Alex West
I'm Alex, and probably just like you, I have a goal I'm working towards. Mine is to achieve financial independence in 2020. I'm working full time, as an engineer on a device NASA astronauts will wear when they go to Mars. In the past two years, I have launched ~20 products and made 4 of them profitable. I always keep it real and blog about my progress daily.@alexsideris_
Reached $1.2K MRR. Cyberleads is at $1k MRR (cyberleads.co) All the rest are at $200 MRR collectively May is gone. The fifth month of the year. Something huge happened. I broke into the $1k MRR club! Growth happened through Twitter and HackerNews. One of my blog posts blew up on HN. ...
This month, MRR went up to $825. Cyberleads is at $674 MRR. (getcyberleads.com) GitGardener is at $151 MRR. (gitgardener.com) EpilepsyBlocker is at $0 MRR. (epilepsyblocker.com) Here is what happened. Initially, this month was a natural continuation of the previous one. Boring...
My total MRR for this month was $367. $164 MRR for GitGardener, $203 MRR for Cyberleads. Costs came at about $100. STORY: This month sucked ass. I am very dissapointed in my progress, but at least I can reflect now and see what went wrong and avoid the same mistakes in the future. ...
My revenue this month was $410 in total. $149 for GitGardener. $261 for Cyberleads. Total costs are about $100. The past month has been crazy. Remember that goal of $500 MRR I had been chasing forever? Well, I nearly reached it already!! Here's what happened. Two weeks ago I launch...
My MRR is $123, all from GitGardener. Net revenue for this month was $185. This was the first month of the year and I'm pretty happy with it. Many things happened. I moved abroad, from Greece to Italy, Milan. I started a Full Stack Developer job full time, and it's going great, I'm enjoying...
Here we are. Ground zero. Not much to say, I have pretty much talked about the previous two years and my plans for this year in my two long articles. You can find them on this website, on the top right corner of the homepage. They are called "Two years of indiehacking" and "Plans for 2020" ...
Yuk. This was the last week of the month. Again, I left A LOT of work for the end. You know when you're on a run and you want to stop badly? Like, really want to stop? You have a sharp pain in your stomach, and your lungs are burning? You feel like you're going to fucking faint if you keep goi...
A strange week. A 50/50 week. Half of the week was super productive. Doing exactly what I have to do. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I woke up at 07:00 AM and worked three hours before work. I also ran every day. Studied Italian. Read a book. I'm reading "War of Art" at the moment. It's awesom...
Another week. Another tweet that brought thousands of visitors to Cyberleads. Another week with new paying customers. It seems like I've cracked level two of the game. That of finding a distribution channel and a (somewhat) predictable way to acquire new customers. Things are looking pretty...
This week was wild again. My latest monthly blog post went to #1 on HN. My revenue increased dramatically. Every time I put something out there that get's traction, I get a pump of adrenaline and endorphines. But after that initial pump, I want it to stop. All the notifications. All the em...
Yuck. What an awful week. Spent in spreadsheets. Wrapping up the lists for the month. Honestly, if I knew how much work is needed for these lists, I might have thought about it twice before starting Cyberleads. Kidding. Not really. Or am I? The whole week I was working 5 hours per day on...
This week was pure chaos. Last week I was saying how time is going by and I'm not making any real progress, but this week things went completely ballistic. A random tweet of mine went viral on Twitter, and around 10.000 people visiting Cyberleads. https://twitter.com/alexsideris_/status...
It's already week number 16. Week #6 was when I launched Cyberleds. Since then 10 weeks have passed. Week 1-2: The first two weeks after launching I spent them figuring out the product. I launched without a product, so I was running around like a headless chicken. Week 3: I spent one wee...
Sunday is always a day I enjoy. Nice, chill, relaxing. Maybe drink a few beers on the balcony in the sun. Plan for the upcoming week. Excitement. It can be sour though if what I planned the previous Sunday is not completed. Let me go and check what I said last week. Ok I'm back. Here it is:...
I feel nice.. fresh, clean, focused. I know what I have to do. No distractions. I have Cyberleads, that's it. B2B, low maintenance, in tech. Now I have to grow it. It's that simple. When it comes to creating small internet businesses, there are some steps along the way: 1. Idea 2. Build...
So this week was pretty boring. Last week, I came to the conclusion that I should stop fucking around and just focus on growing Cyberleads. I am literally just 3 customers away from my big goal, ramen profitability. But, this week I can't not do that just yet, since we are coming to the end...
Last week I was talking of launching yet another product. What the hell is wrong with me? This is my dilemma. Option 1: Have multiple products in different verticals that can re launch on PH on a rotating manner. Option 2: Double down on one product with low churn and make it a business. ...
Angelstep's PH launch was a flop, but that does not mean that it is not a good product. I had a few reasons as to why I think it's still a good product and a few ways to how I could validate it. Let's have a look and compare with Cyberleads. Cyberleads sends you a list of newly funded st...
So all this week I was working remotely from home. Initially I thought this was the best thing ever, but it wasn't. I have no clear boundaries of work, personal projects, and rest. Before this, I woke up at 05:00, worked until 08:00, went to the gym until 09:00, and was at the office by ...
Shit is crazy right now in Milan. I’m basically living in a ghost town. Yesterday they announced that the city is quarantined, which basically means there is control for entering and exiting the city. In the beginning I got flashbacks of Chernobyl, the mini TV series, but after looking it up I...
Finished the list at the last minute, on the 29th of February, at night. Sent it out the next day with a small feedback form. Straight away, one guy asks to cancel and a refund. I do it and I'm bummed out. Like, very bummed out. I never got so hurt by negative feedback, but this one was ...
It’s February 23rd, Sunday. This time next week I have to have the list ready. Shit’s about to get real, and the pressure is on. So far, I have everything sorted out apart from the emails of the CEOs. Now I have a bunch of company names and CEO names, and need an API that given a name, ...
This week was the best week of the year. Actually, the best week of 2019 as well. Maybe even 2018. Maybe the best week of my two year journey so far. TLDR; Validated a new product and instantly went up to $150 MRR. Plus, it's B2B and in tech!!! I found it! Long story: I am so happy and...
I think this week has been the best week yet. I may not have the numbers to back that claim, but my brain seems more calm, disciplined and optimistic. The reason for that is that my priorities are straight. Firstly, I made up my mind that I should focus on growing GitGardener. There is no reas...
This last week was ok. Not great, not bad. I continued to wake up at 6 and worked for two hours in the morning. Product Hunt Ship is not working at all, but maybe it's the product's fault, not the website's. But I don't know if I can justify $80/mo for it. I continued to tweet everyday, and...
This week everything went perfect. I stayed on track, and I'm solidifying those productive habits. Wake up at 06:00, work till 08:00, go to the gym till 09:00, be at work at 10:00. I'm basically living for those four hours before work every day. Work is super interesting as well, I'm learni...
Completely different week. If I were to grade week number one as a 4 of out 10, week number two gets 8 out of 10. I managed the gym situation, I go in the morning. Yes, at 08:00 AM.. Me, that used to wake up at 12:00 every day. It’s not as hard as it sounds to be honest. I wake up at 07:00 ...
This week was strange. For one, I had to get organized and find my where abouts. How to get to work, how to get back, what are the things I need for home. I started work on Tuesday, since Monday was a national holiday here, like in Greece. I was a weird experience. Actually, funny fact, work i...
So, this was the first week of the year, and it was cut in half. During this week, I moved from Thessaloniki, Greece to Milan, Italy. I also wrote the "2020 plans" article discussing my strategy for this year. As I am writting this article, I am getting ready to go to bed because tomorrow I start...
Wednesday morning. 6:30 AM. Quiet. Everyone asleep. The sun is out already. I remember in the winter, when waking up at this time felt completely unnatural. It was pitch black. Dark. The past wind has been insane. Once again, it was the end of the month, and I had to finalise the lists of the ...
The last days sucked to be honest. I have a lot of work - at my day job - and I haven't been able to work a lot on Cyberleads. To be honest, I don't have to. All I have to do is work is this: - Work on the new lists - Tweet and share my progress - Get feedback from existing customers ...
Monday. I love Monday. It represents change. A second chance. You can start clean again. Woke up at 07:00 today. I'm working now, before starting work at 10:00. I also just wrote my weekly post. Week number 21. By the way, all my anxiety as to the percentage of the year that has gone by is ...
Hmm. It seems like I kept my promise. I actually slept in two days in a row. Shame on me. But, I managed to squeeze some work in today before work. On a side note, I've been really improving my Italian, it's getting molto benne. Also, yesterday was one of the very rare days I didn't work at...
I needed sleep. Monday through Wednesday I woke up at 07:00 AM. I averaged 7 hours of sleep per night. That sounds reasonable, but I generally need at least 8 hours of sleep. Especially when I exercise. Today, Thursday, I tapped out to exhaustion. I woke up, and said "fuck it", and went back t...
Wednesday. I fucking hate Wednesday. It's bang in the middle of the work week. Today I woke up at 07:30 AM. I slept great. Last night, after work, I went for a run. I pushed myself a lot. By the time I was home, nothing mattered any more. I was buzzing. I slept like a baby. Today I'm a bit ...
Tuesday today. Both yesterday and today, I woke up at 07:00 AM to put in three hours of work on Cyberleads before work. Work starts at 10:00 AM. Today I want to write about momentum. I've talked about it several times, but it's a concept that fascinates me. I'm always thinking about it. Mom...
Building businesses is very counter intuitive. Our logic often leads us to do things that are actually harming our progress. Although I had read about every single one of these points, I had to learn the hard way about them. That is by losing months on end on each one. - When ideating, don'...
Life is a struggle. I remember hearing that many times growing up. I always thought it was some melodramatic bullshit. But now that I'm getting older, I'm thinking that it may be true. Not that life is hard and therefore turns our life into struggle. But that we need struggle in our life. Even...
Today I woke up super late. I was having a beer through Zoom with my best friend from Greece until about 1AM, so I woke up today at about 9:00AM. I just opened my work laptop. I didn't get anything done today. I might do some stuff during lunch break or if I have some downtime during the day. ...
This morning I woke up and saw the latest UFC fights. The main event was Ferguson vs Gaethje. Ferguson is an unpredictable monster with unlimited cardio and an iron chin. Gaethje is a pure bred fighter, that never takes a back step and is not afraid to throw himself into the fire. Gaethje won....
Retention is more important than growth. That thought always pops in my mind. Even on my run today. It kept coming to me. My revenue is large enough as it is. And I'm sure my revenue will increase in the future. But the best way to grow is with users that stick around for a long time. If yo...
I waited for a couple of days before writting a new blog. The reason is that I was very stressed after my last article went viral on HackerNews. This blog would have been a lot more emotional. Every time I put something out there that get's traction, I get a pump of adrenaline and endorphines....
In the past week I haven't done much. Haven't tweeted. Haven't coded. Just collected the lists and sent them out. Although I rested, mentally I didn't rest much. I feel this sense of urgency, that I have to keep the ball rolling. Right now I'm relevant. People remember who I am. The more time ...
Still working on the list. It's Wednesday today and the 1st of May is on Friday. I can send it out on Friday evening though, as all my customers are either in Europe or the US, which means they are either with me or behind me - time wise. I'll go now to continue.. Wanna hear a random fun...
Whooof. Today I woke up tired as fuck. I worked four hours before my main job, and then another three I think in the evening. On the list that is. I'm on track though, if I keep up this pace until Friday. Work is also stressful. We are working on a Covid-19 remote patient monitoring syst...
This is the last week of the month. As always, I have left quite a bit of work for the last minute, so I have some catching up to do. Today I woke up at 05:00 AM and continued with this month's list. I'll have to continue at this pace all week long. But at least I'll be able to relax when t...
At last my notifications have stopped on Twitter. The past few days have been crazy. It's nice and refreshing to have peace and not multiple notifications and messages every few minutes. Now I can concentrate again. I can work again. That is exactly what I'll do today, work on the list o...
I knew it. Someone already copied me. I'm not mad at them, but it just put me off. I want to share my journey, and I've always shared the good and the bad. But I'm maybe a bit naive, sharing the good stuff like that. Dunno. If I kept quiet, I wouldn't have been copied. But, I wouldn't ha...
The last two days have been surreal. My twitter exploded unexpectedly from a random tweet. My Twitter followers doubled. My MRR doubled. https://twitter.com/alexsideris_/status/1252656159636545538 It's funny cause late last night I went into a bit of a panic mode. I tweeted that I got a $10...
Startup life is a rollercoaster. Especially in the early days. Both results-wise, and of emotions-wise. Yesterday, reality grounded me in it's most eloquent way. That is by punching me in the face. A tweet of mine went viral on Twitter. Well, for my standards at least. Around 1K likes wi...
I can't seem to pull the trigger when it comes to cold outreach. It's one of those things that I don't like, but then again, who likes it? That's the difference between people that make it and people that don't. The latter prefer not to do it and stay comfortable. I find that the best wa...
Today I woke up to a pleasant surprise. A $50/mo subscriber! I asked him where he found Cyberleads from, I am waiting for a response. Maybe it was Quora. Maybe it was ProductHunt. Maybe it was Reddit. We'll see. I started reading a book called "Traction" yesterday. It's co-authored by th...
I'm always rested on Sunday, so I end up going to bed late. So I'm always tired on Monday morning. That sucks. Today I have to follow up with a guy on LinkedIn. That's it really. I also have to post on Quora and Tweet like I do every day. I still have not made my list yet. That's bad. That'...
Friday. Thank God it's Friday, right? Lol. Yesterday I ditched a book I was reading. It's called "Skin in the game". It's a business book. What I hate about some books, is that you can tell they are stretching what they want to say. They are trying to hit their desired number of words. L...
Yesterday I finished with my initial list of prospects. Out of ~50 companies, I found people to connect in ~25 of them. All in all, I managed to have one discussion, which was pretty helpful to be honest. Another guy is always telling me he will subscribe and he never does. Now he came back an...
Haha. Woke up, opened up LinkedIn and saw a message from someone roasting me. I asked for his feedback and said that I respect his time and that I would be happy to pay for it as well. The problem that I made a stupid mistake. I got his name wrong because I was copy pasting the message and...
I feel a bit better now that I committed to direct sales for this month. I know that it's not pretend work. It's actual work. Just get some customers. I have two people that are interested, but I don't want to jinx it. Unless they actually subscribe, it's all talk. Right now it's 07:00 A...
Morning! Just finished the weekly blog post. We are half way through the month. I need to get going. I just made my LinkedIn profile more complete, now I'll go and connect with people on LinkedIn. Bye!
Yesterday I started reading "Skin in the game". It's a very controversial book, written by an eccentric entrepreneur, Nassim Taleb. His main thesis in this book is that theory is bullshit, and that any kind of academic theorem is based on an oversimplified version of reality. Hence, bullshit. ...
Today I started reaching out to people on LinkedIn. Also, I decided I will tweet about everything on Twitter. I will tweet the way I blog. I got good feedback for my tweet storm yesterday, so that motivated me. And by good feedback, I mean ONE comment saying "thank you for being transparent...
Hey. It's been a while since I have been in a bit of a rut. Yesterday and today, I woke up at 08:00 AM. That's far too late, since I start work at 10:00 AM and my goal is to work 4 hours on my own stuff. Yesterday was one of my worst days ever. I felt like shit when I went to bed. At least I w...
I often panic. Especially before this corona thing. I felt like I had to do things fast. "In two months I want to be ramen profitable" or "This time next year I want to be a nomad" Of course, timelines like that are not realistic. If everything I did went according to plan, I would ha...
So, yesterday I defined my target customer. Agencies that help startups go remote or hire remote developers. I started searching manually on Google, but boy was that tiring and hard. Had collected two companies in about 20 minutes. No bueno. So I went, and found about ~60 that are quite goo...
Monday, 6th of April, 2020. Today marks EXACTLY the end of my three month trial period with my company. They want me to continue here, and I'm very happy for that, since I am learning a lot. The only way I would have been caught in a dilemma is if I were ramen profitable and I could beco...
Yesterday, I was looking into direct sales and was looking into Nathan Barry, Jason Cohen and Steli Efti. Here are two articles so you have an idea: https://marketingexamples.com/direct/jason-cohen-sales https://nathanbarry.com/sales/ And two talks: Steli Efti on IndieHackers: h...
Today I realized something very, very cool. One of my customers, who has been a customer for 2+ months now, since the day I launched is a startup from Toronto that's making 1-10 Million dollars in revenue every year. Wow.. I have a million dollar company as a customer! Seems like my goal fo...
<i>April 4th, Saturday</i> Today I got up in the morning super pumped to write a lot of blog posts. Right now, it's 10:00 AM, sunny outside, Frank Sinatra in my headphones :) Today I am going to write on weekly post I owe, one monthly post for March, and a mega post for Q1. The reason I ...
I missed a few days, the reason being that I was compiling the list of startups for March for Cyberleads. The funding rounds did not take a hit from the covid situation, if anything, it increased. One reason for that may be that they are pushing to finilize deals before things get more craz...
I'm not going to be building anything new. I'll focus on Cyberleads. That's it. Period.
Bad start to the day, I woke up at 08:00 AM. Ever since I started working from home due to Covid-19, I sleep like a log. No stress, no nothing. So some times I don't even hear my alarm clock. Luckily, since I aim to get up at 05:00 AM or 06:00 AM, I never sleep past 08:00 AM. That's when my ba...
OK!!!! Let's report our finding and conclusions for Angelstep and compare with Cyberleads. - Name: Cyberleads - What:Monthly newsletter of newly funded startups - Launch: ProductHunt (150 upvotes) - Results: ~1000 unique visitors, 10 paying subscribers. - Name: Angelstep - What: Mont...
Let me be honest, I think I have anxiety the last few days. Although I have written about it in my blog post "plans for 2020", in the top right of the homepage, I fell into the same trap. The trap being placing non actionable goals. Every single time I have seen some "success" it was when I...
New me.. aaaaaand.. I woke up at 2 hours later than I wanted! 08:00 AM :( Anyway, I did most of what I wanted. I launched Angelstep on Facebook and it got a bit of traction. Some interest, but no paying customers. Tomorrow I launch on Reddit. If I get 0 customers, that's it, I leave i...
It's funny how a bit of blogging get's you on the right track mentally. Yesterday, after writting about my laziness and articulating what I've been doing wrong the past week, I slept like a baby. Today it's Sunday, March 22nd. This time last week I was getting ready to launch Angelstep.c...
Let's be honest here. I have started to slack off a bit. I had a small notebook where I write what time I get up in the morning, if I work out and how many hours I work out every day. I write in green what is good, in red what is bad. I have stopped doing it. Basically, ever since I star...
Yesterday was Angestep's epic fail launch. On the other hand, Cyberleads is doing ok, I still have 7 paying customers for $29/mo. However, I truly believe that Angelstep is a good idea, I see so many people paying for databases of investors and such. I am certain. Although my PH launch w...
So today I launched Angelstep.co, it didn't go well. I got up at 05:00 and had 4 hours to prepare. 09:00 in Milan is 00:00 in San Fransisco. I prepared everything, the landing page wording, the product hunt tag line, the image, the description, the images, the initial comment. I also pr...
Wednesday, March 11th, 2020. Since Monday, I have been working remotely from home, they forced us to because of the corona virus. This gives me theoretically a lot more time, but the truth is that I don't feel that motivated the last two days. Monday sucked, I worked from my bedroom and ...
Sunday. Went to bed last night at 01:00 AM. For me, nowadays, that's my definition of being a bad boy. I woke up in the morning and created a small feedback survey. My mind was all over the place, and my question where way too many and too specific, so I went for a walk. It's difficult to a...
February 29th.. Tomorrow is March 1st, which means I have to send out the first list to my nine paying customers. (they were ten, but one of them asked for a refund because he was FURIOUS he didn't receive the previous month's report upon sign up) I simply did not have one, so offered him a re...
I hope my manager doesn't read this, but if you do, sorry Marco! :D All jokes aside, when you work, you always have a few moments of downtime when you have a mini break at your computer. At those times, ideas come to you. Anyone that has travelled on a bus, train or plane with no TV, book o...
Yesterday I was stressed because I could not sort out the email collection situation for CyberLeads. But fortunately I found a great service and the results are pretty good. You send a request with name and company name and it gives you the email. For example, Alex at CyberLeads and it resp...
Today I woke up at 04:30 AM. I wanted to put four uninterrupted hours into CyberLeads before work. Although it sounds extreme, keep in mind that I went to sleep at 08:00 PM. So I slept 8 hours, which is normal. I woke up and did what I talked about yesterday. Applied many filters to ensure ...
Wore up early in the morning, 6 AM. I’m going to pump out some leads. Yesterday morning I tried to get some leads from online resources and enrich them and add them to the list. It took forever… Like, 5 leads in two hours… This can't be happening. This is not feasable. I’m panicking. Today ...
Today I went to work and I was the happiest I’ve been in a very long time. I’m so proud and everything seems nicer. The city, the people, the weather, the future. Everything is great. I went to work and wanted to work hard, since last week I was sick for the first part of the week and in the...
So yesterday was a crazy day, I launched a product at last! And guess what, I think I validated it already! It's in the lead generation space, a monthly newletter with a list of hundreds of startups that just raised money. Three people subscribed for $29/mo and about another three were aski...
At last this illness is wearing off, today I feel like a new man.. I'm still struggling with the validating proccess. I know some people fear launching but I just wanna launch. Here is my situation. I have a space that is already validated. Lead generation. I have an idea that is already...
Wow, so I missed a few days again. The reason is that I got sick, which is something that I was actively trying to avoid. I went to the library the other day and some motherfucker was sick and coughing and sneezing next to me. I was furious but I didn't say anything and didn't get up and leave...
Yesterday I sent many instagram DMs and emails. I got replies and many are interested. Of course, interested does not mean a done deal, many times I get back to them and they don't reply, so I followed up with some yesterday. So far I have -theoretically- one affiliate deal (50/50 split) with ...
It's 5:30 AM. I went to bed one hour earlier in order to get up one hour earlier. Now I have three hours to work before going to the gym at 8:30. Yesterday I sent just a few DMs to Instagram accounts that post programming memes and such and asked them if they would be interested in an affiliat...
Yesterday I sent a few messages to large instagram channels that have a big following in programming. You know, like instagram accounts that post programming memes and shit. Got a few responses, and I'm in talks with someone about an affiliate deal. Basically, GitGardener is at around $200/mo ...
Missed the previous days, please don't ask why. It's funny how one day of going out and changing your sleep can change everything. Momentum is like walking on a rope, there is no balance, you are either getting closer to your goals or not. I'm back now and will be blogging daily. With a new fo...
Yesterday I went out for a beer with my colleagues and although I had a great time, I came home later than usual, and slept like shit. I also had about an hour's sleep less, so in the morning it was the first time I actually thought about sleeping in. If you had asked me about a month ago, ...
I remember once reading that perfection is not when there is nothing to add, but when there is nothing to be removed. While brainstorming about my new product, I had fell in the trap of adding features in my head of what the product would do. But then, I realized I am assuming too many thin...
Monday morning.. I like it to be honest, the weekend was unproductive as hell. This week I'll focus on one idea only, so I'm not scattered all over the place. Structure. The idea is a tool that generates leads for your dev product. It uses APIs like GitHub API, StackShare API, Twitter API, ...
Have you seen the movie Limitless? If not, this guy finds a pill that makes him super smart and productive. He takes it, writes a whole book in a day, cleans his house, get's his shit together and goes to sleep. The next morning, the pill has wore off and he is back to being a useless wannabe wri...
Saturday.. I slept like a baby, 10 hours. When I woke up though, I didn't have that drive to work on my projects. To be honest, I did nothing. However, I had promised myself that I would leave the house and explore the city, so that's what I did. I took the tram, went into town and got o...
Today waking up was a real struggle. I was tempted to sleep again for another three hours. But these three hours are the most important hours of the day, working on my projects and working out. They keep me sane and happy. Eventually I got out of bed and did everything as usual. The gym sessio...
This morning went great. I woke up again on time, and did what I had to do. I'm getting better as well. In two hours I do what I did all day back home. Strip the bullshit and just do what has to be done. Emails, Reddit posts, etc. Went to the gym as well. To be honest the week is creeping u...
I just love this feeling. The last experiment worked. Waking up earlier in the morning and working then as opposed to working after work in the evening. You should do the things that are most important to you first thing in the morning! I don't feel guilty anymore, even though I put in 2 hours...
Today I did what we spoke about yesterday. I woke up and worked two hours before starting work. Honestly, it was the best decision ever. I really give it my all at work so when I get back home all I want to do is eat, relax, read a book, blog and go to sleep. This way, if I can keep up with...
This is the 20th day of the year, and this is my first daily blog. I feel like weekly blogs can make you slack off a bit with your introspection, so I’ll start writing every single day. That’s the best formula for forming habits for me personally. I am better at going to the gym every day than 4 ...