The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.
On this podcast, we have told the stories of the startup founders who reached unicorn status.
Today’s conversation, by contrast, challenges many of the traditional notions of the startup world.
Today I spoke with Lucas Lopatin, who after selling his first technology company decided to found Indie Build, a startup studio that invests in and helps other founders create (what he calls) anti-unicorns.
We talked about the advantages and disadvantages of building with a startup studio, why focus on bootstrapping a company before raising capital, and Lucas’s main critiques of the venture capital ecosystem.
This episode is full of opinions that break paradigms about technology entrepreneurship, so I hope you enjoy it.
Youtube Timestamps*
[1:10] - Intro to Startup Studios
- How did Lucas get into the fascinating world of startups?
After selling his company, he came close to starting a unicorn startup idea, and he even had some Venture Capital funds interested in investing, but he did not end up doing it.
- Lucas told us what that idea was and why he ultimately did not bring himself to start it.
He started Indie Build in 2021, a context of many excesses in Latin America’s startup ecosystem, and he chose a very shrewd mantra: “create anti unicorns.”
- Lucas explained this idea of anti unicorns to us.
He has several friends who are investors and founders who have raised venture capital.
And he is also quite critical of the ecosystem.
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What makes the least sense to him about the idea of building a unicorn?
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How does he advise a founder to choose between the venture capital path and bootstrapping?
In the US, startup studios have not had a great track record, at least measuring success as the # of unicorns created.
And they have several critiques, such as: studios take a large % of the shares, the best ideas rarely come from a studio, etc.
- What did he learn from the past experiences of other startup studios, and how has he shaped Indie Build’s thesis?
From the perspective of venture capital, or even startup accelerators, Indie Build’s deal is “bad.”
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What founder profile does Indie Build choose over other local accelerators such as 500, Platanus, Rockstart, or other international ones?
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Is it possible that a company under the Indie Build model that starts to grow because of changes in the market, technology, or other factors would want to change and seek to be a unicorn?
[26:00] - Market, Team, and Idea Validation
On the Indie Build Blog they have several essays on how to validate ideas, how to think about an MVP, how to think about cofounders dating, or how cofounders find each other.
Understanding that there are teams that come already formed and apply together, and others that need help connecting.
- What is Lucas’s framework or methodology for connecting people?
We talked about TAM, or total available market. Indie Build does not focus on enormous markets where VC-backed companies would go, but rather prefers small markets.
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What market size is interesting for a bootstrapped startup in which Indie Build would invest?
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How does Lucas distinguish a market where waves are happening versus a market where you have to create the demand?
VC investors have the famous billions, which are markets of billions of dollars.
- What is an attractive market in number or range for a Bootstrapped company?
There is a reason he prefers markets that are not “that” big… but more generally:
- What characteristics do the markets that do NOT seem attractive to him have?
On Indie’s website, they have a post with a list of business ideas and they mention six broad categories.
- What do those categories have that makes them attractive for starting a bootstrapped technology business?
Recently Lucas mentions on his podcast that he ran a brainstorming session of business ideas with AI and that he got to 100 industries.
But today everyone wants to start a company with CHAT GPT, and it looks more and more like a red ocean instead of a blue one.
- Which are the interesting industries where he sees the greatest opportunity to create startups leveraging AI?
We talked about validating business ideas.
- Lucas told us step by step the methodology he uses to validate business ideas.
Something interesting about this process is where to start.
There are founders who start with a solution in mind: I want to create a marketplace. Others start with the problem: I want to solve the lack of mental education. Others with the technology: I want to use artificial intelligence. Etc, etc.
- How does he think about this? Is there a better way to do it?
In my opinion, one of the things bootstrappers do best (based on Indie Hackers stories) is validate their ideas by selling products that do not exist yet.
- Lucas shared with us some ideas and best practices for how to do it.
We venture capital investors receive dozens or hundreds of pitches from founders who want hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire a development team and validate their idea.
- How much capital do you need to start a bootstrapped startup? And what does he tell those founders who may be very capable, but are not technical?
Indie focuses heavily on the US market, and few Latin American founders dare to go into this market.
- Lucas explained to us the logic of the focus on the US
Episode Mentions
You can find Lucas on LinkedIn
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