#188 – Fame, Focus, and Billions of Pageviews with Evan Britton of Famous Birthdays

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

🗓️ 14 January 2021

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Evan Britton (@Evan_Britton) runs a massive website focused on digital celebrities called Famous Birthdays. It gets multiple billions of pageviews a year, has dozens of employees, and he bootstrapped it to profitability without raising a dime from investors. They key to Evan's approach is his laser focus. He says no to almost everything, including the most obvious of opportunities. Instead he prefers to "stay in his lane." He'd rather make one thing great than do a mediocre job at 4 or 5 different things. The story of how Evan made Famous Birthdays great is one of fame, focus, ambition, patience, and just a little bit of luck.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's up, everybody?
0:08.4	This is Cortland from NDHackers.com, and you're listening to the NDHackers podcast.
0:13.6	More people than ever are building cool stuff online and making a ton of money in the process.
0:17.8	And on this show, I talked to these indie hackers to learn about the strategies, the opportunities, and the ideas they're using to get ahead, so the rest of us can do the same. If you've been enjoying the show and you want an easy way to give back, do me a favor, leave a quick rating for us on Apple Podcasts. It helps other people find the show, and it makes me a happy podcaster. In today's episode, I sat down to talk to Evan Britton. Evan runs an absolutely massive site focused on digital celebrities.
0:40.5	It's called Famous Birthdays.
0:42.2	He gets something like multiple billions of page views every year.
0:46.2	And I think his story is inspiring just because of how focused he is.
0:50.4	He says no to pretty much everything.
0:52.2	He stays in his lane, as he puts it, and he's
0:54.6	single-mindedly focused on making a site into a significant institution on the web. That's it. That's all he cares about. He's a really fun guy to talk to. I really enjoy the interview, and I hope you do as well. Evan, you were working on a website called Famous Birthdays. I'm looking at it right now and it kind of looks like MySpace.
0:52.3	How old are you, by the way?
0:53.5	I'm 42.
0:54.7	So you're 42. website called Famous Birthdays. I'm looking at it right now. And it kind of looks like MySpace.
1:12.0	How old are you, by the way? I'm 42. So you're 42. So when MySpace was out, I was in, it was big in
1:17.7	2006. I was in college. I had friends with MySpace accounts. You were well out of college. Were
1:22.5	you on MySpace? Were you using it back then? I was not. But you've somehow distinctly captured.
1:28.3	It's like a more upscale, modern MySpace vibe with balloons and stars and all these pictures
1:33.8	of kids, except they're not like my high school friends.
1:37.1	They are celebrities, YouTubers, TikTokers, TV stars.
1:41.6	I see Jake Paul on here and Zendaya. Tell us about famous birthdays. What is it exactly?
1:48.3	So famous birthdays is a simple way to quickly learn about, you know, celebrities, social stars,
1:56.4	movies, TV shows, bands, web series in a concise yet informative format.
	...

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