Indiemaker

The idea started with potential.

I spent years running a software studio, building products for founders. Good founders. Smart founders with real ideas and solid software.

And I watched them fail anyway.

Not because the product was wrong. Because the cap table was a disaster. Because the co-founder relationship collapsed. Because the investors got cold feet, or someone moved country.

The software didn't stop working when the company did. It just stopped being used. And that felt like a waste of something real.

In 2013 I wrote "digital asset platform" in a notebook. And moved on.

For five years I moved on.

In 2018 I decided to act – not to build from scratch. I'd spent enough time watching founders start from zero when something close to what they needed already existed. I went looking for something to acquire.

The landscape was raw. Newsletters with a website attached. No real infrastructure, no marketplace mechanics. I made offers on three of them. In 2019, one accepted.

We improved the platform, rebranded as Indiemaker, and launched in March 2020 – right as the world stopped.

The pandemic arrived. More significantly, so did the illness of someone I loved.

A terminal diagnosis changes your sense of what time is for. Indiemaker slowed. Sometimes it nearly stopped. I won't frame that as strategic patience. It was slower than I intended because life required it.

What surprised me was what happened anyway.

Indiemaker kept growing. Not because of anything I was doing. Because the problem it solved was real.

Users found it. Told others. The platform developed genuine fans – the kind who email you unprompted to say thank you. The thesis was right. The execution could wait.

By 2022 I had enough space to rebuild properly. My partner in crime Sean – who I have driven absolutely mad with this project over the years, and who builds everything – rebuilt the platform from the ground up. We relaunched in early 2024.

Most exits are small. Most projects are small. That's not a consolation prize – for most people building things on the internet, it's the whole story. It deserves infrastructure that takes it seriously.

Today Indiemaker is a curated platform for buying and selling digital assets, side hustles, and small internet businesses.

Bootstrappers, indie makers, solopreneurs. People building quietly and exiting smartly.

Small exits are the point.