'm...
Dagobert Renouf (13:20)
Nice. ⁓
Dominik (13:34)
kind of a person that I want to be on the safe side. So probably I will in the upcoming months, I will do another freelancing project and do the products on the site because also
Dagobert Renouf (13:37)
Yeah, hear you.
And freelancing,
what is it going to be like? Is it like development, engineering? What is it? Design?
Dominik (13:50)
Exactly development.
will mostly I'm also part of a team and I just do the work that needs to be done without. love, I love freelancing projects where I can give my value without too much planning and hustle on my side. I'm just part of their team. I'm just contributing.
Dagobert Renouf (14:08)
I never heard of that.
I never heard, because I freelance for 10 years, never had a team of freelance. What is that? That sounds cool.
Dominik (14:15)
Basically, I'm just part of ⁓ employees inside of a company and I'm doing freelance. Or a bigger company that works on their own product, for example, and they have employees, but they want to have a freelancer that has more experience and just helps with developing features.
Dagobert Renouf (14:20)
Small agency, kind of, but you freelance.
yeah.
And which country are
you based? You do that locally or remote?
Dominik (14:41)
I am in Austria, but in the past years I also had customers from Germany. So I mainly do it remote. I mean, you see there, I'm here in my own office and I'm just working on my place and joining remote. And I actually love that because I can bring values to my freelancing customers without having too much hassle on my side with bureaucracy and stuff and things like that.
Dagobert Renouf (14:43)
Okay.
Dominik (15:09)
Because I want to bring value with that. want to extend my runway and being able to work on my products. That that's basically what, what I want to achieve with that.
Dagobert Renouf (15:13)
Yeah.
you know, it's interesting you talk about value, because... So I did freelancing for like 10 years or even more, and...
like in my 20s and...
One cool thing about it is you are very connected to giving value. you really feel like they ask you for something. How can I say, like when you build your own product, especially at the beginning before you have customers, you don't know, you don't feel that. You don't feel that you're bringing value to someone. It kind of like feel, you know, kind of like disconnected from that.
And the more you build without connecting to potential customers, the harder it is because you're really just alone. But when you have a client, he's like, he wants this. It's easy. ⁓ he wants this, I do that. And it's just like, you bring value and it's easy to understand and at a job, obviously also. But when you're building your own product, it's like...
Dominik (16:14)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (16:30)
Especially at the beginning who the fuck am I bringing value to like how is you know what I mean?
Dominik (16:36)
Yeah, sure, sure. And I think when you reach that point, when you see that you're bringing value to someone and they tell it to you or they just pay for your product and you see them using it, at least at this point, it's such a nice motivation factor and such a nice feeling for yourself because it's just great to see that.
Dagobert Renouf (16:58)
yeah.
It changes everything. For example, launch day, ⁓ infamously, it took me eight or nine months to launch it for such a simple thing. That's the funny thing. But...
Once I started, I really got into launching it the last month when I saw people really wanted it, when I saw that some people needed it. like, because I was talking, I was on a Twitter space, the weekly app with Nestles from small bets. And they were asking me, why you don't ship? Why you don't ship? That was like two months ago.
Dominik (17:26)
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (17:42)
And I'm like, well, you know, I just want to do my thing and I don't really see, you know, and it doesn't really matter if I don't ship it, you know, and he's like, but it matters. We're waiting for you. We need this platform. We want to launch on your platform. And, you know, that sounds funny, but like that was such a game changer for me when he said that that was the start of my OK, now I'm shipping it like I was I was going in that direction. But I always had some time, even though I had running out of money and everything.
Dominik (17:53)
the ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (18:11)
Since it was just me, it felt a bit, you know, ⁓ useless. even though I had sales, you know, because I I saw like 60 spots in September when I announced with early access and everything, but it was a long time ago. And so I kind of like disconnected from that. And I guess people lost hope that I would ever launch. ⁓ Some guy when I said, hey, I'm launching, you want to get ready? He's like, I thought you ran away with the money. I forgot about it. ⁓
Dominik (18:16)
Mm.
Thank
Dagobert Renouf (18:41)
But anyway, when I realized I was connected and people needed it, man, it changed everything. And so I think that's one argument in favor of shipping fast is that you need to get there, to get to that moment where you see or not, or realize nobody gives a shit, which is painful, but you know, get to this stage where like at least one person wants it.
And their weight and that's like, and now that I launched and every day or I have people say, hey, how do I go on launch day or something? Maybe not every day, depends. Some days I have three people, some day I have zero, of course, submitting their products.
It just changes everything because now I'm connected all the time. And so productivity is like completely different. I don't need to like trick myself to wake up in the morning. I'm just like, fuck, I need to do something, you know?
Dominik (19:31)
Absolutely.
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely, totally agree on that. And maybe for me, I can give an example of Snapify, which already has quite some paying users, like more than 300 paying users. And I see subscriptions coming in every day or canceling. I don't have a feeling to that anymore. ⁓ It's okay. It's just happening. There's money coming in. But after the years, there is no feeling. But if someone reaches out to me and says, hey, they're using Snapify, they're creating a slide.
They love this feature that I've developed. This is really what sparks my motivation at the moment. I mean, we all know that we need the money and we want to reach the point where we can survive from our products. if you want to run it in the long time and want to have fun and motivation and really feedback from the users and seeing that you bring them value, at least I think that's the thing which is the most...
giving, which gives you so much back when working on your products.
Dagobert Renouf (20:47)
Yeah, yeah, 100%. So now the product that you're launching, I'm curious how you got the idea and how you went from zero to finding your first customers about that. How did you stay motivated? The journey of this product, what is it?
Dominik (21:09)
Yeah, so launch day and launching the metric, which is basically a web and product analytics platform. And because you asked about the idea, I think I already built a first web analytics solution back in 2010 or something like that. I don't know. It was long time ago. Like when I don't have a lot of experience and I just want to try it out. But back then I was just too young and I didn't. Yeah.
worked for a long time on it.
Dagobert Renouf (21:39)
How old are you now? Just curious. Okay, cool.
Dominik (21:41)
I'm 32.
And yeah, but this idea of an analytics platform is always kinda was in my head. And when I worked on Snapify, of course this got a little bit more because now I had my product, users were using it. I wanted to understand how they use it. want to...
I got more into marketing, into SEO. I wanted to understand how these channels work and work for my product. So of course I used different solutions at the time. There were also some which I was kind of happy with, but there was always a little bit where I thought, hey, why they don't just add this or make this a little bit better. And basically...
Dagobert Renouf (22:27)
Like which one?
⁓ I'm sorry to put you on the grill, but like talk about the competitor that you liked. know, the one that you liked, but then you failed. You thought,
Dominik (22:34)
and
One
I've paid for years is SplitBee, which doesn't exist anymore because Versal bought it. And I think, I also tweeted that, I think if Versal wouldn't have bought SplitBee, then I wouldn't probably build Mimetric now because...
Dagobert Renouf (22:42)
And remember...
Split
B was so cool, I think they had A-B testing and they were the only one doing it, right? That was the thing. That was really cool. I remember it.
Dominik (23:01)
Yeah, they also had A-B testing there, It was a great
product and they did a really great job. And yeah, but even in Split-B there were some little things where I thought, hey, maybe that would be nice, but yeah, overall I was very happy. Yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (23:17)
But that's the thing. That's the thing
when you have something that... You know, we talk about scratching your own itch, like, it's a problem I have. But it's also like... Because, you know, there's good analytic solution out there. It's not just scratching your own itch. It's also...
You really want to do something like this. you really care. That's something that like, for example, me have been obsessed for one or two years to build a social platform or like a community platform. You know, you know, I don't need like we can use this code, we can use Slack, can use, you know, whatever circle, all this shit.
Dominik (23:48)
Mm.
Dagobert Renouf (23:58)
We don't need it. I'm not like going to scratch you like I mean I can use it now, but I really, really want to do it. So I'm going to find, ⁓ this little thing is not good. And then, I'm going to scratch my own itch. But that's cool, you know, but that's that's interesting.
Dominik (24:12)
Yeah,
I also agree on that. And there were like two to three, four years where I had it in the top of my head and I just kept it back there because I thought, should I really build it? Should I really build it? And then I was at a point where I just said, okay, Dominik, either you now build it or you just throw that idea away forever. Don't think about it anymore because it also holds you back for a little bit.
And that's when I just decided I'll give it a try. see how, because on Snapify I learned that I can work on a product for a longer period of time if I have fun working on it. And I asked myself for long enough that would I have fun working on this? And at least most of the time in the end I didn't guess. So I just said, I just do it. I try it. I try to give my own touch to it a little bit and yeah.
Just try to be another solution on that market, on the analytics market.
Dagobert Renouf (25:15)
That's awesome,
perfect transition. Can you show us, and what's the touch? You you said your own touch. So what's your own touch? Your own spin on the analytics product. Because basically, I have...
Dominik (25:34)
during.
Dagobert Renouf (25:37)
people submitting analytics products quite often now. So I'm trying to have only one analytics product per launch day. That's why I moved you to this one because last one there was already somebody. But like I'm really, that's interesting because last week ⁓ the guy who launched it, had this, he was starting to find his own unique end goal. And so I'm curious to hear about, you know, what are you, what's your take on it?
Dominik (25:44)
Yeah. I can't imagine you.
Yeah, I mean, I have to be, I have to also be honest here. I'm not sure if I found that angle yet already. And it's also fine for me because at the moment when people ask me, also have a bit of a hard time to say them what's, what's really different at the moment, because I'm still at a stage where I'm building out the foundation and I have ideas at the top of my head, but I want to get the foundation right. So
At the moment, when you look at the metrics, so here you can see the landing page, it's probably like a lot of other analytic solutions out there. won't, I'm not gonna lie. So.
Dagobert Renouf (26:42)
One thing I can say
though, because you're quite humble and I appreciate it, is knowing your work on other products and just having checked Vimitric quickly, the quality is very high though. You know, like the UX, the UI, it's very polished already. And that's, well, you know, a lot of these platforms, are built in a weekend, not the ones I put on launch day, of course, because I'm selective with the products.
But ⁓ it's easy to build a basic version, so a lot of people do that. But I can see you're already putting effort, the way it's designed, and I haven't seen that before. that's this menu on the bottom and everything. So I just want to give you some props for that. It's not just some analytics product. You're very humble.
Dominik (27:25)
Yeah.
Thank you
very much. And I just wasn't sure if I wanted to mention it here to a wider range of people, but I had that discussion with friends and other people in the past. I also think that excellent UI and UX is also a differentiation factor. And I personally love to spend time on crafting a nice experience. And that's also what I'm putting into Bimetric, of course. I try to.
From the first step I do try to make it feel like it's nice. if you want to say, I also think that this is already a differentiation factor compared to many other analytic solutions out there because the market is already very crowded. And as you said, you can do a simple solution in very fast basically, but I've all tried from step one.
to deliver a nice experience. That's definitely also something which I can say. apart from that, it's so here you can also see, for example, a live demo. And here is also nice that I can already use another or my other product for that. Because here I'm just showcasing Snapify and all the public data of Snapify.
Dagobert Renouf (28:31)
Yeah.
That's so funny.
Like you're like, how we call it. But you're like self promoting yourself in a way that's so relevant. That's awesome. That's like transparent. That's really cool. Wait, so let me check. Let me check. me check. So how, what's the timeframe? Just 24 hours? Oh my God.
Dominik (28:56)
Yeah, exactly. And also, I just want to be...
Yeah, Snapify has quite some users, yeah. Snapify is doing well in terms of traffic, yeah, that's true. Definitely can't complain on that.
Dagobert Renouf (29:09)
24 hours, 50, my God. Yeah, Snapify is awesome. Snapify is awesome, yeah.
And how did you, okay, so I'm just like ⁓ diving in before looking into the metric, like, so Google, ⁓ is it branded search or like actual SEO with like actual search terms?
Dominik (29:34)
I would say both already because here on the left side you can see blog posts. I'm putting a lot of work into SEO over the past years as well, like publishing two to four blog posts every month.
Dagobert Renouf (29:36)
Yeah.
I see.
So I'm just reading for people listening and not on YouTube, like React Carousel component libraries, best VS code themes, that like the blog post you wrote, Chad CN UI alternatives. Interesting, yeah, so quite wide, quite broad, guess, you know, not people, because I guess there are not many people looking for like screen-shunting tools for developers who want to show their code snippets. So you have to go a bit larger than that.
Dominik (30:02)
Exactly.
I'm focusing on defs in general.
Dagobert Renouf (30:19)
Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense targeting death.
Dominik (30:21)
and try to sell them
a presentation tool basically, then on the blog post.
Dagobert Renouf (30:25)
And we say, and I
keep seeing that
to devs is a big mistake because it's such a hard market. What do you think of that?
Dominik (30:35)
⁓ of course, I also heard that a lot. And also in the beginning, I had that feeling. But the longer I worked on Snapify and I interacted with other devs that were then my customers, I can't confirm this at all. It was mostly such a nice experience because either they already tell you what the bug is that they are facing, which is awesome, because they already analyze the software they are using.
And they are also, at least in my experience, more, how to say that...
Dagobert Renouf (31:09)
Wait, I'm sorry,
what was the first point? Because I thought I got it, but then I got confused. What was the first point?
Dominik (31:16)
They are already explaining you solutions to why a bug might happen when they experience a bug in your tool. Because they are developers and they are analyzing a problem. They okay, that could be the bug. they are already, when they reporting a problem, they're already telling it to you.
Dagobert Renouf (31:24)
Yeah, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah,
they give you very good bug reports with screenshots of the console, everything, network tab. It's very easy to have good bug reports with Devs.
Dominik (31:37)
Exactly.
Exactly
that. And also they are at the same time, they are more forgiving when there are bugs. have the feeling because they also produce bugs every day and they are not like you're not in a B2C customers where people hanging out on TicTac and never touched or developed the software on their own. They know what it is, what's behind there. So somehow they are also more forgiving, I guess, because of that.
Dagobert Renouf (32:13)
Yeah,
and it's funny because like we say we shouldn't sell to developers and you prove the opposite. And we also say we shouldn't say sell to indie makers because they are broke. But I sold, you know, lunch days mostly for indie makers and I can sell, you know, I sell them. And related to what you just said, I noticed...
Only one person, super annoying Dan Kulkov, who's always annoying on Twitter, his brand is being annoying, so it's okay. ⁓ But except him, nobody gave me shit for not launching. ⁓ I was always sending emails, people who paid their early access. I was always sending emails, I was always ⁓ saying, I can refund you at any point, I get it, I'm not trying to rug pull anything, I'm just going through this process of
Dominik (32:44)
you
Mm-hmm.
Nice.
Dagobert Renouf (33:08)
launching and all the shit I had to deal with, ⁓ personally. ⁓ And they were so nice. Everybody was so nice. They were rooting for me. Of course, I gave, I think, 10 or 12 refunds out of the 60 ⁓ over like eight months, so that's not that much. And people were waiting and they're supporting me and...
Dominik (33:15)
Mmm.
Dagobert Renouf (33:31)
because they get it because and what's funny is some people still haven't submitted their product because they bought eight or nine months ago but they still haven't shipped it either because they're like struggling also you know so they're connected to me and ⁓ and so like there's so much empathy so yeah i'm just wanted to point it out that
Dominik (33:41)
Nice.
Yeah.
But I think to come back
to that, like for example, say don't sell to developers, don't sell to indie hackers. I think that's really not a nice way to approach it because there are so many different developers out there and there are so many different indie hackers out there. And it also depends because indie hackers trust you. They know you for several years already.
This rule with just don't sell to indie hackers also doesn't make sense because if you bring value to them and if they trust you, then you kind of already break this rule or you can break through this rule and still have success. And that's the same also with developers. mean, of course there are also developers which is, which you might have a lot harder time to sell them things.
Dagobert Renouf (34:37)
Yeah.
Dominik (34:47)
But there is also a part of developers which are open and really nice to interact with in that regard as well.
Dagobert Renouf (34:55)
Yeah, and if you have a specific ⁓ capacity to get trust with developers, with the quality of the work you put out, or me with indie makers by being open and sharing, what matters in sales is trust. And that's also why on launch day I do these interviews, because I've thought long and hard, and also why it took me a long time to launch. was like...
Dominik (35:15)
Mm-hmm.
Dagobert Renouf (35:20)
I know in my experience to get sales, my previous products when I was getting sales is because thanks to Twitter, I gained people's trust. It's not just one product, it's product from Dago and this guy I know and I know he's real. So it just changes everything. And that's why on launch day, like some guy, he said, hey, can I not do the interview, just, you know, pay and do the demo? I'm like, no, no, I want, we need all to like...
Dominik (35:29)
Hmm.
Absolutely.
Dagobert Renouf (35:49)
The goal is to get sales and not just sales, of course, it's way beyond that. like the best way to do that is to show yourself and connect with people emotionally. If you don't have that, you cannot have sales. It's going to be 10 times harder. So that's why I'm like interview for trust and then special discount for 48 hours so people have FOMO and then trying to make it work this way. But yeah, like, yeah.
Dominik (36:16)
Absolutely. And
this also brings, is basically an answer to a question you had at the beginning before I showcased Vimetric. You asked me, how did I get the first customers? How did I get this moving? And it was basically because of people who knew me, who knew that I've built Snapify in the past. I mean, at the moment, Vimetric has three paying customers. And I think ⁓ all of them already knew me before and they could somewhat expect.
what I'm delivering and that's so much of a difference. if you are building that up over the years, it's definitely helpful. mean, yeah, trust is a lot ⁓ or means a lot to people when they're buying products and especially in a crowded market, like for example, the analytics market, it can be also a big bonus point. ⁓
for people's decision to buy or choose a specific product.
Dagobert Renouf (37:18)
100 % and it's gonna become even more important with you know more and more products being shit with AI and all these tools that make it easier. So yeah the human side, the trust side, that's how you stand out. So yeah go ahead.
Dominik (37:25)
Hmm.
Exactly. And so at the moment, that's also
my big things that I'm focusing with Mimetric. I want to lay a nice foundation. want to be a nice analytics product. want to, at the moment I'm doing many things like I wrote documentation, I created SDKs. I tried to spread the word about the SDKs, just
really getting the product.
Dagobert Renouf (37:54)
Show me
the SDKs because that's like pretty advanced. I'm curious to see it.
Dominik (37:58)
Yep, basically here is the documentation and you can see that I've already pushed quite some different SDKs like for Astro, React, Node.js, Python, Go, PHP. And this makes it just easy to integrate the metric and start tracking and sending events. So this is the things.
Dagobert Renouf (38:13)
Amazing. It's not just a JavaScript
on the page. It's also you can put it on the backend. You can put it. And I guess you can send all the events you want.
Dominik (38:21)
Exactly.
Exactly. For example, when from your Stripe webhook a purchase comes in, then you can immediately track it there from the backend and it's just more reliable data than just doing it in the front end. And yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (38:35)
Yeah, so that's
what you were saying. You were focused on the solid foundation. ⁓ And so far, what was the thing you're most proud of so far?
Dominik (38:39)
Exactly.
I think...
Dagobert Renouf (38:46)
And I see 132
stars, does that mean it's open source on GitHub?
Dominik (38:52)
Exactly. It's also open source. It's my first open source project and product. I also spent so much time thinking about if I should do it or not, but I went for it.
Dagobert Renouf (38:58)
Awesome!
It's funny,
I want to do it too with my slack alternative. I want to do it open source too. Okay.
Dominik (39:09)
⁓ nice. Nice.
And so far, I really enjoyed it. It's now open source since a month. And I think it was a great decision. But of course, can't say, I really thought so much about it, if I should do it, if I shouldn't do it. yeah, then I just went for it. And I think also in the analytics market, it
It was a bit easier decision because there are already quite some open source solutions out there. And when you track data, people trust you more when the source is also available and they could see what you're really doing behind the scenes. And so I thought I finally do it with Vimetric and open source it.
Dagobert Renouf (39:58)
And how does that work? Because
the worry I have is I'm going to have tons of people wanting me to merge PRs every day. Or maybe that's the opposite. Maybe nobody cares and there's nothing. How is it?
Dominik (40:12)
At the moment I'm at the nobody cares point of things. ⁓
Dagobert Renouf (40:14)
But still you have
more than a hundred stars, it seems quite good.
Dominik (40:20)
Yeah, at the moment it's more like collecting likes on Twitter, like collecting stars on GitHub. But still, I think there is value because it again, increases the trust. And sure, I think you could also reach that point where people create PRs and so on. But yeah, I also don't want to be flooded with PRs because I have a vision for my product and I want to be...
Dagobert Renouf (40:25)
I see, yeah.
Dominik (40:49)
Yeah, I want to be in control what happens, but I just try to emphasize this on the contributing markdown file and so on, which you do on open source repositories. So when people want to contribute, should first contact me and we can talk about it if they can contribute and so on. But I'm still early. I can't tell you too much about it.
Dagobert Renouf (41:04)
Yeah.
But it's really good for the trust because that's what's really good. People are not locked in and they can eject if they need and use their own server and not have to. I think that's awesome. Yeah.
Dominik (41:22)
Exactly. Yeah. That's
also a big thing because I thought, will this maybe be a bad thing for Vimetric because I get less customers. But in the end, I think it's like that. Either people want to self-host or not. And if they want to self-host, they won't choose Vimetric either, or they would have never chosen it. But like this, I can also get people on board that are self-hosting it.
Dagobert Renouf (41:32)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dominik (41:51)
and then again helped me with spreading the word and I saw it working out very well for other products and that's why I said yeah I'll just give it a try.
Dagobert Renouf (42:01)
That's awesome. Yeah, I think I want to do something similar and I'm really curious to see how it goes for you. So can you show me like the coolest thing on the metric for you?
Dominik (42:16)
So just have to make sure that I don't show you. I think like this, I can show it to you. At first, personally, I really like this view where you can see all of the users that have interacted with your product. But there are also quite some other solutions that show that to you. Then you can also click on one user. This is basically now you can see me interacting with Vimetric because I'm also tracking Vimetric with Vimetric, which is, yeah.
Dagobert Renouf (42:39)
⁓
Yeah.
Dominik (42:45)
inception style.
Dagobert Renouf (42:45)
Funny.
Dominik (42:46)
here you can see a specific user and what for example, yeah, I just wanted always to have is the first scene card here, because for snappify I also always wanted to see where did the user came from in the first place. And for example, did one of my blog posts really lead to a conversion, even if it was ⁓ months later, and so on.
Dagobert Renouf (42:58)
Yeah.
and then how they will use the product, because I can see this very interesting activity, GitHub style activity ⁓ graph. That's really cool.
Dominik (43:14)
and
Exactly. And here
you can also click on one day and then on the left side you see the events from that day. So if you want to go back and only want to see how the user interacted with your product on that day, you can also see it like this. But to be fair, this was also already working like that in SplitB. So I also wasn't doing something magical here.
Dagobert Renouf (43:46)
Yeah, okay. Yeah, I never tried, yeah. Okay.
Dominik (43:51)
Yeah, I'm still having a bit hard time to describe, but I have ideas for the future, which I want to extend the product. I want to do more like user segmentation where I can show the users here on the page, users that are more likely to churn because they haven't interacted with your product. So you might want to reach out with them. I have several ideas in my head, but as I said at the moment, I'm still
Dagobert Renouf (44:09)
Yeah.
Dominik (44:18)
laying the foundations. At the moment I'm working heavily on the funnels feature where you can create funnels, but this is also basically something you have in other analytics tools.
Dagobert Renouf (44:22)
Yeah. And what?
Yeah, yeah, but you know, you
have something there, something in another app and maybe, you know, in a couple months your app is the only one with this set of features all together in a nice UX. So, you know, it's really cool.
Dominik (44:40)
Yeah, sure. Like
you said in the beginning, I'm kind of humble and I don't want to sell people something that this is the magical tool because at the moment it's still very similar to other analytics products. In my opinion, it's also ⁓ one of the best in terms of UI and UX. You get an extraordinary experience and it's definitely already at a point where it helps you to understand
Dagobert Renouf (45:00)
Yep.
Dominik (45:08)
where are your users coming from, which things are helping you to convert, and ⁓ also to see how are they interacting with your product, and ⁓ maybe to show you a little bit of a detail.
Dagobert Renouf (45:20)
Did
you do a mobile version yet? Like ⁓ responsive?
Dominik (45:27)
Not yet. The web app is responsive, yes. Because I also want to always check on my analytics on the go. So here you can see it works very well on mobile.
Dagobert Renouf (45:35)
awesome.
Nice, yeah, because I was wondering, since you're a UX guy, really good move to put the menu on the bottom, because big mistake people do is they just do like a hamburger menu with like just these three lines, but it's always better to show in one click where you can go, so really good move, really good UI move, I think.
Dominik (46:00)
Absolutely,
because I have the idea I want to... I actually already decided on that I want to make native apps as well because I just want to give the users the opportunity to receive notifications when specific events happen. Maybe when something urgent happens they want to receive a notification and...
Dagobert Renouf (46:08)
⁓
That's amazing
and you know that brings me to this thing you did with Snapify. You you go super deep and then it unlocks something because then when you say this, now you're like really, really going deep into how do I make the best experience for the user and now you're gonna send notifications for events which is not on like a lot of these other platforms. So now it's becoming something new.
And then maybe, I'm not giving advice, I'm just saying just it's a possibility. Only because of that, maybe like in Snapify, you started doing ⁓ presentations, PowerPoints, maybe there, you're gonna end up be like an event tracker and like logs of things. And maybe in six months, there's like integration or like some shit like this and you open a completely different market, like there's like a product called Log Snag or something like that from an Indie maker that does that.
And you know, and that's only because you give a shit and you care. And so you end up doing features that nobody else thought of. And then this mix of new feature that nobody thought of in an existing market creates an original and interesting product.
Dominik (47:24)
Shit.
Yeah, basically that describes very well my idea at the moment. also, for example, for the mobile app, I think it would really be nice if you can have nice native widgets on your app, maybe where you can see some statistics directly on your home screen and stuff like that. But that's all, I really have several ideas, but...
Dagobert Renouf (47:54)
Yeah.
Dominik (48:02)
And that also maybe brings me to another point is when do you want to ship your products? And now I'm launching on launch day on your platform. I also already launched on other platforms and try to get the word ⁓ out there, even if the metric at the moment is not too different from other solutions. But I have to get going at some point. need to get started with the product and it's going to develop it.
Dagobert Renouf (48:26)
Yeah.
Dominik (48:31)
probably will look lot different in a year and then maybe when someone asks me I can also go more into detail about what's different and what's the key differentiators in terms of features. But at the moment, yeah, I'm focusing on laying down a nice foundation and my plan is to work on this thing for a longer period of time and yeah, make it a nice solution.
Dagobert Renouf (48:58)
That's awesome.
And can you stop sharing your screen? ⁓ And I wish I had a button to stop sharing the screen of the guest on Riverside because I'm always asking this shit. ⁓ But anyway, ⁓ you know, I think the thing you have going for you is the trust because the previous product, you've been doing it for four years. You're still running it. It's still working. You're still working on it, you know.
Dominik (49:02)
Yeah, sure.
Yeah
Dagobert Renouf (49:26)
So because like I think that's kind of like a hurdle that we have as indie makers is like, ⁓ is he going to keep working on it? Is he because like a lot of people, they just do something and then they give up or they stop. So it's hard to invest. And even if it's not just money, it's also the cost of switching, you know, analytics, for example, or you need to switch platform. And then what happens with my data, this guy stops. But with you, I'm like super confident you're not going to stop.
Dominik (49:38)
Mm.
Dagobert Renouf (49:54)
So I can use your platform and it's going to be good for years. That's how I feel about it. So that's an, think really, and maybe that's something to put on the landing page actually, something like that, but I don't know. I'm just thinking about it. Like this, this trust thing, this long-term trusting, I think it's very important. Yeah.
Dominik (50:05)
Mm.
Thanks that you mentioned that because that's also some of the things which I hoped would help me with building something like Mimetric in the long run.
Dagobert Renouf (50:21)
Yeah,
yeah, 100%. Well, that was awesome having you on lunch day, and finally meeting you.
Dominik (50:29)
Yeah, absolutely. I enjoyed it a lot. Thanks for this nice and casual chat. I really enjoy this format. So I just can also say please keep it going because those chats are so nice and also I think they somehow bring the indie community a bit closer together.
Dagobert Renouf (50:48)
Yeah, that's the whole idea, man. I'm like, that's why I started doing the podcast, because at first I was like, should I make something like with crazy videos of like telling the story? Like, it doesn't matter. Like, I think like what people are missing is just like we are like, for example, me and a lot of us, we're just alone. Like physically, we're just like, I'm here in Lille, you're here in your city in Austria. Everybody's kind of like alone and we're all online.
But since Twitter became a bit less community focused and more focused on virality, kind of like, and IndieHackers.com also become a bit less, ⁓ like a tight Indie maker community, we kind of like lost.
Dominik (51:21)
Mm.
Dagobert Renouf (51:30)
where we can hang out and where we can and I feel like this podcast that's why I'm like I'm just doing one per day like on average because it's basically all these interviews and I'm just putting them there and it's just if you listen to that you just can hang out with indie makers for half an hour or 50 minutes a day that's the and that's all but that's awesome yeah
Dominik (51:32)
Mmm.
Hmm
Absolutely, that's really nice. Yeah,
I think so too. I think it's a good idea. So I just can say, please, please keep it going. I enjoy it a lot.
Dagobert Renouf (51:59)
Yeah,
thanks man, that's awesome. So we're gonna do a fake goodbye, which I'm gonna keep in the recording, but please, I'm not gonna close the, don't close the window right away. yeah, thanks everyone for listening. Thanks Dominic and good luck for your launch day.
Dominik (52:20)
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me and yeah, see ya.
Dagobert Renouf (52:25)
Bye.