Flowcast E03: Building in public with Marc Louvion

0:00hey guys welcome to flowcast a podcast with flout where we chat the successful entrepreneurs Freelancers and other amazing professionals that are crushing it their game my name is Peter and I'll be your host on this audio journey in this week's episode we'll talk with Mark Leon Mark is a CTO and founder of game diget living the life of a digital n and Indie hacker Mark be a Ser entrepreneur and an expert in building products on the internet Mark Welcome to our [Music] podcast all right so Kick It Off let's start with your introduction how would your family and friends describe you what's Mark like in everyday

0:37life uh I think they would say I'm a happy person and I'm crazy okay why that I'm happy because I try to smile all the time and crazy because whenever I got an IDE that crossed my mind I try to make it real and sometimes it's just simple things sometimes it's a bit crazier and do you have the same descriptions about you or would you describe yourself a bit different no I think yeah that's pretty it's pretty relevant nice and do you think like being crazy and trying to execute every idea could be your unique skill that has helped you become successful or getting to the point where you are where are you

1:20today yeah yeah totally all right cool and can you also share us a bit about your background like how I like how your childhood where did you go to school like all the major things that let you come to the point where are you today right so I was born in France I'm 29 today um I was a terrible student at school then I went to University where I was supposed to learn how to code but I didn't I was learning how to party uh then ended up doing a a trip in Hong Kong for an internship and I discovered that there's something else than just the life at University that

1:59kind of brightened my mind and when I came back to school I finished the studies and started to build my own projects and that was like about six years ago and that brought me pretty much where I am today yeah I see that's quite a pattern with like entrepreneurs and Indie hackers that like people are usually terrible at school or not like good learners but then they're really good in executing their own ideas like learning by themselves like learning by their own pace they also practice the they also do they also self-educate or but was it all in school and then like working no yes totally like my results

2:43at school were really terrible it's a miracle that I graduated um and I I learned basically I learned everything after University on I think mostly YouTube and Udi yeah yeah I know you to me as well I've done couple of courses there about marketing and yeah you you and YouTube is like YouTube is its own University right now yeah exactly do you use any other platforms for self-education reading any books or doing any courses uh I would say technical stuffff are YouTube and Google okay and and and yeah I read daily I read about 30 minutes a day all kind of books and and yeah more like psychology things and I

3:25learn also languages through iuki and enki and Jingo okay nice H would you have any recommendation for the books that you're reading every day like what are top top books um why we sleep by mat Walker Oh I read this really good book yeah yeah totally um how to fail at almost everything but by Scot Adams it's a really good book if you you know you're entrepreneur you keep failing and uh you don't know where you're going that really sets you in the right mindset to keep going keep grinding and um the I think the origin of virtue by someone I forget the name but it's a book about uh what made

4:15humans humans what makes us what we are today and we're not just like regular animals but we're we have evolved to what we are and that was really really big Revelation um for me yeah I read some of this book as well like I mentioned what with sleep and and also those uh the last one yeah was really great books we will definitely link them in the description and yeah let's move on to the present like what did you do before starting to build your own ideas did you work for any corporate corporate or on other startups like what was your job like I've never had a job I right after

4:53University I started to build my own IDs and just I just got a job for a couple month um what was that about a year ago I was not really feeling well and I was like oh maybe I need a change from the entrepreneurship journey I took a job for six months um maybe you know the person I work with Ty Lopez as a marketer on the internet yeah I know him yeah can you tell us about can I tell us a bit more about this he like he's a really famous person and yeah yeah the story is pretty fun because I I had no idea I would work for

5:25him I appli for that company that I think the name was Genesis or something there was nothing mentioned about Ty Lopez and then at the end of the interview the guy said like hey do you want to pass a message for Ty Lopez I was like what and I ended up understand like I finally they explained me what you know the company is branded under another name but we're working for Ty Lopez and I work with him for crypto project they were launching a lot of apps and things um it was it was really you know interesting to to work with like very like successful entrepreneurs

5:57because you can see you know what what they do and I was impressed by how they ship fast and they kill fast like they go they ship anything and if it doesn't work they just kill it and move on to the next one and they work on like 10 projects at the same time and um I got fired and I get back to the entrepreneurship journey and uh I feel much better she inste and what did you do there exactly like what was your role I was a project manager okay cool yeah it's totally different world world when you work with people like pz and stuff like a huge

6:30budget then like you can actually Implement all those uh White combinators and Lead methodology techniques when you just like create aing products and burn it and move along yeah and yeah I heard your your moto is build ship earn uh it's about building sh and shipping CL can you tell us about this how you embody it build ship earn yeah um it's some some kind of that um as an engineer it's very easy to get lost into building new features and and tweaking your app so it looks better and my feeling so far is that most apps I launch don't don't make any money and and it's you can really get emotional if

7:18you spend a lot of time on something that you polish and then you end up you know like with nothing so it's a it's a it's a motto it's a reminder for me to like hey you know don't spend too much time on it ship it build it and if if it doesn't work just move on to the next one it just adds on to your portfolio it's nice and and yeah move on and do you work alone on this project or also in teams only alone only alone yeah I think I think working alone is easier to like live by this Moto because as soon as you add other people

7:51uh yeah this can be this can become pretty tricky to like leave by this model like to move so fast yeah and yeah what are the biggest upside to working on your on your own products um I think it's a m it goes with psychology things um I can wake up and feeling awesome and then two hours after I feel like I'm useless uh so this emotional roller coaster is really weird it's hard to control it and I'm trying to um absorb it and let it go so it doesn't bounce back hard yeah that would be the biggest upsides but that will be your biggest upsides and yeah how do you how do you

8:35conquer this like how do you how do you fight those emotions like do you have any tips on like day-to-day activities that you do to be so so be so productive and to keep going oh you so the question was what what are your biggest upsides I heard obstacles no no no upsides oh okay sorry for that I was going on the other side is uh yeah I mean the biggest upside is definitely for me and this is what I'm chasing it's it's Freedom complete freedom to wake up whenever I want work on whatever I want and move on whenever I want and um and yeah I just this is yeah

9:15this is the number one lead for me okay got it got it you successful build game vidget decision games and prob B right can you tell us a can you tell us about this companies a bit and which one are you most proud of okay uh so the first one I built was viral bot 2017 working for escape room businesses it's basically a Facebook Messenger bot that is uh uh entertaining the players so you can like a you can basically play a mini game on inside Facebook Messenger I sold it to escap rooms that was the first startup that I buil have made money and up to date you

9:56made almost $100,000 so that's pry cool because that that made me realize I can make a living with it um it crashed during covid so I don't work on it because um you know it catched up a bit but I'm not very interested about it anymore so I moved on I created game widget which is um a little widget that uh shows on your website at the bottom left and that allows visitors to play a game directly inside of your website you would play like an an escape game inside of your website it's engaging and in cre conversion rate by 0.5% um it was it was fun it was fun

10:36working on it but uh I kind of move moved down because working with businesses um I I somehow find it a little bit boring I need some human touch I need to talk to you know people constantly and I felt like this business would not help me do that so I moved on I moved on and I created habits Garden which is um a gamified habit tracker it helps users build um habits and achieve their goals by leveraging the gamification things so you grow habits uh to complete quests get rewards and U and plant some little flowers you can play with your friends and that's probably the one I'm the most proud

11:17about just because it's more it's just me okay it's I have a lot of daily habits and uh and that startup really feels like me oh yeah I saw on your Twitter it has 3,000 user right correct yeah and was it like building Hobbies Garden just like because you need it and then you expand it to to a product for more people or what was the key reason to like to build it um I was I was bored I had no much ideas at the time and I was like my my I use the Habit tracker and it did not give me what I wanted I wanted to have a

11:58calendar view of my habits where you would have one day equal one square okay and when you you complete your habit the square is green and like GitHub if if the audience knows like some people are in GitHub the contribution board um same thing but for habits and I couldn't find any habit tracker that has that has this feature so I just build one out of you know nowhere just just for fun nothing serious and people liked it um and so I I just kept adding more features how did you do it did you like did you snow code or did you just code it completely from

12:38scratch I code I only code I don't know no code okay short for me is coding so uh yeah cing okay cool and did you did like any market research before or like competition analysis talk with like potential users or was just like yeah I'm going to do it and he just went ahead absolutely nothing I just I had this idea I have to build it I built it okay and have you ever procrastinated before yes I mean still sometimes there are days within days without uh yeah but do you think habit Garden is now changing this for a better yeah yeah what's changing is um

13:26more than just the app itself is the fact that there're users who send me messages they say they love the app they say they would like this feature that gives me IDs and that keeps me going that that helps with this procrastination okay yeah can you tell us a bit more about that like users are sending you messages or just like just appreciation messages or also suggesting how like the product could improve yeah totally so I build on public on Twitter so there I get lots of feedback from that and the community the startup Community is wonderful there like people are always cheing each other so it's very nice and within app um

14:03because it's a habit tracker people show up daily okay and it's very easy for them to leave a feedback there's a box um for them to do though to do so and there's also customer chat supports so I don't know I get couple you know three four five messages a day from people who either ask for features or just send like a love message that they love the app um yeah I love it and yeah can you expand this a bit like what were some features that were added with the help of users um cometes definitely um I when you complete your habit you will throw

14:41some cometes okay people give me that idea and I try to make it super cute so it's it triggers you know some dopamine Rush when you're done with your habits um the leaderboard actually that's more of my wife's feedback she's a she does CrossFit and she loves leaderboards so she's like hey you got to add a little board to your habits Garden there we go um the referal system as well you can invite players to get more um gems more rewards so I added this because user mentioned it and then it's just a matter of time but I have a massive to-do list of features that

15:18users requested okay nice yeah Building Product with the community is like I think this is the only real way how should you do it in a like this yeah yeah especially since it's a game and and when it's a game people have you're not you're solving an a global problem but people have a lot of IDs for you know it's like a game there's like the field is empty you can build so many things on it yeah and I'm sure you get like a ton of ideas but like how do you decide which ones to include and which ones like not to include um honestly I don't I don't really know

16:01because um some it's really hard I don't have a framework to decide like this there is this thing that what sometimes you know I I dig so I check the ID I look at what are the consequences terms of how much time will I invest um how the products going to change with that um and then I have a good feeling it's either a yes or a no it's rarely in between okay understand yeah I mean God feeling God feeling is like often times is a good way to go because like adding too many features and every feature that user suggest is can be like Never Ending

16:40Story yeah and yeah and can you tell us about the biggest mistakes you've learned when like from building your own products like what were some mistakes you did that if you look back to your younger self you would not like repeat and how would that you change this how would you do it differently it's 2016 I just graduated okay I have no idea how to program I don't know anything literally and then I have this ID where I'm going to build the next Tinder for sports so it's going to be an app that's going to help you match a tennis partner or a runner so you can go on a workout with someone

17:23okay and as a perfect engineer that I am I designed the app in my head and I to build it but I build it in a in a startup like you know Silicon Valley startup way okay I make people sign dnas if they want to talk to me about the ideas like I go crazy like I I'm thinking of the next Mark Zuckerberg I try to build an app and I don't know JavaScript I don't know the basics and I learn a framework which which is called I think ionic so I I'm here with like pieces of codes that I have no idea what they're doing and I'm trying to pile them up

17:57like like Legos to make an app it's terrible like it doesn't even work the app has never been born but I spent a year on this and then on a day I just realized like what am I doing and I like quit and I'm I I quit on I I close that app and I move to another country I mean the the idea sounds awesome Kinder for sports can you like tell us more about it like how do you came up with this I'm I love sport I do all kind of sport and I try to do two hours of workout a day and I've always feel super

18:32lonely like when I was a student I would go to uh the alss ski resorts by myself just because I love skiing and I felt this loneliness and I was like how about you know like an app that would match People based on their skills so you find someone that is a bit like you so you can compete but like a friendly competition Fair competition um that's pretty much how it came yeah so wasn't like it it wasn't the premise wasn't like uh to like a dating for sporty for sporty people it was more like to meet people to do sports with right yeah yeah totally yeah

19:07okay I got it and yeah were there some some other mistakes that you remember like some other Lessons Learned I think no I think I've I've got really frustrated with the time invested in in a product M and that's probably my biggest takeaway yeah and how are you know changing that yeah go ahead sorry so how do I change um how do I change that I I give myself like really short deadlines um do product hunts it's a site where you submit your product when you're you're ready to launch it I usually give myself a deadline I'm like the product is going to be ready for

19:47product t uh launch on you know in 10 days and I have from now to 10 days to build it and that Rush creates some kind of um motivation and that helps me helps me um be productive and and going back to your to your previous question uh the second thing I think I I learned is that don't try to change what you're using if it works keep it as it is like don't try to change framework don't try to use a new app for this like if if you have something that works well for you just keep using that thing get really good at it instead of trying to change try new

20:22things because you spend so much time you can lose so much time doing this so better to not launch a perfect app but just the app that's functional enough if I understand right yeah yeah there's a guy that I really admire that says there is a 24 hours version of every startup out there so in 24 hours you can build a Facebook in 24 hours you can build a Google it can be sketchy but it it can work right and I use that code I I turn it into like a week uh version of a startup and I try to make all my startups within a week

20:59oh okay got it like this sounds like super intense like how many ideas are you launching on a monthly bases um so I I also because I work on on my other startups um I'm not full-time building new startups but I would say once every week every two weeks sorry once per month I would launch a new ID a new app or something and all all of them are like you you didn't do like market research everything just build it and launch it and see how it goes yeah totally good feeling yeah nice I love it love it and you also call yourself an indie hacker

21:39right can like I mean I I know the concept but like not but can you like explain what it is like what does it mean to be an indie hacker that's a good question I kind of follow the movement and I was like yeah okay I'm an India hiker now uh I guess the vision it um I think it's more like people who are a bit tired of you know what um the regular way of doing things so they're hacking the system by doing something by themselves and following their own path so it's like uh you know it can be you and a group of friend or just you

22:22and and you do your own thing you do it the way you want you do it wherever you want um it goes with the remote culture the asynchronous culture it's probably how they describe it in my poor words so you see would you say that you have been an IND hacker since like the anti University that you said that you just started building your own products or was it like have you become this recently and like by the definition I I think it started so it started right after University but I went from I'm going to be the next mark zuken to oh I'm just a guy in my room

23:00building my IDs um so the entrepreneurship thing has always been there it has evolved to being super ambitious to be a bit like normal ambitious and um and the big difference for me was that about a year ago I started to build in public on Twitter so I've been in the dark for like five months five years working my own app for five years nobody have heard of it and then suddenly I started to share you know the behind the scenes of what I'm doing and that has been a b a big game changer for me because I really started to connect with the community I meet

23:33some other Indie hackers um yeah yes uh correct me if I'm wrong but if I understand this right being like more entrepreneur is about starting your own company like employing people and in the Hecker is more like working independently being more like a freelancer style but building your own idea that you work on it like few people I'm not super good with definition I think entrepreneurship is more like a spirit you can have it by being um a content creator on YouTube by being a programmer that make its own apps or by being super ambitious and wanting to build the next Google okay and Indie hacker would be like a subset of

24:18entrepreneurs who are living by themselves more Independence a bit less ambitious okay got it got it and you you just said that you started building in public right uh building this is a huge thing on Twitter we also started doing this for one of our product and what made you do that like why did you change like before you said that you were like building in the shadows like all alone and then you moved to Twitter like why did you make why why did you do it like what made you do that I think um it it has to do with Peter levels it's a really is a really

24:55famous in the hacker okay um and I think he made a book called make that I read and I was like yeah that resonates with me that feel like this is the way this is who I am and I started to follow him on Twitter and I realized that he's sharing his salaries and I was like okayy this is exactly you know the kind of people I want to meet and this is exactly who I am so I was like okay why not following the same move and uh and there we go and did this help you get more lits build like build product more successfully or they just

25:29help you meet people that and connect with other funders and in the hackers both of them um I get customers from Twitter I get feedback on my products on Twitter I get awareness from just people following the journey even though they're not interested in the product itself they just reshare because you know people are cheering each other up um and I also create some connections I met some people in real life that I I were you know chatting with them on Twitter so it's a bit everything okay got it and do you follow any framework like how do you do it you like I don't know put up like content

26:06schedule or also going by the God is it's the same as I do with my apps it's just good feelings I try to um I try to push myself to be on Twitter like 30 minutes a day okay um because I know that being regular like coming up regularly cons being consistent on Twitter seems to help um so I try to yeah have a 30 minutes window a day where i'm on Twitter I try to write one tweet and engage with the community and but it's probably the only framework if we could call it this way and do you think like the listen like among our

26:42list we have like a lot of aspar entrepreneurs and people building their own products like what are like what are some things that people should watch out when building in Publix it's like if there are any like specifities um I think at the in the end it comes down to um how what you what you actually do because you you don't grow a Twitter accounts with from thin air you have to provide some kind of value you can provide value directly within Twitter like by you know helping other people reach more audience or or you can build a a product and and that if that product

27:29becomes interesting then people will follow you but growing a Twitter for the sake of growing a Twitter doesn't make much sense it's probably the takeway okay yeah got it and growing a community in Twitter is one thing but you also said you met a lot of interesting people in real life because of it and yeah right now you're in Bali right Bali is super f as far as I know Bali is super famous for like digital Nomads Freelancers and all those like kind of people like can you tell us like that's like being inal help you with that like the also me there are like amazing people like people that you

28:05can connect and build ideas together or that help you build your ideas it's fun now not really because I was I was in chongu in 2018 which is a place where most of digitals any Indie hackers are and at the time I was not really going to events or parties because I'm I'm a very introvert person I I I stay home most of the time I don't even work in in cafes and things so I didn't meet anyone then I moved to the south of Bal on the booket where I am currently and this is a place where it's only for Surfers you would have two

28:40recent Surfers there so the chances of meeting another entrepreneurs are pretty unusual and um and I started to recently I started to commit again and go back to chunu and do do some events and so I'm going back at it but I think Twitter actually brought me back to this okay got it itself okay got it and the is prob the only location where you live and like practice being in the in the hacker or were there also other locations that you've been besid it's Paris where you from I lived in k for about two years where I met my wife and earlier in Hong Kong for six month okay and you said

29:20you're Prett introvert so you Ser so engage and like working cafes but it may be like just changing the sceneries and living in another cult cultures help you shape like to become a person you are today and then also like to build the products like you are yeah yeah totally it's a good question actually I think I would recommend everyone in their early 20s to go abroad with a backpack not no money and just figure something out because you you not only discover another culture that especially Europe and Asia are very different so that really opens your horizons and you know like um it it's really broaden your mind and also

29:59the fact that you have to um there's no Mom and Dad there's no more signs that you know on the roads um the bakery is not a bakery it's it's a ramian restaurant all the things are very different and you have to figure everything by yourself so um problem solving and also you you get to meet a lot of people you get to ask questions it's a very I think it's a very good experience for anyone yeah I will totally agree on that I I mean myself I went like the World After High School H yeah I agree but when you when you come back home like as

30:33at young age in early 20s when you're not really developed yet like personally you you came back a different person for sure totally yeah and how was it like what was like living in Korea like what did what impact did it have on like you bringing an entrepreneur or Indie hacker um from living Korea is very very different um it's like it's a little bit like China and Japan in a way that they have a very strong culture they don't speak much English um so it's it's it's very different uh it was it was it was interesting uh the thing is the startup scene is not really developed

31:17there um so it's hard also to meet some like-minded people um surprisingly in Bali is way smaller but it's way easier to meet those people so I wouldn't say that Korea itself changed the way you know I do things in the business side but it just helped me grew as a person okay yeah I got it and I mean I heard I'm from my experience korean's also like pretty introverted as well like and not so open foran yep totally but the funny thing is I met my wife she who is Korean and and we live here in Valley okay and she's also a digital moment yep she teaches Korean and she

31:55makes educational videos on YouTube all right nice yeah you you you briefly mentioned that you're launching your product uh on product hunt and yeah you you're also launching in on Reddit right and can you talk about the differences in launching on those two platforms uh that was very different product Hunt is super friendly PE people will always cheer you up and product time is made for product that are that needs to you know that pay product so you you usually only get positive feedback Reddit on the other hand is more like a you know like a little cafe place and you come with your product and

32:36and you say like hey buy my product people don't really like it so it's it this a very different way of of launching a product yeah I'm I'm really interested in Reddit because I think like we tried doing some like subtle marketing on Reddit and I talked with a lot of people like trying to use Reddit as a like marketing or sales funnel and it's it's really hard like using credit for promotion is super hard can you like share us some tips like how did you do it like some good practices yeah sure so um I used reddits for to launch some apps and one of them got really crazy

33:13like it was um on the top page of Reddit for a couple hours uh there were like I think 50 or 60,000 visitors within 20 within a day so the website went went pretty crazy um I think it it comes on to the community you're you're launching your product in um and and it's like it's like it's like a niche so you you need to you really need to follow the guidelines of the community you need to know their language um some some communities are not like anti promotion completely anti- promotion so there's no way you launch a product there you just have to move on

33:49and do something else um yeah yeah and did you like promote it directly like did post and like hey guys this is my product and here's the link or they like engage in comments or like what is strategy behind it I have a few subreddit that I am part of and I try to be active daily as a just as a user not sharing not promoting anything so it's a bit easier for me to promote products when I want um and then if I if I if I were to launch an app on on reddits um yeah I would definitely be in the comments replying uh sometimes I I manage to

34:28hide the promotion of the product uh on Reddit so I would make like a two versions of my site one is free and one is paid and I will launch the free one on Redd just to get the traffic and see what people think and to avoid you know getting banned because of it's a promotion thing um yes lot of very different strategies here and there based on the community you're sharing any any being active in a stop R that's like it allows you to be like more open about it than like promote your stuff from time to time is is it different from just being

35:02C worker in the community in subreddit yeah yeah yeah totally yeah okay and I want to talk about one more expression with you what is RAM and profitability it's fun yeah uh it's a good question for me it's about 1,500 I would say um it's the threshold of money you need to get every month to reach a point where the extra money what whatever whatever is above that threshold is just for fun and not for the basics um it depends where you leave of course um but here in belly 1,000 $1,500 is is just enough and how did you come up with that like Ram is that's your own expressions

35:52or did you learn it somewhere no I think it's a in the IND the hacker Community it's it's pretty common to to to call it ran profit stability I think it comes down to the um to the do you know what are the cup ran yeah I think it this is started with that is that it's probably the cheapest and the easiest meal you can make as an entrepreneur oh okay got it I think originally come from there yeah I think Ramen profitability goes a long way in Baldi or even longer way in other in other Southeast Asian countries yeah there a lot of ramen for one

36:321,500 and yeah can you also tell me like an advice you would give to your younger self like if you would meet yourself back when you finish University and you start launching your ideas what would you say to yourself probably that everything other people tell me is just their own vision okay can you expand this a bit um I was I was pretty super tiny kid uh I grew up really late like when was when I was 18 so I was the under like the the little kiddo one one meter 50 cimer like super skinny and people would call me Madame like they all think I'm a

37:19girl because I had long hair and so I would get you know all those like U badass guys that would like make fun of me and things and when you're a kid you take this very seriously you think you know they're it's real right uh and you worry and you think you overthink about it and at the end you know just things move on and and you forget it so I would just tell myself that it's their own vision and and I should not listen to them yeah totally understand and what is the best advice you ever heard and then also actually implement it to your own

37:54life I think it's it's what Peter says these book is like uh yeah build fast sh fast kill fast okay yeah and you to leave by it right yeah yeah and what's the advice for our listener at the beginning of their startup Journey or their inie hacker Journey what's like the top one thing they should look outward for what's the best advice you got um the the heat the success heat rate for a startup is close to 0% so whatever you have whether you think it's a really good ID it's very unlikely that it's going to be successful so just build it very quick and what matters is

38:37not what happens is what what matters is that the experience you get from it do it in public so you get some following and then every time you build a new product you're going to grow your magnitude is you're going to get more results with it so again build bu F sh F skill fast yeah it what matters the most is like the journey like every product you build even if everything every every single product fails you you'll become just so more experienced and experienced that like if you keep trying and if you didn't it work I think you will succeed at least to some degree at some

39:10point yeah definitely and to and to like conclude this podcast today I want to ask you like five rapid questions okay so yeah what's your favorite book why we sleep met wer your favorite podcast my first oh the team first one okay your your favorite productivity Tool uh as a tool like as a software or something yeah yeah like um it can also be like physical tool like I don't know a notebook just like the tool you use for productivity just I think airplane mode okay H most used app on the phone what's up okay and your favorite hobby surfing surfing okay nice I love surfing as well

40:04cool mark it was lovely talking to you was a great episode and I hope uh we talk again soon yep thanks for Jo thank you for having me Peter it was nice [Music]