Ben Tossel, welcome to the Andy Hackers podcast. Thanks for having me. And you're the founder of MakerPad. MakerPad helps makers figure out how to build apps and websites without writing a single line of code. In fact, at the top of your website, it says very boldly, literally in bold font, whatever tool you want to build, you can do it without code. You've been working on MakerPad for less than a year now, but it already, I think, made over $100,000 in revenue in the first half of this year, and it's probably on track to do more than that in the second half. And you've tweeted that that's 95% profit. You have very few expenses. You built the whole site and a meta kind of way without writing any code yourself. And what's the craziest to me is that this is a side project for you. You've got a full-time job. You run MakerPad in your free time. So let's start there. Most any hackers are doing this for freedom. They want to be their own bosses and control their own time. If they had something like you do that could make them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in their free time, They would quit on a heartbeat and just go work on that. So I think this is kind of revealing of your motivations. Why are you building MakerPad and why isn't it your full-time thing? Well, first of all, that was an awesome introduction. So I appreciate that. Well, I'm working with Ernest Capital, which is, as Tyler, who runs the fund, wouldn't want to call it alternative to VC, but more early stage investing in bootstrappers.

So it's people who get to sort of 3K, 5K MRR who want to go full time on this thing, which is sort of like a funny full circle that, like, potentially MakerPad could be sitting in that in that bracket as well it's basically solo founders or very small teams who are starting off on their um reach chapter journey but we sort of give them the cash to go full time and then they can quit their jobs hire some extra support staff and and get access to our mentors and deals and

things like that we've put together for them. So, I mean, that's really like an amazing

opportunity for me. And I, Tyler basically reached out to me when I was doing a previous project.

I think it was more for he was seeing if I would want to take investment. But then he said

what the fund was going to be doing.

I said, I just have to be involved.

Like, I just, I want to be involved in the fund. Don't worry about the investment stuff. I didn't know. So, I'm up in the air with doing things full time as I've been on my own for two years or so. So I just wanted to be involved in the fund. So here I am. That's pretty unusual for a founder to talk to an

investor and decline to take investment and instead ask to work with the investment firm. What was it

about earnest capital that made you so excited to work on it? Well, it's just one of these things,

I think, that comes around only once every several years, I think think the community's been desperate for it

indie hackers are blown up your site and everything around that the community is just

becoming bigger and bigger and there's more like stories especially you're telling

especially on this podcast that people are going out and doing things a different way than

raising VC money so just seeing what Tyler was, why his vision was for

Ernest, I just really wanted to be involved. And my whole career in tech has been trying to help

founders do things. I never thought of myself as I'm going to be the founder who can have this

big company and do something myself necessarily. Mine was more for fun or learning. But yeah, just gave me an opportunity

to be able to work with founders on different problems every week. There's something different. So,

yeah, it's just been awesome to be a part of that. It's funny hearing you describe it that way,

because that could easily be the description for your business maker pad as well. You're helping

founders accomplish things every week. You're working on different problems. And I'm curious how it works, actually. If I am somebody who doesn't know how to code

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