What's up everybody? This is Cortland from Indiehackers.com and you're listening to the IndieHackers podcast. On this show, I talked to the founders of profitable internet businesses and I'm trying to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes. How do they make decisions both at their businesses and in their personal lives and what exactly makes their businesses tick? And the goal here, as always, is so that Lynn's making me laugh here. The goal here is always so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and go on to build our own successful internet businesses. Today is a special episode. I'm here with Lynn Tai, the founder

of Key Values. What's up, Lynn? Hello. Lynn is a really good friend of mine. We met in

college 12 years ago. We moved to San Francisco together. Yeah. Eight and a half, nine years ago back in

2010. I think it's safe to say that Lenennon is my best friend. And... I'm also like a mentor, advisor, whatever you want to call it, to your business key values. So I've been there since the very beginning two years ago. Yeah. Almost the day. Almost to the day. And I remember very distinctly you saying that your goal was to eventually come onto the Indie Hacker's podcast, which I had just started two years ago as well. And you were like, well, you got to make some money first. Yeah, you got to make some money. And now you have. Yeah. Why don't you tell listeners how much money you're making with key values? Yeah. So last quarter, Q4, I did about 80K in sales. and this quarter I'm on track to do the same or even better. Yeah, last week I did 25K sales. I tell you that. It was like a really, really... You've been telling me all week. True. It's just been like a really awesome energizing week. Yeah. So you're on track. You're sort of like $300, $350,000 a year run rate with your revenue. What are your expenses look like? How much money do you spend to keep this business running? Not much. I mean, I don't have employees. I don't have an office. I work out of here from home or squat out of Oliver's office. My husband's, my paper, subscriptions, posting. I mean, yeah. Like a few hundred dollars a month you spend. It's almost all profit with your business. You're a solo founder. You don't have employees. You don't have an office. Your first time founder. This is the very first company you've ever started in two years. You're already at the point where you're making way more than you made as a developer. How does it feel?

It's, I mean, it's surreal, but it's also the new normal. But no, I'm really proud. And it's, I remember two years ago, you were like, if you just do anything, you show up every single day, it'll happen. I was like, promise. You promise. And you're like, I mean, I don't promise. No guarantee you. I know you're like, I'm not writing this down, but yeah, I mean, if you just show up for two years, it'll happen. And I mean, you weren't promise. No guarantees. I know, you're like, I'm not writing this down. But, yeah, I mean, if you just show up for two years, it'll happen. And, I mean, you weren't wrong. And it's been two years. I think one of the cool things about your story is that you are not what I would describe is a business guru. You're not devouring startup essays and books. You're not reading on the philosophies of sales. calling me out right now're calling me out right now. It's true though. It's like this is how you identify. I'm definitely not. I'm not. And yet your first time out of the gate starting a business, you've achieved more success than I ever had than most people I've talked to. And I think there are a lot of special, unique things about key values that make it just a really good business and that sort of contributed to your outside success. So I really want to get into those details. But before we do, why don't you tell people what key values is, how it works, who uses it and why?

Yeah. So key values is a website that helps software engineers find jobs based on their values. So if you're an engineer and you want work-life balance, you want to contribute to open source and I don't know, maybe you hate

going to meetings, you would go to key values, select those as tags and filters, and you'd

find teams that share those values. And yeah, and then you get to learn about companies before

committing to the long and exhausting interview process. And how, and then you get to learn about companies before committing to the long

and exhausting interview process. And how does your business model work? How do you make money with

key values? Yeah, so it's not a recruiting platform. There's no placement fees or contingency model.

It's a subscription model. So companies pay me. I never charge engineers never would. Companies pay me

a flat fee for the year and to generate the content and list their page on key values.

Okay. So it's super straightforward. Let's get into the story of how you started it. We're going to go way back into our history. Do you remember when we first moved to SF? Or do you remember even before that in college where I was always obsessed with startups. I was obsessed with coding.

You were on a totally different spectrum.

You were, I think, neuroscience.

Yeah, I was brain and cognitive sciences.

I was, goodness, it's so weird to think back.

It's like everyone who thought you were the weird one and now living in San Francisco,

it's like the no, everyone's in this space. But yeah, I remember you would always be coding at parties and whatnot. People would literally be like chugging beers behind you and you'd like drink a beer or then go to your computer in code. But no, in college, I was Brain and Cog. I always wanted to be a professor, my mom, my dad, my sister. They're all academic professors. So

even before I got into college, I, like, knew for certain that that was my calling. And so in

college, I was laser focused on doing research and making sure I got good grades and everything

...