What's up, dude?

Hey man, what's going on?

We are talking to the one and only Rob Walling today.

I'm excited. I'm excited. I feel like I haven't seen him or talk to him in what, like five years? When did we last go to microcom?

Five years. Well, microconf, right? It's probably been like two or three years. We haven't,

I haven't gone to microcuff since the pandemic started, but I'm pretty sure we went to every

microcalf before that, so 2019. I mean, four years. Yeah. But he's also been on the podcast

a couple times. I mean, he's doing everything, right?

He started, since then, he started Tiny Seed, which is the first accelerator for bootstrap founders.

He's still running microconf. He is writing a book, the SaaS playbook. We're going to talk about that today.

He also started five or six bootstrapped companies in the past,

including one that he sold for millions, presumably tens of millions of dollars a drip. It's interesting

talking to Rob because I think he's just been around for so long that just like the thought of Rob makes

me think of like all the different phases that like a tech founder has gone through, especially

being an indie hacker. Like when he first started, he was writing Start Small, Stay Small, which is basically a book to be an indie hacker well before anybody else was like doing this. So he's kind of seen the different trends. And I feel kind of like an old man because I was around then, you know, and like doing this stuff back then. And like the scene today is unrecognizable.

Do you feel like this?

It's like it's hard to keep up with like what all the changes are and how how the landscape has evolved.

I do feel that way.

And I think it's the natural consequence of starting indie hackers and like kind of entering this community of bootstrappers where there's a bit of a who's who,

right? You kind of know the people who have been successful. But if you keep playing in that

arena for long enough, like the faces change, right? And like the sense of like not even just

who is doing really well, but also like what kinds of products are the things that are going to play well. You just lose track of that. I mean, we've been through the crypto phase, right? We went through like the Web3 phase. Now we're sort of in this weird AI phase, the no code phase, the no code phase. Creator economy phase. And it's like the thing is none of these phases have gone away. They're still there. There's getting layered on on top of each other more and more. And each of them probably has like its own set of superstars, right? And it's hard for us to always be in the weeds about about who those superstars are. Did you see Amy Hoy's post on Andy Hackers? A couple days ago. I feel like I'm honored to be one of the first commenter.

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