Losing Millions and Staging a Comeback · COVID-19 is Creating More New Businesses

Channing here. Friendly reminder for all of you in the US that voting registration deadlines are fast approaching. This is sure to be a whirlwind week in US politics, so now's as good a time as any to register to vote!

Here's what you'll find in this newsletter:

• What if you spent years growing your business to millions in revenue, then lost it all when COVID-19 hit? For Aline Lerner, this is more than just a hypothetical situation. Read how she's staging a comeback.
• In the News. Trump's infamous tax returns just got released. A new solution to the problems of social media? Americans are starting a record number of businesses.
• Online privacy is one of the biggest issues in tech right now. Learn why this is a great thing for indie hackers.
• Harry's Growth Tip: How to make your higher-tier package more inviting.

Special thanks to Nicola Milner, Nico Botha, and Harry Dry for contributing to this newsletter. Want to contribute a piece 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

🏚 From $Millions to $0… and Back Again?

"I stared into the abyss."

What happens when you grow your indie business to millions in revenue… and then a disaster comes out of nowhere to threaten everything you've worked for?

Aline Lerner of Interviewing.io faced that exact challenge earlier this year, after the COVID-19 pandemic essentially erased her revenue.

Aline founded Interviewing.io six years ago to change the hiring process. "Hiring should be about connecting smart people," Aline says. "It shouldn’t be about middlemen [or] resumés."

So she created a platform where software engineers can practice safely and anonymously before taking on the "scary" algorithmic interviews at real tech companies.

Engineers loved it. She got over 7,000 signups on her mailing list on the first day she posted her landing page. And in the ensuing years, she scaled up to dozen of employees and millions in revenue.

Her business model was simple: The companies conducting the mock interviews had to pay, but engineers could practice for free. "It's free and always will be," the site advertised.

And then COVID-19 hit.

Almost immediately, employers stopped hiring and put their subscriptions on pause. Revenue plummeted. Seemingly overnight, the survival of the company was at stake.

Aline felt blindsided.

Would she be letting down her customers if her business failed? Would she be letting down her users? She even began to question whether her centrally-held tenets were still valid. "Who am I now, and what is this company?" she asked.

But she didn't have the time to "practice grieving" like she might have done under more normal business difficulties. It was do-or-die time. She had to act.

With the end of her runway in sight, Aline and her team redirected all of their energy to a single question: "What do we have that we can sell?"

And then a critical insight surfaced.

There was considerable value locked up in the thousands of engineers who'd been using Interviewing.io for free. The same engineers to whom they'd promised, "It's free and always will be."

Turning the ship around would require Aline and her team to reinvent themselves, to think like scrappy indie hackers again, and to go back on the one-and-only promise they'd ever made to their users.

To hear the story of how Aline saved her business, catch her on the latest episode of the Indie Hackers podcast. —Nicola Milner

📰 In the News

🏢 Americans are starting new businesses at the highest rate in more than a decade. Why? Partly out of necessity, sure. But also due to new opportunities.

💰 Trump's tax returns just got published. And they reveal numerous tax avoidance strategies that Trump and other affluent Americans use to avoid paying Uncle Sam.

🦠 A few tech execs, including a Salesforce VP, got together to discuss creative ways that small businesses can survive the pandemic.

🚀 LinkedIn released a list of their top 50 startup picks of 2020. It's a goldmine for product idea inspiration.

✨ A new social network is on the way. Unlike Twitter and Facebook, Telepath will require users to be kind. Can it work?

🕵️‍ Indie Hackers Lead the Fight for Online Privacy

Tech companies have come under a lot of fire lately for their irresponsible use of user data. It's no coincidence that the new Netflix documentary on the subject has been a trending topic on the IH forum. And regulators in Europe are engaged in a very public struggle to get tech giants like Facebook to limit transfers of user data from the EU to the US.

For indie hackers, this heightened awareness about online privacy is a good thing. Early-stage founders are leading the way in online privacy, and there are a couple reasons why:

Ethical product marketing and organic growth: Indie hackers usually don't have an enormous marketing budget. By using alternative, organic growth channels there is no need for most of them to rely on intrusive tracking and biased algorithms to reach their audiences.

Building good software and charging for it: Indie hackers tend to thrive on the traditional way of building good software and selling it at a reasonable price as opposed to big tech companies that offer software for free and sell the data of their users to advertisers.

Want some examples?

• Simple Analytics and Fathom Analytics offer site stats without tracking or storing user data.
• Retrobox is a Slack app for team retrospectives that deletes user data after every meeting.
• Gekri is a privacy-first online journal that offers insights into your mood.
• Portabella is a Kanban board that offers end-to-end encryption for added security.

Check out my newsletter for the latest on privacy and tech. —Nico Botha

📈 Harry's Growth Tip

How to make your higher-tier package more inviting.

1. Create a visual hierarchy.
2. Make the discount more compelling.
3. Use tier names to set expectations.

Join my list for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips. —Harry Dry