Gilbert: 00:01

I find that the creative outlet of side projects is massively helpful. You know, I I I think there's times when you're, you know, when you're working on a big problem or you're building a big feature and you're months into it, and it starts to become a drag. And I've Countless times found that side projects are just a great escape.

James: 00:19

Hello, and welcome back to Indie Bites, the podcast where I bring you stories of fellow indie hackers in 15 minutes or less. In this episode, I'm joined by Gilbert Pellegrom who is the cofounder and CTO of Lemon Squeezy, a platform for selling software and digital products online. Previously, Gilbert created the NEVO slider All the way back in 2010, which grew to millions of users before he sold it. He then went on to work with Ormond Clark at Themezilla and Dunked, who he then teamed up with again to build Lemon Squeezy. What's interesting about Gilbert is despite being the CTO of a rapidly scaling startup, he's still making and shipping side projects, which we'll talk about more about On this episode.

James: 00:52

If you wanna hear more about lemon squeezy, I actually cohost their podcast called Make Lemonade, where I speak with their CEO, Jay Arthur, about behind the scenes of building a bootstrap making millions. Before we get into this episode, I'd like to, of course, thank my legendary sponsor, Email Octopus. They're an email platform focused on Affordability and ease of use without some of the bloated features that other email apps have so you can focus on shipping and growing your audience, which regular listeners know is essential for

James: 01:17

growth in the early days.

James: 01:19

So to get started with an email platform that gets out of the way, you can contact up to 25 100 people for free, Head to email octopus.com and hit the link in the show notes. Finally, if you wanna hear more from Gilbert about his thoughts on going outside of your comfort zone, Going from software engineer to CTO and why LemonSweezie turned down funding to bootstrap the company, I've uploaded the extended version of this chat on the Unity Bites membership They get access to you for just $60 a year. Links are in the show notes. Let's get into this chat.

James: 01:46

Gilbert, welcome to the pod. How are you doing? Yeah. Yeah.

Gilbert: 01:48

I'm good. Thanks, James. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me on.

James: 01:50

So let's take it all the way back to your university days. The project that sort of put you On the map was something you created in your dorm room talking about the conception of Nevo slider.

Gilbert: 02:02

Yeah. So the Nevo slider was it was, an image slider. And and it was one of those things where at at that time, you know, I was just getting into web development and I'd kind of fallen in love with Just building websites. Right? And just at that time, image sliders became extremely popular.

Gilbert: 02:21

Basically what happened was as I saw 1 and I thought, Wow. That look cool. I'm gonna try and build it. Right? So then I and then I built one.

Gilbert: 02:27

I used some like imagery. It was like Disney imagery, which probably totally copyright. But I I use some like decent images and I I created these like fancy effects that were like chopped, you know, or like slices and grid, you know. And and nobody else was doing that at that time. Right?

Gilbert: 02:43

They were just like simple image sliders. And I added all these fancy effects and use some good images and create a website saying put it out there. And of course, I wasn't really expecting much of it. And and so I did it, yeah, over a weekend. I think it took me a couple of days to build over a weekend when I was in uni.

Gilbert: 02:55

And then I think I launched it on the Saturday and on the Monday, somebody posted it to Hacker News. And Hacker News at that time was, you know, a whole different beast. I think the site had 80,000 hits in a day. And that was it. That kicked it off.

Gilbert: 03:08

I mean, from then on, it was just hundreds, thousands, millions of downloads over the next few years. So

James: 03:13

And to you you weren't charging for it at this point either. This was just a a free script. Right? Why did it take millions of downloads for you to eventually think, ah, I could make some money from this thing?

Gilbert: 03:25

Yeah. The the the kind of young naive non business person in me was sitting there going, you know, This thing is getting millions of downloads a month. There must be a way to make money from this. Right? And I figured, well, you know, why don't we make a WordPress plug in out of it and we'll just charge for it, you know.

Gilbert: 03:41

And I remember doing the maths and telling somebody, you know, if if I convert at 1%, like I would make, you know, $40,000 in a year or something. And, yeah, in the 1st month it made $6,000 and that so that was that was that. You know, after that, it was like, woah. Okay. You know, this is a thing.

Gilbert: 03:57

So

James: 03:57

And then, yeah, this has always been a side project For you and sort of throughout university and after university, you kind of embedded yourself into the WordPress space, not only as a developer. I think you helped out with the early days of WooCommerce, which is crazy to think of what that's become now. Then you teamed up with Ormen, which are now working With now on Themezilla and Dunked, how did all of

James: 04:21

that occur? Did were you intentionally going into the WordPress space like this?

Gilbert: 04:24

No. Again, a lot of it was kind of accidental. I think the the success of the Nevo slider WordPress plugin put me on the on the map in the WordPress world. And, you know, so you started to kinda come into contact with people like AD Pinar who who was at the time, you know, the CEO with themes. You know, and I was looking for work one summer and he said, you know, we've got this idea for shop as it was called back then.

Gilbert: 04:47

And he's like, do you want to build a prototype for it? So I built the very first prototype. John O'Nolan as well. He was kinda big in the WordPress space at that time and did things with him. And and so, you know, it wasn't it wasn't like, deliberately like, I'm gonna break into the WordPress space here.

Gilbert: 05:00

It was very much just, you know, the kind of natural Path that I was on building sites in WordPress and but around the same time was when Orman first got in touch with me. And, you know, world Class designer, you know, he was one of the the 1st guys on on theme forest to to make $1,000,000 and all the rest of it. And we were chatting and he said, you want to build a site project with me? And and Like, sure. So we built this thing called snippy, which was like a a a snippet manager, you know, for code snippets and that kind of thing.

Gilbert: 05:27

It was a simple And so I built that with him while it was in my 1st job as a graduate. And then on the back of that, he was like, why don't you why do we work together? And that's how I got my job in in Themezilla, building WordPress themes for Orman. Yeah. And then the time came in Orman was like, look, I think we should build a A SaaS product like a you know, I think I've got this idea, for what would become dunked.

Gilbert: 05:50

And dunked is like a portfolio builder for designers. You know, it gives you a A simple way to, you know, just create a portfolio website for your design work or whatever. And then that just took off. Like that was just Bonkers. That was one of those, you know, things where it was just it was a bit like the Nevo slider, you know, we we we had good feeling about it, but it, you know, It just went mad almost straight away.

Gilbert: 06:10

Mhmm. So worked with Orman and done them for a couple of years after that, I think. And yeah. I got to the stage where, you know, I just felt Like, I needed a change. You know, I wanted to do something different.

Gilbert: 06:21

So emailed a few people and Brad Tienard, who was the founder of Delicious Brains, which was the the WordPress plug in Company that did Migrate TV Pro which is like one of the most popular WordPress plugins there is, I think. And yeah. He was like, yeah. Come and work for us. And so I ended up in Delicious Bench for 5 years, working for them building WordPress plugins.

Gilbert: 06:39

So

James: 06:40

And that that sort of brings you up to date with sort of starting Lemon Squeezy because you started Lemon Squeezy One day a week when you were working for Delicious Brains, Ormond have worked with you. How did that conversation go going from, like, only worked as an employee, but Sort of collaborating to do you want to come and be a cofounder on this new thing that we're thinking of building?

Gilbert: 07:00

At the time, I was quite happy at Delicious Brains. You know, I had a good Senior software engineering job. And the the lemon squeezy thing came out of nowhere, but obviously knew Armin quite well. And Armin was like, look, you know, we're building this thing and we don't really where it's gonna be yet, but we have this idea, but we really need someone to build it. At first, I was kinda like cautious about it.

Gilbert: 07:18

You know, I was seeing that thing where I was like, you There's a lot of risk involved in joining a startup that hasn't started. Right? And so I agreed with Brad who who who kindly allowed me to take a day a week and, you know, just start kinda working from there. And and then I met Ormond and JR and Jason and obviously, things started It real eventually. And and at that point, we were like, okay.

Gilbert: 07:40

I need I need to go and work here full time. But yeah. But at first, it was very kinda cautious. It was just like, lots Talking lots of plans and speculation, but, you know, it was yeah. Very much a time of kind of discovery about what we wanted to do.

James: 07:52

Well, let let's move on to Little bit more about your side projects. This is a common theme that has run throughout your whole career, Gilbert, and you're still firing stuff out. Just this weekend, I see a tweet from Gilbert saying, I've launched these new or I put a deal on for these wallpapers. What the hell? Gilbert, I thought you were making, Hugely complex platform to sell goods online.

James: 08:15

Not selling wallpapers. And I looked at it, lovely wallpaper, bought them. It's it's now on my screens. But, like, Like, if you're constantly launching side projects all while you're working full time, all throughout your career, why are you doing this?

Gilbert: 08:29

So I think one of the things that I've always find is that I never want to lose the love that I first had for web development. Right? You know, I went to university. I got a software engineering degree, but web development wasn't really part of my degree. That was like I I Did stuff on the side and I kind of fell in love and I taught myself as most people do in this kind of realm.

Gilbert: 08:50

You know, you teach yourself HTML and JavaScript and CSS. And then You build websites and you can fall in love with just a pure creative aspect of it. Web development is still my hobby. Right? As well as my job.

Gilbert: 09:03

Right? And and I I love that I get to do both, but I find that the creative outlet Of site projects is massively helpful. You know, I I I think there's times when you're, you know, when you're working on a big problem or you're building a big feature and your months into it And it starts to become a drag and, you know, the work side of it starts to become, you know, heavy going. I've Countless times found that site projects are just a great escape, you know, because you just get to build stuff. It's like playing with Lego.

Gilbert: 09:33

Right? You know, you you just get to build stuff. And it doesn't matter too much what it is, you know. And these wallpapers that are released this weekend, you know. I was just exploring GPT and Dally and, you know, I was just like playing around with that.

Gilbert: 09:45

And I was like, okay. Yeah. I can make some more papers. You know, that there's times when you Want to build side projects for profit and and side businesses and that kind of thing. And and obviously, that's fine and that's cool if you can do that as well.

Gilbert: 09:56

But I think for for me a lot of the time, It's just that creative outlet, you know. And and and and also sometimes an opportunity to learn a new technology. Right? You know, it's just you see a new thing and and it looks cool. And you think, well, you know, I'll give it a go and give it a bash and just see, you know, build something to here we go.

Gilbert: 10:13

So

James: 10:14

I feel like my view on side projects So shifted from something that could be passive income and make money to exactly what you've just explained. I'm not technical, but I love learning new No code tools or learning how to create a certain type of content, any video I want to do, and it's that creative outlet where I'm not worried about How much money it's gonna make at the end. And, like, this leads into another question which is, should you charge for your side projects? I was saying that if you can make a little bit of money, then do it. But, like, be kinda clear from when you're starting out.

James: 10:47

Are you doing this some something that you're gonna sort of timebox And launch for fun, for free, that people can use? Or is this something that maybe you feel has a little bit more potential and you can enjoy it, But actually, you're gonna turn it into a thing that you can charge for.

Gilbert: 11:01

Yeah. Exactly. And and I I think I've always taken that actually with side projects. I think first of all, it's it's it's It's good to be clear on what you want from a side project right before you start. You know, is it something you want to make money from?

Gilbert: 11:11

Or is it just are you just, you know, Is it a creative outlet? Are are you just playing around? Because I think those 2 things have very different outcomes. Right? You know?

Gilbert: 11:19

And if you're trying to build something that's gonna make money, then I think it's massively important that you scope it well. I think one of the things I learned, you know, a SaaS app is a big bit of work. Right? There's lots of pieces to put together. And even a simple SAS has, you know, authentication and billing and all sorts of bits and pieces.

Gilbert: 11:37

And so like, you know, being able to Come out with a reasonable scope. Sometimes tools and frameworks help obviously and and make things faster and easier. But I think you really have to be ruthless about Biting off only what you can chew, you know, when it comes to site projects. Because otherwise, you'll either just never get it off the ground or it'll become a maintenance nightmare. And Yeah.

Gilbert: 12:00

Spend forever just fixing things or, you know, dealing with support or whatever. So

James: 12:04

I I like the idea of creating a really Small pared down version of your eventual vision to help with validation. Maybe it's just a landing page explaining Explain the problem. Maybe it's a prototype that you can get a few people using. Because if you are gonna do a side project that you do think is gonna turn into something bigger, You do need an element of validation there. And if you want to have the fun of building something small, make it really small and get something out onto the world rather than spending a lot of time building something and never launching it because you realize the scope's too big.

Gilbert: 12:37

Yeah. And I often find myself these days. I almost feel like when I build a side project that there's a rush. And the rush is to reach that point where you can get Something out

James: 12:49

Yeah.

Gilbert: 12:50

Before you lose interest in it. Right? Right before it becomes too big and or or too heavy and you just get to that stage where you're like, yeah, this isn't, you know, this is not gonna work.

James: 12:58

So a lot of your early side projects were acquired, and we didn't actually mention that that Nivo Slido was acquired along with some other things. Do you have any tips on how to get your side projects acquired? Do they need to be making revenue at this point? I don't

Gilbert: 13:14

know if I have any particular tips. A a lot of the site projects I've I've sold have just been on on Flippa or, FE International, which is like a brokerage for some bigger ones that I've done. But they haven't been, you know, things I've done anything particular, you know, to get them sold. They have generally just been, you know, like listing them on on these kind of places. I think I think the the was If it was, you know, a a kinda bigger company and went through FE International and, actually there are few rounds with a few different people Who were interested and then it the the sale fell through and then, it was from female that eventually was like, yeah.

Gilbert: 13:52

Okay. Let's let's do this. And so I I sold it to him. In terms of, like, tips on on things you could do, what one thing that I always do now, and it makes the process so much easier is make sure that you have all your accounts for everything isolated. And what I mean by that is like, You know, if you're building a site project or you're building a project and you think you might sell it in the future, you know, create a new account for your hosting and for Your, you know, email provider and for your billing.

Gilbert: 14:19

Because that's that way when you come to sell it, you you can just hand over all of the accounts.

James: 14:24

That seems to be, like, anti the advice of, like, getting stuff out and shipping it because you can find people just, like, making loads of accounts, new emails, whatever, instead of Making the thing. I I guess that goes back to having the intention of what you're going to do with it. Right?

Gilbert: 14:38

Exactly. Right. And and it's one of those things, you know. I think it's, you know, if if you're gonna Dell, you know, or if you think you're gonna sell something, then, you know, it's it's helpful in the long run to have to have it like that. And even from a billing point of view, it makes it's easier to separate costs for a project if you have separate accounts for things.

Gilbert: 14:55

But if yeah. Again, if you're just playing around and you're just putting something out for fun, then, yeah, it doesn't really matter, does it? So

James: 15:01

you listen to the show, so you know that we end on 3 recommendations, a book, a podcast, and indie hacker.

Gilbert: 15:09

I think think I think probably the the book that's had the biggest impact certainly from a business point of view, recently is Atomic Habits by James Clear. Podcast, I I would I would love to give a shout out to Rob Hope who does the Yo podcast. And yeah. Indie hacker. I would quite like to give a shout out to Marcel.

Gilbert: 15:25

I don't know what how you pronounce his last name. Right? I don't know if it's Pociot or it's spelled p o c I o t. Right? He's one of the founders of Beyond Code.

Gilbert: 15:34

And they do these like Great developer focused tools. One of them is called TinkerWell. And the they're they're just like an indie company, but they they they the tools they build are excellent. They're great. And, I use them like so much, and I honestly can't recommend them enough.

Gilbert: 15:47

And so, you know, shout it to Marcel.

James: 15:49

Gilbert, fantastic Recommendations. Thank you so much for coming on this episode of IndiBytes.

Gilbert: 15:54

Yeah. Thanks for having me, James. Yeah. It's been a pleasure.

James: 15:56

Thank you for listening to this episode of IndiBytes with Gilbert Pellegrong. If you enjoy And want to hear more, the full conversation is available on the Indie Bites membership. You can head to indibytes.com/membership to sign up. And a thank you again to my awesome sponsor, Email