The Swyx Mixtape

Listen to Indie Hackers: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/indie-hackers/041-an-optimistic-nihilists-ldribhqGTOM/ (20mins in)

special! the making of this mixtape was livestreamed today if you're interested in the behind the scenes process

Also recommend listening to the Dropbox talk that he mentions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8UwcyYT3z0


Transcripts


Courtland Allen
19:43
What about in the early days? Because I know for a lot of founders, those first few months where you're not sure that this is something that's going to work out or be worthwhile can be pretty nerve racking. I know you started off with CoderPad as a side project, but you eventually decided to make it full time, so where there any bumps in the road, or challenges, or any insights that you had growing from zero dollars to, what was it, $4,000/month?

Vincent Woo
20:3
Yeah, I quit it when I hit $4,000 MRR.

Courtland Allen
20:6
What was that decision like?

Vincent Woo
20:8
This is going to sound really stupid, and I had to explain this in the YC interview as well, they were like why $4,000, you haven't quit yet? I was like, I'm quitting at exactly $4,000 MRR, and they were like, why? I was like, okay, here's a reason... it's stupid. It's because when I hit $40 MRR, I posted on Facebook as a joke, haha my business makes $40/month guys, isn't that funny? Then when I hit $400 I was like haha, guess what, I made 10x what I made the last time I posted, that's crazy bro. Then I thought, oh shit, if I do this again at $4,000 that's actually kind of real stakes money, so I might as well quit then. Also $4,000 kind of pays for rent and stuff, so that's why. There's no reason to it, I just did it because I felt like it. I could've quit at any number, I mean if I quit at the beginning it would have been fine too, it didn't really matter.

Courtland Allen
20:57
In San Francisco $4,000 pays for literally just rent, haha.

Vincent Woo
21:1
I had a roommate, we were splitting a one bedroom you know, I had the converted living room kind of situation, one of the shitty old Victorian's in a basement.

Courtland Allen
21:11
Was it a hard transition going from your developer salary to just $4,000/month...

Vincent Woo
21:17
No.

Courtland Allen
21:17
Would you say that you were motivated to... what was pushing you the most, just to increase your revenue or to...?

Vincent Woo
21:21
These motivational questions are hard for me, I don't think I'm like most people. Why was I doing what I did? The truth is, I don't know. I don't actually believe that most people know why they do what they do. I was doing a thing because it seemed like the right thing to do but... okay, I'm going to take a moment to explain. I'm what you might call an optimistic nihilist, like I don't think anything's really real, up to and including money. Money is like a dead person's face painted on a green piece of paper... that it signifies material wealth to me is almost amazing. That, that system actually works to me is terrifying and awesome at the same time. So yeah, I thought it would be fun to make more money, but I knew abstractly that if I failed at CoderPad, literally the worst possible thing that could happen to me... is I would just get a job. Which I had proven that I had been able to do at least a couple times before that, so I wasn't worried about it. There was no anxiety for, because to me this is all a big game.

Courtland Allen
22:22
Yeah, it's almost like a role playing game. Where you're essentially leveling up and acquiring skills, and to what end... I don't know haha.

Vincent Woo
22:31
I think of it more like an open world exploration game, like GTA or whatever. Like just seeing how much you can get away with before everyone figures out that you have no idea what you're doing, and you're just making everything up as you go along.

Courtland Allen
22:41
So one of the reasons I asked you about your motivation was because one of the earlier things that I saw you in was actually a video where you gave a talk at Dropbox.



Courtland Allen
23m 9s
Well that's what I wanted to ask, why give a talk like that?

Vincent Woo
23m 12s
It was to provoke the audience.

Courtland Allen
23m 14s
Did you want to tell them that...

Vincent Woo
23m 17s
That they were doing their lives wrong? Yes.

Courtland Allen
23m 18s
How did they take that? They seemed pretty supportive.

Vincent Woo
23m 21s
They liked it. I mean it was tongue in cheek, obviously. It was in this building, probably on this floor, just a different room, it's Stripe now. We could do the same thing if you want... could come back and do the same talk again, in the same room. Why did I do that? I mean...

Courtland Allen
23m 40s
The impression that I got watching it was that it seems like it was a core principle of yours that people should do this, or that it's better for the world if more people do that.

Vincent Woo
23m 51s
There's more of the premise for the talk than necessarily a core belief of my personality. I mean I was invited to do a talk and they even payed me, it was crazy. This was a best topic I could come up with, so I tried to make it compelling, but I also gave reasons to not start a business. I actually think there are tons of reasons to not do it. Many people I think are unsuited for it, and also it's not terribly pleasant in a lot of ways, so I don't know necessarily that I actually recommend everybody who's listening to start a business. I know that's sort of the premise of Indie Hackers, and also it's acquisition by Stripe is sort of, how do you put it? Grow the GDP of the internet.

Courtland Allen
24m 27s
Exactly, nailed it.

Vincent Woo
24m 28s
Right, so readers at home, if you can start a business, do that, but also maybe don't. It's not easy, it's a lot of work and there are a lot of things that valuable in life that have nothing to do with money, that's how I'd put that.

Courtland Allen
24m 44s
I think one of the cooler things that you touched on, that I've also found to be true is that a lot of people who would love to start a business don't, just because they've never even considered it as an option. Especially being the smaller, Indie Hacker type business where you're just making money and you're not trying to be a unicorn, especially if you're a developer, that doesn't get advertised as much. Do you think that's changing now-a-days?

Vincent Woo
25m 7s
I think it must be changing. If there exists people like you, who's sole job is to promote this lifestyle, I would take as some indication that things are changing a bit. On the other hand, I touched on this in the talk, I think this is kind of cyclical. It used to be a cultural norm that everybody kind of wheeled and dealed, at least that's my impression. If you go in other countries that's way more true too. We probably hit peak corporatism and are trying to dial that back a little bit, I think is natural, it was probably inevitable in some respect that people would get upset with... we've had cultural satire and lampooning of corporate life for decades now. I remember my entire life I would watch stuff like Office Space, or cartoons...

Courtland Allen
25m 55s
Dilbert.

Vincent Woo
25m 56s
Yeah, no one paints a favorable light of corporate life anymore. There is no work that makes the work of an office seem noble. In some ways that's tragic because I don't think that's necessarily true, but on the other hand it reflects reality. I think the majority of office work, in the world now, is in some way deserving of satire.

Courtland Allen
26m 19s
Yeah, and now-a-days if you don't like the corporate culture you can just do your own thing, it's never been easier. You can build something, especially if you're an engineer, that reaches across cultural lines, that reaches people who aren't in your immediate vicinity, and you could build something scalable like you've done with CoderPad and I think people seeing that really inspires them.

Vincent Woo
26m 36s
Thank you, that's a very nice compliment. For the listeners at home, Courtland is a really nice guy. Everyone seems to like him, that I've talked to, I don't know how he got so popular, it's kind of amazing. Can we talk about you for a little bit?

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How much has CoderPad changed since you first built it? I know one of the early emails I also have from 2013 is you sending out an email to everybody at CoderPad saying, "We just hit 1,000 users, here's what I'm working on!" then at the bottom you have a whole paragraph basically asking people to tell you, what should I build? What came out of those efforts and how much has CoderPad changed?

Vincent Woo

40m 50s

So in the literal sense, how much CoderPad has changed, I mean we've redesigned the site a couple times, but not in ways that are shocking, more like streamlining and refocusing attention of the user on what we think the important parts of the interview experience are, but fundamentally the philosophical value prop is exactly the same as it's always been, it's been refined a little bit, but CoderPad as an idea has not changed at all. The original form of the idea is more or less the one that exists today, because it was the correct idea I think, I got lucky with that. I could imagine another world where that's not true very easily, I don't think I'm a genius or anything, I just lucked into the right problem at the right time, and had the right set of skills to execute on it. I wasn't the only one with this idea trying to execute on it at the same time, there are other people with similar backgrounds who try to do CoderPad that I never even knew about, that I found out were dead later, or were still kind of limping along. I just happened to be the one that won. The reason I am sitting here talking to you is because by definition, I am lucky.

This is the problem with advice in general, I think all Indie Hackers interviews should come with a disclaimer, just because I think it would be funny, but like, by definition when you ask successful people for advice what they do is they enshrine, it's a hagiography, they just blow up these little details of their life and give them such explanatory power, like I could sit here and tell you why optimistic nihilism is the correct philosophy to have for someone who wants to start a business, but I don't really believe that, I have no idea. By definition the people you talk to are the lucky ones, what they should really say is the way to be successful is to be lucky.

Courtland Allen

42m 30s

Haha, just make sure you get lucky.

Vincent Woo

42m 32s

Yeah, that's like 90% of the variance right there. The other 10%, you have some control over but not a lot, so I'd say the real advice is to not worry about it so hard, the odds are you will fail. That's okay. You have to be okay with that before you can do it. If you absolutely cannot let yourself fail, then you shouldn't be doing one of these, I don't think.

Courtland Allen

42m 53s

What do you think, in your path from starting the company to two million in annual revenue, what do you think is the most lucky thing that happened to you that accounted for you success?

Vincent Woo

43m 5s

We were lucky to win the confidence of certain large customers, it's not clear exactly why that happened, I just happened to know someone at the right place, or got an intro, or something like that. It's maybe surprising, but I actually don't have many friends in tech, so I didn't really have an easy time getting intros to tech companies, of the few that I did they tended to pan out pretty okay. I remember one time, Bob Lee, he was a VP at Square or something like that, gave a talk at the VC that put most of the money for Square when they recruit all the founders to come have a conference or whatever, and he had some panel on hiring and he just told the whole crowd, "Hey, you should buy CoderPad. It's this weird product made by some guy named Vincent Woo." The only reason I heard about it was because my boss at Everlane at the time texted me, "Hey, heard you're doing pretty good buddy!" and I was still employed there, like I had no idea this even happened. That was lucky, some of that stuff sort of serendipitously happened in the background, and it was useful for getting going, but I think it would have worked even without that stuff honestly, it'd just been slower.

Courtland Allen

44m 17s

What about the opposite, what do you think is the most advantageous thing happened that was sheer effort, or skill, or that was very deliberate?

Vincent Woo

44m 25s

I am a very good programmer, so that's a huge advantage. If you're making a product that is mostly code, being a really good programmer almost by default is a big advantage. Another founder doing this job with more average programming skills would take longer, or they would make more mistakes, so I'm lucky in that respect too.

Courtland Allen

44m 50s

I think last July I emailed you before I started Indie Hackers, I had watched your video on Dropbox and I said, Vincent I like CoderPad. I think it's been pretty incredible what you've done, I think you also shared some Hacker News comments about how you've grown, and you didn't come on Indie Hackers because you said the downside to sharing the behind the scenes details was not worth the upside...

Vincent Woo

45m 13s

No, not at the time I don't think.

Courtland Allen

45m 14s

What's changed?

Vincent Woo

45m 15s

My perception of how vulnerable the company is. At the time I probably was worried more about attracting attention of the wrong sort... I was just anticipating a bunch of difficulties that I don't think actually now will manifest. For instance, if our customers know our revenue numbers will that change discussions we have with them? At the time I might have been a little paranoid about that, but now I don't think that's nearly as likely as an outcome, it seems like so much more of the business has gelled since then that I feel like the company is in a pretty good place and that it can totally tolerate sharing some of it's internal workings with the outside world. Not because I think sharing is the right thing or anything, I just felt like bragging. I'm going to be totally honest, It's mostly vanity. After four years to be able to brag about it a little bit feels nice, because I've actually been really secretive about it. I've definitely brought people over who have expressed incredulity at the idea that I am a wealthy business owner given the way my then apartment looked like, with my roommate, and the living room, with the bedding in it, they kind of look at me like a crazy person, so it's nice to get a little bit away from that. I have to admit, it's for me.

Courtland Allen

46m 37s

Yeah, I think that's honestly what makes Indie Hackers work. If it didn't feel satisfying to talk about what you've done, what you've accomplished, then I would never be able to get people like you to come on the show.

Vincent Woo

46m 49s

Right, I think you should get people who have fucked up in a huge way, if you can somehow entice those people, because you're only getting the success viewpoint. I don't think doing a business is as much about doing everything right as it is not committing a few huge errors that everybody commits. Do you think of the game of tennis as being about making the best plays, or not making mistakes? At the highest levels it's about making the right play. At every level below the highest level it's about not committing unforced errors. There's this YC saying, I crib a bunch of notes off YC, we owe them a lot, that more startups die by suicide than by murder, and that's absolutely true. I've seen so many people fail for completely avoidable, stupid reasons that everybody but them saw coming, it happens over and over again. Listening to the successful people they say things like, oh yeah I knew what I was doing, we had this plan, we did it, then we were successful, which I think lulls people into this sense of, okay if I just feel as if I have a plan and do things I'll be successful. The truth is, they did the right thing. The difference between the right thing and the wrong thing is really hard to illustrate by only interviewing the people who did the right thing. I think interviewing people who fucked up in this incredibly huge way I think is totally valuable.

Courtland Allen

48m 2s

I think a lot of the reason why people do the wrong things, or avoid doing the right things is simply because it's not because they know that those things are there to be messed up on or excelled at, and they just do the wrong thing, but it's because sometimes they don't even know. For example, like you said earlier we kind of live in this society where customers have been reduced to bits, and just numbers and words on a screen. Where in reality, you should be talking to your customers and it's difficult for a lot of people to... or a lot of people fail to talk to customers not because they've decided they don't want to or that it's not important, but because it doesn't even strike them as something that they should be doing.

Vincent Woo

48m 34s

I don't know man, I think it's more than that. We've been shouting that idea for the last ten years. YC's been around a while, it's definitely changed the game. If you haven't heard the notion, that starting a startup, you should probably talk to your customers... every VC would probably tell you that, anyone you'd go to advice for would probably tell you something like that. If that lesson hasn't sunk in, there's something deeper there, it's not just that you don't know but that you're the kind of person that really doesn't want to do that for some reason or another, like, why. I think that's a lot of people definitely but I think the emotional motivation's there...

Courtland Allen

49m 4s

I think it's on the advice side to be honest because you'd be shocked at the number of people who hear the good advice over and over and over again, and don't follow it.

Vincent Woo

49m 13s

I totally agree, I think advice is often useless. You can tell people exactly what they're doing wrong and make it a really stark, obvious picture, and they can still ignore you. Like that Paul Graham quote about their business in YC is giving founders advice they know they'll ignore. This is endemic to human nature, people don't like advice. You have to trick people into doing the right thing almost half the time. That's a key learning for sales, but what's going on there, what are we doing with this, is our to convince people to do the right thing? By producing information like this, how likely do we think it that we will materially effect outcomes? I think that's a really serious question that people who make a living off of advice giving need to ask themselves, and I think there's very little serious examination of even the basic idea of like, does advice work? We know so many famous people who have predicated their whole persona on advice giver, and they're respected by the community, but have they actually ever changed an outcome? Who knows, it's very hard to quantify.