IndieHackers.com acquired by Stripe

Congrats to csallen.

This makes me ... feel weird. Not sure what it is exactly. Let me explain.

I'm an aspiring indie hacker. Currently soaking in the relaxation of a much needed sabbatical following my previous 8 year long employment (what a ride that was). When I'm ready, I'm going switch gears and devote myself to starting a bunch of small "indie hacker" type projects. I've been on HN for quite awhile now and I always enjoy reading about startups and being engrossed in the YCombinator community. My previous job was a startup, but I was purely in technical roles. I think it's time to get my feet wet on the business side.

So I've followed IndieHackers.com intently. I went so far as to read almost all their interviews and breakdown my analysis in a blog post (https://hackernoon.com/indie-startups-the-ingredients-of-success-74531fe3a019).

After awhile I really started to dig the whole "indie hacker movement". The idea that SV type startups aren't the only game in town. You don't have to build a rocket ship. You can built a fighter jet. You may not make it into space, but fighter jets a cool too.

I didn't start digging it just because it sounded cool, though. The idea that these kinds of one or few developer teams could start consuming the lower hanging fruit that SV startups won't touch because they aren't explosive growth opportunities? It just makes sense. Yeah, in some way it's just small business reinvented. But Courtland said something that stuck in my mind. The vast explosion of developer tools, libraries, SaaS, cloud computer, APIS, etc over the past few years has laid the foundation for single person teams to tackle problems they never could have managed alone in the past. It reeks of opportunity.

So, with all that background, this acquisition makes me feel weird. On the one hand, I'm totally happy for csallen. What a great thing to happen. I don't mean to down play that at all. On the other ... it's sad to see his indie business die. Perhaps he doesn't see it that way; dying I mean. Obviously this is a great opportunity for him and his brother to focus on what's important for the site. That's a good thing. But it does mean IndieHackers.com is no longer an indie hacker business itself. That's why I feel weird about it.

I'm of course concerned about Stripe's intentions. IndieHackers is a great resource, and it'd be a shame to see it consumed by typical corporate greed and manipulations. I don't mean to imply that's Stripe's MO. But I think I'm not the only one afraid of that, founded or unfounded. Plenty of people here are already calling foul on IndieHackers for their past behavior.

At the end of the day I'll get over the fact that IndieHackers is no longer an indie hacker. But I really do truly hope that it stays true to its core mission: to provide a platform for us to share our stories, unfiltered and transparent.

Congrats, and thank you csallen.

I've been reading HN for 5 or 6 years and this feels very strange to me. From the comments in here by the principles it kind of seems like Stripe is doing IH a favor. A few things that stick in my craw:

1. This seems like it would be damaging to IH's brand image (since it will now be perceived as a PR arm of Stripe, and it's all about independence)

2. Stripe's stated goal here is simply to ensure the success of IH in order to drive more people to start companies. That's not exactly compelling on it's own, and with (1), even less so.

3. IH was apparently very big on financial transparency, yet the principles are being decidedly opaque about financials in this thread.

Are these types of deals common? Does Stripe own any other media companies?

[note: these are just my thoughts. i don't think i'm entitled to any further explanation nor do i think anything nefarious is going on.]

Patrick from Stripe here. I wanted to quickly chime in to emphasize that our goal in acquiring Indie Hackers is to simply ensure that the site becomes as successful as possible. The Stripe upside we're hoping for is that more companies get started and that they're more successful. We already see a very large fraction of new internet companies choose Stripe; we're mainly hoping that Indie Hackers can help us grow the overall number rather than to grow our fraction. (Our product has to do the latter part.)

Also: congrats to Courtland on building an awesome site! I've been enjoying the interviews on it since it launched. It's very refreshing to hear from so many people who are quietly building real businesses with real revenues.

Isn't it ironic the details of the acquisition isn't being transparently shared?

From Indie Hackers site:

"Anyone with a business or side project that's generating at least $300/mo in revenue. There's no upper limit. Of course, you have to be willing to share your revenue — the point of this site is transparency!" Source: https://www.indiehackers.com/submit

I think we have the "right" to know what the transaction entailed; how much the owner was exactly paid, that is.

One of my favorite sites that provided real value. I guess IndieHackers did a lot of things right which created such fast growth with a quick exit.

1) Great design. Really professional feel (even though it just a wordpress blog)

2) Regular updated content to keep visitors coming back.

3) Highly targeted to hacker community / product creators - no wonder it was featured over and over again on the front page

4) In built SEO and traffic. People who are featured on it link back to it. People link to it for inspiration (great social signals).

What else? Anyone else wanna chime in?