How to Bootstrap in a Poor Country ‧ More Affordable SEO ‧ The Rise of Micro-SaaS

Channing here. Google launched Tables this week, which gave me a kick. Think of it as a mix between Airtable and… Airtable. People instantly started making predictions about when it would end up in the graveyard with so many other Google products. I showed Tables to Courtland and his response was, "So… they're copying something that Notion already made obsolete? RIP innovation at Google."

Newsletter time. Here's what you'll find in this issue:

• Think bootstrapping is hard? Try doing it in one of Europe's poorest countries like the founder of Designmodo ($45k/mo).
• In the News. The SEO tool Ahrefs is becoming affordable (finally). The CIA is poaching tech talent from the Valley. And Facebook might pull its service from 45 million European users.
• Trend Alert: Micro-SaaS companies are on the rise. Learn how they're taking big risks to get to customers first.
• 3 Growth Tips. Get invited on podcasts that will grow your audience. Increase your paid newsletter sales. Win at Google by being early to cater to voice searchers.

Special thanks to Dru Riley for contributing a piece to this issue. Want to contribute an article of your own? Check out this doc for an idea of what I'm looking for. Then simply publish a piece on IH and email me about it! —Channing

🧱 Bootstrapping a Business in a Poor Country

Imagine replacing the salary from your day job with cash from your own business. If you're like most indie hackers, that's the dream.

But for Andrian Valeanu, it was only a modest first step. Because Andrian is from Moldova, one of the poorest countries in Europe. And the salary from his day job didn't exactly constitute living large:

A lot's changed since then. Andrian's now bringing in $45,000/mo through his company Designmodo. And the story in between is an object lesson in making something from nothing… while risking everything.

The first step involved breaking free of that day $350/mo day job. Moldova doesn't offer a lot of employment opportunities outside of farm work, so Andrian's best option was to code. His only problem? He wasn't an engineer. And he didn't have the money to pay for classes either.

So he took matters into his own hands:

Not long after, Andrian built his first revenue-generating project and quit his job.

That's when the real journey began. Because, at only a few hundred a month in revenue, he had very little margin for error with his new business. That's an almost existential problem. Every time you launch a product you're placing a bet. Companies with plenty of cash on hand can place plenty of these bets. But companies with little or no cash? One or two bad ones can spell disaster. And for Andrian, this might've meant returning to a job market that paid him a few dollars per day.

So he proceeded accordingly with his business, minimizing risk at every turn.

First, he chose a product line that was predicated on making a diverse set of small bets: email- and website-building apps. By keeping each app small and aimed at a different audience, Andrian created a situation where the fate of his entire business did not rest on the shoulders of a single product.

But it's not enough for a business to be defensive. To compete with his larger competitors, Andrian also had to go on offense: hiring developers, running marketing experiments, and more. And for this, his business needed capital. Which… Andrian didn't have. Loans weren't readily available in Moldova, and in the early days he didn't much in the way of personal savings or business profits to reinvest in Designmodo.

His only option was to get creative. So he worked out a revenue-sharing agreement where the members of his team would all personally invest their savings in the company and reap a share of the profits:

With this foundation under him, Andrian was on his way.

Check out his full interview to see how he's climbed from a few thousand per month to half a million per year. —Channing

📰 In the News

👎 Facebook is threatening to pull its operations out of Europe if regulators ban it from transferring data to the U.S.

🔎 Ahrefs just released a set of free SEO features. Get 'em while they're hot, indie hackers.

⚔️ Trump takes on social media by making it risky for platforms like Twitter and Facebook to remove offensive content.

🛍 Two Shopify employees just went rogue and stole customer data from 100s of Shopify merchants.

🕵️‍ The CIA is trying to poach tech employees with an equity model of its own: any CIA employee who patents an invention gets a cut of the proceeds.

👶 Trend Alert: Micro-SaaS

"If you build something for everyone, it works for no one."

Micro-SaaS companies solve specific problems for specific groups.

Platform risk is common in Micro-SaaS. For example, ChimpCharge leans on Stripe. Mailbrew spreads the risk across Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Product Hunt, Hacker News.

In the future, platforms will clone features from popular plugins. Shopify now offers abandoned cart follow ups. Despite this, micro-SaaS will thrive. Abandoned cart apps, like CartHook, Consistent Cart, and Privy solve problems missed by Shopify. Competition will increase. Exhaust data, like traffic, reviews and backlinks, point to the best opportunities.

Go here for a deep dive on this trend. It includes opportunities for indie hackers. —Dru Riley

📈 3 Growth Tips

We've got a mailing list that sends out 5 growth tips a week. You can sign up on our site. Here are 3 from the past week:

1. Getting on a podcast can grow your audience and improve your SEO. Try pitching with a video clip that sets you apart and gives the host a preview. Read more...
2. Upselling subscribers to a paid version of your free newsletter won't always work. Instead, try starting a separate paid newsletter, and use the free newsletter to advertise it. Read more…
3. Young people are now using voice commands to search the Internet. This will have implications for SEO. Get ahead of the competition by using your articles to answer likely voice queries. Read more…