Lessons from Indie Hacking: Lynne Tye of Key Values

I'm a regular listener of the Indie Hackers podcast, and this recently republished episode really resonated with me so I just wanted to pull out some key thoughts and choice quotes to share. The episode is: How to Build a Life You Love by Quitting Everything Else with Lynne Tye of Key Values and originally aired on March 21, 2019. It may be an older episode but Courtland, the host of Indie Hackers, says its one of his favourite interviews ever, not just because Lynne is one of his closest friends, but because of her solo founder story in building Key Values into the success it is today.

Lynne started Key Values — a platform that helps prospective employees understand what a company values and what their culture is like. I love the idea of this vision because I've found it difficult to tease out the real essence of an organization just by looking at its website or LinkedIn profile. This fills an important gap for job seekers that I'm sure I would want to use if I was trying to figure out my next career move.

Recognizing What Makes You Unhappy

Lynne started out following her sister's footsteps and was pursuing a career as a professor of neuroscience. Partway through her PhD, she had the realization that she was really unhappy and basically living someone else's dream, and not her own.

And I just literally had this "Aha" moment when I was like, I don't have to do this. No one's making me do this. This isn't a life that I have to live. So, I can choose, and I choose that I'm out.

Then leaving that it’s like, fuck, I’m starting from scratch. I’m 24, 25. I literally can’t lean on any of my previous experience. It’s scary to start over. And you feel so behind. I feel so behind, behind everyone else. But I think that in a way freed me. And now I know there’s no time to waste doing shit you’re not excited about.

Despite some big expectations from her family and herself, she quit this old, unfulfilling life and went on a bit of a soul search. I love that she realized she was in control of her own destiny, whereas expectations were just that — something levied against her that had no specific bearing on how she wanted to live. She joined the gig economy, backpacked across Southeast Asia, and even became an Electronic Dance Music concert producer!

On Having Enough as a Foundation to Build On

She eventually landed in the tech scene, working at a tech startup called Homejoy that helped her understand the industry and build up her network. She eventually learned to code and after doing contract work as a web developer. I found it super interesting that she was able to keep her expenses super low in an expensive city like San Francisco to ensure she could pursue this new interest.

I was very committed. I literally would walk from the Mission all the way through the Tenderloin to your apartment. And I never Ubered or never took a Lyft or anything because that costs money and I was saving money. I would just walk through all the needles and the bums who are like yelling mean things to me.

Scratching Your Own Itch

Another thing that resonated with me is that she built her business to scratch her own itch. I imagine when founders do this, they are way more passionate about solving the problem, and have a sense of where to start. When she started looking for a developer job, she was completely uninspired by the experience of getting to know if a company was a right fit. She'd spend weeks in interviews and still have no sense of what a developer's day to day is. And sometimes it's just a little push that's needed to do something about it.

"I should look for full time jobs." And so, I spent a week or two on a job search and it was just so shitty, and I complained about it so much. And it finally, like always, when you're like, "All right, Lynne, you've been calling me about this. Could you build a business around it?"

On Challenging Status Quo

When she was building Key Values she decided to join YCombinator, a successful startup incubator. I love her perspective as she went through the experience, because although she had tons of great advice, she was also knew how to filter what was right for how she wanted to live her life as a founder and indie hacker. There was a lot of pressure to take VC money and grow fast but she eschewed this common wisdom as she wanted to build this for herself on her own terms.

I had no experience building a company. I’d never – I was new to all that. So, it’s hard for me to filter because I don’t have any data to pull from. I don’t have a pre-existing mental schema or rubric to filter advice through because I’m new to this. But the one thing that I did know, is I know how I want to live my life and I know how taking investment will make me feel if I have people to answer to. I knew that part.

In her journey she's also echoed the running thread of surrounding yourself with people you want to be like, since you're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.

Just surround yourself with people you’d like to be more like and then naturally, just organically, everyone’s a chameleon you just end up absorbing what they do, and you just become that.

Maximizing Energy

She was also laser focused on what gave her energy and what took it away. For her, trying to pitch and raise investment was distracting her from what was important to her.

People really underestimate how much energy goes into doing Demo Day and fundraising. Since I’m a one-woman show, if I’m spending two months fundraising, that means no one’s working on the product, no one’s doing sales, no one’s growing developer traffic. And so, it was just a really expensive decision to me. And it wasn’t – and I know this sounds all hippy dippy and whatever, but I think the best way for me and making decisions is just what energizes me. Because I had two years of runway, it wasn’t an issue of running out of money, it was more of a concern that I would get frustrated or uninspired, unmotivated and quit. So that was what I was protecting against.

Key Values is now growing past $300K in annual revenue and allows Lynne to work on something she loves, and focus on the things she gets energy from. I’m really inspired to channel some of these lessons into whatever may be next for us!