All right, what's up, everybody?

This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to a crossover episode between

the IndieHackers podcast and the Acquired podcast with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal.

On Acquired, Ben and David, deep dive into the stories behind companies that you've heard of and might use every day

to try to figure out the strategies and the events that got them to where they are.

It's an excellent show. I listen to it all the time and I can't recommend it enough.

So do me a favor. Go check out their show. It's called Acquired.

In this episode, unlike most other episodes of the

Indy Hackers podcast, Ben and David flipped the script on me and asked me about my story, starting

indie hackers. So I hope you enjoy it. Cortland Allen, welcome to Acquired. Ben, David, thanks for having

me. Yeah. It's so great to have you here. Our pleasure. For anyone who has not listened to your voice, for the many hours that I have on the Indie Hackers podcast, obviously we're going to reference it lots and lots throughout this show, but go check it out and very excited to be doing a crossover episode with you. Yeah, I'm excited to do this. People have been asking for a while for me to do an episode on myself, because obviously Andy Hackers is kind of an interview show. I just tell other people's stories. And I've always been like, as weird as it sounds like shy to do an episode on my own podcast. So congratulations on being the first people to convince me. Well, look, we are the acquiredquired podcast, and you did that mega deal exit to

Stripe. So how could we not cover the acquisition of the century? This is great. It's got

like all the hallmarks of both of our episodes. Well, David, who is Cortland for listeners who don't

listen to any hackers or haven't participated in the community? Yeah. So Cortland is a former YC founder, MIT

alum, and founder of a company that has been acquired by Stripe, all of which, you know,

seems like it would fit very much into the acquired theme. But there's a twist, which is unlike the big gopher broke. We were jamming before we

hit record here about like the typical startup path that we cover all the time on this show

is like trying to build the new version of standard oil out there except 10, 100,000 times

bigger than the Rockefellers and the

Carnegie's could ever imagined. Cortland is all about a different philosophy out there.

The indie philosophy and, of course, the company that he started and what he runs

within Stripe and the website and the community and the podcast is indie hackers.

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