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 try to get a sense of what it's like to be in their shoes. How do they get to where they are today?

How do they make decisions, both of their companies and in their personal lives? And what exactly makes their businesses tick? And the goal here, as always, is so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and go on to build our own profitable internet businesses. Today, I'm sitting down to talk to Stelly Fhty, the CEO of Close.. Close is a CRM tool that helps sell people close more deals. And Steli and I go way back. We met in Y Combinator in 2011 in

Silicon Valley back when I first moved here. And since then we've kept in touch. This is

Steli's third time on the podcast. And I really just wanted to catch up with him and see what's

going on in his

world. Steli is an experienced indie hacker. He hit product market fit years ago. His business has

already been making millions of dollars. He's already grown his team to dozens of people.

And I wanted to get a snapshot of what kind of decisions and concerns you make when you reach that

point in your business. And also how a business of that maturity level deals with the crisis we're going through right now with COVID-19 and all these lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders.

So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Steli.

Dely, how are you doing?

How's it going with you?

You know, I honestly cannot complain, but I still do it every day.

But I'm working on it. But I'm healthy and I'm reasonably sane. So I have lots of blessings to count, I guess.

I feel the same way. I complain. You know, I've like had a lot of travel plans ruined this year and a lot of other plans. But like in the grand scheme of things, it's pretty minor compared to what else is going on. I'm healthy. My family's healthy. I'm safe. I'm also staying sane. I'm a huge introvert. So I think being at home for a long time hasn't been as much of a challenge as it's been for some of my friends. But it's kind of starting to wear out of me after a couple months. So a couple friends and I are going to look into getting a cabin, just sort of moving away and just like riding out the storm together. We'll see how that goes. But one thing I've noticed that I've really kind of enjoyed the kind of a silver lining is it feels like everything's moving a little bit slower. Like the whole world is moving slower. People just aren't getting as much done. They've got their kids at home. Everyone's cutting everybody a little bit of slack.

And for some strange reason, that just makes me feel better. It feels like it's taking a load off my shoulders. I don't have to run as fast. Do you feel the same way? Do you feel like you've slowed down

or the world has kind of slowed down? And that affects how you think about your job and how you work?

My world definitely has slowed down. My circle has focused a lot more and at first it's funny at first

I was just complaining because I had all these like I had to move at these travel plans with a big

retreat coming up and like we had to reschedule and cancel and like do a ton of these like

...