300: Marc Louvion — Becoming a Product Launch Beast
Download MP3Today, I'm talking to Marc Louvien, who's Product Hunt's maker of the year 2023. Marc is a shipping beast, and his most recent project Shipfast allows other founders to launch their products just as fast as Mark does it. Shipfast has seen massive success over the last couple months and our conversation actually turns into a founder brainstorming session at some point, where we try to figure out where Mark can take his project from here. This episode is sponsored by acquire.com. More on that later.
Arvid:Now, let's get shipping with Mark. Mark, welcome to the show. I am talking to the maker of the year 2023. I think this is awesome. Congratulations.
Arvid:How does it feel to be awarded such an honor, such a title? Did you expect that?
Marc:I I had a little glimpse of it. Last 2023 was, very, you know, like a lot of thing happened, shipped a lot of startups. But that backward, like 2 years back when I just got started, product tent was kind of like the Colosseum. I was I was seeing it as the thing, you know, for makers. And so that 2 years journey has been pretty impressive and the title was yeah, it was just so cool.
Arvid:Yeah. That's really nice. I I found this, first off, I it's really cool to to have this title and then to get that title as somebody who hasn't been around, like, for decades as well. Right? You got started.
Arvid:You really shipped for a couple of years, and now you're here building all these amazing things. Is Product Hunt still something that you, like, use in every single of your products and every single of your launches?
Marc:Yeah, man. I literally shipped an app yesterday on product hunt.
Arvid:Yeah. How how is that doing? What is it? Zen ZenVoice. What's the name of that thing?
Marc:Yeah. It is ZenVoice. Io. It's a little, no code tool for Stripe to avoid paying the fee for Stripe invoicing. That's awesome.
Marc:And it was doing well. I, I, I, I always launch on Twitter as well. I make, videos that, I think I remember you were one of the first person who made a comment on that Joe Rogan video. It was a year and a half ago, and I'm forever thankful for that. And, and, yeah, doing well.
Arvid:Yeah. I'm I wanna kinda talk about this, like, because I was looking at this yesterday when you launched and I was thinking, this guy not only is building interesting products, but he's building them with this focus on the launch and Product Hunt itself. Like, I don't think you could build a tool that could not be launched. I think you would you would always, like, gravitate towards something that you can actually put on Product Hunt. How much, of a priority is it being launchable for you if you build something new?
Marc:It is 300%. It is my entire focus. And that's why I try to avoid shipping proper. Startups with more like one feature of what a startup idea I have in mind. Because I have packed a bunch of, failed startups in the past and I would drive my mind crazy.
Marc:I would spend a year building a product that nobody would ever want. And so now my marketing is mostly launching, and I see how people react. And I've seen that with some products like Gfast. I have really good feedback and traction from the launch. And then I go all in on it.
Marc:And sometimes, with other products, then you know, I launch, I make a couple of $100 for the launch. It's nice, but there's no real traction. There's nothing that, people are really excited about. And so I would just keep the product running and I would move on to the other one to avoid making the mistake of spending another 6 months on something that, people would probably never want or use.
Arvid:Yeah. Do you have a time limit for this? Like, if a product that doesn't like, how how long do you work on a product before you think, okay, maybe it's time to pivot to something else?
Marc:So there are different stages. In the last year, it would be maximum 1 month. I'll never spend more than a month on it. Now I get to see people's questions. People are giving me feedback.
Marc:People are sending me emails. So I guess some kind of pre validation. I kind of know something that people already want. And so, I would this year spend more time building those products because I know there's some kind of need already somewhere.
Arvid:Yeah. So with this pre validation, do you also have kinda a pre pre validation, like before the launch itself? Do you do you try to build up some kind of, I don't know, on Twitter, in your community, some some kind of buzz before you even put it up on product end?
Marc:I do actually for Zen Voice. So the last product I launched, I I build it live on, YouTube. I set up my stream. I have my little microphone and I go live every morning, and I would spend 2 to 6 or 8 hours live building the product. And then I get people's feedback.
Marc:So they are like, they, sometimes they help debug my code, which is really nice. Sometimes they give me marketing, like headlines, IDs, and also I get also some potential customers there who are like, oh, this is cool. You know, I, why don't you add this feature or that feature? This is my pre pre validation thing.
Arvid:Wow. This is this is awesome. That that is really cool. Streaming has always been really interesting. I I feel like as a as a coder, I'm always super scared to stream.
Arvid:And I had Rocks Rocks Codes on the show, and he streamed a lot in the past. I think he he I had an interview with him on his podcast. Like, we were hanging out on his Twitch stream for 4 hours and just chatting while he was we were diving, like, from topic into topic. Streaming is a different world. Right?
Arvid:The the it's it's just a a more engaging kind of thing. When did you start streaming, and and why did you start streaming? This this is a this is a pretty pretty big deal. Right?
Marc:And I think this is the kind of question I don't even know how to answer. I don't know. I I felt okay. I think I wanted to have a different approach to building in public. And like you're doing with the podcast, you're, you know, you're showcasing some founders who've, who've done well in the past.
Marc:I tried to have a deeper approach than just 280 characters on Twitter. And building live is the most, you know, real things you can ever do. Because, there's this thing where you see some people who made it, you don't know the entire story behind. And even though you see a tweet, it's hard to relate for some of them. And so I was like, well, if I go live, this is a 100% me.
Marc:This is not edited, not scripted. And so, yeah, transparency is something that, you know, it connects people, it sells. And I wanted to give it a try. I think I've done it 3 times. Once a year ago, maybe another one, 6 months ago.
Marc:And recently like last week, and it's been doing well. Like, and even YouTube is also pushing those lies. I got, I have a really tiny YouTube channel at the moment. It's, I think it's about 5,000 subscribers and each live would get at least 2,000 views, which is nice for a video that's not edited, and that forces me to sit on my desk and actually produce some code.
Arvid:Yeah. That's awesome. And, Yeah. It it it is, it is very interesting to watch. I feel like watching somebody act as an as an entrepreneur, as a founder, is wildly different from just seeing those, like I said, 280 characters of a summary of their work.
Arvid:Right? You you get to the this transparency, the authenticity. I do wonder because you're you're now somewhere at at 76, 77,000 followers on Twitter as well. How do you maybe, yeah, that maybe the question is, do you struggle with staying authentic in front of such a massive audience at all, or is it easy for you?
Marc:Yeah. Recently, it I don't think it's about, at least for me, not about the number of audience of people. It's about coming back after making a product that was talked about, a lot on Twitter. It's very hard. I feel like some people would have expected or maybe I just have expectations for myself and I feel like I have to make the next heat.
Marc:I cannot ship something that will fail. And I self assure myself with that. Yeah, that's pretty much where where I am at the moment.
Arvid:That that that's interesting. I, I love this because that's how I felt for the last couple years. Right? We we sold our business in 2019, then I started writing. And, I mean, you know, writing is also hard.
Arvid:Coding is hard. Business building is hard. Everything is hard if you really wanna do it well. But writing is easier because, you know, people don't pay you a subscription fee and you have to keep writing. Right?
Arvid:It's not the same. It's not the same as building an indie business. So I kinda didn't build businesses for a while because I felt, well, I'm just gonna keep writing, gonna build a new seller, gonna build a media business, you know, gonna just find sponsors and and do advertising, make money a different way. And then I started building again. Didn't work out too well.
Arvid:Right? And, like, the first couple projects that I was doing didn't go that far or as far as I wanted to or as far as I did in the past, and I felt like, oh, should I even code? Like, it's nice to hear you feel the same kind of feeling because it's obviously stupid. Right? Like, these things, you never know where it's gonna go.
Arvid:You just have to put in the work. So how do you convince yourself to still go through this, to to still put your work out there?
Marc:I think I built a little identity in my head of who I am. And I try to turn off the emotion and just be like, okay, I like creating stuff and this is who I am. Since I'm a kid, I create stuff. I'm just going to keep creating stuff. I I don't know if that's the
Arvid:answer. Yeah. I I mean I mean, maybe maybe share some some things from your past that you've created, like, pre indie hacker. Like, if you said you started as a kid, what did you create back in the day?
Marc:I think like mo, like a lot of EDI actors, legos are playing in my room. I building them all day. Nothing else matters. Huts and dams. I'd go into, we had a little garden.
Marc:My parents might, I would have some little logs and I will make a little huts in the garden or in the forest. And then, yeah, I mean, and then I discovered coding, at university at the time where I was not interested in coding, but I kind of started to understand a little bit what is the internet and what is coding? And then after university, I had to do something. I just didn't want to become an engineer, which was my graduation. And so I I tried to, you know, find back what I was doing as a kid.
Marc:So building stuff for the current world. So the digital world. And I followed with coding, to be this kind of, like, self fulfillment of creation of tool creation. Yeah.
Arvid:Yeah. That's pretty cool. I I agree with that. Like, coding is magic. I don't know I don't know how to say it any better.
Arvid:Right? Coding is just magic. And the fact that you can create magic for other people to use to be wizards all by themselves, that is that is so powerful. I think that I I would like to talk about Chip Fast. That is the product that I've been most impressed by recently.
Arvid:Although, we'll we'll see where SendVoice goes over the next couple days. Right? You never know. But, Shipfast has been it it just just blew up like crazy. And, can you explain to me why you build it?
Arvid:What it is? Maybe that's important to you. Who you build it for, and, where this journey has been going over the last what is it? Like, 6 months?
Marc:It yes. It's it's soon to be 6 months. Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, I I So this is a code base for, programmers who want to create startups.
Marc:It includes, payments. It includes emails and all that. Back then it was just a way for me to ship faster. So it was 6 months ago. I already at this point built about 15 products, and I was doing the same thing over and over.
Marc:You set up a landing page, you create a domain name, you had customer support. You process the payments. I was like, oh, I'm going to create my own boilerplate. And I'm going to make it available, for people who want to eventually do the same. And I spent probably a week gathering the code, making a little documentation, and I push it live before going on holiday to Hong Kong.
Marc:And then I just woke up to the launch. And at the time, I was making maybe 3 to 4000 a month and I would wake up to the launch with something like 3 ks already made within 24 hours. And from, from that day, it, yeah, things like it created some kind of, I don't know, loop or whatever, And just things kept going up and it has been making about $50,000 a month for for the past 5 months.
Arvid:Yeah. It is. The I I've note I've noticed that in your Twitter bio, that number is just amazing. Right? As does for for a product that doesn't even have, like, recurring revenue.
Arvid:Right? This this is just amazing sales. Can you talk to me maybe about the choice that you made here? You have I think you have two prices. You have one, like, $169 for, like, a normal version, and you have the $199 version that includes, like, lifetime updates and that kind of stuff.
Arvid:I find that pricing choice really interesting. First off, it's just pay once, use forever. That is already pretty cool, but also this very slight difference between prices. Can you talk maybe about the psychology that you you put in there, like the reason why you priced it that way?
Marc:So, the people who are listening to this know that this is pure luck and randomness. I had no idea what I was doing back then, but I think I, it, it worked. So the, the idea is to have some anchor price where you have a price that is slightly cheaper than another one with 1 or 2 or less 3 features less, but it creates some kind of anchor. People would be like, okay, so that's 169 is the price for the product. And so that 199 makes sense afterward because you are anchored to that 1.70 or $1.69 price point.
Marc:Whereas if you have just one price, what do you, how do you compare that with something else? Like how many apples is that? Like, you know, it is hard to, to understand for people. What is the value of such a thing? And that helps a lot with this.
Marc:And I decided to go with a one time payment because, you know, as you said, like it's much easier to sell a one time fee for something, than it is to sell a subscription. If your product doesn't have, a really good recurring value, there is no point of charging you recurring revenue.
Arvid:Yeah. I I think it's also just a wonderful idea for this kind of product. Right? This product, you don't have to to pay for hosting. I mean, you have to host somewhere, but you don't have to pay for ongoing hosting of other people's stuff.
Arvid:You provide files. I mean, I've from your marketing copy, you don't provide files. You provide an experience. Right? You provide, like, a way for people to ship, which is nice, and I like this.
Arvid:I really enjoy your copy. Gotta say, I I was reading through that page, and even just because I'm interested in what people build And the way you phrase it, it's like you you don't buy the code. I mean, obviously, you buy the code, but you buy in fact, if you buy your own time, you buy your own time back. That's what this product is. I I find this really, really cool.
Arvid:You really speak the language of the people that you're helping, and that's probably because you use this yourself. Right? Do you still use it in all your products? Is is this still, like, the the boilerplate for everything you do?
Marc:Every time. And that's how I avoid building unwanted features. I have tons of feedback about potential features for Prashy Fast. And what made it successful is because I built it for myself. And if I listen to all those feedbacks, I'm going to build a very complex boilerplate, and I do not do that.
Marc:Instead, I use it for myself. And every time I see something that is useful, I'll add it to Shifast. So I shipped Zendesk yesterday using Shifast. And out of ZenVoice, there were 2, UI component that I made for the landing page that, were nice. I thought I could reuse later.
Marc:And so I went back to Chimpass and I added those 2 components. That's kind of my filter to avoid, you know, focusing on unwanted stuff and and build only what matters.
Arvid:That's really cool because you also get to use these new components now in your old projects, if you ever wanted to. Right? That that is that is awesome. What a genius way of building something that just feeds back into everything else you're doing. That's really cool.
Arvid:I I love what you've done on the home page too, where you show just how recently you updated the product. I think this is a lesson, like, for for indie hackers who still want to communicate with their audience like one to 1, really want to show, hey, I am building this. This is not not some nebulous company somewhere. This is me. I'm the person behind it.
Arvid:Here's the feed of, like, the GitHub commits that just integrates into your website. Is that something that you did did you choose that as a marketing tactic, or are you just a nerd who wants to show that you that you integrate the GitHub comments into your, your website there?
Marc:I would say it's, it's the spirit of the community where we'll build in public. The T shirt is saying is you share your transparent. We relate very close little community, and so we can relate to people that way. So it's closer to a marketing strategy than me being a nerd. And I, yeah, I think like the YouTube lies, building it public, just I think it's great to show everything that you're doing.
Marc:The good, the bad, the secrets and all that. And so that's part of the, the reason I made this open. Yeah.
Arvid:Yeah. I think it's really cool. I I think, like, it really speaks to me as somebody who who judges or has to judge. Like, most of your users, they come to your website, they look at it, and they've they wanna figure out, is this legit? And is this gonna stay with me for a while?
Arvid:Right? For because for $200, you wanna invest that money into something that's gonna stick around. Showing the update frequency and just how recent the latest update has come, that is a pretty solid positive signal, like, to the developers that you're serving. I think that feature in particular stood out to me as genius. I'm gonna steal that idea at some point.
Arvid:And I think if if only more of us would do this just to to share with their target customer audience just how much effort they put into this. Right? Then I I think that would communicate much more clearly why and how you're building this. This is really cool. Are you building some some kind of beyond the product, which is code.
Arvid:Right? Are you building a community around this too? That's not just a code base there, but also people who can help each other. Is that a plan? Are you doing this?
Marc:Yes. It was not expected at all because I'm not a community type person. I'm very actually, I spend all my time in this bedroom here, and I don't talk to barely anyone. But someone mentioned, do you have a Discord community? And I was like, why not?
Marc:Let's give it a try. And I opened a Discord. And I made it part of the premium plan and people started to join and like, like share a crazy help, like debug each other, outvote each others. As well. Me for someone who has never been part of a close community like this on the Twitter, I was like, wow, this is pretty cool.
Marc:And I kept, you know, adding more channels so people can talk about marketing, can talk about debugging, life in general updates, work in progress. And it's been doing really well. The she passed community now is I think it's about a 1,000 something members. And you have every week you see new project being launched on product tons. And I mean, this is pumping.
Marc:This is a kind of like the end reward for me is like, oh, if I see people actually shipping stuff, it's beautiful.
Arvid:Yeah. It's really cool. I love that this is like a a little side result of you building this product. Now all of a sudden you've brought people together. Isn't that awesome?
Arvid:I I think this is just the most wonderful thing. Do do you intend to to take this further as a business, Like, the both Shimpfast and this community. You'd like, not just in terms of monetizing it, but do you intend to build more around this, like, consolidate it?
Marc:I don't I'm at a point where I don't really know. Do do you have any clue how
Arvid:I
Marc:could update or upgrade this?
Arvid:Well, let's brainstorm a little bit. I'm I'm thinking a lot about, the small bets community by Daniel Vesalo. Right? That is a very focused community on this one aspect of we all wanna build different things, and we wanna see which one of them makes it, and we focus on that one. You kinda are in a very similar niche just in a in a more technical way.
Arvid:You are where people start that thing, and they try to make it grow. Right? They try to to grow it to a point where this little thing that they quickly built turns into real business. What Daniel has done, and that's probably the one thing that I would recommend, is turning the community into a university because Daniel has been hiring people to teach. Right?
Arvid:He I I was on on his, and I'm gonna be at at, the end of February, gonna be there again teaching about building a media business. And he has, Justin Welsh talking about LinkedIn. Right? He's he's bringing all these experts in that can help the existing community just with a lecture. And then he he saves the lecture as a recording and offers it for free to anybody who joins the community.
Arvid:You know, like, that turns the community into this constantly growing treasure trove of knowledge that new people can tap in, and old people, they get new lectures every now and then. I think turning it into a university, that's a that's a move, and it's easy. Like, you're well connected. You could easily get your indie hacker friends and the people that you know in the in the marketing world and all of that, just give a lecture, then, Daniel Vassallo pays them. But you probably don't even need to do that.
Arvid:There's a lot of just interest by indie hackers to find other indie hackers to look at their stuff. So, you know, I think that's how it could start for you.
Marc:Oh, that's smart. Yeah. It's a very smart, but yeah, this guy is really doing really well. Oh, super awesome. Yeah.
Marc:Yeah. Smart. I think this is probably the part where my developer mindset comes and tells you like, hey, bro, we need to build here. We cannot do some other the operational thing part of it is not for you, Mark, your developer. But, but I think this is a really smart way.
Marc:That's probably why the community is growing. So it's so big now. I hear it everywhere.
Arvid:Yeah. And and the thing is, I I think, Daniel has hired people to help him out. I think Louis Basaes is on the is, like, a cofounder, like, after the fact kinda cofounder situation there, just sharing sharing the operational workload. But it's it's that's the one thing that may be a bit problematic at this point. If you're a developer and you wanna code, then sitting in webinars, like, is not the same thing.
Arvid:Right? Like, sitting and and listening to people teach in the community, putting effort into maintaining the community, that obviously is time that is not spent in in your IDE. So you'll have to figure out how much of a developer do I wanna be if you wanna build this even bigger, or do you wanna find somebody who's kind of a community manager or a community leader, somebody who does it better than you, but will still listen to you, you know, somebody like that, and give them that role and have them build the community while you keep coding. That's that's really the balance you need to strike as a as a solopreneur. Right?
Arvid:Because you still need to be fulfilled in what you do. Daniel Daniel has no problem with that, but might might be more problematic for you. Have you thought about, like, giving giving up the the reins to somebody else?
Marc:It has crossed my mind a few times, and I think there is a part of me that really wants to say solo. I think you can only go as far as you want being solo. But at a certain point, and I feel like where I am now, I'm kind of happy to stay solo, and not have this part of me that doesn't want to work with people. I'm making this podcast for Greg. I am someone who doesn't like people.
Marc:I love people. I just don't like the operational part of it and having, you know, like, deadlines and stuff, you know? So yeah. Yeah. This is like, yeah, I have to probably find if I can find a fit with my personality and expanding the business at the same time.
Marc:Yeah. It's pretty hard.
Arvid:Honestly, I think it's a very common I wouldn't even call it problem. It's just a common reality for indie hackers. Like, for people like, the indie is is is important. Right? We wanna be independent.
Arvid:We don't wanna be beholden to somebody else. It's bad enough that we have to listen to our customers. Right? It's bad enough that they're the ones controlling what we do. Now having other people in the mix, that's just complicated.
Arvid:I I understand it. I feel it. Honestly, that was the reason why I never hired anybody for FeedbackPanda. The business that we built, my girlfriend and I built back in the day and then sold a couple years later. And and this is a cautionary tale because my reluctance to hire, my reluctance to get people on board into the into the business led to me almost burning out completely.
Arvid:Like, I I was mid burnout when we sold the business. We sold the business mostly because I couldn't keep doing it anymore. Right? This might not be where you are right now, and I hope you never get to that point, but it's I convinced myself that I never wanted to share this with anybody else. Right?
Arvid:I convinced myself that only I could do what I'm doing because I'm the world's best developer for some reason. Obviously not true, but that's what I told myself. Nobody else could do my work. And then it kept growing and growing and got bigger and bigger, which is wonderful, but I was still just me, and I was the only technical person in the business. My girlfriend was doing operations.
Arvid:She was doing, like, the design and the the marketing and all that, and still we were both overloaded, me a bit more than her. It got pretty horrible. So there is value in thinking of other people and bringing them in to a certain degree. There is also value in doing it yourself. So I don't wanna scare you with this.
Arvid:I just wanna give, like, my perspective on this because that was pretty dangerous at some point. I hope you never get there.
Marc:Yeah. No. I I think I can imagine. Yeah. Yeah.
Marc:I mean, it's probably because you have I think, you were having, like, a proper software so people would use it every day. For me, as you said, it's like, they get the code is a it's kind of like a course. So once you get the course, you could get a few supports, customer support emails here and there, but it's still quite light. So probably not experiencing any of all the hard work you've had tried. How would you say is did you have mostly customer support, like, bugs on the sites or emails from clients?
Marc:Or is it something like technical that was hard to manage because you had a lot of traffic or something?
Arvid:Well, I I guess, that's that's a good question. Most of customer support was just people who had little issues. Right? We we were serving kind of a it was b to b, but it was also b to c. Like, we were serving freelance online English teachers.
Arvid:They were not very technical. They were just sitting in front of their computers trying to get their webcam going and whatnot, and we help them with some kinda admin stuff on the back end. So we were with the browser extension integrating into their online classroom, there were some technical hiccups, but it was mostly just when our side had a problem or when the connection the browser extension had a problem, a lot of people, we had, like, 5,000 customers at any given point, everybody would write at the same time. That was the stressful part, like dealing with the avalanche of customer service, not even the individual problems because most of the time it was like, yeah. Yeah.
Arvid:We're fixing it. Just check back in 5 minutes. Right? That was the answer we would give, but I would give this answer, like, a 150 times. That was the problem.
Arvid:Right? It was the the flood. And had we hired somebody, just anybody for customer service at that point, just to be like the first line of defense and say, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Arvid:I'm gonna go through these 150. You keep fixing that bug. I'm gonna tell them they're gonna be better in a couple minutes. That would have saved my sanity much more. And you're right, it was a SaaS business.
Arvid:We were serving customers constantly 247 worldwide. That's different than an info product, which is why, like I said earlier, I have not built a SaaS in a long time after we sold. I wrote books. I made courses. Right?
Arvid:I did all that stuff because precisely the customer service load is minimal. Like, with books in particular, Amazon KDP, like, you you put it on Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon deals with all the stuff. Right? They sell it for you, they print it for you, even the ebooks they put on the Kindle, you don't have to deal with any of these issues. Even Gumroad, people download it, they do it all by themselves, it gets very, very low support, but also I guess the upside of it is also a bit lower, right?
Arvid:That it's not that you all of a sudden have thousands of customers paying you 100 of dollars a month. It's just people paying you $5, $10 every now and then. So, you know, different deal. But that's that's kind of why I'm trying to suggest something that is not a SaaS to you at this point as an extension of this. Right?
Arvid:If you take Shiftfast further, if you start building little SaaS tools, you can do this, but then you get into this whole customer service cycle again. Right? Then you need to be present all the time or you need to hire. So I guess a community of just lectures where people you can still build. You can build a community website.
Arvid:I think Daniel Vasallo did that too. Like, he built the platform that houses the Small Bets community. There is a Discord. I think now he's using the the once thing that the the base camp people put out, like the Campfire, I think, is the name, right, of their their chat system. But Daniel still has all the videos and and all that stuff integrated into smallbets.com or whatever.
Arvid:I forget. But it's his own platform that he built. It's just he doesn't sell the platform. He sells memberships on that platform, which is a different kind of business. And and memberships, I think, are also easier to handle.
Arvid:And or it's not even membership. It's a lifetime membership. It's a pay once, you know, use forever just like your product is at that point. It could come with the code. That's a I think I love this idea of of you building a community that sits on top of an info product that is actively maintained.
Arvid:That makes the community more active, and that also allows you to just grow the value of the community, then people would probably buy the product just to be part of the community. That's very interesting.
Marc:That a lot here. I get that a lot that says, I don't know how to code, but I want to be part of the community.
Arvid:You but that's the point where you've tapped into something. Right? That's the point where you know, okay, people people value this connection, and they would buy something they cannot use just to be part of this. I I would think about the Shipfast University, man. I I really like, you don't even need you could sell a a membership.
Arvid:You could sell a monthly membership to the to that community, and people would probably pay it if it's not too high. Right? Particularly, if it doesn't come with the code. But if it comes with the code, then now all of a sudden you have a an LTV that is 3, 4 digits if you, you know, bundle it with the price. That's kinda nice.
Arvid:I I think that's just pretty cool. And you're a charismatic guy. Like, you could get people to come in. You already know how to launch things and how to drum up some interest. Oh, I think that would be cool.
Arvid:Sorry for turning this this podcast episode into a con consulting session, but that's, I think, you asked, so that's that's what you get.
Marc:Man, that was nice. I actually I was typing a little new line on my to do list for Shiptast. I appreciate it, man.
Arvid:Yeah. I I I appreciate it too. Thanks for asking me. I think it's nice to to think about where things can go. Right?
Arvid:Because that's what India hackers do. We build something and we say, well, what can we do? What else can we do? How can we help these people more? Thing, I I really enjoy this.
Arvid:And, you having built so many things, go go ahead.
Marc:I I just want to say that when you were talking about that community for Shep Pest, I could see sparks in your eyes, the founder sparks in your eyes, and we have a new business ID in mind. And you start to imagine the entire roadmap of it. It's like, ah, this is gonna be like this and then like that. Yeah. This is beautiful.
Arvid:And and it is yeah. You know, yes, it it really is. I've I've been experiencing this over the last couple weeks building my own thing. It's just you you you all of a sudden you see something that doesn't exist, but you see it. I think that's one of the most wonderful feelings that you can have, and I I find it really cool that your software that you sell with Shimpfast is facilitating that for other people.
Arvid:I think you're doing the community a great service in having this out there. And I know you have competitors, and I know people could just learn how to code and do it all by themselves, but that that is also competition, like a job to be done kind of competition. Right? But what you what you're doing in particularly in building this community around it is just drawing this massive moat around this project. I think that's a really, really smart choice that you've done there.
Arvid:Very cool. What what else are you working on? Are you are you fully focused on on Sendvoice now, or are you still, like and how how do you distribute your time? That's what I wanna know because I see, like, 3 or 4 things in your Twitter bio, all of which probably takes some maintenance. How do you prioritize these things right now?
Marc:So this is new this year. I have 5 days allocated for building stuff. So from Monday to Friday, where I'm offline most of the day, and then I come online at 4 or 5 PM. Browse a little bit of Twitter, go to bed and start again the next day. And I allocate my weekends to Saturdays Sunday for content creation.
Marc:Saturday would be for, the I just started the YouTube channel where I tried to do exactly the same as I used to do as I did on Twitter, and I'm still doing it. But with the videos, it's taking a lot of time and I'm not, you know, used to making an entire 10 minutes YouTube video in one day, but I'm trying my best. And Sunday would be for writing the newsletter and a couple of tweets related to that newsletter.
Arvid:Okay. Wow. That sounds like you have a full week. Do you how do you balance like, you know, like work life balance? I don't think forefounders really exists, but I think we we call this work life integration at some point, right, where it all kind of flows into each other.
Arvid:Do you do other things as well other than, like, coding and and writing content and now doing videos? Like, how do you balance this in your life?
Marc:Yes. I surf every morning. I wake up, drink a coffee and go to the beach, spend 2 hours, spread some energy, get some sun. Then I will go home, have a coffee and read a book for, I don't know, 30 minutes usually, and get breakfast after that. Then I started the day and I work and I finish around, 6, I would say.
Marc:And then with my wife would go out, find a local restaurants, chat there. I recently set up this little guest room on the back where I have a PS4. I just received my new speaker. So Nice. I kind of like your office, a Yeah.
Marc:A bit sketchy version of your, office right now.
Arvid:I love it. That's really cool. Yeah. That's nice. Well, that sounds like you figured out a balance.
Arvid:I love the honestly, I love your discipline because when I wake up, I've been thinking, like, while I slept about some weird coding issue or, you know, something that I really wanna talk about to be able to go and surf and have a coffee and read before you work, congrats, man. That's discipline right there.
Marc:So for you, the struggle is in the morning. It's like you wake up and you have those ideas and you have to put them to work, correct?
Arvid:Yeah.
Marc:Yes. That's fine. For me, it's mornings are okay. I wake up. I'm like, fine.
Marc:Like work is gone. But the problem is if I wake up in the middle of the night, then I'm dead. That's why I try to not drink water before going to bed, like at least 3 hours before. Because if I wake up to go to the toilet and my brain starts to think about work, then 2 hours like in the bed, I spend 2 hours debugging some code or imagining features or talking about that small community thing for.
Arvid:I mean, I I get that. I I understand. Like, I'm I'm trying to keep it out of my my evenings for that same reason. Right? It's like it's I I could work until midnight and then go to bed and then go back to work.
Arvid:Like, I'm at a stage with my thing. Like, I have my first customers, and I have really good feedback cycles and all that. I could work forever and there would always be something to do. But I have learned over the last couple of years, particularly after selling this business because of my burnout and my high anxiety, that I don't need that. Like, I literally don't need that in my life.
Arvid:Right? This is something that should stay out of there. So I I'm starting the best thing that we have done is get a puppy. We have a dog, and I'm the one that walks her in the morning. So when I get up, I cannot go to work because first off, I'm woken up by the puppy.
Arvid:The puppy comes into the bed and just like, yeah. I'm hungry. That's how that happens. Right? So I I have to feed the puppy and then I have to walk the puppy.
Arvid:And something magical happened there ever since I started walking her. My brain just it it dumps all of the the random stuff that it's like journaling. Some people journal in the morning. I go on a walk with my dog, and it just empties the trash. You know, the empty trash button?
Arvid:That's the walk for me in the morning. And then I come to the come back home. The puppy is happy because she did everything she wanted to do. She sniffed the whole neighborhood. It's very fun, and we have this bonding time with each other, so that's good for my heart.
Arvid:And then I get my coffee and I go downstairs and I start working. I think I've been much more productive ever since I've done this compared to before where I would wake up, go right to work and, like, you know, find my way from sleep mode into work mode there in in front of my computer. This little interruption, you surfing me the puppy, I think that makes a big the the the the the
Marc:the the the the
Arvid:the the the
Marc:the the the the the the the the the
Arvid:the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the
Marc:the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the
Arvid:the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the
Marc:the the the the the the So I think it's what do you usually close your computer?
Arvid:We have figured out that somewhere around 5 or 6, we're both done. Like, Danielle works from from home. She's a she's an audio engineer, so she edits and and does, like, audio work. And she's done it 5 or 6 most of the time. She closes her computer.
Arvid:I tend to close my computer. I mean, I don't close my computer. I have a Mac Studio. I just walk away. Right?
Arvid:The studio is my workspace. Right? Right next to it is my coding space. This is my talking space. I close this door, and I'm done with work.
Arvid:I try not to take it. I'm in the basement. I try not to take it upstairs. That's the idea. Oh, nice.
Arvid:That is it it really helps. Honestly, that's one of the things also that I learned. First off, get a puppy. Everybody get a puppy. The second thing is, put a door between your work and your nonwork life.
Arvid:Like physically locate your work away from where you live. Right? Don't put your work in your bedroom or your living room. Don't take a laptop. Don't don't do what Peter Levels probably does.
Arvid:I just work from the couch. No. No. That's to to Peter. Obviously, he he does a great job at, you know, whatever he does.
Arvid:But I have found for me, taking the work with me is not a good idea. I need a designated space for it, and that's what the studio is for me.
Marc:Yeah. Yeah. A 100%. Yeah. That's that's a new experiment for me this year.
Marc:Last year, I was I would work until I had to go to bed. And it was doing well because everything was growing. But then as soon as things become steady or worse, things start to decline, Then that's your inner brain is like total fucked up. So I really tried to have, as you said, like office, I close the door and I'm good for the day. 6 pm is also the time limit for, for us.
Marc:So, yeah. Good. I will also put you in the category of, you know, you have a really nice beard. You have a puppy. I would put you in the same category as Danny Postma.
Arvid:Yep. Oh, for sure. 2 yeah. 2 founders
Marc:who found a good life, work life balance.
Arvid:Yeah. Yeah. I talked to Danny on on this podcast just about the same thing as well. Like, we were exchanging information about our dogs because we wanted to know, like, you know, just dog parents talking about their puppies on a podcast, obviously. But, yeah, that's that's the thing.
Arvid:I had this conversation with Danielle earlier. We were out walking the dog, like, in our evening walk, and we were talking about, well, when do indie hackers stop spending all their time on their businesses? Right? When is that? Is it a phase where you do this, where you focus, you grind every day, hours, hours, hours from waking up until you sleep?
Arvid:And I I was Danielle was saying, yeah. Well, I guess it's when when things start working out. Right? When you have revenue coming in, then you have the luxury of not working full time on your thing. You can start surfing and you can, you know, can start reading books and stuff because you have a a stable financial situation.
Arvid:How was that for you before you were successful with your products? Were you, like, grinding 247?
Marc:Yes. I'm I'm still quite healthy. I would always sleep 8 to 9 hours. I would always go to surf, but I would not have this moment at night where I close the computer at 6 and I enjoyed 3 hours of free time with my wife going out for dinner. I would just somehow work.
Marc:Even though Twitter is not proper work, I would still be on Twitter and be around. It is somehow proper work. I think
Arvid:it is. I mean, we put in a lot of effort to to make things nice on Twitter. But, yeah, it's it's kinda it is not work that feels like work. Right? It's it's kinda leisurely.
Arvid:Yeah. Oh, wow. Wow. Fun. I'm glad that's not the case anymore, man.
Arvid:I because that that can quickly this can damage relationships too. Right? It can damage your relationship with your partner. If you have kids, you you neglect them, even relationship with yourself. If all you do is work, work, work, and you don't allow yourself to find, you know, recreational joy in other things, stress, anxiety, these things happen.
Arvid:So I I'm I'm glad that you and I, we both speak for taking time off work even if work is interesting. Right? Yeah. That's, that's a pretty important thing.
Marc:I'm I'm curious if you enjoy anything besides, spending time with your girlfriend or working out with your dog? Is there anything that you really enjoy in life, like, really, really enjoy at a point where it's, like, almost addictive?
Arvid:Yeah. Cooking. I love cooking. Cooking to me as an activity is something that I just I just love. Like, I I will make a roast.
Arvid:I will make a risotto. I will make, like, really fancy pasta with the pesto is all kinds of things. I just love making things that I enjoy eating and that other people enjoy eating. Whenever we have people over, which we try because we we live in a really small town in Canada. I moved here with Danielle to be close to our family, and it's a pretty sizable family.
Arvid:She has lots of friends. Whenever we have people over, I try to make an amazing meal. We try to make an amazing meal, and I just love that. I bake, I cook, I do all kinds of things. That to me, that is the it's almost like coding because it's literally an ingredient list and you do step by step.
Arvid:Right? It's like it's source code. You you have your variables and you kinda you loop over that thing and, you know, your functions and and you transform ingredients from one data type into the other, but it is such a physical thing where you get immediate feedback from the product that's quite different from virtual things. So I I love this. I also love painting miniatures.
Arvid:That's my other hobby. Right? I'm a big war hammer nerd. That's that's kind of the world that I come from. Right?
Arvid:I if you could see what is what is behind this here, I have, like, a an airbrush and, like like, all kinds of brushes and all kinds of acrylic colors. My studio is the man cave of the nerd. I have the studio here, my computer over there, and there's my warhammer painting station right over there behind you. So that's what I definitely
Marc:appreciate if you send me a picture after the podcast because I used to do the same thing.
Arvid:Wow. Why did you stop? Was it too expensive? Because that tends to be a problem.
Marc:It could be. Yeah. That might be. I think since I started to code, I put all my attention to that, but now it's kind of new. I'm trying to find some hobbies and stuff that I can do outside of work to disconnect.
Marc:And that could actually be one of them.
Arvid:I recommend it. Like, to me, I have a 3 d printer too. I I I let me be honest. I have 3 3 d printers, 2 resin printers and 1 f m printer. And I've been, like, printing miniatures and, you know, understanding how all of the the chemistry and the the physics of that works.
Arvid:And I've been painting them. It's it's just trying to nerd out on a different level. Right? Something that is for me, exclusively for me. I don't do this in public.
Arvid:That's a personal thing, but I need it to connect with my physicality because all I do is write about abstract things and talk with people like you. I love talking, but you're just this tiny little thing on my screen. Right? Like, you're not physically present here. I I need something that allows me to feel the physicality of my life.
Arvid:So that's what cooking does, and that's what painting miniatures does too. Do you have any hobbies other than surfing that give you, like, a physical thing in your life?
Marc:Not really. I was super excited when I was making up this room to just, you know, put the furniture here and add the speaker there. Now I love I love work, like, working spreading some I love sweating. It's not too easy to say like that, but I love I love working out.
Arvid:Yeah. Uh-huh. Well, that's also great.
Marc:Pretty much.
Arvid:I think hey. Peter always says, you gotta lift. Right? Are you are you lifting? Are you lifting enough?
Arvid:What do you think?
Marc:Not at all. I am a outdoor, I'm I'm more like a play play person. I I tried to go to the gym. I just really, it's not, I don't like it. So I skate and surf work well for me.
Arvid:I have a home gym, and I don't use it. It's, like, right over there too. Nah. Doesn't work. Like, it's it's I mean, that that's just me being lazy, but I'm also not that kind of thing.
Arvid:I'm not that kind of personality, but maybe that's that's the thing. If you prioritize it, you make it happen. And if you can prioritize it, you need to find something that you will willingly prioritize in your life. And I see you do this with surfing. If that is something you really enjoy, you make time for it.
Arvid:Right? That's how that happens.
Marc:Yeah. Sometimes learning how to just listen and not forcing, it it could be a great teacher.
Arvid:I think so too. And I I think it's an important important priority to choose in your life. Like, as a solopreneur, as an indie hacker, like, we are so focused on our, like, the technical parts of our lives because that's what everybody talks about. Right? Like, in the community, I think until, like, the last couple years, the indie hacking community was all about code.
Arvid:It was all about, like, you know, JavaScript frameworks and all about, like, Stripe integrations and that stuff. And, I mean, we all laugh about it that the whole Peter levels deadlifting comments and that kind of stuff. It's all funny in a way, but I'm really glad that he's bringing this into the conversation, that he's talking about healthy eating, that he's talking about, like, healthy way of living, that these for this weird with this weird obsession with, calculating the the carbon dioxide, you know, the chemicals in his rooms and stuff, I think it's important to to take care of your surroundings and of yourself, of your body and your life. So I'm glad to see you do it. And I think to talk about it too, not just productivity.
Arvid:Right? Not just, like, how to be more effective with your business, but also how to to live a fuller life. I think you're a good example for this as well. So thank you for doing this in public as well. I think it's really cool.
Marc:I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. Peter is doing a great job at leading the AB Hacking's movements and still after all those years showing us, how to do things there.
Arvid:I think you are doing this too. I think, like, let's not forget that you have what what is it? Like, probably 1 quarter of Peter's following now on Twitter. Is it, like, maybe maybe 25, 20% or so? That is pretty significant.
Arvid:Think about that. Right? That's I mean, Peter's been doing this for a decade now. Right? That's it's, it's pretty sizable.
Arvid:So so you're still hanging out in Bali. Right?
Arvid:Are you are you a
Arvid:slow mat? Is that what you are?
Marc:Yes. 6 years in Bali and almost 5 years in this house, so barely moving any anyhow. Yeah.
Arvid:Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. That's not nomading at all. Do you ever see yourself, like, taking up the nomad life again, or are you just done?
Arvid:Are you just settling now?
Marc:We have a plan to buy a, hopefully, a Cybertruck if it becomes available in Europe and do a Europe tour from Norway to it's not Europe anymore, but Morocco.
Arvid:Yeah. We're close. Right? I mean, they're not gonna like it, but, yeah, this is very frustrating. That's that's that's that's really cool.
Arvid:Yeah. That's awesome. That is really fun. That's, so and then after that, you're gonna go back to Bali? Like, I I just wanna know.
Arvid:Do you have, like do you feel like you have a place that is home at this point in Bali, or is Bali still, like, you know, like the the the foreign place, like the the vacationy kinda phase of your life kinda place?
Marc:It feels like home. And I feel so good when I'm back from my home country of France to Bali. I feel like I'm actually back home. The only thing is hard to make a big commitment and buy a house here because things move really fast. With what happened with the war in Russia, you have a bunch of people coming.
Marc:And so things so they start to build things everywhere. So that that creates some kind of, like, random events that I'm not sure I wanna deal with. That's why we struggle for now to commit to Bali for the long term, and we keep renting this villa. We every year, we renew the contract.
Arvid:Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I I guess it's it is a a volatile place. So things change pretty quickly.
Arvid:Like, I've I'm I'm not that versed in it. What I know is that laws change quite often and the relationship with foreigners and what they can do and all that is always a bit problematic and unplanable, I guess. So very interesting. Why? I guess your Cybertruck tour is gonna be interesting.
Arvid:Are you gonna do that in public too? Are you gonna share that journey if you if you do it?
Marc:I'll probably still build in the Cybertruck.
Arvid:That's awesome.
Marc:Oh, man.
Arvid:That's cool. You gotta put like a a a Starlink on top and just gonna build from the driving vehicle.
Marc:Live stream livestream it. Probably the the car will drive itself, and I'll be I'll be building livestream while being driven by the car.
Arvid:Oh, that that is so cool. Yeah. I I I don't I don't own a vehicle. We only have 1 in our household, but if I ever were to buy 1, it would probably be the cypher truck. I I think it's just such a fun vehicle.
Arvid:Big fan of, like, 80 sci fi style, and that car or that truck is just the most wonderful example of this. Man, I am looking forward to seeing you drive the Cybertruck all through Europe. That's gonna be awesome. Man, okay. If people want to find you and follow you on your journey, both the journey of you building indie products and building SaaS business, maybe, communities hopefully in the future.
Arvid:Where do you want them to go?
Marc:Would be marclou.com, my website, marclou.com. I have my Twitter, where I share everything I do in public, my YouTube channel, which is pretty new, and all my startups and revenue that are, shared there.
Arvid:Yeah. I highly recommend following your journey. I'm a big fan. And in case you haven't noticed, I'm a huge fan of you and your work, and I I really appreciate you talking to me about it and sharing all of these insights both into your life, into your your personal approach how on how to live and balance your life. That was really interesting to hear.
Arvid:And just how awesome you are at building things, that's always wonderful to see. Thank you so much for being on the show today. I am really, really happy we got to talk.
Marc:Thanks for having me, Arvid. I really enjoyed the the podcast. And, Andrew, you're also following, your journey since the beginning and, got inspired by everything that you've done. Thank you.
Arvid:Thanks so much.
Arvid:And that's it for today. I will now briefly thank my sponsor, acquire.com. Imagine this. You're a founder who's built a really solid SaaS product. You acquired all those customers, and Problem is You're not growing.
Arvid:For whatever reason. Maybe it's lack of skill or lack of focus or planning, lack of interest. You don't know. You just feel stuck in your business with your business. What should you do?
Arvid:Well, the story that I would like to hear is that you buckled down, you reignited the fire, and you started working on the business, not just in the business. And all those things you did like audience building and marketing and sales and outreach. They really helped you to go down this road 6 months down the road, making all that money. You tripled your revenue, and you have this hyper successful business. That is the dream.
Arvid:The reality, unfortunately, is not as simple as this. And the situation that you might find yourself in is looking different for every single founder who is facing this crossroad. This problem is common, but it looks different every time. But what doesn't look different every time is the story that here just ends up being one of inaction and stagnation. Because the business becomes less and less valuable over time and then eventually completely worthless if you don't do anything.
Arvid:So if you find yourself here, already at this point, or you think your story is likely headed down a similar road, I would consider a third option, and that is selling a business on inquire.com. Because you capitalizing on the value of your time today is a pretty smart move. It's certainly better than not doing anything. And acquire.com is free to list. They've helped 100 of founders already.
Arvid:Just go check it out at try. Acquire.com/arved. It's me. And see for yourself if this is the right option for you, your business at this time. You might just wanna wait a bit and see if it works out half a year from now or a year from now.
Arvid:Just check it out. It's always good to be in the know. Thank you for listening to the boost of founder today. I really appreciate that. You can find me on Twitter at avitkahl, a r v e r k a h l, and you'll find my books and my Twitter core set too.
Arvid:If you wanna support me and this show, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, get the podcast in your podcast player of choice, whatever that might be. Do let me know. It would be interesting to see. And leave a rating and a review by going to ratethispodcast.com/founder. It really makes a big difference if you show up there because then this podcast shows up in other people's feeds, and that's I think where we all would like it to be.
Arvid:Just helping other people learn and see and understand new things. Any of this will help the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day, and bye bye.
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