#167 – The Most Sensible Debate on Hustle Culture and Work-Life Balance with Natalie Nagele and DHH

Indie Hackers

Courtland Allen and Channing Allen

Startups, Entrepreneurship, Makers, Indie, Bootstrapping, Online, Technology, Business, Founders, Bootstrappers, Ideas, Tech, Indiehackers, Hackers

4.9 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2020

⏱️ 112 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If you want to build a successful business, you have to be ready to work 24/7/365 to have a shot at success… or do you? Both Natalie Nagele and DHH bootstrapped their internet businesses to millions in revenue, yet they took different paths to get there, with DHH only putting in a small number of hours vs Natalie who ate, slept, and breathed her job as a founder in the early days. In this episode we discuss whether or not DHH's approach is truly repeatable for others trying to get their businesses off the ground, the limits to human productivity and happiness, and the role that society and hustle culture in shaping how we feel about our work as founders.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's up everybody?
0:07.0	This is Cortland from Endiehackers.com and you're listening to the IndieHackers podcast.
0:13.0	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.
0:18.0	How do they get to where they are today?
0:20.0	How do they make decisions, both of their companies and in their personal lives, and what exactly makes their businesses tick?
0:24.6	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.
0:30.6	Today we're going to discuss a very important topic, work life balance and productivity as a founder.
0:38.3	And joining me are two very special guests.
0:40.0	Neither of them needs an introduction, but they both certainly deserve one.
0:44.6	Natalie Nagel is a former guest on the Indie Hackers podcast.
0:47.3	You might remember her from episode number 90, which is one of my favorites.
0:51.6	Natalie is the CEO and founder of Wildbit, a bootstrapped and
0:55.7	profitable software business with unusual longevity. She's been doing this for 20 years now and
1:02.0	generates many millions of dollars in revenue for multiple products, including Postmark,
1:06.7	which I happen to think is the best transactional email service. I use it for Andy hackers to send
1:10.6	millions of emails every month. So Natalie, thank you for Postmark. And welcome back to the show. Thanks, Cortland. I'm so excited to be here. We are also joined by David Honemeyer Hansen, better known by many as DHS on the internet. David is the founder and CTO of Basecamp, another bootstrapped and profitable
1:29.5	software business that does many millions in revenue and has been influential for decades.
1:35.3	David is also the creator of Ruby on Rails, the popular programming framework. He's a New
1:39.8	York Times best-selling author. He's a professional race car driver who took first place in his class
1:44.4	at the 24 hours of Le Mans. He is also one of the primary reasons why indie hackers exist. I can say,
1:50.5	without a doubt, there would be no indie hackers if David's talks and his writings that inspired me
1:55.4	11 or 12 years ago had not happened. So, David, thank you for the inspiration and welcome to the show.
	...

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