Profitable Founder
Twice a week (Wed/Sun), I interview the best indie hackers and tech founders so you can steal their playbook and apply it to your own journey.
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Profitable Founder
Hacker Residency: Building the Bridge Between Silicon Valley and Bootstrapping
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We went to the $20 million.
SPEAKER_02One luxurious villa, ten founder, and one monster lock in. This is not a new Reality TV show. This is the hackers. A place where you get to fight founder loneliness by being surrounded by monters, a worm community, and other ambitious funders.
SPEAKER_01We want a faster, more successful and ambitious indie hackers.
SPEAKER_02In this episode, you will discover the system trave is built to get six months of work done in six weeks. The three biggest problems every indie hacker faces why 98% of funders should not raise venture capital. And our one villa in Vietnam is bridging the gap between bootstrap founders and Silicon Valley. And at the end of this episode, you will know where to apply for the next hacker residence. So, Travis, you said not long ago working alone sucks. Looking back, there is a clear difference in my mind between the time I spent working with my co-founder versus when I was working mostly on my own. Tell me more about the founder loneliness.
SPEAKER_01Yo, is it a big problem? Um I yeah, I feel like a lot of really talented developers, you know, we we tend to be lone wolves. And uh that can be great. Like you can you can move so quickly when you're just by yourself. Uh when you're setting your height your expectations higher, and when you're trying to build something bigger, or or just the longevity of it, like there's always going to be ups and downs in in business. And uh it helps a lot to have someone who is uh who is uh in involved in the project at a similar level as you. You can have employees, you can have friends, you can have mentors, but someone who's in the trenches with you who is able to share that burden. Um, and that could mean any number of things in practice, right? That could be like uh just being there to support you. It could be uh delegating you know some of that work. I think uh a lot of indie hackers, especially, it's like you have to do so so many, wear so many different hats from the core develop product development to marketing to sales to talking to customers to um you know if you want to want eventually raised, like uh uh talking to investors, like these are all different skills, different hats. And you know, you end up just getting pulled in so many different directions. So um, you know, I think there's a part of it that's very practical about sharing some of that responsibility, and then there's a part of it where it's just it's so much more fun to be building stuff with with dope people, with people you respect that you can learn from. Um, you know, so so I've I've had multiple companies, uh, some some of them kind of solo and then some of them with co-founders. And uh, you know, like the the the I'll say the the the two biggest reasons uh why why startups fail. Um I'm actually curious, do you do do you know what they are?
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_01No? So the the the number one reason is uh lack of product market fit. You're you're building something the market the market doesn't want. The number two reason is uh co-founders, team, team problems, team breakup, right? So it's you know it's it's a type of type of thing where uh it it it can really really be great as a foundation, but you just want to make sure you're you're doing it with the right people. Um so you know it is a big risk as well.
SPEAKER_02I totally agree. Like I've been trying to build uh startup with co-founder since the beginning of the year. I did a few of them before that worked, but like since the beginning of the year, I tried to find a co-maker, someone tech who could like code and build a product with me, and it failed every time, not always because of the um person, but most of the time is because yeah, we were not meant to work together. And the yeah, only time that this wasn't the case, it was because of product market fit. So, yeah, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01So I actually wrote like an article maybe five years ago at this point about uh my my approach to finding co-founders. Um, and I really think of it a little bit like a marketing funnel. Uh, and what you're marketing is yourself and this whatever idea or or opportunity to build something dope with you. Um and you know, so the the first part of that is actually just being public about it, like putting yourself out there, exactly what you're doing, uh, marketing yourself, your your personality, you know, the the types of projects that you like to build. Um, a lot of people skip over that and they just rely on on chance. Um, I think it's important to put yourself out there, this whole thing build in public, right? Like uh talk about yourself, what your goals are in public. And then uh kind of the second part of that funnel is um being really intentional about writing down uh your hard constraints and soft constraints about what you're actually looking for in a co-founder. So for instance, your one of your hard constraints might be, I need somebody who's really technical. Um and just being upfront about what you're looking for, what you're not looking for will it's like dating, right? It's like like you can make the process a lot more efficient, a lot more fun if if you have already written down and taken time to think about like exactly what you're what you're looking for, what you're not looking for. Um, because if if one person wants to go and build a billion dollar business and you're like, nah, I want to live in Bali and do my indie thing, like probably not gonna work out. Um and then, you know, actually like like just having some really short scoped projects to to work on together. I think that just cuts through all the BS, all the noise. Uh, it's the the fastest way to actually see like how do you work? And the the types of things I I think about there are like uh am I the one leading the way, or does this feel like an equal relationship? Like oftentimes you'll be the one like being more proactive, following up, whatever. And you know, you really want to be looking for someone that's kind of like equally, equally involved, equally a lot of the best co-founder relationships tend to be like convergent, meaning like I'm working on something and someone else is working on something, they're they're like very similar. And so then we like converge ideas. Uh, and then maybe the the last thing I'll say is the the number one piercing question that I've I've found for whether or not I I view someone as a co-founder is like let's say you have a really, really important meeting at like a a big customer or at a big VC like Sequoia, right? And that's like super important, you know, your your reputation's on the line. And for some reason you couldn't make it to that meeting, whatever emergency. The question is, would you feel comfortable having this person as your potential co-founder go to that meeting and represent you in your in your stead? Um, and I think that that says a lot about whether or not you view that person as an equal, equal kind of an equal and someone that that could represent you, or whether maybe they're they're better off as an employee or you know, uh an advisor or something.
SPEAKER_02This one really uh hit me because I had that with uh one of the person I worked with. I was thinking about that question, not in that way, but almost like it's just like, yeah, can I yeah, can I bring this person in a meeting and like we present something together? And I think the answer was not.
SPEAKER_00So yes, that says so much, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It does. So you probably have a lot of experience. If you write this kind of article, you probably worked with co-founder, you worked alone. I think you worked with VC uh company, you worked uh bootstrapped. So tell me more about your story, actually. Who are you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, who am I? Uh so my my uh GitHub and Twitter handle is transitive bullshit. Uh I absolutely love open source. I spend a lot of time on GitHub. Um, my background in a nutshell, I started programming. Do you know TI TI graphing calculators?
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_01Okay, like TI, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I do, I do, I do, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I uh made started making games for that like back in the year 2000, so like 25 years ago. I I just like that's how I got into programming. I I loved it. I got really deep into that during high school. And I think I'm like maybe the 10th or the 14th most downloaded like TI game author of all time. Uh and what I didn't know at the time, what I didn't even think about, because I was just, oh, this is cool. I can make games, I can share them with my friends, right? Like that was open source. Uh, all of the all all the games, all everything I was learning from was from other people around the world making these little calculator games, and it was all open source. Um, and uh all that stuff is still like public online, you know. And then I I went, I studied computer science. Uh, I worked at Microsoft for a few years uh on a kind of an operating system uh research project that was really dope. It was my first experience like doing during the legit engineering. I was working with some OGs that had worked on Windows for like 30 years. Uh, really, really important to understand like professional software engineering. Uh also lived in Seattle. That was a cool experience. At the same time, I was uh I had a lot of friends that were doing startups and and and whatever. So ended up uh leaving that, moving to New York, and um joining my my first startup that was called Stamped. Uh was kind of the the CTO there, leading the engineering team. Um, long story short, we ended up selling that company to Yahoo. Uh it was more or less an Aquahire, and uh started a new office for Yahoo in New York. I didn't really love Yahoo, um, but like they offered us a decent chunk of money um as as an exit there. And then I I kind of bounced around uh a bit, ended up moving to Bangkok in 2015, worked for a startup out here. So I'm in I'm in Bangkok right now. Like I generally kind of nomadic, just happen to be in Bangkok. Uh so lived in Bangkok for three years, was working on a Slack clone for the Asian enterprise business, which was kind of cool because like one, I was just I was working with this this massively international team, and then two, I got to I got to travel a lot around Southeast Asia. It was like like traveling in in meeting banks and and and these big like government corporations and and stuff. Uh, but just fell in love with with Southeast Asia and then came back to the US, uh founded a company with two friends of mine caught called Automagical that was doing AI video creation back in 2017. Um, and that was decently successful. We ended up selling that to our biggest customer. Um and uh, you know, all throughout this, I've just been doing a lot of open source projects. So I have like hundreds of open source projects, and whenever I don't know what to do, that's kind of what I fall back to. Uh, I think it was around 2022 where I really started getting into AI. And I remember like the day that ChatGPT released, I think it was November 29th, 2022. Uh, within 24 hours, I had reverse engineered the like ChatGBT web apps um API and released a NPM package called the ChatGBT package, and that just blew up, right? As ChatGPT was blowing up. So uh tons of people were building on top of this. This is before any of the you know LOM chat completion APIs actually existed. People who were like in this space really saw that this was an inflection point, and it was just uh the early days of that, and this was this was how people were were able to use it. Um, so I ended up like building uh a chat bot on top of that. Uh it was a Twitter bot called at chat GPT bot, grew that to 150,000 followers, uh, ended up getting banned by Twitter, which I have some strong opinions about. Um, but generally was just kind of riding the wave of building a bunch of uh like built one of the first uh RAG retrieval augmented generation uh kind of demos online and um went through this program in San Francisco called HF Zero, which is um the really the world's most premier like startup accelerator at this point. And uh a lot of what we're what I'm doing today, uh this whole hacker residency thing that that I founded uh along with a couple of my my friends is really based on my experience going through HF Zero. So that's that's me in a nutshell, Florine.
SPEAKER_02What a story. Well, we'll come back to Hacker Residency later. I have a lot of questions about it, but first more about your experience as like you had um two exits, I think one venture and one bootstrapped, right? Yep. Can you tell me like the pros and cons of both? Because you've been in both sides, so you know I know a lot of people have this kind of question or ask themselves if they should raise money or not. So tell us everything.
SPEAKER_01I mean, this is something like the way that I would describe it is is just having perspective and really understanding the game that you're playing. Um, you know, I think there's a lot of people who are indie very intentionally, and then there's people who are indie because that's just the world that they they come from, and maybe they don't have as as much access to capital or or ventures or these types of programs. And then there's there's people who uh like a younger version of myself, I really put raising venture on a pedestal. Right, like you go, you go and you watch the social network and everyone wants to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. And I was like, I was always like the best of the best in my you know classes and programming and whatever. And so I I like put myself on that that pedestal and and um I don't think it was it was it was healthy, right? Because I really viewed that type of success of like raising a venture, venture scale thing without understanding the the trade-offs that that you're asking about. So, you know, one one trade-off is when you raise venture, you're really making a commitment to getting to uh essentially a hundred million dollars in in in revenue. And if you don't, and if you're not kind of on that path, uh you're really incentivized and pressured to uh either either sell or pivot. So it's either like a zero or like a billion dollars, right? Um so very high, high risk, high reward. Uh with with my first company stamped, um, we really didn't hit product market fit, uh, but we had built a really, really strong, strong team, mostly ex-Google engineers. And uh Yahoo uh wanted us, so we actually we we shopped around um and had acquisition offers from every single major tech company, Google, Twitter, et cetera. And Yahoo just offered us like four times as much money. Um, and their their reasoning, this was uh right around 20, 2012, 2013, um, when Marissa Meyer had joined from Google as the new CEO. And she was trying to turn the ship around. Like Yahoo was was definitely not doing well, and they were gonna make a major push for mobile. And uh we we basically joined as an aqua hire, um, meaning that it's not like they didn't really care about what we had built, even though I was super proud of what we built. Uh they they they were they were just acquiring us as a bundle for the talent. Um, and it was all engineers that normally would not go and work for Yahoo uh just because they were a sinking ship, um, more or less. Uh so we we started a new office in New York, and uh, you know, though the the to answer your question, the biggest drawback with like that type of exit is I had golden handcuffs, right? Like I was getting paid a lot, um, but I had to stay uh at least 12 months to receive the first like like real check, and then I was incentivized to stay for four years. I only stayed a year because I I just didn't like it. I I felt like I wasn't was stagnating. Um, but you know, the majority when you hear like like certain numbers of you had an exit for this amount, usually like for if you raised venture, the the VCs get paid first, and then if there's any compensation packages for the employees, it's like you know, on a four-year cliff uh at the minimum. Um, so just kind of keep that in mind. It like you hear these, these, these large numbers, like a $50 million exit, $100 million exit, whatever. Uh, and usually the the uh employees get like a small fraction of that. Um, and then you know, for my bootstrapped uh startup, Automagical, um, we sold that to our largest customer. We were we were doing pretty solid. I think we had a couple hundred K in ARR. And uh we were at a point where we could double down and and work on that, but all three of us, my my two co-founders and I, we really didn't want to, we didn't see ourselves spending the next five years working on this thing. Like, um, and so we we kind of shopped it around again and ended up selling for a multiple to our largest customer. The the biggest difference between these two experiences was I had learned from the first one and I uh intentionally did not have any type of like vesting or whatever. It was like it was a slightly smaller deal. I agreed to do to join them for you know uh a couple weeks and help with the transition of of all the engineering, like handoff, and so they they understood how to run the system and maintain it. Um but I didn't have to my my my conversation wasn't tied to uh staying there and continuing working on this thing, which was a night and day difference.
SPEAKER_02Mentally, what was the best? You know, like with your mental health, with like the um all the war that you had to do and everything, like which one will you choose now?
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, I I mean I if I'm building a software product, I will uh uh stay bootstrapped as as long as possible. Um I also like it I think it's it's hard to give general advice because other people might I think most people have more financial constraints, right? And that's that's like more top of mind. So for for me, where I'm at now, um, I will stay uh bootstrapped as as long as possible until I feel really strong product market fit. And the way that I that I I think about raising venture, and I think most people should should think about raising venture, is it's really a tool to compress time. So let's say like I I have uh a product and I am really, really ambitious. I I know the direction that I'm going in. I I am pretty sure that in 12 months I'll be able to go from let's say uh 1 million ARR to like uh 4 million ARR. Just just you know, by by the numbers and and I'm pretty sure I understand the playbook. Um Raising Venture is all about uh compressing that future date of like it'll take me 12 months to do this to it'll take me two months to do this uh by hiring by hiring more people and being more aggressive. And you when you think of of raising venture, it's really a commitment to building a venture scale company, meaning uh at least 100 million in ARR, oftentimes uh like getting to a billion dollar valuation or now nowadays like a $10 billion valuation, um, and building a really, really large team. So like there's there's a pedigree that that I an earlier version of myself thought it was like very like raising venture was was a proxy for success. Uh, but like those investors are not your customers. Um they are not uh and and I I I feel like it also just adds a lot of stress uh to to what you're doing. It's it's it's way more pressure and stress. Um as opposed to let's say like like my co-founder Tony, Tony Din, uh who is you know an uh just amazing, humble uh guy, a really good developer. He is, I think, around one to one point five million ARR. Uh, but he works solo. Um and he works with his wife Ann uh totally bootstrapped. Um and he he spends like half of his time surfing. Like he still works really hard. Don't get me wrong, like he works seven days a week. Um, but you know, that level of stress and and understanding what you what you want, whether your goal is to build like a massive billion billion dollar plus business and you know hire hundreds or thousands of people, or is your goal to uh get to a point where you have enough passive income or financial freedom uh to not have to worry about about money and be and and really have optionality to to work on whatever you want, to travel whenever you want, um, and generate wealth for your family. I think m most people like the the the thing that I've I've learned and it takes me a long time to to kind of have how have enough experience in both to have this viewpoint, is I really think the vast majority of founders who want to raise or who do raise would probably be better off either not raising or waiting to raise. Um, and the the reason is like the venture business model is really all about like let's say a VC invests in in a hundred companies. Um they're really okay if like 98 of those go to zero. Um, as long as one of them like has a 10,000 X exit. That's that's really what the venture business model boils down to. Now, as a founder. And and having seen a lot of other really talented founders, I am probably one of those 98, right? Like uh and and that sucks. Like they really you're you're probably gonna end up with zero or or even if you have a solid exit, like it's not you're not getting most of that money, right? Um, and so you know, when one of my my favorite questions to ask uh founders, entrepreneurs, indie hackers, whatever you identify as, is you know, what is what does success look like for you? Um, and and the the people who really are going to build that $10 billion generational company, there's no version of any advice or any questions I can ask them that is going to stop them from doing that. But I do think that the vast majority of really talented developers, founders, uh entrepreneurs who kind of get uh uh sucked in by all of the resource and all of the the allure of raising venture. Like I like to think of it there's um literally hundreds of billions of dollars of venture capital out there. And I don't think like most people who who maybe haven't gone through this this whole world or lived in Silicon Valley understand just how much res how much capital is out there, and not just capital, but resources, uh mentorship, programs, um, like like what the kind of the YC style of building a company, right? Um, and it's great. I I love that all that stuff exists, but at the same time, I think of like all the resources out there for building a venture scale company, and then on the other hand, you have like the resources that that exist out there for building like an indie or bootstrap thing, and there are awesome individuals, you know, people like Tony, Tony, uh Din, Peter Levels, who who are stewards for for for this uh uh you know world, but there are very few actual institutions and and programs that are catering to the the the indie folks, the the folks who either intentionally or unintentionally are building bootstrapped businesses. And um, you know, like the world between these two, venture and and indie, is just so disparate. It's very binary. It's like you're either building a venture skill thing or VCs don't care about you. Um and I think the world would be a much better place if we were to close the gap between these two so they're not so so disp disparate. And if there were more legitimate institutions like the hacker residency targeting uh indie hackers, targeting uh young entrepreneurs who might not understand the like like a younger version of myself. I totally didn't understand the difference between these two worlds. I didn't understand that like it was possible to build a really solid, impactful business without raising venture because I came from from this Silicon Valley-esque world that was just so like uh there's so much pressure and so much like this is this is the only way to be become successful. Um and so you know a lot of what we're doing is is trying to be that missing institution uh that that is kind of aspirational and and able to uh fulfill a similar role, let's say, that YC does in the startup world. But for the the indie indie hackers, for the bootstrappers, for these folks who you know see all of the the content and the interviews and all these things about raising money and and and and certain types of businesses, but it doesn't align with their version of success and and and and practically like like what they're actually the business that they're actually building.
SPEAKER_02It's interesting because I think it's really scary. Like, you know, for someone who don't come from money, never live in SF, for example. I would say for me, I'm like, okay, what if I raise money? I feel like I will have so much responsibility, I will have to open an office in whatever city that I don't want to live in. And that's scary. But then I talked to David Park the other day, and then he was talking about what he did seat strapping, which is like raising money at the beginning, but like not that much. So you just need you just have enough money, like runaway money he called that, to actually live and focus 100% on his product, but still be a digital nomad, not have a big office, have everyone remotely. What do you think about that? Is that the balance that you're looking for?
SPEAKER_01Florian, seed strapping is dope. VCs hate seed strapping. Like, let's just be clear. You don't for the vast majority of VCs, you don't go to them and say, Hey, I'm gonna seed strap, I'm gonna raise from you, and then I'm not gonna build this billion, you know, billion-dollar business that your entire business model is based around. Um, they're looking for the the 10,000 X exits. So, yeah, seed strapping exists. I think it's it's awesome. And people like like David and myself, like people who have raised before, who understand the game, who have a strong network, um, it is something that happens a lot. Like, like people will will raise some money. Uh I was talking to a uh VC friend of mine in NSF recently, and you know, he was talking about how either going through YC or raising a seed round is it's now kind of the equivalent of like, hey, I I I I went to college, like I have I have a bachelor's degree. Like it's just something that people do as the default, and it gives them that uh financial freedom to experiment and to to to to explore around. Um you know, but that that is different when you when you talk about other areas of the world and and people who don't have as easy access to that capital. And then it is different from the perspective of that really goes against the the business model of how most VCs operate. So you you either find a really chill VC um who is okay with that, uh, or you you're not fully honest with them. And and I I don't like that. Like I really don't like I think you should just be up front with with what you are, that you want to build a build relationships, um, you know, because the one thing that will follow you around is your reputation. Uh so you know there is a missing piece there. I completely agree with you. I think there are a couple of of institutions out of the tens of thousands of VCs around the world, there are three that I know about that uh do this seed strapping thing or or uh invest in uh intentional indie and and uh indie hackers. The the three are uh Tiny Seed, uh Indie VC, and another one called Calm Fund. And out of those three, Calm Fund shut down this year. Um it is a hard business. Um and you know, I for for both Indie VC and Tiny Seed, they they tend to be the one and only check that that their target uh founders will ever raise, but they do take some equity to protect to protect against the upside. Because let's say like um a lot of the best companies, uh cursor, for instance, uh start off as as like just side projects, right? And it's like the founders are just working on them because they're scratching an itch and they're they're really interested. And they start off and their goal isn't to build a billion dollar company, they're just they're just building something cool and solving their own problem. Um and so maybe they raise a little bit of capital. Uh and and the the the difference being that if if it's very honest and intentional that the the VC structure is is set up to um to not be dependent on you raising future rounds and and and jumping on what I call like the VC hype train, where it's like you raise a seed, now your definition of success is raising a series A. You raise a series A, now your definition of success is raising a series B. And it's like it's kind of this like Ponzi scheme a little bit. Like Chamath Polyhippatia, uh, very experienced uh uh VC called it a Ponzi scheme. I I think that's maybe a a little um uh a little too negative, but um you know it really really does it really does change your your incentives and and and the type of company that you're building. So I I I like let me just circle back. Like I think the world is missing more institutions and capital that is okay with with building like a million-dollar year business or $10 million a year business that is massively successful, right? Like your family will never have to work again, um, as opposed to this like billion-dollar business or bust uh type type mentality that that like the entire venture industry runs around.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, again, really interesting because I feel like this is where my position is. For example, when you have when you are a dreamer like me and you have vision a vision, you want this vision to be beautiful. Let's say tomorrow I will not talk about the software, but I want to build an hotel. And I have this vision of this beautiful hotel with like luxurious equipment, with like new tech and like this kind of leather sofa everywhere. Like I have all this thing in my mind, and I know that if I put everything together, this thing will work. But if I just use my own money to build that hotel, it will look like garbage because I don't have enough, so I just need enough money to build this beautiful hotel that match my vision. But I don't want to build um international chain of this hotel and reach a billion dollar um I don't know, uh whatever. I just want this hotel to be beautiful. Take care of this hotel, it will make millions a year, and that's it. So I just need like that money. Is it what you're trying to do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh absolutely. I like the hotel example. Um build a really solid foundational business that doesn't have to necessarily reach a billion, ten dollar uh billion dollar uh exit and uh provide the support, the capital, the mentorship in order to get there. Um, and then you know there's another side of this where let's say you have uh uh you're just trying to build this hotel, you've never done you've done this before. Um, it'd be pretty dope to be able to be connected with 10 other people who building hotels or in our world, like uh AI, SaaS, or B2B apps or whatever, who are experienced and ambitious and all looking to build the best hotel, you know, uh that you can. Um that is that that's also really, really important. So it's not just like like money and capital, right? Uh uh when I talk about the the difference in these two worlds, on the one world you have the the venture world. Um, yes, a bit part of it is the capital, but another part of it is the resources, the uh mentorship, the uh everything that you get from learning from really experienced founders, operators, uh people who have have built and sold you know businesses, especially in in your like hotel you know domain. Um and you know, that just doesn't really exist in the indie world. Like I do think there's a uh a really, really powerful and good movement around building in public. And I like to think of it as increasing your surface area for luck. So the more that you talk about, like for me, my my main outlet is like I leave all these breadcrumbs on GitHub on on open source and all the projects that I like contribute to, right? And uh oftentimes people will will find me or know about me uh through through that open source stuff, right? But it's increasing my surface area for luck, and it is a way to make those connections to find people who maybe are working on similar things or or working on my hotel or whatever. Uh but there is a difference between doing that and doing it really intentionally, and having uh uh an institution that does that kind of at scale. And that's that's really a large, large percentage of like this exists in the venture world. It doesn't exist in the in the indie world, and I I think it absolutely should.
SPEAKER_02So, what is your plan to solve the problem? Is the hacker residency the center of it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, it it really is. Um, so first off, I I just want to say like I this wouldn't be possible without my my co-founders. Uh so I'm working on this this thing called the hacker residency with uh my co-founders David Park, Tony Din, and Min Min Fuc Chon. Uh David and I are from the US. Uh Fuke and Tony are from Vietnam. So we kind of have this like uh East Meets West, um bridging the gap between Silicon Valley and Southeast Asia uh thing going on, and then also bridging the gap between you know traditional venture capital world and the indie hacker world. Uh so I've kind of dabbled in both, um, but not nearly as well known in the indie world as like Tony and Fuke. Uh and then you know David and I have have both done the venture thing. We're coming from from more of the Silicon Valley world. And and I think there's so much that uh indie hackers can learn from like uh a Silicon Valley mindset and from those type of playbooks and resources. And it's a one it's a two-way street, right? There's there's a lot that that the the uh Silicon Valley world and and the startups can can learn from like these these really ambitious uh world-class indie hackers that are just building for you know for the fun of it and and and making a lot of money without without raising a lot of capital, right? I think uh one thing that I believe pretty strongly is um constraints breed creativity, and when you don't have a lot of capital, it's like it's a it can be a good thing. Now, obviously, you need enough to be able to like uh be round and profile, like like pay for a place to live and and and you know uh uh these type of things. Um so to to to go back to your question, like the this hacker residency is uh really an experiment that we we started uh about eight months ago. Um so I've known Tony and Fuke for a while through my open source stuff, uh, and then got introduced to to David, and they were they were talking about like doing a hacker house out in Tanang. And I was like, that sounds awesome. Um but I had gone through this this amazing program in SF called HF Zero. Uh and so I kind of talked to them about that and and this whole residency concept. So like the difference between a hacker house and a residency is you can kind of think of residency as like one step up in quality from a hacker house. Like most of the time when I think of hacker house, I think of like pizza boxes in the corner and some you know beer cans uh in the corner. Maybe it smells a little bit, right? There's parties and stuff. A residency is like the grown-up version of that. So uh, you know, you you you generally uh have a residency is run by a third party, uh, so it's someone that is kind of providing direction and mentorship. Um and then the the the biggest thing that that that that we do is provide uh take care of like everything in in your life, all the distractions in your life, so that people can just lock in and focus. Uh so uh the hacker residency started as an experiment. We we ran our first batch this past November. Um we really didn't know what to expect. We we we sent out applications online, uh, ended up getting 500 uh applications. I personally did 75 interviews, kind of like what we're doing right now, just not recording them, you know. Uh and really just talking to people about what they're building, uh trying to get a feel for their vibes and and everything. Uh, and then we we chose uh what we thought are are you know the the best 10, try to get a good good group together, uh, and then bring everyone together uh in a really nice villa in in Vietnam uh for a month and just lock in and build. Um a lot of our program is heavily inspired by HFZero. So I'll just kind of uh talk about HF Zero for a second. Um so HFZero runs these three-month residencies in SF. They are without a doubt like the premier residency in the world. They are more uh selective than YC, for instance. They um and and they select 10 teams to live together in a mansion in an SF for three months, uh, to lock in and build. They invest a million dollars in each of those 10 teams. And at the end of the batch, uh, most of those teams go to go on to raise a seed or a series A, depending on where they're at. So HFZero is like extremely successful. They they've moved up market over time. Uh, they're a venture fund, that's their business model. And um they've been doing this for for five years. They've learned a lot about how to do this well, and so a lot of what we're doing is taking what HFZero has learned and uh doing it in uh a very different market, you know, Southeast Asia. And then HFZero tends to target repeat founders. I think four out of the 10 teams in their last batch, their uh the the founders were uh previously unicorn founders, so they had had had previously founded billion dollar companies. Um and the average valuation at HFZero's last demo day was $82 million, just insane, right? Like they they are really at like at a level um where they're just killing it in SF for these like top-tier repeat founders. And what what we're doing with the hacker residency is kind of taking the the same playbook and and uh you know, inviting 10 10 teams uh uh to all live together in a house, a lot of the best uh the best founders, a lot of the best hackers, they're like pretty uh strong personalities and maybe a little weird, right? So like actually getting that to work well and and and live together in harmony and and have it be like a a really uh productive, positive environment um sounds easy, is actually really hard in practice. Uh, but HFZero has has learned a lot the hard way of doing this. So, you know, we're we're kind of doing the same thing. And like HFZero, one of our core principles is this concept of subtraction. So uh a lot of a lot of programs, a lot of accelerators, like you come in and your your calendar is just packed. Like today we're gonna learn about this, we're gonna have this speaker at this time and whatever. Um, and we kind of take the opposite approach. Like the best people, they don't need a whole bunch of stuff on their calendar. What they need is to focus, they need to subtract things. Uh, and so we uh take care, like after after we we invite people out, um, we're all living together and uh working together out of like a really, really nice uh villa. And then we take care of all of your your daily needs and distractions. So think of it like coming to a five-star hotel, uh, three meals a day uh that are really healthy, a gym, um, uh a personal assistant, um and and a workstation, really everything that you would you would need that you would normally like, like you spend cycles thinking about them every day. Uh uh and and when all that stuff is just removed and you're you're able to just solely focus on on your work, and then you're doing that surrounded by 10 other world-class ambitious people. Like there's it, it's it's this truly game-changing thing that is hard to describe if you haven't experienced it for how how much it activates you. And you know, we like to say our second batch is gonna be uh six weeks. That was that was one of the big pieces of feedback. Like after a month, no one wanted to leave. Like, this is too short. Um, and also it was the first time a lot of people were visiting uh Denang, it's a beautiful city. They wanted to not just lock in but also do like touristy stuff and and everything. So we're gonna do six six weeks for our next batch, which starts starts in April. And you know, we like to think of it as uh six months of work in six weeks. Like it's it's literally that much of a game changer. Um, and part of that is is is removing the distractions and letting letting people uh lock in. Part of that is having really experienced uh mentors. And so that's like like the four of us as founders, as well as um some of some of uh my my friends who are very successful entrepreneurs, like kind of come out. Um in the future, we're looking to get other uh really really like top tier indie hackers, really successful indie hackers to come in and and uh selectively act as as mentors for people. Um so part of it is is we you know, we we meet with everyone at the beginning of the batch and really try to try to figure out um what is the single highest leverage thing that you should be working on. Um Paul Paul Graham from YC has this awesome concept of uh fake work. You might you might have heard of this. Uh I'm a huge fan of it. It's like founders, uh, especially, especially developers, like to like to work on things that that they feel comfortable working on, um, but it might not be the thing that that is the most important to be working on in order to validate or in order to uh uh unlock the most potential for your business. So, you know, me, like when I don't know what to do, I'm in my code editor because that's where I feel comfortable. Um, but is that the highest leverage thing I probably should be working on? Um oftentimes not. I should be talking to customers or I should be marketing or something, right? So really trying to understand enough context to be able to help people around uh where they're at in their journey, what their goals are, and then um accountability to make sure they're actually doing that. So, like I there were a few people during this batch, right, where I was I I went up, I was like, Miles, you're you're you're you got you got cursor open.
SPEAKER_00What are you?
SPEAKER_01So, you know, it's it's a combination of of uh the the environment, this this container that is purpose built for for focus work, uh combined with some mentorship and and accountability, uh combined with just just being around other really uh top-tier ambitious people. And then we do this thing, like we basically have have your entire calendar is is just free. Like we're all we're all adults, like you can do what you want. Um and uh the only thing that that we really have on the calendar each week is Monday evenings, we we do uh demos and and you know, really like two-minute demos, like very, very, very quick. Uh, but when you see all the all the progress that like the people around you are making, it's it's a it's a reinforcing mechanism. It pushes you to uh be like, oh shit, I gotta I gotta lock in, right? Um and so it pushes the pace. The other thing that it does is uh really help people to practice the skill of pitching very, very concisely, very, very sharply, which is probably the number one skill that a lot of very talented like indie hacker, you know, uh uh types um could like that that we we see that they need improvement on. Um and this is something you know when you go and you pitch VCs or or whatever, like like it's it's a it's a skill that it's it's a muscle that you can build up, and it really does make a huge difference in your ability to uh to articulate and to convince other people to care about about what you're what you're doing, right? Um so that's that's kind of the hacker residency, a little bit of the backstory in a nutshell. Uh this is my my main thing. I'm 100% focused on this. I'm really excited about you know the potential uh for for what this could become. And I I think all of us, all four, all four of us, we didn't really know what we had. We were just doing it as an experiment to start off. But the more that that our first batch went on, the more that these people that we were living with and working with every single day started to feel like family. And and we we just all collectively were like, we we we caught on to something here. We absolutely need to double down on this and and really uh make sure that we give it you know a a good a good shot.
SPEAKER_02Man, I love it. I really love the concept. I love what you're doing. And my question is, what did come out of that? Like, what were the feedback you got from the India girl? Like, did they learn something? Did you learn something?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what can you say about it? It's it's a great question. Um so I think the the number one feedback was this is fucking awesome. Like people just didn't want to leave. Um, and and it was actually you know kind of emotional because uh it's it's a stressful experience and and you're you're pushing yourself, and then you develop these these close relationships. It's usually it's like like late at night, you know, conversations and and stuff that happens organically. Uh or you you go and you take a walk along the beach with with somebody, um, or or they're they they open up to you and tell you about some other stuff that's going on in their life, right? Uh and yeah, so so the the number one piece of feedback was just the vibes were awesome and uh people people loved it. Um there's a lot that we could do better. I mean, I I think a lot of programs that that that are doing this are don't have the advantage of uh taking the structure and the experience that HFZero has after five years of doing this, right? So we we're already like instead of starting at zero, we're starting at like 0.8, but still trying to figure out like our version of things that is is authentic to us, that is not just like copy and paste them HF Zero. Um, so you know there was one issue, for instance, where the villa that we had was like beautiful, like absolutely gorgeous, but there were some issues with the rooms. So it was raining a lot during the month, and one of the rooms was like flooding, and then like Vietnamese yeah, Vietnamese construction can be a little weird. Like one of the rooms, gorgeous, gorgeous views, but then the sink was like outside, and the the it was a couple that was staying there, so it's not just like like like uh individuals. Uh the anyone who joins is welcome to bring their partner. Uh so you know we had um Brian and Yen from uh were coming from South Korea, and their room, for whatever reason, the sink was outside. Uh like laterally yen had to like go outside in the morning to to use the sink. And there were like construction workers nearby that were like yelling. So like there were little things like that that were obviously um not ideal. And uh for the next batch, we actually we already booked the the villas. It's like these two villas that are right next to each other, um, that kind of similar, similar vibes and similar quality. Um just trying to think about other feedback. Um, you know, it's it's a it's a diverse group of people. Uh, some people like like Thomas, for instance. Like it was Thomas's first time traveling outside of Europe. And so there was a lot of change. And it was a lot of like uh, and then you know, speaking English all day was was very journey for him. I think it was still overall a very positive experience. Um, but one of the things that we we heard was you know, it took people time to acclimate and kind of get used to this new uh situation and sleep schedules and uh meeting people and it felt a little bit rushed. So, you know, we're we're moving from four weeks to six weeks for for the next one. And uh let's see, what else did we learn? I mean, it's so much, dude. I I don't know. Uh we're we're we're learning as we go for sure. We're like we're we're making it up as we go, but I I think overall it was like way more successful from uh an actual lived experience perspective than than any of us were really really expecting. You know, we the the the the number one thing I said going into it was like a lot of people talk about doing this, this type of thing, and and it never ends up happening. So I wanted to make sure that we we did the leanest possible version, no business model. Uh like we we just um agreed the four of us to put in put in uh money ourselves, and then retroactively after we made the decision to do it and we booked a place, uh I was like, well, let's see if we can get sponsors. So we ended up getting some really really legit sponsors, um, Cognition, who makes Devon, Open Router, uh Exa, like some really really really good AI companies, and it ended up basically breaking even for us, which was awesome.
SPEAKER_02Uh that's that's a good that's a good transition because I wanted to ask you about that. Like you did that with your co-founder. How did you find the sponsor? And how did you find the mentor or like the people who came? For example, Dango came to the villa, and I know that it was something big for some people. How did you do that and what is your network strategy in this situation?
SPEAKER_01So that network strategy is is very simple, it's it's like not intentional, just building in public and doing doing dope shit and being a good person, and like uh other good quality people will get interested and reach out. Like Dan was was uh totally uh just just lucky. Um, he happened to be traveling in Denong and he saw something that we posted online and and then he reached out to David, and um we were like, Well, I don't I don't know who this dude is, but he's got a huge following. Let's talk to him, you know. Um and he ended up being really, really dope. I actually I had like a personal one-on-one with Dan uh to talk about my mental uh or my my physical health, which was awesome. Um and so you know, in terms of the sponsors, uh it I I I have a very strong network from all of my previous like uh work and open source stuff and and just uh have been in and around the Silicon Valley ecosystem for a while. So a lot of those people, like I was just texting like directly. Uh and then there were a few folks that we we we sent out um kind of cold uh DMs uh to to maybe like one of the devrels at at uh some of these places. And we had uh a Notion doc that put together just a little like like one line one liner about what we're doing, what we're looking for. We had uh embedded on there like our uh launch or or announcement tweet from from Tony, Tony Din that had 200,000 views. Um and I kind of framed it as like, okay, so so a lot of these companies sponsor hackathon all the time. And it's it's literally it's nothing to them to put down like 10, 20k on a hackathon because it's free marketing, or not free, but it's it's it's it's easy marketing for them to their their core target audience of ambitious like uh hackers, right? And my framing was you you guys are already sponsored hackathons. This is like a 30-day hackathon, right? You're gonna get like content from us mentioning us with you in the background, etc., for 30 days instead of like a day or two days, right? Um, and then that plus having a really good network and having the reputation um of saying, hey, like you guys know HF0. HF Zero is super well respected. Uh you guys know know us. This is like Tony and me and and and and things. Um, and this is just an experiment. So just being honest, like I don't know what comes from this, but it's an experiment. We're gonna do it, and we're gonna be putting out a lot of content, be making some noise. Uh, we would love for you to be a part of it, you know. And and I think like there's some of our sponsors really were more active about asking for us to like post about them. And then some of them were just like they they kind of understood uh and and and really just wanted to support like the indie hacker ecosystem and and liked what we were doing for that reason.
SPEAKER_02I think you did really well because for four weeks we're seeing you everywhere. Like I was seeing the I was seeing the Vita on my feed every single day. Rob was doing video, Thomas was doing his daily blog post, and then there was uh one of your really good video editor, I forgot his name, was doing it. Exactly. And thanks to him, actually, I took that video that he did as an example, and now all my intro of this podcast are based on that style. I say, like, I want an editor. Um he was presenting like the video that was presenting um in the hacker in the villa. So just this quick intro. And I say I want a video editor like Edmund. I say this name and I say I want someone like him because he was already full. But no, he did amazing, and I think the sponsor got a lot of visibility thanks to that.
SPEAKER_01Hell yeah. Yeah, we were really lucky to have Edmund helping out. I mean, Edmund Edmund's uh is an interesting example on his journey. Uh so Edmund studied computer science at Berkeley. Um again, like being in SF and being around that environment, the the default was to go to YC and raise venture. So that's that's what he did, right? And this was maybe five, six years ago. Uh raised venture and then burnt out and realized like I hate this, like this isn't for me, right? And then ended up going on this content journey, uh, maybe similar to what what you're doing, you know, uh, and uh combining that with like his love for dancing and just create you know exploring and creating video content, uh, and really found his his life's calling doing that. Um so now I think he's got like 170,000 followers on Instagram. He he has a bunch of really legit like sponsorships. Um, and we kind of just randomly got connected with Edmund through HF Zero's video editor, Stu Jordan. Um and I don't think Edmund really knew what to expect either uh coming into this, but he had a great time and really felt at home. Um yeah, I that's that's all I'll say about that for now. But um really excited to to work with Edmund more in the future because like we didn't we weren't paying him, dude. Like he he's he's such like a top-tier dude, and all all he did was I paid for his flights in his hotel. And then um, you know, I was I was very hesitant to ask like for for more of uh Edmund's time and stuff because he was really just doing it um uh out of his own love and generosity, uh, but really really felt uh like he he he was a core part of our crew.
SPEAKER_02So and I have to connect with him because when I had Thomas on the podcast, he said you should invite this guy because he has a really interesting story. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01He also I think a lot of like video content people um don't don't have that really legit technical background. Like he studied computer science, he he did a uh a tech startup before, and I think that is a huge competitive advantage for him to be able to talk about some of these these topics that are really technical in nature.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 100%. Um another question I had is like, why did they pitch their startup to the Vietnamese government? Like I want to understand that. I was seeing videos from Rob and like everyone, I was like, what happened?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. So uh it's it's interesting. Like most of these accelerated programs, like HFZero, they have a demo day at the end, and most of them are investors, right? Like you're pitching to investors because the your goal is to raise venture capital. Well, for us, at least for this first one, like we didn't really care about investors, right? We we did have a couple of them there. We invited a lot of builders, like a lot of local um founders and indie hackers and stuff. And then uh we also invited the Vietnamese government. Um, I mean, this is this is something that that you kind of have to do um when you're doing this type of program in a in another country, right? Like you really have to make sure that you're uh doing things the right way, that you're not stepping on toes, that you're being respectful. Um, and so one of our biggest sponsors was of this Vietnamese tech company called Data House, and they're like an old school uh um software company. Uh sorry, there's something weird going on out my my my outside my room. It sounds like it was like gas or something. Okay, anyway, I think it's it'll probably be fine. Um so yeah, they helped us with all like the local stuff, and they also introduced us to the government. Um Danong has a like program for innovation, um, and they're trying to promote their local startup ecosystem. Uh what they really loved was was us taking some of this like Silicon Valley mindset and the way that we do things out there and just bringing it to uh Danong. You know, I think most of our our founders, aside from two, were flying in uh from around the world. And then we had a couple of local founders as well who were who are just like absolutely uh unbelievable similar level. Um, but trying to have it be uh not a one-way thing, but a two-way thing where the the the local ecosystem, the local founders can also be learning from and and contributing to our program, I think is a really important thing. Uh but yeah, at the end of the day, we we had uh a representative from the the Vietnam government there, and um they uh gave us a gift. It's uh I don't know, it's an interesting thing. They give us this like big rock uh that is like really heavy that that has this beautiful like like Viet Viet Vietnam um painting on it. Um but then all of our people were flying in from around the world, and it's like this heavy thing. So, how do you take that on your luggage and stuff? Um it was interesting, it was cool. I think the Viet Vietnamese uh government uh representatives that were there really liked it because they hadn't seen anything like it. Like, like this is not how uh startup ecosystem you're testing.
SPEAKER_00Yo, bro, there's like a fire. Hello, what is going on? It's testing okay, okay. No problem, okay. No, I was like there's like a a a fire extinguisher. What is going on?
SPEAKER_02I was going to cut that, but I will keep it. Amazing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I totally lost my train of thought there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we're talking about the Vietnamese government and now you're trying to stop a fire. Yeah. Well, let's jump to the next one then. Um what is after like all this time that you spend with like 10 uh India girls, what is the three biggest problem you see in India girls?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I've written a little bit about this. I feel like my thoughts have updated a little bit, but let me let me give you kind of my more prepared answer and then happy to talk through how I how how how my thoughts have changed, maybe. Um so I think the the first biggest problem is uh loneliness. Indie hacking, it's in the name. It can uh there there are some communities, like the Hacker Network is awesome. There's there's meetups, there's obviously stuff online, um, you know, being part of communities like building public. Uh, but at the end of the day, it's really hard to have to find uh a network of peers who you can reliably learn from and and who will push you to to get better. Um like someone someone like myself who is pretty pretty experienced as an entrepreneur. I love I love going to meetups and stuff, but I I just um it's not the same as as for instance being in Silicon Valley, where I know I walk into a room and I'm gonna like learn something from every person in that in that room. And so like the density of talent is is something that I I think is missing. And uh have being able to have a a true community of of peers is is something that is is really helpful for for indie hackers. So that's the first one, kind of loneliness, uh lack of lack of community. Um the second problem that I see a lot with indie hackers is it's really hard to choose the right thing to work on. Um, and a lot of people who are struggling uh are just pushing a boulder uphill and and and working either on something that they don't have founder market fit for or within uh a market that is really just like crowded or or too hard, or like YC has this term tar pit idea, meaning it's an idea that you like start working on and then you get stuck in, you know, like these old tar tar pits, like the dinosaurs, and you just get stuck in them and you get marred, and then you just like like uh chilling on that for for years. And then number three is just distribution and marketing is hard. Most indie hackers are like developers turned entrepreneurs, and uh developers like to spend their time coding, adding features, etc. Uh, even if they they would probably get a lot more out of spending more time uh marketing. So, you know, one of the things that we we try to do for people is uh create a like have have some of the the folks who who have larger audiences help the other other other folks who are just starting out, and you know, you can be around these these folks who who really understand the game of of even just just posting on X, for instance, uh and help them to get their social game off the ground, um, to get some default eyeballs on on what they're building, which really just helps them out in the in the early days, you know, and then and then having someone like Edmund who is absolutely world-class at video editing to uh create a marketing video for them and have that be an asset that they can use on uh X, on TikTok, on whatever. It depends on on what you're building, you know, which which one of those platforms you should be focusing on for organic marketing or um but uh yeah, I'd say those are the three biggest ones. Uh loneliness, lack of community, um choosing the right problem to work on, and then uh marketing and distribution.
SPEAKER_02You said uh one thing was like the funder market fit. Can you explain more about that? Because I think it's interesting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, for sure. So final market fit is really like how much how well do you and your interests and your your background overlap with the target market and the the types of customers that you're targeting? Um, you know, I think some some people When I I I talk to them about what they're what they're working on and why, uh, that their their first answer is um, you know, I'm working on this because I I I I'll make money. And and it's like, okay, uh, cool. Like we're all here, you know, making making money is a part of the game. Um, but for longevity, if you don't really care and empathize with your target customers, um, it's really hard to uh go go that extra mile and uh put put more of yourself into making the best best solution for them, right? So whether that's like solving for your own problem and then selling to your you know to to people like yourself, the the the issue there is then you end up just having like a thousand dev tools, uh, you know, because you're like solving for developer issues. Um you know that meme uh where the the there's like like two two stands and the one stand is like people selling shovels, uh and then like the guys come in and he's like, Hey, do you want to buy the shovels? Like, no, I'm selling shovels too, and they're just like everyone's lined up and all shovels. Um, you know, that that's that that's probably the the the the main downside of like solving your own problem.
SPEAKER_00Um but uh yeah, I I don't know if that answered your question.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it did. It did. Okay. Is there a question that I didn't ask you and I should have asked you?
SPEAKER_01Uh no, you're you're you're you're good at this, Florian. Um I think maybe just uh I would love to chat a little bit about kind of where where we're headed in the future for this this hacker residency. Um I think our our real mission. So it started off as an experiment. The experiment was super successful. We generated a lot of interest, generated a lot of lot of demand. Uh, and right now we're kind of doubling down and figuring out what this looks like more long term in a more sustainable way. Uh, and and really our our underlying mission that is is we want to try and foster more successful and ambitious indie hackers. So, you know, I think a lot of the the successful indie hackers, um, they're they're they're a little self self-limiting in in how far you can go as an indie hacker, or uh even like being able to really effectively use AI to do more with with less these days. Um like trying to unlock the ceiling of of indie hackers and and and bridge the gap between the the indie hacker world and this like venture world over here, which are currently very separate. And then the like helping foster more successful indie hackers is is really just the broader ecosystem. It's it's so powerful to go from being an employee to uh having your your own business. And I take that for granted sometimes, you know, because like I I I kind of flipped that switch in my in my brain a long time ago, but it is like probably the number one um most impactful thing that if you're if you're kind of young, ambitious, talented, or not even young, right? Like I just trying to build something for yourself, getting to the point where you have some passive income, uh it's it's I view it as as unlocking optionality, right? Because you can start there and you can even start with something small, but once you get to the point where you have uh passive income and you you you no longer have to work for for someone else and trade time for money, like that is a massive, massive unlock for whatever lifestyle you want to do. Maybe maybe like Thomas was saying, right? He's like, What when I when I have a certain amount of money, I want to throw my computer into a lake and never program again, right? And I was like, I'm surprised by that because most of the time, really good at uh engineers, indie hackers, like like like my you know, myself, I I love coding. I love the craft, and it's like I I enjoy my happy place is when I'm in flow state and I'm not thinking about anything else except for the code in front of me, right? Um, so so I for me, that's my version of of success of having optionality is I don't have to worry about my finances, right? I can take care of my my my family and and uh live the lifestyle I want. But then I have the the freedom and optionality to work on whatever I want whenever I want. And and usually that that's various open source things. Um for Thomas, it's throwing his computer in a lake and uh you know uh uh having wine and cheese with his friends uh uh you know every day. Um for for Tony, Tony Din, he's kind of already at this point where he's making you know uh plenty of money, especially, especially with where he's coming from, uh, being from a relatively small area in Vietnam. Uh and his his version of that successful life is working with his wife on uh typing mind and on side projects and spending half of his time surfing, traveling around the world surfing, right? Uh I think I think the hacker residency will be a success if we can uh eventually become that like YC like institution for for this the indie hacker world and really uh one set set set an example for the the the the already like kind of successful and ambitious folks to aim higher. And then two, uh we we have a lot of plans to kind of create content and to uh create learning resources and and really try and propel the ecosystem to to help more people escape the rat race and uh uh build you know products with AI or or just just put themselves out there. Maybe it just starts off creating content, right? Like there's there's all there's so many different paths to to entrepreneurship, to to uh working for yourself, to having freedom these days. Um, and these are all kind of pieces of it that that we want to be trying trying to promote.
SPEAKER_02I love it. If I'm an India, I'm watching this podcast until the end, I'm ooked, I want to be in the next one, the next residency. Where can I find the next link? Like where can I apply, or is it already open?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a good question. So uh I we will be opening applications for our second batch uh just after the new year, so around January 2nd, we're gonna we're gonna put it out. Um our next batch is going to be from April 21st through June 1st, so six weeks, uh in Dunang, Vietnam again. After this next batch, we are going to go regional. So it's not just a Vietnam thing. We're gonna run batches in Chiang Mai, in Bali, uh, you know, kind of around Southeast Asia. Think of all like the the really uh dope digital nomad kind of hotspots. Uh and but for for our next batch, it's gonna be April 21st. Um you can follow at hacker residency on X, and uh we'll be posting applications there soon.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. Well, I will try to release this podcast before the 2nd of January.
SPEAKER_00Oh no, I I I either way, uh for sure.
SPEAKER_02Uh thank you very much, Travis, for your time. Uh it was a pleasure to meet you, and I will see you soon.
SPEAKER_00Likewise, Florian. Thank you, my man.