How I'm Helping Startup Founders Grow Their Reach

Hi there! Who are you and what's your background?

Hey, I’m Peter, a man of many hats as you would say. I started as a self-taught software engineer, traveled the world a bit, became the lead developer for a software company, then switched back to traveling and became a marketer and indie hacker. At the moment, I’m kind of a digital nomad, while the emphasis is more on digital than nomad - even before the virus started. I’m paying my bills with writing, coding, and other little jobs here and there. My first side-project, startup name check also contributes a few Euros now and then.

What’s your newsletter about?

My newsletter is pretty simple. It’s called Where To Post and it provides actionable marketing assistance for people building bootstrapped businesses (so-called indie hackers) and startup founders. It started over a few glasses of Georgian red wine in quarantine. During a conversation with a friend on Telegram I thought: I got a number of checklists, notes, etc. on how to launch on several platforms like Reddit, ProductHunt, etc. I’ve collected the information or gained it from experience, why not share this information with other indie hackers?

I’ve seen numerous lists of “100+ places to post your startup” and they never worked for me. Either they were only minimally applicable to my projects or simply outdated. So, instead of making it a one-time firework in the form of a list people bookmark and forget I decided to make it an email list. The core idea is: One piece of advice now and then to ensure it is practical and leads to a successful little step in marketing.

Do you have a monetization strategy for your newsletter?

For now, I don’t intend to monetize the newsletter. If some sponsoring opportunities come my way I’m open to considering them, but it’s not a priority at this point. It doesn’t make sense to invest time in finding options to monetize it, while the content should come first.

How do you run your newsletter?

I had a look around and somehow stumbled upon Buttondown. It’s super simple - you write your emails in markdown (which I’m used to as a developer) and it brings even a free tier of 1k subscribers. Justin, the owner of this indie project, is super responsive to any questions and helped me a lot with the little details at the start.

What newsletters do you like reading?

My favourite newsletter is cron.weekly by Mattias Geinar. It's technical enough for me, well curated and surprises me regularly with cool new things I didn't know about. 5 out 5!

What goals do you have for the future?

I want to build and launch more projects. It’s an interesting experience. I’m also simply enjoying building projects and finding marketing options around the web. The marketing side of building a side-project is what many fail on. I like scouting for marketing opportunities, connecting with other makers, and writing. As an ‘accident’ of this process, I became a regular contributor to a number of large websites. This is a great opportunity to help other makers and drive attention to the idea of bootstrapping businesses in general.

Where can readers go to learn more about you and your newsletter?

There are a few places. I actually keep a number of blogs. Some are ‘real’ sources while others are only syndicated. My main blog is PeterThaleikis.com (yeah, I know, not an easy name). Luckily there are bookmarks and search engines. There is also a newsletter about my side-projects and business thoughts: https://peterthaleikis.com/newsletter.

Otherwise you can always follow me on Twitter, IndieHackers, ProductHunt, and of course GitHub. I’m always happy to hear from other makers. Flip me a message on my website.