Channing Allen Profile Banner
Channing Allen Profile
Channing Allen

@ChanningAllen

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19,486
Following
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Statuses
1,790

Co-founder @IndieHackers I tweet lessons from my 50+ weekly chats with founders. Mostly how stuff works and how to make it work for you.

NYC
Joined December 2009
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
5 years
tl;dr 1. stop selling your time as an employee 2. start buying time: quit the job, consume less entertainment, etc. 3. reinvest your purchased time into making things that make money 4. reinvest this money to buy more time 5. rinse & repeat until you own ALL your time
@naval
Naval
6 years
How to Get Rich (without getting lucky):
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
To go from 0 to 1 as a founder, you have to learn how to wear all the hats. But to go from 1 to 2, you have to learn how to take them off.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
1 year
This is basically where I live. This little nook. Easily accounts for 50%+ of my waking hours these days. What's your setup like?
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
If you can't find time to make a project, then your real project is to make time.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
24 days
You don't have enough money my dude We're taking Indie Hackers to the fucking moon
@johnrushx
John Rush
24 days
I want to acquire IndieHackers and Product Hunt. Can someone connect me with the owners?
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
The most effective leaders I know are all relearners. You have learners, unlearners, and relearners. Most folks stop at learning. A fraction go on to unlearn what they learned, but stop there. This isn't an actual improvement until they start relearning. I'll explain 👇
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
Learning to code is way harder than we all make it out to be. I say this as a self-taught developer with plenty of experience teaching others. Do you need a CS degree? Definitely not. But do you need a community/mentor who can help you overcome unique hurdles? Most people do.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
1 year
It's like TechCrunch if TechCrunch were written, run, and funded by the actual players in the arena. And we're still just getting started. Seriously.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
Why people don't start projects: They underestimate what they can do. Why people don't finish projects: They overestimate what they can do.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
Create more than you consume.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
Your quality of life improves in proportion to your ability to say no.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
Don't become an entrepreneur because you want freedom. There is no freedom as long as there are problems to solve. Become an entrepreneur because you want to choose and control your *unfreedoms* rather than having them imposed on you by society.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
Working for yourself 👇 Day 1: Boom! Quit my job. No more boss. No more long commutes. Earthlings, brace yourselves for what I'm about to build. But first, a few episodes of that Netflix show everyone's been talking about. Tomorrow… WE BUILD. Day 30: T…tomorrow we build?
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
1 year
Human psychology is wild. I've seen it once a week for 6 years… never gets old. An indie hacker's success story (👋 @tdinh_me ) hits page 1 and people feel so personally attacked that they create false realities as a coping strategy. Positive-sum thinking is a superpower.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
15 days
🚀 ALPHA is the new MVP 🚀 You can now launch on IH! It's free this week while we fix bugs. Soon it'll be a small fee, ~$20. How: go to your product page, click "submit to top products" in the right sidebar. 3 launches scheduled for tomorrow so far!
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
the best thing about @NotionHQ is it stores all your stuff in one place the worst thing about @NotionHQ is it stores all your stuff in one place
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
As you become more competent and secure as a person, your ego shrinks and you crave less social approval. So think twice before envying anyone who regularly brags about their accomplishments. There's probably something they're not showing you.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
2 years
🤯 HUGE milestone… The IH newsletter just crossed 100,000 subscribers! For years we plateaued at ~30,000. But 2 years ago we broke through & never looked back. Despite: • $0 on ads • no marketing • only 2 part-time contractors (editor + graphic designer) Here's how 🧵
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
11 days
Yikes. Matt Mullenweg just had WordPress conduct a hostile takeover of @wp_acf (popular WP Engine plugin). WordPress powers 43% of ALL WEBSITES on the internet. And all are at the mercy of one guy with a vendetta. The dark side of founder mode:
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
asking someone if you can ask them a question is like sending them a blank email with the subject line "can i send you an email?"
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
The @IndieHackers newsletter just hit 70,000 subscribers! One year ago today the number was 41,000. AMA.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
20 days
- Workout: genetics - Diet: genetics - Sleep: genetics Please stop DMing me 2/2
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
I'm looking to hire a couple of super talented tech/biz journalists. They'll write for an @IndieHackers audience of 100,000+. And the team they'll join includes writers published in Rolling Stone and the New York Times. Know anyone? (DMs open)
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
1 year
3 weeks into our transition to a community-powered media company. Haven't shipped this fast since our pre-acquisition days. Thoughts? Suggestions?
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
When you work on a difficult thing: You'll generally overestimate its technical difficulty and underestimate its *emotional* difficulty. To do a thing right, even once, you have to become good at it. But to become good at it, you have to do it wrong, repeatedly. This is key 👇
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
5 years
Byproduct of this recession: *many* new indie hackers. Why? ❶ *Millions* are newly unemployed. A small % (at least) will start companies. ❷ VCs are crunched right now! New founders will find bootstrapping more attractive than bad valuations. ❸ 👇
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
Of all the people who resent having to market their creations, about 0% spend time scouring the Internet for the unmarketed creations of others.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
1 year
Heartbreaking story on IH today: This guy Jay Tan got laid off from his bartender job back in 2020. Had a bunch of free time suddenly so he built a SaaS. Because why not, right? Then this thing ( @GetZlappo ) took off. But… it was built on the Twitter API. So he went from $0
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
14 days
We agree, but don't worry we already shipped a solution:
@johnrushx
John Rush
24 days
@nico_jeannen I really wanna fix PH, Been watching their downfall for more than a year and I think it’s bad for entire startup world if they fall. So we need to save them and make them great again. I have a plan.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
life is so much better when you don't care what the president is up to
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
By far the best growth hack for building an audience: Make something people like and write your name on it.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
Wow. Twitter has been sitting on a goldmine for a decade, but they haven't been able to extract much of the gold. That's about to change in a big way. Quick thread… 1/
@TheHustle
The Hustle
4 years
Twitter announced the rollout of their new feature, 'Super Follows.' Here, users will be able to monetize exclusive content.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
2 years
It's discouraging how much time it takes to make great things. But it's encouraging how much time you can make for yourself by consuming fewer things made by others.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
1 year
July 16, 2016. There's an incredibly sad parallel universe out there in which we named the community "Wage Breakers" instead of "Indie Hackers":
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
23 days
Okay riddle me this: After you build your Product Hunt alternative… where do you launch it? 🤯
@Jonnotie
Jonno Riekwel 🇳🇱 🇳🇿 – devlogs.gg is live 🎉
23 days
It looks like 20 new Product Hunt replacements were started yesterday. So I’ll just put this here 👀
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
6 years
When you view the world as a series of outputs you form opinions. But when you view the world as a series of mechanisms you form strategies.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
To compensate for our no-meetings culture at @indiehackers we have what we call the "water cooler" — a meeting room (via Horizon Workrooms) that's open 24/7 where team members can join or leave whenever they like and chat freely about work or play.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
13 days
Wow. Morning of day 2. This is Hacker News level traffic. If you want eyeballs on your product the numbers speak for themselves.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
7 years
Behind the curtain at the @IndieHackers podcast with @csallen ! 🎙️
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
20 days
I still get DMs about this photo. Was 36 here. Best shape of my life. People have been asking about my workout routine, my diet & sleep habits, etc. Now I'm 37, and I'm fitter than in the pic. Here's how I keep in shape (workout, diet, sleep) while running a startup: 1/2…
@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
9 months
Standing on an active volcano 🌋
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
11 months
Does anyone else say "please" when typing commands to chatbots? e.g. "Please make an image of XYZ." Feels silly — I know it's 1s and 0s. But I actively struggle not to be polite. Unconsciously I think I'm worried AGI will go around collecting receipts when it shows up?
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
9 months
Standing on an active volcano 🌋
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
Layoffs and new tools have made no-coders one of the fastest-growing groups of @IndieHackers . They're uniquely entrepreneurial, but they also face unique revenue hurdles. I wrote about these hurdles and how no-code founders are overcoming them here 👇
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
Relearning is real learning. Hence Picasso's "Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist." Relearners are the true innovators of all ages and all disciplines. They're the doers and makers moving society forward.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
1 year
We're being active on Twitter again. Going a lot better than expected tbh.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
1 year
Whenever I type "indie hacker" into Twitter search I have a hard time believing the results. It's a major cultural identity with a life of its own. A respectable force in the startup ecosystem. We literally used to be a tiny blog like 7 years ago
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
A friend told me his hack for dealing with stressful events: "The line from that Batman movie — 'I'm not trapped in here with you; you're trapped in here with me' — I literally say that out loud a few times." I made fun of him (of course). But I just tried it and… it worked?
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
14 days
🤓 Stats, 1st day of launch (4hrs left): • Launches today: 20 • Launches tomorrow (scheduled): 37 • Votes: 300 • Pageviews: 2,031 • Top 3 products: 🥇 75: @getfernand 🥈 50: BoringLaunch ( @notifyShivam , @gamifyKaran ) 🥉 35: @trydeformity
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
1 year
New pod with Seth Godin is out! Topics discussed: 1️⃣ How he finds new business ideas 2️⃣ Writing 9,000+ blog posts since 2002 (on top of 20 bestselling books) 3️⃣ Exiting to Yahoo for $30M 4️⃣ His secrets to productivity And much more 👇
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
8 years
As of last night, no more ads on @IndieHackers ! 🙌
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
You know someone who's great at something you want to be great at. Fixed mindset is when you envy their talent and stand still. Growth mindset is when you envy their head start and get going.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
Many are starting online education businesses these days: courses, newsletters, videos, etc. If you are one of them and you want to make money, please internalize the following two points: ❶ people don't pay to learn ❷ people pay to *earn*
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
I love NFTs. Not because of NFTs per se but because of the great awakening they're causing: "So you're telling me these things are only valuable because everyone else believes they're valuable?" "Oh, wait until I tell you about the tree bark and cheap metal called money!"
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
Cold showers are the only thing I've experienced where ten different versions of me might walk in, but only one version ever walks out.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
1 year
we are so back
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
For best results when building projects: Stop starting and start finishing. For best results when consuming information: Stop finishing and start beginning.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
The best method for practicing gratitude is to study almost any era of human history.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
tl;dr instead of spending your life making more money, invest your money making more life
@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
5 years
tl;dr 1. stop selling your time as an employee 2. start buying time: quit the job, consume less entertainment, etc. 3. reinvest your purchased time into making things that make money 4. reinvest this money to buy more time 5. rinse & repeat until you own ALL your time
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
Everyone talks about how hard entrepreneurship is. But no one talks about how long it takes to *become* a good entrepreneur. Weird, right? It takes years to get good at sales, or writing, or coding. Yet we're mum on getting good at all-of-the-above? I blame VCs. Hear me out:
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
everyone's got such an uncompromisingly black-or-white opinion on whether NFTs are a bubble which is weird because NFTs 100% are a bubble
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
Entrepreneurs who use the wrong metrics. 👇
@blader
Siqi Chen
4 years
This may be the strongest optical illusion I’ve ever seen.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
A desire to escape uncomfortable work is the root cause of most business meetings.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
2 years
HERE WE GO Latest pod with @csallen is out! Just us, no guests. We talk about why Act 3 for @IndieHackers will smash Acts 1 and 2. Plus: - What it was like working at Stripe - How we spun out & became indie… again - 3+ ideas on our new product roadmap
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
2 months
@cmilesb If you like this, I recommend Ken Wilber's books. No one's better at synthesizing complexity theory into a unifying vision. Start with "A Brief History of Everything" or "A Theory of Everything." If those hook you, upgrade to "Sex, Ecology, Spirituality"
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
2 years
In 2021 I read 60 books. Ranked them from best to worst and found a surprising pattern: I discovered the best 5 books the same way: 🚫 bestseller lists 🚫 personal recommendations ✅ other books When a good book referenced ANY OTHER BOOK, I bought that book on the spot.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
Before the 2010s: - "Are you seeing a therapist?" - "Yes." - "Wow, what's wrong with you?" 2010s/2020s: - "Are you seeing a therapist?" - "No." - "Wow, what's wrong with you?"
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
To be interesting, be interested. To be interested, take all those problems you've been avoiding and force yourself to face them, one by one.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
6 years
I've never yelled so loudly at a comment section.
@nytimes
The New York Times
6 years
Silicon Valley is backing a novel idea: Instead of charging students tuition, students go to school for free and are required to pay back a percentage of their income after graduation, but only if they get a job with a good salary
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
Online communities: historically difficult to monetize. Most target penny-pinching consumers. But consumers are becoming more entrepreneurial! More are thinking & spending like businesses. Add the loneliness of lockdown? New golden age for communities 👇
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
2 years
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
10,000! 🚀 A welcome milestone in tough times. 👉
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
16 days
Hung out with a roommate I hadn't seen since college. He couldn't believe how much I'd changed. I used to be a lazy goofball. Hated math. Procrastinated on everything. Now I'm on the opposite extreme of all these qualities. He asked me what had happened to bring about all
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
2 years
Turning revenue off was a lot easier than turning it back on again. But way less rewarding.
@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
8 years
As of last night, no more ads on @IndieHackers ! 🙌
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
2 years
My 2 favorite concepts come from the Ancient Greeks. No English terms quite capture their meaning: 1. "Akrasia": to know the best course of action yet not pursue it. 2. "Enkrateia": the opposite — to do the hard thing when it's the right thing. Here's enkrateia via Dall-E
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
I have a work routine. It generally serves me well. Except that time last month when my girlfriend's Swiss parents lectured me for being a stereotypical American workaholic. Can't win 'em all. Anyway, here's the routine. You be the judge:
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
6 years
@AustenAllred This is hypnotically interesting. Kudos @AustenAllred .
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
I know we're not supposed to compare apples and oranges but f*ck it: Notion is the best web app. Come at me.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
22 days
🚀 The coolest feature on IH is getting a big update. I just counted, and 19,300(!) indie hackers have pages in our Products database for sharing revenue & company updates. Soon you'll be able to "launch" these pages to the community. Expect that 19.3k number to go way up…
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
11 months
I made a book trailer for my novel using AI! Still working on the final draft + there's a long process ahead with agent/publishers, so this was mostly just to play with new tech. Video: RunwayML Narration: ElevenLabs Took ~6 hours, start to finish. Wow.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
7 years
Safe to say many people will find a long-anticipated surprise in today's @IndieHackers newsletter (cc @levelsio ) ✈️ 🌎
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
5 years
Companies of one (to borrow @pjrvs 's term) are having their shining moment in this recession. Not necessarily because of how well they're doing. But because of how durable & adaptable they are even when things *aren't* going well. This is by design! 👇
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
@david_perell The best path to human flourishing is not through the pursuit of happiness, but through the happiness of pursuit. (Personality psychologist @DrBrianRLittle expounds on this in his book "Me, Myself, and Us".)
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
A total stranger told me he loved me today.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
Fundraising is applying for the race. Bootstrapping is walking up to the starting line without permission.
@APompliano
Anthony Pompliano 🌪
4 years
Fundraising is the starting line, not the finish line.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
the google chrome team has finally developed a feature for tab hoarders 😂
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
How much money someone has tells you nothing meaningful about them. How much status someone has tells you nothing meaningful about them. Here's what actually matters: The curve of the line graph connecting their past self, their current self, and their future self.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
Relearning is seeing what a thing is made of and then building it back better than before. Or trying, anyway. Because relearning is much harder than unlearning: "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one." —Sam Rayburn
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
5 years
@csallen how does it feel to know I was right all along
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
I often feel mystified at all the disorder in the world. Then I remember: Humans are hairless tribalistic apes who happen to be equipped with thousands of generations of accumulated cultural knowledge. The real mystery: How we've created all this order in spite of ourselves.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
1 year
lol this is how rumors start @levelsio
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
1 year
Minimalism bores the hell out of me. So I go all the way in the opposite direction. Maximalist workspace. Maximalist home gym. Maximalist daily routine.
@workspacesxyz
Workspaces
1 year
⚡️ @ChanningAllen co-founder of @IndieHackers "Overall, my workstation is a bricolage of spare parts I've accumulated over the years. Think Legos. I've experimented with different configurations and this is the best so far."
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
5 years
Question for no-coders (people building apps with tools like @airtable , @zapier , @webflow , @bubble , etc., instead of code): 👉 What is your main motivation for making no-code projects?
🚂 Fun hobby/useful skill
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💰 Build a business
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🧜‍♂️ Grow my audience
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🕵️‍ Show me the answers!
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
6 years
Just a few of the 🌍 indie hackers who met up this weekend in 🇰🇪 Nairobi, 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Edinburgh, and 🇺🇸 Chicago! This week: 🇪🇸 Barcelona 🇺🇸 NYC 🇺🇸 SF And more:
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
4 years
The belief: you have on-demand access to media. The reality: media has on-demand access to you.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
When you cut corners on product quality in order to scale, you kill your golden goose. Here are 3 basic guidelines we follow at Indie Hackers to keep the goose alive: 🧵
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
9 months
I'm so bad at vacations. In a Costa Rican "cloud forest" after my most intense work year ever. It's beautiful here. But. I feel like a motorized toy car whose wheels keep spinning when you lift it off the ground.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
6 years
An inspiring recursive function: The system you don't understand is made up of subsystems you do understand.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
pursuit of happiness < happiness of pursuit
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
1 year
I want this, except… a digital version. Like Google Sheets with tiny lifeweek squares instead of cells. Might whip one up in a couple hours over the weekend if it doesn't already exist
@r00k
Ben Orenstein
1 year
Just hung this poster next to my desk. Hoping it'll help remind me to make 'em count.
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@ChanningAllen
Channing Allen
3 years
I call it "infinite entrepreneurship." It's when you focus on ways to enjoy the process, not just the proceeds, of building a business. Which gives you the stamina to grow into the role. I wrote a piece on what this looks like in practice:
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