#260 – 通过多款产品实现月收入1.8万美元的成长之路与Tony Dinh

嘿，哥们，怎么了？我现在真不该醒着。感觉糟透了。昨晚几乎没怎么睡。我现在就像个活死人。

Hey man, what's up? I should not be awake right now. I feel terrible. I barely got any sleep last night. I'm like the living dead right now.

嘿，托尼，怎么样？

Hey what's up Tony?

你好，你好，托尼。

Hello, hello Tony.

你好，钱宁。你好，科林。

Hello, Channing. Hello, Colin.

欢迎大厨。

Welcome to the chef.

谢谢。谢谢邀请我来。

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

你那边现在几点？你在胡志明市吧，

What time is it where you are? You're in Ho Chi Minh City,

是的，我在胡志明市，现在是晚上11点。是的。

Yeah I'm in Ho Chi Minh City is eleven p. M. Now. Yeah.

你通常是夜猫子吗？你一般工作到几点？

And are you like typically a night owl like what kind of hours do you work?

我通常熬夜到午夜，然后大约那个时间开始工作，所以这是我平常一天的最后时刻，但今天我们可以稍微延长一点，完全没问题。

I usually stay up at late until midnight and then go to work at around that hour so this is the last hour of my usual day but for today I think we can go a little bit further than that it's totally fine.

是的，我很感谢你抽时间。钱宁向托尼提议。我当时说，嘿，我们可以在太平洋时间下午1点到3点之间的任何时间录制节目。因为我就是个傲慢的美国人，就理所当然这么认为了。

Yeah I appreciate you making the time. Channing pitched Tony. I was like, hey, can we we can do the episode at any time between like one to, you know, 3PM Pacific time. Because I'm just an arrogant American. Just assumes that Right.

是按太平洋时间。

It's on Pacific time.

每个人都应该适应托尼的时间。

Everyone should get on every Tony's

比如，我在越南。那对我来说就是凌晨3点左右。我做不到那个时间。

like, I'm in I'm in Vietnam. That's gonna be like like 3AM for me. Like, I can't do that.

是的。不过我很高兴你那边是早上9点。对吧？你也是九点或早起的人吗？

Yeah. But I am glad that it's it's 9AM for you. Right? Are you also a nine Yes. Nine o or early bird?

我算是两者都有。我有一个极其健康的睡眠时间表，我熬夜到很晚，然后起得非常早。哇。每晚只睡四五个小时。实际上这很糟糕。

I'm like a both. I have an excellently healthy sleep schedule where I stay up super late and then I wake up really early. Wow. Get like four five hours of sleep every night. It's actually it's horrible.

我不推荐这样做。

I don't recommend it.

你现在还这样吗？你现在还这样吗？我记得你在之前的某一期节目中提到过，但现在你还在这样做。

You're still doing that now? You're still doing it now? I remember you mentioned that in one of the earlier episode, but still now you're still doing it.

我有一个Whoop手环，就像，你看到这个腕带了吗？我不知道。它就像一个健身设备，类似Fitbit或Apple Watch，记录你所有的数据。我可以查看每周或每月的平均睡眠时间，结果很糟糕。昨天我只睡了四个半小时。

I've got a whoop, which is like, do you see this wristband? I don't know. It's got like a fitness device like a Fitbit or an Apple Watch that like records all your stats. And I can go through, and I can see my average sleep every week or every month, and it's horrible. So yesterday I got four and a half hours of sleep.

什么？这个月我的平均睡眠时间是……我在平均多少？我们有一个小组。钱宁和他的女朋友以及我的一些朋友都在我的Whoop小组里。我平均每天睡五小时十一分钟。

What? This month I'm averaging what am I averaging? We're in a group. Channing's in my whoop group with me, along with his girlfriend and some of my friends. I'm averaging five hours and eleven minutes of sleep.

不，老兄。哟。我知道。

No, man. Yo. I know.

七月里睡了五个小时。我甚至没什么好炫耀的，比如，哦，我不能说这是什么奋斗鸡汤。我不是熬夜工作。可能只是

Five hours and five in July. And I I don't even have any sort of like bragging, like, oh, like, I I can't say like this is like hustle porn. I'm not like staying up late to work. Maybe it's just like

我的理论是，科特兰德不太能感知自己身体的感受。所以睡眠极差的负面影响不会立即在他身上显现。

My theory my theory is that Cortland doesn't have a very good ability to sense the way that his body feels. And so the negative effects of getting terrible sleep just don't immediately affect him.

也许或者可能就是天性吧，我猜。

Maybe or maybe it's just nature, I guess.

我也这么想，但这仍然不好。钱宁说得完全正确。比如，我直到31岁才意识到，如果我吃太多食物就会犯困。我需要花时间才能把环境中的情况和自己身体的反应联系起来，因为我总是过于科学化地看待这件事。

I think so, but it's still not good. I and Channing's absolutely right. Like, took me I didn't realize until I was like 31 that if I eat a lot of food, I get sleepy. Like it takes me a while to like connect what's going on. What's going on in like my environment to my body because I get too scientific with it.

我就会想，我怎么知道这就是我犯困的原因？就好像

And I'm like, I don't how do I know this is why I get sleepy? There's like

你把手放在火上时能注意到烫伤吗？

Do you notice when you put your hand over fire that it burns?

我明白了

I figured out

那本来会是个大问题。好吧，

that was gonna be a big problem. Well,

Tony，很高兴你能上节目。你是我去年最喜欢的独立开发者之一。

Tony, I'm glad you're on the show. You were one of my favorite indie hackers in the last year.

谢谢。

Thank you.

你的故事太疯狂了。差不多正好一年前，去年八月，你发了一条推文。你说在做了七年开发人员后，我辞职去追求梦想，构建我热爱的软件并以此谋生。所以大约一年前你辞职了，那时基本上只有一个梦想。当时你在推特上只有大约一千个粉丝。

Your story is crazy. A year ago almost exactly a year ago, last August, you tweeted you penned a tweet. You said after seven years working as a developer, I quit my job to pursue my dream, to build software I love and make a living out of it. So that was like a year ago that you quit your job, and you pretty much just had a dream. You only had like a thousand followers on Twitter at the time.

你确实有一些副业项目，但它们只带来几百美元的收入。而现在仅仅一年后，你在推特上有了5万粉丝。你有多个产品，我认为三个主要产品每月总共带来近2万美元的收入。嗯。太棒了，兄弟。

You had handful of like side projects really, and they were only doing like, you know, a couple $100 in revenue. And now just one year later, you're at 50,000 followers on Twitter. You have multiple products, I think three main ones that are bringing in a total of close to $20,000 a month in revenue. Mhmm. That's awesome, man.

这就像我见过的独立开发者最快的冲刺之一。

That's like one of the fastest sprints I've ever seen an Eddie Hacker make.

是的，我觉得在过去一年里我在这里和那里幸运了几次，但在这个过程中我也学到了很多，所以我很高兴事情对我来说进展顺利。

Yeah I think I got lucky here and there a few times in the past one year but I also learned a lot in the process as well so I'm glad things are working out for me.

越南的生活成本是多少？比如你每个月赚2万美元，作为一个独立开发者在家工作，靠这个能生活得多好？

What's the cost of living in Vietnam? Like if you're making like $20,000 a month you know as this indie hacker just working from home like how well can you live off that?

便宜得难以置信。在越南，我记得我以前每月生活费不到1000美元，所以当我准备辞职时，我想至少在越南每月1000美元我能生存下来，现在我有几百美元的月度经常性收入，所以我很确定我能做到，而且现在我赚得远不止这些，同时还在越南生活，所以

Incredibly cheap. In Vietnam I think I used to live here for like less than 1 k a month so when I was about to quit my job I was thinking that at least I can survive in Vietnam for 1 k a month and now I have a few $100 MRR so I'm pretty sure I can do this right but and now I do much more than that and also living in Vietnam so it's

这太夸张了

that's ridiculous

每月3000美元，你可以过上类似中等收入普通家庭的生活。而每月1万美元，你就能过上奢侈的生活方式。

at 3 ks a month you can live somewhat like a middle income average household. And at 10 k, you will be, like, a luxury lifestyle.

在你发的那条说要辞职的推文中，你还提到你没有妻子和孩子。所以除了越南的基本生活成本外，你也不需要养家。

On your tweet that you penned where you said I'm gonna quit my job, you also mentioned that you have no wife and no kids. So on top of the background cost of living in Vietnam you also don't have to pay for a family.

是的，这也是鼓励我的一个重要原因，因为我认识的很多其他印度人有妻子和孩子，这让他们的决定困难得多。所以对我来说，我只是想给大家提供一个背景，了解我的处境，看到全貌。每个人的情况都不同，如果你有孩子要养家，情况就会不一样。所以是的，我辞职时相当自由，我有很多想法和一些初步的指导。是的，我认为这对我今天的成功贡献很大。

Yeah yeah that's one of the big reason to encourage me as well because a lot of other Indian girls I know have wives and kids it make the decision a lot harder for them so for me I just want to give people a context of what where I'm at to see the full picture of my situation It will be different to everyone so if you have kids and you have a family to feed it will be it will be different you know. So yeah I was pretty much free when I quit my job and I have a lot of ideas and a few instructions initial instructions So yeah, I think that's what contributed a lot to my succeed today.

那我们快速聊聊你的几个产品吧，因为你有很多。我想我们今天可能只聚焦其中三个，因为谈太多会让人困惑。其中一个是我是用户，我是你两个产品的付费客户。其中一个叫Snapper，就是字面上的snapper这个词。

So let's talk about a few of your products real quick, because you've got a lot of them. I think we'll maybe just limit our focus to three of them today, because it's like it's confusing when we talk about too many. One of them I'm a user, I'm a paying customer of two of your products. So one of them is called Snapper. Like literally the word x snapper.

我发音对吗？

Am I pronouncing it right?

对，发音正确。是的，就像snapping（截图）一样。

Yeah. It's right. Yeah. Like snapping.

是的，Snapper。它超级简单，就像是一个截图工具。每次我在Mac上截图时，不仅仅是把图片复制到剪贴板，而是会弹出这个漂亮的界面，图片会有一个很酷的渐变背景，我可以随意更改。

Yeah. Snapper. It's super simple. It's like a a screenshot tool. So every time I take a screenshot of my Mac, instead of just copying the image to my clipboard, I get this beautiful interface where the image gets this cool gradient background that I can change.

我还能获得所有这些超强功能。比如，如果我真的需要，我可以从图片中选择文本，它会保存到一个特殊文件夹里，我可以随意拖放，还能添加圆角和投影效果。Snapper上个月刚赚了4200美元，而你昨天才刚发布它。然后你还有Blackmagic，一个Twitter增长工具。它几乎就像是你为Twitter制作的各种超酷独立工具的大杂烩，你把它们全都整合在一起了。

I get all these, like, superpower features. Like, I can select the text from the image if I really want to, and it saves into a special folder, I and can drag and drop it anywhere I want, and I can add rounded corners and a drop shadow. And Snapper just made $4,200 last month, and I think you just launched it yesterday. Then you've got Blackmagic, a Twitter growth tool. It's almost like a hodgepodge of these really cool individual tools that you made for Twitter, and you just like stuck them all together.

那个我也买了。所以每次我上Twitter时，都可以打开Blackmagic。我能看到我正在查看的每个人个人资料的所有额外信息，他们的最佳推文、谁关注了他们、他们的最佳互动数据。我能看到关于我Twitter每个部分的酷炫信息。如果我进入通知页面，我能看到哪些给我发通知的人是关注我很久的，或者是新粉丝等等。

And I got that too. So every time I go to Twitter, I can open up Blackmagic. I can see all this extra information about everybody's profile who I'm looking at, their best tweets, who's following them, their best engagement. I can see cool information about every part of my Twitter. If I go to notifications, I can see which of my people who've notified me are like have been following me for a long time, or the recent followers, etcetera, etcetera.

Blackmagic每月能赚大约1万美元。然后你还有DevUtils，这是你所有应用中我唯一还没用的。那基本上就是一个为开发者准备的巨大工具箱。DevUtils赚多少钱？

Blackmagic is making something like $10,000 a month. And then you've got DevUtils, the only one of your apps that I don't use yet. And that's basically just a giant toolbox of tools for developers. How much money is DevUtils making?

平均每月大约4000美元。

It's average out about 4 k a month.

好的。

Okay.

这不是经常性的。所以取决于月份。没错。

It's not recurring. So it depend on the month. Right.

然后你把所有这些加起来，就能达到每月18.19万、2万美元的收入。

And then you add all these things up together and you get to $18.19, $20,000 a month in revenue.

是的，接近20万，没错。

Yeah close to 20, yeah.

太疯狂了。这真是很多想法。

Crazy. That's a lot of ideas.

是的。你知道我在产品介绍中提到过。我一直在思考如何介绍它，但哇，这真是对Blackmagic、Snapper和Devutels的很好描述。我真的很喜欢同时开发多个产品，这是我的人生目标之一——建立一个多元化的产品组合。你知道，只是为了安全。万一一个产品不行了，我还有其他的可以带来收入。

Yeah. Well you know that I introduced in my products. I was thinking about how to introduce it but wow that's that's very a good description of Blackmagic and Snapper and Devutels as well so I really like to work on multiple products at the same time it's my one of my life motives to build a diversified portfolio of multiple products. You know, just for safety. Just if one go down, I have the other ones to bring to revenue.

不过我很好奇你的童年是怎样的，你不仅仅是制作这些极其成功的应用，你还亲自设计它们，每一个都很精美，你超级有野心。我的意思是，要构建这么多东西，你肯定是个勤奋的人。所以我想知道，你父母是什么样的？这种动力是从哪里来的？

I wonder about your like childhood though, like you're not just like making these apps that are incredibly successful, you're also like designing them every one of them is beautiful you're super ambitious I mean to build this many things like you got to be a hard worker so I want to know like what kind of parents did you have like where does this where this drive come from?

我在越南的这一代是第一批经历和平时期的人，在此之前，我父母出生在战后，所以他们都非常贫穷。我父亲是建筑工人，母亲只是在家卖些东西。我开始对技术和计算机产生热情是在高中时期。父母给我买了一台电脑，然后我开始学习用Pascal和Visual Basic编程，当然在那之前我也像你Colin一样沉迷于游戏。

My generation in Vietnam is the first generation that experience peace so before that my parents were born in after the war so they are all very poor. My dad was a construction worker and my mom just sells stuff at home. The point where I started to be passionate about technology and computers was at high school. My parents got me a computer and then I started to learn to code with Pascal and Visual Basic at the time and well before that I was addicted to games I think like you Colin

是的。我对越南的情况很好奇，像你这样小时候就能上网、学习编程、玩电子游戏的经历，在当时越南有多普遍？

yeah. So I'm so curious about Vietnam like how common of an experience was it for like you know you're on the internet as a kid you're learning programming you're playing video games how common was that in Vietnam at the time?

首先，当时没有多少孩子拥有电脑，而对于那些有电脑的人，他们并不像我这样真正深入编程。我记得参加一些编程比赛时，从整个越南，我的城市只有三个人——我和另外两个来自家乡的人。所以我认为，不仅很少人能接触到互联网，即便在能接触的人中，对编程感兴趣的人也不多，这也是我的一个优势。

First of all not many kids had computers in the first place and then for people who have computers they don't really get into programming like me. I remember joining some programming competitions and from all of Vietnam from my city there are only three people so me and two other people from my hometown so I would say not many people have access to the internet and also if from those people who have access not many people are into programming so it's one of my advantage as well.

你是在北越还是南越长大的？

Are you in are you in North Or South Vietnam or were you when you grow up?

我是在中部。

I was I was in the middle.

正好在

Right in

中部。是的。

the middle. Yeah.

什么是

What was

来自顺化市。

From Hue City.

你提到过，像是，你们算是第一代在没有战争环境中成长起来的人，你知道，属于那一代。那么，你们这一代与上一代有什么不同？因为，作为一个美国人，我们对越南的历史了解甚少。我们对

You mentioned, like, you were kinda the first generation that grew up with, like, no war, you know, you're, like, part of that generation. Like, what made your generation different from the generation that came before you? Because, like, as an American, it's like we learn very little history about Vietnam. We know very little about

是的。我的意思是，

Yeah. I mean,

它甚至不是我课程的一部分。我所知道的关于越南的任何事情，都是后来作为成年人阅读的。而且，显然，有越南战争。这是一个非常有争议的话题，我敢肯定你们对此可能有与西方人不同的看法。所以我很好奇，作为你们这一代的一部分，是什么样的体验？

it's like it wasn't even part of my curriculum. Like, anything I know about Vietnam, like, I've read subsequently as an adult. And, like, obviously, there's, like, the war in Vietnam. It's, like, a very controversial topic, and I'm sure you have, like, different opinions on it maybe than people in the West. So I'm curious to hear, like, what what was it like being part of your generation?

而且，这与你们父母那一代相比，有什么不同？

And, like, how does that contrast with, like, your parents' generation?

我父亲曾是一名士兵，后来成为一名建筑工人。那时候是北越和南越时期。对每个人来说都是一个艰难的时期，我认为我的父母也不例外，他们很穷，非常穷，然后我和我弟弟出生时也很穷。后来他们努力摆脱贫困，所以当我10岁及以上时，我们家开始好转，但在此之前，我的童年非常非常贫困。而上一代的人，他们不得不从事非常繁重的体力劳动，来为我们这一代提供生活。所以，是的，那确实是一段艰难的时期。

My dad was a soldier, and then he became a construction worker so at the time it is the North Vietnam and the South Vietnam. It was a difficult time for everyone I think so my parents were not an exception they were poor really poor and then me and my brother were born poor as well later on they few hours away to escape the poor so when I was 10 and above our family started to get better but before that my childhood was really really poor and those people from the previous generation they had to work very hard on a very physical heavy work to provide for our generation. So yeah, it was a difficult time for sure.

你父亲在越南那个时期是个贫穷的建筑工人，看起来他当时在当地没有太多也在从事编程和计算机工作的朋友。你父母当时觉得你在做什么？他们认为你是在浪费时间吗？他们鼓励你吗？你是如何坚持走在这条道路上的，要知道当时可能还没有相关的词汇和文化来定义这种

Your father was a poor construction worker in this period in Vietnam and it seems like he didn't have a lot of other friends locally who are also working on doing coding and working with computers. What did your parents think that you were doing? Did they think that you that you were wasting your time? Did they encourage you? Like, how did you stay on this path toward doing something that, you know Well maybe there wasn't a vocabulary and a culture around that being like a

是的，这绝对是个非常好的问题。我觉得他们到现在也完全不知道我具体做什么，他们只知道我在电脑和互联网上工作，仅此而已。

yeah they absolutely excellent question I think they right now they absolutely have no idea what I do they only know I I I work on computer and on internet and that's it.

你真的会给他们看你赚的钱吗？

Do you really show them the money that you're making?

是啊。他们知道你有多成功吗？

Yeah. Do they know how successful you are?

他们知道。但他们不知道我具体是靠什么赚钱的。所以他们只知道我现在不再为公司工作，而是为自己工作，并且能赚钱，所以他们

They do. But they don't know what I I I do for money. So they all they know that now I don't work for companies anymore and I work for myself and I make money so they're

比如问你是不是在做什么非法的事情？

like Tony are you doing anything illegal?

我觉得他们不这么认为。但在我小时候，我试图说服他们，如果你给我买台电脑，买这张CD那张CD——我记得那是一张Windows安装光盘或者某种工具盘，能让我不用去维修店就能修电脑——我告诉他们，如果你为我做这些，我就会在电脑上工作，不再玩游戏了。我当时真的对游戏上瘾，不知怎么他们就被说服了，我就是这样得到了我的第一台电脑，我想这改变了我的人生。

I think they no I don't think they think that but when I was young I was I was trying to convince them that if you can buy me a computer and buy me this CD and that CD I remember that was a window install CD or some kind of tool CD that allows me to fix the computer without going to the repair shops I told them if you do this for me and do that for me I will be working on computers and I will no longer play games. I was really addicted to games and somehow they are convinced and that's how I get my first computers and it's changed my life I think.

是的，所以最终你学会了编程，我猜你不再玩那么多电子游戏了，而是沉迷于编程，这在某种程度上就像一种游戏，有着那种令人上瘾的反馈循环。是的。你工作了七年最终在去年辞职的是哪家公司？

Yeah so eventually you learn how to code, you stop playing as many video games I presume, get addicted to coding which is kind of a game in a way it's got like that addictive feedback loop. Yeah. What company was it that you worked at for seven years that you eventually quit last year?

哦，我为三家公司工作过，我觉得很幸运每次都能在三种不同类型的公司工作。我的第一家公司是外包公司，我们做外包工作；第二家是初创公司，他们发展得不太好，公司破产了；然后我转到第三家公司，是一家大企业，是GenDesk（如果你知道的话，我觉得在这里提一下应该没问题），它是新加坡的一家大公司。能够参与所有三种类型公司的工作，我认为我在这个行业获得了一些知识，这是那些从职业生涯开始到结束只在大公司工作、没有经历过外包和初创公司工作的人所不具备的。每种类型的公司都有我们可以学习的东西，所以我很高兴有那段经历，我一点也不后悔为那些公司工作，我认为这是我为了在辞职做自己的事情时建立优势而可以学习的背景和知识。是的。

Oh I worked for three companies and I feel lucky that I worked for three types of companies each time. So my first company was an outsource company we do outsource work the second one was a startup they did not go well the company went bankrupt and then I moved on to the third company which is a big corporate company it's GenDesk if you know about it I think it's okay to mention here it was a big company in Singapore so being able to participate in the work of all three types of companies I think I gained some knowledge in the industry that a normal person who work on a corporate since the beginning of the career to the end who doesn't experience the works in an outsource and in a startup there are things that we learn on each type of company so I'm glad that I had that experience and I never regret working for those companies at all I think it's background and knowledge that I can learn in order to build up the advantages that I have when I quit my job to do my own thing. Yeah.

我要当一会儿粉丝。Cortlandt提到他有两个你的产品。我买了Znapper来制作截图，昨天刚用它发布了一条推文风暴，觉得太棒了。所以很明显，你已经学会了

I'm gonna fanboy for a second. Cortlandt mentioned that he's got two of your products. I bought Znapper to make for screenshots, and I posted a tweet storm just yesterday using it and thought it was awesome. So clearly, you've learned

哦，哇。

Oh, wow.

在这些不同的公司学到了非常惊人的技能组合。比如，你是一名优秀的设计师，显然也是一名能干的开发者。在这些不同的公司，你是一直只做同样的事情，还是怎么变得如此全面发展的？

Really amazing skill sets at these different companies. Like, you're an excellent designer, you're clearly a competent developer. At these different companies, were you always just doing the same thing or like how did you get so well rounded?

是的，你在工作过的公司学到了什么，让你拥有了现在的优势？

Yeah, what did you learn at the companies that you worked at that gave you the advantages that you have now?

是的，毕业后我是一名前端工程师，做了很多前端工作，那时候的前端不像现在，更像是CSS动画，你知道，就是把东西做得非常完美，我做了几年这个。在此期间，我学习了设计和UI，不一定是正式学习，但我逐渐有了对设计的感觉和认知，知道什么好什么不好。这是第一家公司，做前端工程师。然后在第二家公司，我算是前端和后端都做，我们用的是Ruby on Rails，这也给了我经验。在第三家公司，我专门做后端，能够接触到公司里一些最大的系统，我们为全球用户服务，所以那段时间是一种不同的体验。除了全职工作，我还有很多副业，大学时我做自由职业开发安卓应用，还有用PHP做的副业项目。

Yeah after I graduated I was a front end engineer so a lot of front end and the front end back then is not like front end today is more like cds animation you know doing doing the stuff that is so perfect and I was doing that for a few years and during that I learned about design and and UI I'm not necessarily learn but I kind of get the feeling and get a sense of design you know what is good what is not good so that was the first company Frontend Engineers and then a second engineer the second company I kind of work is a mix of frontend and backend we were working on a Rails Ruby Ruby on Rails and that gave me the experience as well. At the third company, I worked solely on the back end side and I was able to touch on some of the biggest systems in the in the company and we were serving users from all around the world so it was a it was a different experience at a time and beside of my full time job I also have a lot of side project as I was doing freelance work when I was in college doing android apps and I have side project where I work with PHP.

在后端方面，我使用了很多我在全职工作中没有机会实践的其它技术，这些都在我的副业项目中完成。所以基本上我职业生涯的前几年全是学习和100%专注于成为一名优秀工程师

Doing on the back end side, I work with a lot of other technologies that I do not have the chance to practice in my full time job I do that all in my side project so basically a few first years of my career is all learning and and 100% focusing on being a good engineer

你从哪里产生了成为独立开发者的梦想？因为，我的意思是，很多人满足于一辈子只做一份工作。对吧？你本可以只当一名优秀工程师，在公司工作到40岁。但就像去年，你在推特上说等不及要辞职了

Where did you get this dream to be an indie hacker? Because, I mean, a lot of people are happy to just work at jobs their whole life. Right? You could have just been a good engineer and worked at companies until you were 40. But like last year, here you are tweeting like, you can't wait to quit.

对吧？或者你已经辞职了。那种渴望是从哪里来的？

Right? Or you did quit. Where did that where did that itch come from?

是的，变化如此之快真是令人惊讶。五年前我还梦想着成为优秀工程师，在大公司里处理大型复杂系统。现在我只想构建能为人们带来价值的软件，仅此而已。毕业后，我有点随波逐流，身边所有人都想进入好公司拿高薪赚钱，所以我当时有点忘记其他一切，陷入了这种竞争轨道。高中时我制作了很多Windows应用程序，那时很开心，虽然没有卖钱但很有乐趣。在职业生涯最近几年，我开始回忆起那些日子，感觉我更喜欢那样——我喜欢构建服务于最终用户并为他们提供价值的应用程序，胜过想成为某个后端工程角色的专家。这种想法在过去几年里反复出现并逐渐增长，然后疫情爆发时，我被迫整天独自在家，那种无处可去、无人交谈的感觉真的让我深受触动

Yeah it's amazing how it changed so fast. Like five years ago I was dreaming about being an an excellent engineer working in a large complex system for a big corporation. Now I just want to build software that bring value to people and that's it. After I graduate I kind of get into the flow of all the people around me who always want to get into a good company with a good pay and make money so I kind of forget about everything else at the time and kind of get into the flow to get in the rat race you know and when I was in high school I made a lot of window apps so window windows application and I was having fun back then I did not sell for any money but I was having fun so in the last few years of my career I kind of remember back into those days and I feel like I enjoy that more I enjoy building application that serve the end users and provide value for them more than I want to be an expert in let's say some back end engineering role so and it started to grow on me over and over again in the last few years of my career and then when COVID hit I was forced to be home alone all day It really hit me hard in the feeling when you know you cannot go anywhere, nobody to talk to.

是的。所以这种想要回归构建应用程序的渴望结合起来，让我开始考虑开启新的旅程。同时我也了解到了独立开发者社区和Twitter，所以我觉得有一种强烈的冲动要辞职去追求这个

Yeah. So that combined with the urge of going back to build apps stuff it made me think of going on a new journey and at the same time I think I learned about indie hackers and community and Twitter as well so I feel like there's an urge to quit my job and pursue this.

我有时觉得自己不适合被雇佣。技术上来说，我现在在Stripe工作，但这其实是我第一份真正的工作。我觉得很多独立开发者都一样。比如Chan，你并不是真的想被雇佣。你以前有过工作，但你在工作中从来没那么开心

I sometimes feel like I'm unemployable. Like, technically, I work at Stripe now, but this is the first, like, actual real job I've had. And I feel like a lot of indie hackers are the same. Like, Chan, you don't really wanna be employed. Like, you've had jobs before, but you're never that happy at your jobs.

我过去的工作都有一个非常明确的目标——就是为了离开它们

I had jobs with a very specific goal to get out of them.

是的。就像，我我从来没有一个时刻你会觉得，我热爱这份工作。你知道吗？就像，你曾经卖过一段时间复印机，然后找到了一份开发者的工作。但我我有点类似，不过对我来说，我只是不喜欢不能随心所欲地做自己想做的事情这个想法。

Yeah. Like, I I there's never a point where you're like, I love working in this job. You know? Like, what you're like selling copy machines for a while, and you got a job as a developer. But I'm I'm kind of the same, but for me, it's like I just don't like the idea of not being able to work on whatever I want.

除了所有这些，我还有另一个理论，关于是什么说服或促使人们尝试超越为别人打工的状态。那就是你为自己打造了一些东西，尝到了自由的滋味。你尝到了，你知道，某种程度上用自己的头脑构建东西，看到人们为之付费等等的滋味。而且我看到在你五月份辞去最近的工作之前，你实际上在MicroAcquirer上构建并出售了一个产品，大概卖了2美元。是叫drivestats.io吗？

I have another theory on top of all of that for what convinces people or persuades people to try to move beyond going and working for the man. And that is you build something for yourself, and you get a taste of the freedom. You get a taste of, you know, sort of getting building something with your own brain, seeing people pay money for it, etcetera. And I see that before you quit your most recent job in, like, May, you actually built and sold a product on MicroAcquirer for, like, $2. Was it called drive stats dot I o?

是的。而且那是在你辞职之前。没错。所以看起来这种渴望一直存在，你甚至在，你知道，摆脱朝九晚五的工作之前就已经取得了一些独立成功。是的。

Yeah. And that was before you quit. Yes. So it seems like this itch was there, and you were even, you know, finding some indie success before you were free from the Yeah. From the nine to five.

我觉得这是最明智的做法。是的。在辞职之前先开始一个副业项目，看看感觉如何。

I mean, I think that's the smartest thing to do. Yeah. Just start a side project before you quit your job and just see what it's like.

是的，这绝对绝对准确，而且拥有直接服务的客户的体验与我在公司里的经历非常不同，在公司里你只是调整机器中的一个小齿轮，要花很长时间才能影响到最终用户，这一点在过去一年里对我影响很大，而COVID让这成为了现实。

Yeah that's absolutely absolutely accurate and the taste of having customers direct customer that you serve directly is very different than what I have in the corporation where you just tweak a little cog in the machine and it takes so long to reach to the end to the end users and it grow on me a lot in the last year and the COVID made it happen.

所以你现在到了这个阶段，你做了一个副业项目，尝到了一点自由的滋味，你真的很想辞职，但显然你并没有一个成功到能源源不断产生现金的项目，你也没有现在拥有的那些条件，那么当你想辞职但又没有完全准备好时，你会怎么做？

So you're at this point now you've made a side project you've gotten a taste of freedom a little bit and you really want to quit your job but like obviously you didn't have you didn't have a successful project that was like spitting out cash you didn't have any of the stuff that you have now like what you do in a situation where you want to quit your job but you're not like you know totally set ready to do that?

所以在我的情况下，我设定了一个目标：当我至少有一两千美元的月度经常性收入（MRR），或者有一条非常清晰的路径能在一年内达到那个目标时，我就辞职。我有储蓄，所以即使辞职后完全没有收入，也能给我足够的缓冲时间，但我不想冒那个风险，对我来说有点太过了。所以当时我看到我的推特受众和一些黑魔法（可能指某个产品）带来了一些吸引力，我认为当时有300或400，这足以增强我的信心，让我相信我至少能在一年内翻倍，翻倍后就是800 MRR，这在越南接近“拉面盈利”水平了，你知道，然后我搬回越南，应该没问题，应该没问题。

So in my case I set a target to quit my job when at least I have one or two ks MRR or I have a very clear path to reach that point in a year. I have savings so it give me a good runway if I quit my job without any income at all but I don't want to take that risk it's a little bit too much for me so in my case I was seeing some some traction from my twitter audience and also black magic at that time I think it has 300 or 400 which is enough for me to boost the confidence that I will be able to double this in a year at least double this so double it will be 800 MRR which is close the ramen profit in Vietnam you know and then I move back to Vietnam and it should be good should be good.

所以当时Blackmagic的月度经常性收入是400美元，那时你还没有从其他项目中获得任何收入？

So this was Blackmagic was was at 400 MRR and at that time you didn't have any revenue coming in from separate projects yet?

我确实从Dev Udeos获得收入，但非常少，我想每月不到100美元或可能200美元，而且不是经常性的。我记得有段时期两三个月我完全没管它，因为网站没有流量、没有客户、没有销售、没有收入，我失去了动力。我开始停止开发它去寻找新想法，但由于我经常使用自己的产品，我会时不时回来为自己添加新功能。然后不知怎么就有了一些客户，这个应用就继续运行着。我没有关闭它。因为它是一个可下载的应用，我不需要太多维护成本，所以即使我不再开发，它仍然运行着。后来当我在Twitter上走红后，它的表现又好转了，所以还不错。

I do have revenue from Dev Udeos but it's really low I think less than a $100 or maybe $200 a month and it's not even recurrent so I remember there's a period three months of two or three months I haven't worked on it at all like I lost the motivation to work on it because there's no traffic to the website no customers no sale no revenue so I started I stopped working on it to find new ideas but then because I use my product a lot and then I keep coming back to add new feature here and there just for me and then somehow it's there's a few customers out there then the app just keep leaving. I I don't shut it down. It just keep leaving because it's it's a downloadable app. I don't need to I don't I don't have a lot of maintenance cost for that so even though I don't work on on those I still leave and and later on turnout is pick up after I I got popular on on Twitter it's pick up again so it's good.

所以你希望在辞职前达到每月1000到2000美元的收入。这和你之前的薪水相比如何？你之前赚很多钱吗？这会是一个巨大的降薪吗？还是刚好持平？

So you wanted to to get to like 1 to $2,000 a month of revenue before you quit your job. What like how does that compare to your salary? Like, were you making, like, a ton of money before that? Would that be, like, a huge downgrade for you? Or would that be, like, just right on par?

这根本不算什么。我最后的薪水平均每月1万美元，是在新加坡，但考虑到汇率和股票期权等因素，大约每月1万美元左右。所以1千美元根本不算什么，我觉得在新加坡无法生存，但在越南也许可以。因为我在公司工作了三年，有一些积蓄，没有妻子、没有孩子，只需要为自己花钱，有时给父母寄钱。所以我觉得积蓄不错，加上越南生活成本低，我有信心这样做。

It's the it's way it's like nothing. So my last salary was last my last salary was 10 k a month on average USD. It was in Singapore but you know conversion and stock option and stuff so it's around average around 10 ks a month so 1 k is nothing I don't think I can survive it in Singapore but in Vietnam maybe but because I also worked in the company for a few years three years so I got a bunch of saving I don't have wife no kids no wife you know so I'd only spend money for myself sometimes spend home money home for my parents assist. So I think the saving was good and combined with the fact that the Vietnam living cost is low and I was confident to do that.

所以你真的很硬核，愿意承受这样的薪水削减，愿意接受只有原来十分之一的收入搬回越南。

So you're like hardcore ready to take the sleep if you're willing to take like that big of a salary cut like you're willing to go down like a tenth of a move back to Vietnam.

是的是的，我知道每月相差9000美元，但我当时已经有足够的积蓄。记得去年这个时候，我已经提交了辞职通知。因为疫情，我每天独自出去吃午餐，听Indie Hacker播客，听那些独立开发者每月赚1万美元并上播客的故事。我学到了很多，最重要的是这给了我巨大的动力，我相信我能做到，我能成功。所以今天对我来说就像梦想成真。是的，这就是我的小坦白。

Yeah yeah I know it's like $9,000 different every month but I was having enough I remember so this is a confession right remember around this time last year around this time exactly last year I already handed over my notice to quit my job and every day I would allow I would go out for lunch alone because of COVID and I will listen to Indie Hacker podcast every day to all of those stories about Indie Hackers making 10 ks a month and jumping on the podcast so I learned a lot and most of all a huge motivation for me that I will do it I can I can do it I can make it Yeah? So today is like dream come true for me. So yeah, that's my little confession.

很高兴我们能激励人们做出不负责任的职业决定。我们做对了一些事情。

I'm glad we can inspire people to make irresponsible career decisions. We're doing something right.

不，有动力是好事。没有动力也是好事。是的。但是，但是，是的，9千美元在当时对我来说是大幅降薪，但我有信心。那又怎样？

No, motivation is good. Not motivation is good. Yeah. But but, yeah, 9 k USD is a huge pay cut for me back then, but I I was confident. So what?

我能把它提升到1千美元的月经常性收入。

That I can get it up to 1 k m r.

那么你的策略是什么？因为从一开始你就有了一系列不同的产品。你是想我要做三个不同的应用，每个都能赚点小钱，加起来就很多？还是只想做一个？你觉得这个过程会花十年、一年还是怎样？你当时脑子里是怎么设想这个过程的？

So what was your strategy? Like, because now you've got like this array of different products from the beginning. Did you think like I'm gonna have like, you know, three different apps that I make and they're all gonna make a small amount of money that's gonna add up to a lot or did you like think you're gonna make one? Did you think it was gonna take you ten years like one year like what was going through your head for what this process would actually look like?

当时我有Blackmagic，这是我唯一有经常性收入的产品，它有300美元的月经常性收入，所以我非常有信心能在约两年内把它做到2千美元。

At the time I had Blackmagic which is the only product that I had recurring revenue right so it had 300 MRR so I was very confident that I can bring it to 2 k in about two years.

甚至在那之前，当你刚开始捣鼓的时候，我很好奇，因为那时你已经有了Blackmagic的想法，也有了Devutels的想法，你已经开始做这些事情了。在那之前，你是如何决定作为独立开发者的策略的？我觉得这很独特，因为大多数人不会有各种不同的东西，大多数人只要能做好一件事就很开心了。

Even before that like when you first started like tinkering I'm curious because like by that time you'd already come up with the idea for Blackmagic, you had the idea for Devutels like you already kind of like started working on these things, even before that like how did you decide like what your strategy was gonna be as an indie actor? Because I think it's pretty unique like most people don't have an array of different things like most people would be happy to just get one thing to work.

起初我只有一个产品，就是Dev Youtube。Dev Youtube是我的第一个产品，我试图让它成功。我当时还没有Blackmagic和Snapper的想法，但我只是想尝试让它成功。朋友们告诉我，为了增加Dev videos的销量，我应该上Twitter，这就是我开始使用Twitter的原因。当我开始使用Twitter时，我开始发现Twitter周边的问题，于是我就创建了Blackmagic，然后就一直这样继续下去了。

At first I only had one product it's it's Dev Youtube. Dev Youtube was my first product and I was trying to make it work I I didn't have an idea about the black magic and snapper later on but I just want to try to make it work and one of the thing that people told me friends told me that I should do to get more sales on dev videos is to jump on twitter so that's why I started to use twitter you know and when I started to use twitter I started to see problem around Twitter and that's how I created Blackmagic and it just keep going you

对吧

know right

Blackmagic 产品开始获得关注，这为我的开发YouTube频道带来了流量，同时我也在建立观众群并加入了公开构建的运动。我认为这一切都像复利一样结合在一起，产生了复合效益，它把所有产品都带动起来了。是的，一开始我并不知道接下来要做什么，我只是想为我的开发YouTube频道增加更多收入。

the Blackmagic stuff started to get traction which bring traffic back to my dev youtube and at the same time I also build in an audience and join into the movement of building in public and and I think it's all all combined together like compounded interest compounded benefit it it bring the the all the products up together yeah in the beginning I didn't I had no idea what I will be doing next I just want to to have more revenue for debut youtube

听你这么一说，我注意到一个模式：如果你从开发工具开始，Blackmagic 是一个Twitter浏览器扩展。Znapper 是一个截图应用，让你在某种意义上能让图片在Twitter等社交媒体上看起来更好。所以这就像多米诺骨牌效应，你开始做一个产品，然后在构建这个产品过程中遇到的问题给了你其他产品的灵感。

I noticed a pattern now that you say it with if you started with debut tells Blackmagic is a browser extension for Twitter. Znapper is this Mhmm. Screenshot app that makes it so that you, in a sense, make images look good on social media apps like Twitter. And so there's, like, this domino effect where you began working on a product. If you and then the kinds of problems that you ran into trying to build that product gave you the ideas for other products.

对吧？就像你想为开发工具建立观众群，然后你构建了Blackmagic，因为你认识到其他人也有这个问题。是的。所以我有一个问题是，这三个产品都很成功，我们是否应该假设你还有很多其他看似有趣但没能成功的想法？

Right? It's like, know, you wanna build an audience for Yeah. Devutels, then you build black magic because that's know, and you recognize that other people have that problem. Yeah. So one question I have is these three products are successful you know are we to assume that you have a big graveyard of other ideas that seemed interesting and that didn't get off the ground?

确实有，我从来没有准确数过，因为不知道在哪个时间点应该认定它们已经失败了。但我有几个失败的项目，比如DevGutios不是我的第一个macOS应用，我之前在构建一个查看日志的应用，那是我第一次尝试独立开发，结果彻底失败了。作为一个硬核工程师思维，我试图构建一个不仅功能好，代码库也要完美的应用。我写了单元测试，覆盖率大约80%或90%，完整的单元测试和架构，涉及三种不同的编程语言：Golang、Swift和JavaScript，做了很多工作。但某个时候我开始失去动力，因为花了太长时间，大概三四个月来构建，却没有原型可以展示，没有什么可以向世界展示的，只有我电脑里的一个废弃项目，而且几乎不能正常工作。我记得非常努力地让这个应用工作，它是一个日志查看器应用，我试图让它能处理TB大小的日志文件，真的是非常大的日志文件，TB级别，这是一个非常困难的问题，花了我很多时间，这就是我的第一课。

I do I do I have never counted them properly because I don't know where at which point I should count them dead but I have a few failed project like DevGutios was not my first macOS app I was building an app to view logs and that was the first attempt into indie hacking and that was a huge failure so coming from a hardcore engineering mindset right I was trying to build an app that looks so good not only from the functional but only from the code base perspective you know so I was I was writing unit tests like coverage at around 80% or maybe 90% of coverage full unit tests and full architecture involved three different programming languages like Golang, Swift and JavaScript and doing so many stuff but at some point I started to lose motivation because it takes so long it took me like three months or four months to build and I have no prototype to show and I have nothing to show to the world only an escort project in my machine and that's it and it's barely working I was I remember trying so hard to make the app work so it's a log viewer app right so I try to make it work for terabyte size logs file so really really big log files terabyte size and it was a really hard problem it's a hard problem and it took me a lot of time so that was my first lesson.

我最终从未发布它，它现在还在我的电脑里。

I I ended up never released it, and it was in my right now.

所以你得到了一个教训。你尝试构建一个产品，失败了。你犯了一些经典错误，在尝试验证和让其他人看到之前就埋头构建。

So you had one lesson. You tried to build a product. It failed. You made some of the classic mistakes of working on building before you work on trying to make, you know, validate and see get it out in front of other people.

这是开发者的经典错误，制作一个非常极客的开发者工具，需要大量编码并在幕后花费很多时间。是的，这种工具可以成功，我的意思是，我们采访过一些销售开发者工具并赚很多钱的人，但这完全是另一种类型的业务。

And it's classic developer mistake of making like a Right. Really nerdy developer tool that's like requires a ton of coding and takes behind the scenes. Yeah. It can work. I mean, like, we've interviewed people who are like, who sell developer tools and make a lot, but it's just a totally different type of business.

托尼，根据你现在做的事情来看，它们更加视觉化，我认为这是不同类型的动力。是的。在Twitter上发布内容，每次你添加一个功能就可以发推文，人们会喜欢它，而开发这个开发者工具，你只是坐在那里编码几个月，没有人能看到，甚至没有像日志视图这样的视觉元素，这根本不适合你。

And Tony, based on like the things you've done now, are like way more visual, like, I think it's a different type of motivation Yeah. Between like putting something out on Twitter, where every time you add a feature you can like tweet it and people will love it, versus like doing this developer tool and you're just sitting there for months coding this stuff no one can even literally there's no visual element like a log view like it just doesn't it's not your cup of tea.

是的。我记得我当时想，我可能会做这个大约六个月，然后当我发布它时，它会非常火爆，但从未发生。我从未想过我要向谁展示，比如几个人、朋友，你会走红还是怎样？结果证明非常困难。即使现在我有多个渠道和很多粉丝，让某件事走红也很困难。那时候我什么都没有。没有观众，没有渠道，没有通讯，什么都没有。

Yeah. I remember I was thinking like I gonna do this for maybe six months and then when I release it it's gonna be so huge never happened I never I never think about who I'm gonna gonna show it to like a few people, friends, you're gonna go viral or what It turned out to be very difficult. Even now when I have a bunch of channels and a lot of followers, it's also difficult to make something go viral. Back then I had nothing. I had no audience, no channels, no newsletter, no nothing.

那将是不可能的。

It will be impossible.

对我来说，你的故事中最独特的一点是你有多么自信。事实上，当你的产品月收入只有300美元时，你就决定跳槽，并且坚信在接下来的两年里，一定能达到2000美元。而且，你知道，这是一个又一个信心的巨大飞跃，但你经历了那次重大失败，那是你独立开发生涯的开始。是什么让你有信心下一件事会成功？

To me, one of the most distinctive things about your story is how confident you are. The fact that you jump ship when you were making 300 MRR with your product and you decided, hey, in the next two years, I'll definitely get to 2,000. And, you know, it's one big leap of confidence after the next, but you had this big failure, and that was to start your indie hacking career. What made you confident that the next thing would happen that was that was good?

所以，在第一次失败之后，我不需要任何信心去做下一件事，因为在那之后，我觉得我会一直保留我的全职工作，直到我能用我的副业做出点什么。所以DevJutios是第二次尝试，我仍然保留着我的全职工作，在晚上和周末兼职开发DevJutios。所以我想，如果它不成功，我会继续工作，我没有足够的信心去做其他事情。

So so after that first failure right, I did not need any confidence to work on the next thing because after that I feel like I'm gonna keep my full time job forever until I can do something with my side project so DevJutios were the second attempt and I still keep my job my full time job and building DevJutios on the side at night and at weekends so I was thinking that if doesn't work I will keep working on the job I don't have enough confidence to do anything else

所以我

so I

我会降低风险，是的，如果那个视频长时间没有效果，我可能会转向其他事情，但一次只做一件事，你知道，因为我有一份全职工作。所以，如果有其他人想辞职，确保你首先有一个能赚点钱的副业，或者至少有一些能给你信心，让你相信在一两年内会成功。我只有在DevJudeo在Twitter上走红后才辞职，我在Twitter上有点名气，获得了一些经常性收入，是的，而且我还有很多优势，比如在越南生活成本低，没有妻子，没有孩子等等。

will I'll de risk it yes and if that video doesn't work for a long time I may move on to something else but one thing at a time you know because I have a full time job so so if any other people who are looking to quit the job make sure you have a side project that earns some money first or at least something that gives you the confidence that you will make it in a year or two. I only quit my job after DevJudeo was popular on Twitter I get somewhat popular on Twitter and get some recurring revenue revenue yeah and besides I have a lot of advantages like living cheap in Vietnam and you know no no wife no kids and stuff so

你在一些平台上发布的内容做得很好，比如你确实有很多优秀的帖子表现非常出色，你基本上就是讲述不同产品的故事。我认为我最喜欢的是黑魔法，那是你做的第一个关于订阅收入的项目。你在辞职前就开始了。在第一个月里，你就从‘嘿，我为我的Twitter个人资料做了这个很酷的东西’开始。我想你做到了，随着你越来越接近一千个粉丝，你的Twitter头像会有一个环绕的圆环。最终当圆环到达顶部并完成时，就会显示你达到了一千粉丝。他还发了这条推文。

you posted on any actors like a like you got like actually a lot of great posts have done really well where you kind of just like tell the story of your different products I think my favorite is is black magic it's the what's the first one you did that was like subscription revenue You started it before you quit your job. And in the very first, like, month, you went from like, hey, made this cool thing for my Twitter profile. I think you made it to like, as you got closer and closer to a thousand followers, like, your Twitter profile image would have like a ring that would go around it. And eventually, when the ring got to the top and completed, it would be like, you're at a thousand followers. And he tweeted this.

是的。但Westmark。

Yeah. But Westmark.

是的。是的。进度条。当时甚至没多少人关注你，当人们觉得‘哦，这有点酷’的时候。最终就推出了。

Yeah. Yeah. The progress bar. And like, very few people, like, were even following you at the time when people were like, oh, this is kinda cool. And then eventually, like launched it.

Product Hunt上它成为了当日第一名产品。简直大获成功。大家都喜欢它，然后你开始收费。你是怎么做到的？

Product hunt. It got like number one product of the day. Like it was just crushing it. Like everybody loved it and you started charging money for it. Like how did you how did you do that?

或者你是怎么从一个人毫无粉丝、没人关心你在做这个东西，突然变成拥有大量粉丝、人人都在意的？我想有人在你开始几个月后试图花4万美元买下它，你就像‘不，这玩意儿超火。我要留着’。你是怎么达到那个点的？因为大多数人只是默默无闻地做东西，他们发推文却没人那样回应。

Or how did you get it from like you're someone who has like no followers, no one even cares that you're building this thing to, like, suddenly, you have a ton of followers, everyone cares. I think someone, like, tried to buy it from you for $40,000, like, a few months after you started, you're, like, no, this is hot shit. I'm gonna keep it. Like, what like, how did how did you get to that point? Because, like, most people just, like, build stuff in obscurity, and they tweet about it and no one responds like that.

从那以后就再也没有进展了。

It never goes anywhere from there.

是的。我认为一千粉丝的里程碑对我来说是一个重要的里程碑。在那之前，我完全不知道自己在做什么。我试图在Twitter上建立受众并为我的debut deals引流。当时我并不真正相信黑魔法，黑魔法是存在的，但它是我为自己构建的一个脚本来做进度条的事情。所以那时我已经有一千粉丝了，所以它不算一无所有，是有点东西的。如果我能做一些独特、有创意且能病毒式传播的东西，我就可以利用那一千粉丝作为基础让事情传播开来。我认为进度条是早期病毒式传播的事情之一。我努力让我的推文有些独特和视觉吸引力，所以我认为它病毒式传播了几次。接下来是实时横幅，实时横幅是一个非常特别的东西，它帮助我在48小时或三天内从一千粉丝增长到五千粉丝。那条推文中有病毒循环，那时我为黑魔法做的一些工具让我在Twitter上病毒式传播，由于新受众的到来，我推出了新产品，然后它们就复合在一起了。

Yeah. I think the the 1,000 follower milestone is a is a big milestone for me. So before that, I have no idea what I was doing. I what I did is to try to build an audience on Twitter and get traffic to my debut deals right I did not really believe in in black magic at the time black magic was a thing but it's a script that I built for my own to do the progress bar thing you know so so at that point I already have a thousand followers so it is something it's not nothing it's something something so if I can do something you know unique and creative and and can go viral I can use that 1,000 followers as a base to to make things go viral and I think the progress bar is one of the thing that go viral in the early day so that progress bar I try to make my tweet somewhat unique and visually compelling so that I think it went viral a few times and then next the next thing was the real time banner the real time banner is the thing that is a very special one that it helped me going from 1,000 followers to 5,000 followers in I think forty eight hours or three days or something it was there was a viral loop in that tweet and that was around the time when I think a few tools that I made for Blackmagic get me viral on Twitter and because of the new audience coming in I launched new product and then it kind of compound together.

是的，我超爱这个模式。这就像是病毒循环中的病毒循环，因为你在Twitter上，你的受众也在那里，然后你为自己在Twitter上制作工具，你发推谈论这些工具时，其他人也会关心，因为他们同样在Twitter上。而且你的产品本身也具有病毒性，比如当你更新背景图片时。Twitter上每个人个人资料图片后面都有横幅图片。而Changed的方式，你知道他的横幅产品是做什么的吗？它会显示你最近的关注者。

Yeah I love it. It was like viral loops inside of viral loops because it's like okay you're on Twitter where your audience is then you're making tools for yourself on Twitter then everyone else like who you tweet about these tools to like cares because they're also on Twitter And then like your product itself is viral, because like your product when you updated the sort of background image. So everybody on Twitter has like, you know, the banner image behind their profile image. And the way Changed, you know, like what his banner product does? It like shows you recent followers.

所以我们设计成每次有人关注你，你的Twitter横幅图片就会更新显示那个人的名字，这超级具有病毒性，因为每个人都想关注他，这样就能在横幅图片上看到自己的名字。于是他的关注者数量就飞速增长。所以这可能是发展这个应用的最佳环境，因为你周围有一群在Twitter上的人，他们自己想要这些工具，也想宣传自己。我不知道你是不是有意为之，但这真是太天才了。

So we made it so like every time somebody follows you, your Twitter banner image will update and show that person's name, which was super viral because then everyone wanted to like follow him so they could see their own name photo and his banner image. And so he just shot up the follower charts. So it's like probably like in the best possible environment to grow this app because you're around a bunch of people who like are on Twitter and want these tools for themselves and want to like advertise themselves so it's like I don't know if you did that on purpose but it's genius.

是的，那时候我经常折腾Twitter API，我试图可以说是滥用他们允许的一切功能，尝试用它做一些互动性、有趣和创意的事情。那个横幅功能很成功，非常成功。之后人们也想为自己做同样的事情，所以我想好吧，为什么不收费呢？然后我把我的小脚本变成了SaaS，让他们通过Twitter登录，然后用那个脚本更新他们的横幅和个人资料图片，这样他们就能做和我一样的事情。我很长一段时间都是免费的，我告诉人们现在是免费的，但以后推出时就需要付费了，我事先说得很清楚。因为免费，很多人跳进来试用产品，这就是为什么当我在Product Hunt上发布时，很多人已经知道它了，然后他们给出了产品评价，你知道，它就流行起来了。

Yeah I was messing around a lot with Twitter API back then I was trying to do I would say abuse everything that is allowed by them I will try to use it to do something interactive and fun and creative so that banner thing was a success that was a huge success yeah and then after that people want to do that for themselves so I think well okay why not charge for it and then I make from my little script into a sass let them log in by Twitter and then use that script to update their banner and their profile pictures so they can do the same as I made and I gave it for free for a very long time I let people use it for free but I tell them that this is free for now then later on when I launch it you will have to pay so I made that very clear upfront and because it was free a lot of people jump in and try the product and that's why when I launch it on on Product Hunt a lot of people knows about it already and then they gave on to give their reviews about the product and you know it got popular.

你似乎还在Product Hunt发布时做了一些不太寻常的事情，比如如果我说错了请纠正，但我记得读到过你在发布前三天发了一条推文，说嘿，我几天后要在Product Hunt上发布，你给关注者选择，比如嘿，你想让我在发布时通知你吗？然后很多人就说好的。这倒不一定是什么火箭科学。

You also seem like you do some non obvious things with launching on Product Hunt for example correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I read that you three days before you launch, you just make a tweet, and you say, hey. I'm gonna launch on Product Hunt in a few days, and you give your followers the option, like, hey. Do you want me to notify you when I'm launching? And then a lot of them are just like, yes. So and this isn't rocket science necessarily.

这只是利用人们已经是你的粉丝这个事实。他们已经是，你知道，你是在公开为他们构建。在某种意义上，你直接问他们就行了。

It's it's just sort of, leveraging the fact that people are already your fans. They're already you know, you're building in public for them. And in a sense, you just straight up just ask them.

我觉得这太聪明了。太聪明了。很多人，他们一做完东西就立即发布。但我认为你应该 definitely 和早期客户或早期测试用户交流，尝试把他们纳入你的发布计划。因为我在Indie Hackers上也做了同样的事情。

I think that's so smart. It's so smart. A lot of people, like, they just launch something right after they build it. But I think you should definitely talk to your early customers or early beta users or your early, like, testers of your product, and try to incorporate them into your launch. Because I did the same thing with Indie Hackers.

就像，到我发布Indie Hackers的时候，我已经通过邮件联系了大约200人，试图让他们接受采访，其中很多人确实接受了。所以在发布前一周，我对所有联系过的人说，嘿，我下周要发布了，你们愿意支持这次发布吗？我可以通知你们吗？完全一样的事情。然后当你发布时，所有这些人都来支持你，给你投票等等，而其他人发布时，甚至没人知道他们是谁？

Like, by the time I launched Indie Hackers, I had interview had, like, emailed, like, 200 people to try to get them to, like, do interviews with me, and, a bunch of them had. So the day like, a week before I launched, I was like, hey, everybody I've talked to, I'm going to launch next week you know do you want to help support the launch can I notify you same exact thing and then when you launch like all these people show up at your back to help you out to upvote you etc whereas everyone else is launching they've like nobody even knows who they are?

我认为在发布初期获得关注度非常重要。是的，这个策略其实已经很古老了。我做的一个新方法是要求人们在Twitter上回复，然后我会手动私信他们，但人们已经这样做一段时间了，也许他们在发布前几天或一周前发邮件宣布发布，然后发布后人们就会加入。所以拥有受众是一个巨大的优势。

I think that's very important to get the the traction very early in the in the launch. And, yeah, this is this strategy is is quite old already. One thing I do new is I ask people to reply in on Twitter, and then I will DM them manually but people have been doing this for while maybe they send an email in the beginning a few days earlier or a week earlier to announce their launch and then after they launch people jump in yeah so having an audience is a huge advantage yeah

跟我说说这个收购报价的事情，因为有人试图购买Blackmagic，就像'哇，这东西太厉害了'，你是怎么...你给Tony发了一个四万美元的报价，这个报价是从哪里来的？你对此有什么感觉？

tell me about this like acquisition offer because someone tried to buy black magic like oh shit this is killing it like how do I yeah you message Tony an offer from forty thousand dollars like where did that where did that come from and how did you feel about it

所以我把Blackmagic发布到microacquire上，只是想看看人们愿意为它付多少钱。

So I posted Blackmagic to microacquire just to see how people would pay for it.

哦，好的。

Oh okay.

是你让这一切发生的。是的，是的，是我让它发生的。我在microacquire上发布了信息，但没有给出价格，但那时候的Blackmagic和现在很不一样，还没有色度键功能，而色度键功能才是赚钱的部分。

You so you made this happen. Yeah yeah yeah I made it happen. I posted on microacquire and I don't don't give a price but black magic back then is very different it doesn't have the chromatization yet and the chromatization was the one that the moneymaker

好的

okay

所以我确实收到了一些买家的询价，其中有一个非常感兴趣，甚至给出了4万美元的报价。当时它的价值大约是300多美元，如果按年收入计算，大概是10倍甚至更多。但就像我说的，Blackmagic不像今天这样，它还没有色度键功能。当我收到那个报价时，我已经对色度键功能有了一些想法，只是还没有开发出来。我觉得这是一个很好的交易，但如果我要卖掉它，我就必须处理这个色度键的想法。如果我开发了它，可能会获得三倍的价值，但你已经卖给了别人，现在又做类似的东西，会很麻烦。我考虑了一下，因为这个原因我没有接受报价。另一个原因是4万美元虽然不错，但扣除税费和其他费用后，大概只剩下3万到3.5万美元，对我来说这不是能改变生活的钱，我当时确实不需要现金，所以对我来说并不那么重要。

so yeah I got a few buyers and one of them was very interested and they even gave an offer of 40 ks so it was at 300 something I mean alright so if I did the calculation it was like 10 as of AR or even more yeah but yeah so as I said black magic was not like today it did not have the chromatention and by the time I had that offer I already have a few ideas about the chromatention already I just have not built it yet so I feel like okay this is a very good deal but if I'm going to sell this I will have to do something about this chromatenson idea that I have and if I do that I may get into triple of you know you already sell that to the other person now you do something kind of similar it's gonna be troublesome so I thought about it and because of that I did not accept the offer and also another reason is 40 ks okay it's good it's high but after tax and stuff a fee I don't think it is let's say $30.35 left 35 ks left it's not a life changing money for me I definitely not needed the cash yeah right there and then So it wasn't that important to me.

这是你设想中的最终目标吗？所以你有Devi Tails产品月入约6美元，Blackmagic约10美元，Snapper约4美元。你是希望这些项目被收购吗？你是想继续发展运营它们，享受这种自由的生活方式吗？你心里有退出策略吗？

Is that part of the endgame that you have in mind? So you've got a product that's making about $6, Devi Tails, Blackmagic around $10, Snapper around $4. Are you looking to to get these projects acquired? Do you have this idea where it's like no it'd be dope just to keep growing them and running them and having this free lifestyle? Do you have like an exit strategy in mind?

其实我不太考虑这个问题，我对出售持开放态度，如果有人想买完全可以，任何产品都有可能出售

I don't think about it a lot actually I am open for sale it's okay if I am totally it's possibility to sell the product you're like you're like anyone can

给我任何报价都可以，我随时愿意听听你准备给我多少钱

give you with any amount like I'm always open to hear how much money you're going to give me

任何东西都有价格。其实我之前写过个简短说明，因为收到太多收购邀约。我写道：我所有产品都可以出售，但起价100万美元。虽然这看起来不合理，但如果你买这个产品，你不是在买产品本身，而是在剥夺我的乐趣

There's a price for anything. I actually given a really brief note for this a while ago because I get so many so many offers to buy, and I I I write a brief note saying that, okay, all of my products are for sale, but it will be $1,000,000 before. But it make no money it make no sense I'd say okay if you buy this you are not buying the product you're just buying my fun away from me

我觉得所有产品中，Blackmagic是最不应该卖的。虽然当时你有DevUtils，但那个产品如你所说没有月费订阅。人们只是在Mac应用商店一次性购买下载。但Blackmagic每月能带来几百美元收入，我记得你说过是300美元。虽然不多，但这是持续性收入

well of any of the products I think Blackmagic is the smartest one not to sell because you had DevUtils out at the time, but like that one as you said, you didn't charge a monthly subscription. People would just buy that off the Mac App Store, download it once, pay for it once, and that's it. But Blackmagic you're making like you know a few $100 a month in revenue. I think you said $300 a month. And yeah that wasn't that much but it was recurring.

所以为什么要卖掉这个有持续收入的产品呢？而且你还有计划添加Chrome扩展和更多功能来让它变得更好。现在它成了你的主要收入来源，你一半的收入都来自Blackmagic，月收入达到1万美元

And so you know why sell this thing that's recurring revenue and you know you've got a plan to add the Chrome extension and add more features and make it even better. True. And now it's like your big money generator. It makes half of all the money you make comes from Blackmagic. It's a $10,000 a month of revenue.

它是怎么增长这么快的？大多数试图销售SaaS的人很难在一年内从每月几百美元增长到1万美元。所以Blackmagic背后的黑魔法是什么？

How did it grow so fast? Like most people who are trying to sell a SaaS don't grow from a couple $100 a month to $10,000 a month in just a year. So like what's the black magic behind black magic?

是的，我认为原因是我经常使用Twitter并且拥有受众群体，在Twitter上建立受众，而这个产品也与Twitter相关，所以受众和客户之间存在契合度，这就是为什么我能够在不做其他营销的情况下发展这个产品。我尝试过付费广告和博客等方式，但最终我认为对我一个人来说不可持续。因为这是一个关于Twitter的产品，我只需持续发推文，当人们访问我的个人资料时就能获得关注。另一个原因是我认为我创造了对人们有用的东西，并且不断收到来自其他人的推荐，这完全是非关联的口碑营销，所以它现在自行滚动发展。每天稳定有50到100人注册Blackmagic，而我除了发推文外不做任何营销。我认为这是一种受众和客户的完美契合，使其增长如此快速和稳定。

Yeah I think the reason is I use Twitter a lot and I have an audience, building audience on Twitter and the product is also about Twitter so there's a fit of the audience and the customers so that's why I was able to grow the product without doing any other type of marketing I tried but it was not a succeed I tried paid ads and blogs and stuff but in the end I think it's not sustainable for me as one person so because it was it is a product about Twitter I just keep tweeting and it should be able to get traction as people visit my profile and another reason is that I think I had created something useful for people and I keep forgetting recommendation from other people that totally not affiliated kind of a word-of-mouth marketing so that's why it it roll by itself as of now every day I got 50 people 100 people signing up for black magic just just stably so I and I do nothing for marketing except tweeting so I think it's a it's a kind of a perfect fit for audience and customer that make it grow so fast and so stable

在开发工具DevUtils、Blackmagic和Znapper之间，你每周总共投入多少小时？

between dev utils Blackmagic, and Znapper, how many hours a week do you think you put in total?

好的。在开始时，我认为DevUtils和Blackmagic之间时间分配相当平均。但后来Blackmagic占据了我大约70%的时间，因为它是一个在线产品，一个SaaS产品，有服务器等需要后台运行的一切，需要更多关注以及客户支持。相比之下，NetDutyos是一个独立应用程序，可以下载使用，而Blackmagic花费了我大量时间。Snapper也是如此，开始时我积极构建它，花了两天时间，然后几周后我可能每周花几个小时来构建，之后大部分时间，约70%，都花在Blackmagic上。

Okay. In the in the beginning, I think it were quite equal between DevUtils and Blackmagic. But later on black magic took me like 70% of my time yeah because it is a online product it's a SaaS product and it has servers and stuff run everything running in background require more attention and also customer support so compared to NetDutyos which is a standalone application where you can download and use it Blackmagic took me a lot of time so the same for Snapper as well Snapper in the beginning when I was actively building it I spent two days to build it and then a few weeks later I spent maybe a few hours a week to build and then that's it most of my time like 70% spent on on Blackmagic.

那你每周工作多少小时？比如20小时还是80小时？你是全天候工作吗？或者，你生活中一周花在这些项目上的工作时间大概是多少？

And what are you doing like twenty hours a week like eighty hours a week? Are you are you working around the clock or like you know what's what's like a week in your life in terms of just how much time you spend working on all these projects?

是的，我最近看了数据，显示我平均每天工作四小时。我想六个月前大约是六到八小时。刚开始我刚辞职时，我工作了十小时甚至更多，主要是编码，但还不包括我花在Twitter上的时间，我浏览得很多。

Yeah I look at the numbers recently and it say I work on average four hours a day I think six months ago it about six to eight hours in the beginning when I was I just quit my job I think I worked like ten hours or even more and mostly mostly coding but also not accounting for the time I spent on Twitter so I browse it a lot

是的

yeah

像上瘾一样

like addicting

为一个公司工作四小时、五小时或无论多少小时，在性质上与为自己工作完全不同。是的，为自己工作四到十小时或任何时长。比如，我热爱为自己工作。我有朋友会说，兄弟，你需要更多工作与生活的平衡。你周日还在工作，他们会说，哦，我真为你感到遗憾。

Four hours or five hours or whatever the number of hours working for a company is totally different qualitatively than Yes. Four to ten hours or whatever working for myself. Like, I love working for myself. I have friends who are like, dude, you need more work life balance. You're working on a Sunday, and they're like, oh, I'm so sorry for you.

而我会说，我才为你感到遗憾呢。你在做什么？比如，害怕周一即将到来吗？

And I'm like, I'm sorry for you. What are you doing? Like, dreading that Monday is coming around?

是啊。太对了，兄弟。是的。有没有某个时刻，你意识到自己的收入，当你突然明白你的收入将超过你工作中每月赚的1万美金，然后你想，天啊，这居然成功了，我再也不用回去上班了。

Yeah. So true, man. Yeah. Does was there a point where you, like, realize your revenue where it clicked for you that your revenue was gonna like surpass the 10 ks a month you're making in your job and you're like holy shit like this worked and I'm never gonna have to go back to work.

是的，那发生在我月经常性收入达到5千美金的时候。所以5千美金月经常性收入是我辞职时说的那个数字，甚至在我辞职之前，我就在想，好吧，如果我达到5千美金月经常性收入，我就能养活自己、未来的家庭，甚至还能寄钱回给父母，那是一个完美的节点，让我在越南完全自给自足。所以当我达到5千美金月经常性收入时，我感觉自由了，你知道，完全自由。但现在回头看，实际上在达到5千后我并没有减少工作。我的意思是，当我达到5千时，我认为我正处在增长曲线的中间，它正在上升，当时我在做一件非常特别的事情，可能是黑魔法之类的，现在记不清了，但那时我工作很多，直到后来当我达到7千，然后8千，然后9千时，我开始意识到，好吧，我看起来好像进入了一个永无止境的 treadmill，一件事越来越多、越来越多。你知道，我应该少做点，为什么我做得更多？有时尽管我可以随心所欲地穿着，我却感到精疲力尽，因为有时候就像上瘾，你知道，你无法控制自己。所以是的，当达到大约7千或8千时，我更专注于强迫自己放松，我旅行更多，享受更多时间，而且在最近几个月，我住在海滩附近，这极大地提升了我的心理健康，仅仅住在海滩附近，步行就能到海滩，你知道，感觉太好了。

Yeah that happened to me when I was at five ks MRR so 5 ks MRR is the word that I said when I quit my job even before I quit my job right I was thinking like okay if I get to 5 ks MRR I will be able to provide for myself for my future family and I can even send money back to my parents that is a perfect point that I will be fully sustainable in Vietnam so when I reached five ks MRR I feel like I'm free you know totally free but but now looking back actually I did not work less after I reached five ks I mean when I reached five ks I was in I think I was in the middle of growth curve it was going up and at the time I was doing something very special for black magic or something I could not remember now but I worked a lot at the time much until later on when I reached to seven ks and then eight ks and then nine ks I I started to to realize okay I I'm looks looks like I'm going into a treadmill of one thing more and more and more and more forever you know I should I should do less why am I doing more and sometimes I even though I can dress whenever I want I feel exhausted because sometimes it's like addiction you know is you cannot control yourself so yeah when when I reach about seven ks or eight ks I was focusing more on forcing myself to relax I travel a lot more and I enjoy a lot more time and also on the last few months I live in near a beach it has incredibly increased my mental health just living near a beach and having a walking distance to a beach you know so good

是啊，你理想的生活方式是什么？因为每个人都必须在某个时刻思考这个问题，一旦你达到财务自由的阶段，你就会想：哦靠，我不必为任何人工作了，我可以整天做任何想做的事。人们确实会落入这些不同的类别。有些人陷入这种永无止境的追逐，他们会想：好吧，我原本想赚1万，现在我想赚2万；赚到2万后，又想赚5万；赚到5万后，又想达到年入百万，就这样目标不断攀升再攀升，这就是他们的生活——永远在追求更高的目标。

yeah what's your like ideal lifestyle because you have to like everybody has to think about this at some point once you hit this point of financial freedom, and you're like, oh shit, I don't have to work for anyone else, I can do whatever I want all day. And people like, do fall into these buckets. So some people get under that treadmill, and they're just like, okay, well I wanted to make 10 k, like, now I wanna make 20 k, okay. Made I 20 ks, now I want to make them I want to make 50, okay. Made 50 ks, like I'm trying to hit a million dollars a year, and they just keep going up and up and up, and like that's just their life, like these ever increasing goals.

而有些人则完全相反，他们会想：好了，我达到目标了，现在我想享受生活。对吧？我想结交很多朋友，我想像你说的那样在海滩上度过时光，我想要非常悠闲的生活，把所有事情都设置为自动运行模式，进入被动收入状态。

And some people are the exact opposite, they're like, okay, I got to my goal, like now I wanna like have fun. Right? I wanna make a lot of friends. I wanna spend my time on the beach like you were saying. I wanna have a really chill life, put everything on autopilot, put everything in the passive mode.

还有些人更偏向创造型。比如Peter Levels就会说：你知道吗？我就喜欢折腾我的项目——这是他最喜欢做的事，他就爱干这个。所以他过着非常平衡的生活，但他没有任何退休计划或追求赚取数十亿美金的目标。那么你属于哪一类呢？

And some people are more like creative. Like Peter Levels is like, well you know what? Like I love tinkering on my projects that's his favorite thing he just loves doing that and so he's got a very well balanced life but he doesn't have any sort of plan to retire or to try to go for like billions of dollars so like what bucket do you fall in?

我认为理想的生活是只做我喜欢的事情，也就是产品设计和编程。现在我大部分时间还在做这些，但依然有一些繁琐的工作，比如客户支持、处理琐碎事务以及其他一些对业务必要但工作起来并不有趣的功能。所以对我来说，理想的生活是能够将这些工作委托给我信任的人，这样我就能更专注于创新想法和新产品。我在想，如果我能达到那种境界，可以轻松组建公司或团队来开发新产品、新想法，即使失败了，我也不会为花费的钱感到后悔。是的，我希望能够更大规模地实验各种东西。现在虽然也能做，但必须用自己的时间，所以成本较高，而且机会成本每天都在增加，因为每当我没在Black Magic上工作时，它就在赚钱，所以不工作就感觉在亏钱。这种机会成本让我感到压力，觉得必须继续工作，但日常工作中并非所有部分都让我享受。所以，我仍然想达到5万、100万等目标，但希望以可持续的方式实现，同时享受生活。

I think that the dream life would be I will only do the stuff that I enjoy which is somewhat product designing and coding right now I'm still doing that most of the time but there are still some kind of grunt work like customer support and you know fishing boats and some other boring features that you know necessary for business but not fun to work on so I think the dream life for me is I can start to delegate some of those work for other people that I trust so that I can focus more on innovating new ideas and new products I was thinking like if I get to you know to the point where I can snap a company our resistance to work on some new product new idea and if it fail I would not feel regret for spending the money I would get into the point yeah yeah where can I just experiment with stuff at a larger scale you know right now I can do I can still do that but I have to do that with my own time so it's kind of costly for me and because the opportunity cost is increasing for me day by day because every time I don't work on on black magic it's making money right so if I don't work on it it I'm kind of feeling kind of losing money so I feel like the that opportunity cost is putting me on a stress that I need to continue working on this but I don't really enjoy all of the parts of my daily work so yeah, I still want to reach out to 50 ks and and a million and stuff, but I wanted to do that in a sustainable way and enjoy my life at the same time?

很容易到达一个点，忘记你当初努力实现财务自由时的那股火。每天，你愿意做所有你不喜欢的事情，因为你觉得我必须成功。但我觉得最终很容易，比如几年后我再检查你的时候，可能会失去那股火。太容易就会想，你知道吗，我不想再做任何以前做的难事了。

It's easy to get to a point where you forget like like that fire you have when you're trying to, like, first become financially free. Like, in every day, like, you're willing to do all this shit that you don't like doing because you're like, I need to make it. And it's like, I think it's really easy eventually. Like, I'll check-in on you in a couple years to, like, to lose that fire. It's so easy to be like, you know what, I don't want to do any of the hard things that I used to do.

我只做我喜欢做的事情，因为这就是我现在的状态。我也只想做我喜欢做的事情。但这样一来，做难事就变得更难了。比如当我回想，或和那些在营销上做得很出色、发大量冷邮件的人聊天时，

I only do the stuff I like to do, because that's where I am. I also only want to do the stuff that I like to do. But then it becomes harder to do hard things. Like when I think back to like, when I talk to people who are like, you know, just crushing it on marketing and sending all these cold emails and

嗯。

Mhmm.

或者你知道，比如每天发推特。我觉得，天啊，那看起来太 exhausting了。但然后我又想，等等，四年前那就是我，当时并不觉得那么难。所以我觉得这有一种阴阳平衡。比如，Channing，你也经常谈论这个，关于如何构建你的生活，以始终愿意做难事。

Or you know, like tweeting every single day. I'm like, man, that seems exhausting. But then I'm like, wait, that used to be me like four years ago and it wasn't that hard. So I feel like there's, like, a a yin and a yang. Like, Channing, you're always talking about this too about, like, how you structured your life to, like, always wanna do hard things.

嗯，我的看法是，一种方法是继续踩油门，不断成长。但另一种方法是把同样的火和雄心用在生活中其他方面，那些可能有所欠缺、或者你一直觉得没有时间和自由去处理的领域。例如，对于Indie Hackers，我们还有很多成长空间，所以我不想让它看起来像在自动巡航。但就像，你知道，我多年来一直踩着油门，而我直接的朋友圈在缩小。所以，我打算用我的雄心和火，在纽约市建立一个很棒的朋友圈，等等。

Well, the way that I see it is I think that one approach you could take is to just keep your foot on the gas pedal and just keep growing. But another approach you could take is to take that same fire and ambition and look at other areas of your life that sort of are are lacking or, you know, like, know, things that you haven't ever felt that you had the time and the freedom to work on. So for example, with indie hackers, we still have a lot of growth to do, so I don't wanna make it seem like that's on autopilot. But it's like, you know, I've had the foot on the pedal for many years and, like, a lot of my immediate friend group is dwindling. So I'm well, I'm gonna take my ambition and my fire and, like, build an awesome friend group in New York City, etcetera.

所以，在某种程度上，这就是我喜欢的方式，不让我的努力感和雄心因为从事那些不再带来同样兴奋回报的事情而变得迟钝。

So that's in a way, that's the the way that I like to not let my sense of effort and ambition get dulled by working on things that are not really, like, giving the same excitement returns that they once did.

嗯。我明白了。这是一种很有趣的做法。

Mhmm. I see. That's is a that's an interesting approach.

是的。我的意思是，你推出Snapper的时间比Devutels和Blackmagic更晚。所以即使Blackmagic表现这么好，你还是决定继续推出新产品。Snap对我来说真的很有趣。

Yeah. I mean, you launched Snapper more recently than Devutels and Blackmagic. So like Yeah. Even after Blackmagic is like doing so well, you've decided to like continue adding new products. And Snap is really interesting to me.

所以这是个截图工具。我觉得有趣是因为它有点像你的第一个产品Devutels。它不是订阅制产品。我只需要一次性付款，就完事了。再也不需要给你付任何钱了。

So this is the screenshot tool. It's interesting to me because it's also kind of like Devutels, your first one. It's not a recurring revenue product. Like I just pay for it once, and that's it. Don't ever have to pay you any money again.

为什么要走这条路？你知道，开发这些Mac应用与那些收取订阅费的网站相比有什么不同？选择这条路线有哪些优势和挑战？既然你决定第二次这么做，肯定是因为它有什么让你喜欢的好处。

Why go that route? You know, what's it like making these like Mac apps versus like these like websites that charge subscription revenue, and like what are some of the advantages and challenges of like of going that route? Because if you decided to do it a second time like there might there must be something good about it that you like.

是的，我认为对于macOS应用来说，我自己不想支付订阅费用，所以也不希望这样向客户收费。我在Devutels和Snapper上使用的一次付费永久使用模式并不完全是终身制 - 你购买的是那个特定版本，可以永久使用，不需要再付钱给我。但比如说一年或两年后，如果你想升级到最新版本，就需要支付少量费用来更新。我觉得这是macOS应用的完美模式，很多其他应用也采用相同模式。如果你熟悉macOS应用，就知道一些流行应用如设计软件Sketch曾经采用这种模式，开发者用的IDE软件IntelliJ也是同样模式，TablePlus、Proxyman、Nova应用都来自相同的模式。因为这是既能给客户终身许可又能维持可持续业务的唯一方式。关于macOS应用，我认为现在有很多网页应用，如果我想做出差异化，就要做些不同的东西，所以macOS应用是能够为用户提供更好体验的选择。

Yeah I think for apps macOS apps in general I don't want to pay a subscription cost so I wouldn't want to sell it to customer like that either. The pay once use forever model that I'm using for dev videos and and snapper is not exactly a lifetime so when you buy you will buy that one exact version and you can use it forever never have to pay me again but let's say one year later two years later you want to update to the latest version you have to pay a little fee to to renew it so that is the model that I find perfect for macOS app and a lot of other apps are using the same model if you are into macOS app you know a few popular apps like sketch the design app it used to be on that model the intelligy the IDE app for developers also the same model table plus proxyman Nova app all coming from that same model because that is the only way that can give the customer a lifetime license and also having a sustainable business so that's good About the macOS app, I think there are a lot of web apps these days and if I want to make a difference I gonna do something different so macOS app is something that one can build to to deliver a better experience for the users.

这就是我试图专注的方向。是的。

So that's what I'm I was trying to focus on. Yeah.

是的。你刚发布了关于Snapper的推出情况，已经赚了大概4200美元。这是仅仅在发布当天，还是过去一个月左右的收入？

Yeah. You just posted about how you launch snapper and you've already made like I think $4,200 in earnings. Was that just like on your launch day or is that like in the last month or so?

是的，仅在发布日。这个月我已经赚了大约78,000美元。上个月，我想我赚了大约1万，因为我当时在卖早鸟优惠，所以当第一个版本出来时，我已经让人们免费使用，但我告诉人们，如果你想早点购买，现在可以非常非常便宜。我在Gumroad和Paddle上总共卖了大约1万。这是我构建的第一个拥有大量受众和客户基础的应用程序。你知道，DevDutyUse只面向开发者，但截图工具每个人都可以使用，所以我认为它有更大的潜力，有更多的潜力。

Yes. Just for the launch day. In this month, I already made like $78,000 for this month. And in the month earlier, think I made like 10 k because I was selling early bird sale so when I when the first version came out I already letting people use for free but I but I tell people that if you want to buy it earlier now you can get very very cheap so I was about to sell like 10 ks on Gumroad and on Paddle in total so it's the first app that I built that have a big audience a customer base you know DevDutyUse is only for developers but the screenshot tool everyone can use it so I think it's yet more potential it got more more potential

但是，卖东西是不是更难了，因为你习惯了Twitter，你有这个反馈循环。好吧，你的所有受众都在Twitter上。是的。但像截图工具，它就像，嗯，它在应用商店里。

but is it is it harder to sell stuff like because you're so used to Twitter, which you have you have this feedback loop. Okay. All of your audience is on Twitter. Yeah. But like a screenshot tool, it's like, well, it's in the app store.

它不那么容易被发现。对你来说，可能更难持续发推文之类的。营销和增长那个应用与增长一个Twitter应用有什么区别？

It's not as discoverable. It's probably harder for you to, like, keep tweeting about it and stuff. What's the difference between marketing and growing that app versus growing a Twitter app?

所以对于Snapper，我经常使用它。在我使用Snapper之前，我用了三种不同的工具组合来制作同样的截图，花了我很多时间，但我仍然这么做，因为我觉得它非常漂亮。在Snapper之前，我那样做，很多人问我你是怎么做到的，你怎么让你的截图看起来这么漂亮。所以我不得不一遍又一遍地回答人们我是怎么做的。所以我想，如果我为此做一个应用，我就能轻松地、真实地营销它，当人们问我怎么做的，我就说我会用Snapper，这就是我考虑产品营销的方式。所以它会是通过我进行的口碑营销。实际上，我并不太担心Snapper的增长，因为它是一个macOS应用，对吧？我为自己构建它，所以即使它没有任何吸引力，我仍然会自己使用它，我只花了几天时间，我没有太多损失，而且我节省了时间。所以即使它没有为我赚任何钱，我也没关系，你知道，所以一切对我来说都是额外的奖励。

So for Snapper I use it a lot so when before I use Snapper right I have a combination of three different tools to make that same screenshot and it took me a lot of time but I still have to I still do it because I find it very beautiful so before snapper I did that and a lot of people asked me how did you make this happen how did you make your screenshot look beautiful like this so I keep having to answer to people again and again again how I did it so I figure out if I make an app for this I will be able to market it easily authentically when people ask me how I did this. I just say I will use Snapple and that's how I that's how I was thinking about marketing the product. So it will be word-of-mouth marketing from me and actually I I was not very concerned about the the growth of Snapper because it's a macOS app right? I built it for me so even if it doesn't get any traction I will still use it myself and I only spend a few days on it I I don't have a lot to lose and I saved my my time so even if it doesn't it it doesn't make any money for me, I'm okay with that, you know, so everything comes as a bonus for me.

它有一点内置营销，对吧，形式是如果你有免费版本，你不想付费，那么它就有像knappa.com水印之类的东西。

It is a tiny bit of built in marketing, right, in the form of if you have the free version, you don't wanna pay for it, then it has like a whatever is knappa.com watermark.

是的。是的。那是某种内置

Yes. Yes. That is some sort of built

进去的。

into it.

是的。那个水印功能。我觉得很多人不会用那个。人们有点讨厌它。是的，我可以立刻把它关掉。

Yeah. The watermark thing. I don't think a lot of people will use that. People kinda hate Yeah. I can turn it off immediately.

是的。

Yes.

对。是的。如果你付了钱，你就会去掉那个。但是，从某种意义上说，你是希望有一些吝啬鬼至少能为你做一些免费营销。

Right. Yeah. If if if you pay for it, you're gonna get rid of that. But, like Yeah. You know, in in a sense, like, you're hoping for, like, a couple of cheapskates who might at least, like, do some free marketing for you.

是的。我有点希望这会形成一个营销循环，但我觉得不会。很多人关心设计。他们会在意水印。所以他们会尝试关掉它。

Yeah. I kinda hope that would be a marketing loop, but I don't think so. Many many people care about design. They will care about the watermark. So they will try to turn it off.

是的。

Yeah.

不过我觉得它天然具有病毒式传播的特性，因为当我与他人分享一些漂亮的东西时，他们通常会问你是怎么做的。截图是人们常分享的东西。所以现在每次我截图，它都有这个很酷的渐变背景。我会把它发给朋友，发给和我一起做项目的人，很多时候，在我发了两三张截图后，他们会发现，哦，我截的每张图都长这样，然后就会问我怎么做到的。我就说，哦，去看看Snapper吧。

Think it's naturally viral though because when I you share something beautiful with other people, they usually ask you how you made it. And screenshots are something that people share. So every time I take a screenshot now, it's got this cool gradient background. I'll And send it to my friends, I'll send it to like anyone I'm working on a project with, and like a good percentage of the time, once I've sent like two or three screenshots, they'll figure out like, oh, every screenshot I take looks like this, and they'll ask me how I did it. And I say oh just check out Snapper.

所以它就有这样一种特性，就像你正在打造一个人们自然而然想展示给别人的东西。是的。它非常视觉化。

And so it's got like this kind of it's like you're building something that people naturally want to show to other people. Yes. It's very visual.

只有当它足够出色时，人们才会询问你是如何做到的。所以我认为这是我能够解锁的一点，希望这能促使更多人了解这款应用。

Only if if it is beautiful that people will ask how you did it. So I think that's something that I can that I was able to unlock and then hopefully that will drive more people to be aware of the app.

是的，在某种程度上，这就像是这些'一次付费，永久拥有'型产品的一个隐性好处。你几周前在我们的论坛上发了个帖子，内容大致是：'嘿，看看我是如何违背所有创业建议（不是全部，但大部分建议都强调只专注一个产品）的。我有三个独立产品，它们每月能赚18美元。'

Yeah in a way this is like a sneaky benefit of these you know, pay once, own forever kinds of products. You made a post on our our forum, whatever, a couple of weeks ago, and it was like, hey. You know, here's how I'm, you know, defying all of the start up not all the start up advice to only focus on one product. And I've got three separate products. They're making $18 a month.

而且由于Snapper并不需要你持续投入大量时间

And since Snapper doesn't really require a lot of your continual time

是的。

Yes.

理论上，我可以想象，在接下来的十年里，你可能会逐渐扩展到拥有七个产品，只要它们不全都是订阅制。就像你说的：'没错，我只花时间打理其中两三个，但它们都在赚钱。'

In theory, I could imagine, like, over the next ten years, you ballooning up to having, like, seven right as long as they're not all subscription based and it's like yeah no I only spend time working on two or three of them right yeah they're all making money

完全正确。我认识很多人开发了大量应用，甚至几十或上百个，它们不需要太多维护，却能持续增长并带来收入。所以应用是一种途径，尽管是一次性付费，却几乎不占用你的时间，我认为后者更有价值。

absolutely I have known a lot of people who make a bunch of apps like tens or even hundreds they don't need much maintenance it just keep growing and bringing revenue so app is a way and it's even though it's one time budget it doesn't require much of your time which is I think more valuable.

你认为为什么公开构建的方式如此成功？因为我刚刚刷了你的推特，老兄，你发了那么多推文。我知道很多人都在公开构建，这已经不是新鲜事了，人们多年来一直在这样做，以至于现在几乎有点过时了。就像你只是百万独立开发者中又一个在推特上分享收入和营销策略的人。但对你来说，这很有效。你获得了大量点赞，粉丝数也暴涨。

What do you why do you think approach to building in public is so successful? Because I'm like just scrolling through your Twitter dude and you've got so many tweets and I know a ton of people who build in public and it's like it's not a new thing, People have been building in public for years and years and years to the point where now it's almost like passe. It's like you're you just one of a million indie hackers tweeting about your revenue and your marketing strategies. But for you, works. You're getting a ton of likes, your follower count is blown up.

为什么你认为这对你有效，但对其他许多人却无效？

Why do you think it's working for you and it doesn't work for so many other people?

我发现尽管很多人像我一样在公开构建产品，但他们并没有获得关注，我经常谈论这一点。总结来说，我认为我推文内容的创意性能够激发人们对我所做事情的好奇心。举个例子，早期当我只有几百粉丝时，我用JavaScript做了一个有趣的小水模拟，那只是我为了好玩而做的东西，但因为它是如此奇特和富有创意，看起来如此有趣，所以吸引了人们的注意力。因此后来当我公开构建时，我觉得无论我做什么，都必须特别，必须是人们从未见过的东西，或者能让他们好奇的东西，或者是他们以前无法做到的东西，这样推文才会获得关注。我认为这是其他人难以获得的。DeadGutios是一个无聊的产品，但Black Magic和Snapper就有点意思，因为它们触及的市场领域我认为以前不存在类似的东西，这让人们对产品产生好奇，然后他们想尝试。事实上我构建macOS应用也对此有贡献，我认为人们使用网页应用太多了，已经有太多网页应用了，而macOS上的东西会更具吸引力、更美观，我觉得他们更喜欢。

I find that even though many people are doing the same thing in building public as me they did not get the the attraction and I talk about it a lot. In conclusion I think there's something about the creativity that of the stuff that I tweet that trigger people to be curious about the stuff that I do so let's let's take an example when the early days when I have only a few 100 followers I built something fun with JavaScript a little water simulation so it was it was something just I do just for fun but because it was so strange and so creative and and it looks so fun got people attention so like later on when I build in public I feel like no matter what I do it has to be special it has to be something that people have never seen anywhere or something that make them curious or something they was wasn't able to do before then the tweet will get attention so that is something I think will be difficult to get for other people. DeadGutios is a boring product but black magic and snapper is kind of interesting because it touches on the market where I don't think there's anything exist like that before it make people curious about the product and then they want to try the fact about I build macOS app also contributed to it I think people use web app too much like there are already a lot of web apps and something on your macOS it will be more engaging and and and more beautiful and I think I think they like it more.

这并非巧合，我的意思是，公开构建的主要场所可能是在Twitter上。但如果每个在Twitter上公开构建的人都链接回他们的网站、应用或新闻通讯，人们就需要付出额外努力才能看到他们在做什么。但如果你在公开构建，并且你在Twitter上构建的东西是一个Twitter产品，每个人都能看到你出色的个人资料，看到这个很酷的横幅，就像是一个直接的演示，那么你就拥有了巨大的公众可信度。对吧？每个人都能想象自己使用那个产品并从中受益。

It's there's no coincidence that I mean probably the main place to build in public is on Twitter But if everyone building in public on Twitter is then linking back to their website or they're linking back to their app or they're linking to their newsletter, there's extra effort that people have to go through to see what they're doing. But if you are building in public and the thing that you're building on Twitter is a Twitter product, and everyone sees your awesome profile, and they see this dope like banner, like, it's just sort of this direct demo, then there's a tremendous amount of public credibility that you have. Right? Everyone can kinda see themselves using that product and benefiting from it.

是的。我在Twitter上投入了大量精力。完全投入。它就是我的一切。所以我做的每件事，我都会在Twitter上分享。

Yeah. I I heavily invested in Twitter. Totally invested in. It's everything. So everything I I do, I I share it on Twitter.

是的。

Yeah.

哦，这很聪明。我的意思是，内容也非常多样化，因为如果我关注你的Twitter，我看到的不仅仅是一样东西。你好像有三四个不同的产品在推文中提到。几乎都是视觉化的，所以有很酷的东西可以看。作为一个关注者，我也是你的用户，所以你推文的内容对我来说是相关的，因为我在使用你的产品。

Oh, it's smart. I mean, got such a variety too, because it's like if I follow your Twitter, I can it's not just like one thing. It's like you've got three or four different products that you tweet about. Almost all of them are visual, so there's cool stuff to look at. And as like a follower, I'm like, I'm also your user, so you're like tweeting about like stuff that is relevant to me because I'm like using your products.

然后你还会推文分享你作为独立开发者的进展，庆祝你的成功，寻求帮助。比如，你会问'在哪个subreddit发布Snapper最好？'或者'我要发布了，这样可以吗？'所以你真的很投入，内容种类非常丰富。相比那些只专注于一件事并且总是只推文那一件事的人，你给了人们半打理由来关注你。

Then you're also tweeting about your progress as an indie hacker, celebrating your successes, asking for help. You're like, hey, what's the best subreddit to post Snapper in? And hey, I'm gonna launch, can I do this? So you're like really engaging, it's just like a huge variety of stuff. And so there's like you've given people like half a dozen reasons to follow you, as compared to someone who's just like working on one thing and just tweeting about that one thing all the time.

这就像是，好吧，现在我有一个关注你的理由了。但如果我觉得无聊，就不会再回来了。

It's like, well, now I have one reason to follow you. And if I get bored, I'm not gonna keep coming back.

我也很喜欢你说的，你非常注重制作有趣的东西。托尼，你听说过荒谬的电车难题吗？

I also really like what you said that you have a big focus on making things that are fun. Tony, have you ever heard of absurd trolley problems?

马上要推出一个新网站了，对吧？互动网站，一个有趣的新网站。是的，新网站做到了，对吧？

There's a new website coming out for that. Right? Interactive website, a new fun new Yeah. New did that. Right?

尼尔玩得很开心。

Neil had fun.

他是，他是

He was he was

new.fun，是的。

new.fun. Yes.

那很有趣。是我做的。

That was fun. I did that.

而且，这真的很棒。是的。荒谬的电车难题，你知道，这只是一个古老的哲学问题，就是你看到一辆电车开过来，它会撞死三个人，但你可以拉下拉杆，这样它就只会撞死一个人。但你就得承担这个后果。

And, like, that's awesome. Yeah. Absurd trolley problems, it's, you know, it's just this old philosophical problem where, you know, you see a trolley going. It's gonna kill three people, but you can pull the lever, and then it'll only kill one person. But then you have to sort of own the consequences.

不管怎样，他拿这个哲学问题，把它做成了一个有趣的游戏。最酷的是它传播得如此之广，以至于我一个连Hacker News都不上的朋友都发给了我。他不是那种技术宅，但他跟我说，哥们，这个这个这个游戏太棒了。然后我看到了，我就想知道这个叫Neil的家伙还做了其他什么东西。所以我就浏览他的网站。

In any case, he took this philosophical problem, and he made it this fun game. And the cool thing about this is that it went so viral that a friend of mine who doesn't even go to Hacker News sent it to me. He's not like that techy, but he's like, dude, this this this game is awesome. And then I saw it, and then I wanted to know every other thing that this Neil guy built. So I'm, like, browsing his website.

我玩了他所有不同的游戏，然后我想看看他在Twitter上做什么。所以我认为这里有一个巨大的未被发掘的好处，就是，与其只追求那些有用的、能赚钱的东西，偶尔也可以放松一下，做些有趣的游戏？而且做这些东西本身也很有趣。

I'm playing all these different games, and I'm, like, you know, I wanna see what he's doing on Twitter. And so I think there's such a huge untapped benefit of, like, you know, instead of just going for what's just, you you know, useful, what can I make money on, every now and then just letting your hair down and building fun games? Like, also fun to build those things.

作为一名独立开发者，你可以在你的任何作品中添加任何你想要的约束。你可以说，我要做得超级有趣，或者所有东西都要设计得超级好看，或者所有东西都要非常简洁。对吧？它不一定只关乎如何赚钱，也可以是关于其他任何方面，把你的人格或你自己的特色融入你所做的事情中。

Can you can add any constraint you want to to any of your work as an indie hacker. You can say, I'm gonna be super fun, or everything's gonna look super well designed, or everything's gonna be, like, really simple. Right? And it doesn't have to only be about, like, oh, how do I make money? But it could be about any of these other things where you put your personality or your own sort of touch onto what you do.

而且我认为，当人们这样做时，不仅让他们作为独立开发者变得有趣得多，也让他们的产品脱颖而出。比如Tony Denham的每个产品都明显带有你的风格，有你的印记。Peter Levels的每个产品都到处都是表情符号，非常有Peter Levels的风格，你知道。

And I think that, like, when people do that, it just makes it much much more fun for them to be indie actors, but also it makes their product stand Like every Tony Denham product is like very like obviously from you, got your touch on it. Every product from Peter Levels is like got emojis all over it. It's like very like Peter Levels ask, you know.

你总是可以

You can always

是的，你总是能猜到。猜猜看。然后你会看到其他产品，有人在模仿你们，你知道。或者有些人没有自己的愿景或兴趣，他们没有想过要把什么融入自己的产品中，所以就抄袭Peter Levels之类的。

Yeah, you can always guess. Guess. And then you can see other products, people are like ripping you guys off, know. Or like people don't have their own vision or their own interest. They haven't thought about like what they want to put into their own products and so they copy Peter levels or something.

但是当像你、尼尔、彼得或者其他有自己特色的人时，你们看起来真的玩得很开心。对于那些正在收听的独立开发者们，你有什么临别建议？在你的旅程中学到了什么他们可能在其他地方没听过、但你认为他们应该记住的东西？

But when it's like you or Neil or Peter or anyone who's got like their own touch, you seem like you're having a really good time. What's your parting advice for indie hackers listening to this? What's something that you've learned in your journey that they might not you know have heard somewhere else that you think they should take away?

是的，有一点是要专注于解决他们自己经历过的问题，如果他们还是自己产品的用户就更好了。作为一个独立开发者，你没有大公司那么多的资源，所以如果你是自己产品的用户，你就拥有了深入了解产品和洞察问题的巨大优势。所以要始终尝试寻找身边的问题并解决它们。

Yeah one thing is to focus on solving the problems that they are experienced by themselves and even better if they are the users for their own product so as an as an indie hacker you don't have a lot of resource as a as a big company so that if you are the user of your own product you get an a huge advantage of having a look inside the product and having the insights of the problems so always try to look for for problems around you and solve those problems.

解决你自己的问题。Tony Den，非常感谢你加入我们。

Solve your own problems. Tony Den, thanks a ton for for joining us.

谢谢邀请我。非常感谢。

Thank you for having me. Thank you so much.

你能告诉听众去哪里了解更多关于你的动态吗，比如你的Twitter、网站等等？

Can you let listeners know where to go to find out more about what you're up to, like your Twitter, your websites, etcetera?

那是tonydin.com，我的网站。在那里，你可以看到我的新闻通讯、Twitter以及关于我的一切。

That would be tonydin.com, my website. And in there, you will be you'll be able to see my newsletter and my Twitter and everything else about me.

太棒了。再次感谢。

Cool. Thanks again.