we got this message. It was a mix of shock and cries and joy, and we were sent probably, you know, some number of dozens of e mails to people who are in our space who have knew the significance of it. And yet, Thea, underside of the joy and the surprise, it was just a lot of that. There are a lot of questions, you know, questions about how it could work questions about whether it would be sort of inappropriate herring. After all, we largely advise companies on how to stay independent, how to build their own way, generate revenue and be self sustaining and be free. So we were,

as you might imagine, pretty wary of the appearance that Okay, well, now they're kind of owned, and now they know they have their corporate overlords and they will have the freedom to say what they want to say in there. They're gonna have to be chills. In a sense,

there is a growing movement of business owners who know that better isn't always bigger. They know that growth isn't necessarily bad. It should just be questioned first. Welcome to the company of one podcast. I'm your host Paul Jarvis, author of the book called Company of One. Your Ride or Die for challenging the current business Paradigm of Growth. Hacks and Scale at All Costs. Show picks up where my book left off and dives deep into why staying small might be the next big thing for your business. Join. Over 24 million businesses have used fresh books to simplify their invoicing and accounting. Go to fresh books dot com slash company of one all one word and enter company of one in the How did You hear about a section to get started with your 30 day free trial? No credit card required. Indy Hackers is a business run by Courtland and Channing. Alan and Channing joins me on this episode. He and his brother are both developers and writers, which is appropriate because Indy hackers is primarily ah, content site for entrepreneurs and founders is a community for digital business owners to connect and learn, which is what they've been doing for a while. Until one day they got an email from a tech billionaire who runs a business that powers payments online and that email would change their lives and the trajectory of indie hackers forever.

There's no very good way to explain the acquisition with Striped because as much of a useful function as we believe we were were serving, we're still, for the most part a glorified blawg, where we have helped the tell stories of sort of these underappreciated founders. It turns out that the CEO of Striped knew about us and was a fan of us, and he, pretty much out of the blue reached out to my brother Courtland with Justin, you know, all lower case subject line of an email acquiring the hackers. And so it took us completely by surprise. We didn't really know what to do and the thing that was the most interesting about it. Anything that's been the most illuminating and has done a lot to explain. The working relationship that we continue to have with Stripe is that in the world of acquisitions, they're kind of two types of acquisitions. There's a financial position where it's like we have a great big revenue stream, and the acquiring company wants to merge that revenue stream of some way kind of use that award to their bottom line. And then there's various types of strategic our positions and for us are two mission statements that is,

any hackers are to inspire people to create businesses that might not have seen themselves in that position is entrepreneurs before and for people who are new to it, or people who have specific problems to help educate them. And to put them in touch with other people in other resource is to help him succeed. And with stripe, they're just a payment processor company. And so for them, every new business that takes place online or that shows up and does well is well, that's a win for them, right there. Good enough at what they do that there's a pretty high percentage chance that a new entrepreneur will sign up with stripes. So this is one of those just very serendipitous, you know, alignments of visions, where for them they could see what we were doing. And if we continue to do our mission successfully and helped to inspire people and help them successfully run the small businesses, then that helps stripers.

Well, I mean, pretty much the only real engagement that we have with the corporate office is our various avenues that we can use to leverage. Their resource is they just have incredibly talented design team and and, you know, an incredibly talented marketing team and corporate team. So they're just resource is that we didn't have at our disposal in. Otherwise, it's just the two of us working autonomously. So technically, we are employees and stripe and a sense we definitely consider ourselves employees. But that's more of, ah, like, sort of a technical reality. Um,

whereas the day to day reality is that we both wake up, we both say the road map that we're currently on, you know, how well are you know, how good a job are we doing at inspiring and educating people? Write the two pillars that we are constantly chasing. And if we have changes to make, which we always do, we start thinking about how to make those changes. And very little of our processes are meetings of our decisions in any way really connect with stripes. Unless again we're reaching out for advice. We're taking advice from some of them and it's, you know, when you work with your head down, there's very little kind of surfacing to see the official employment situation and what it looks like

if you don't want to grow your business and hire a huge staff, you'll need trustworthy and valuable partners to keep your business running smoothly. That's my fresh books, and they're invoicing in accounting. Software makes sense. You can rely on them to take care very invoicing and even late payment reminders, as well as tracking all of your expenses. Think of fresh books as the accounting department. You don't have to hire the fresh books. Notification Center is like your very own personal assistant. It always lets you know what's changed in your business since you last logged in and what needs to be dealt with pronto like overdue payments. So join over 24 million people who used fresh books. Try for free for 30 days. No catch or credit card required. Go to fresh books dot com slash company of one all one word and enter company of one in the How did you hear about a section to get started? Solo. Though Channing and his brother Courtland basically became employees of stripe with the acquisition,

it wouldn't have even happened if it didn't line up with the mission in the hacker. Started with to inspire and to educate people to create and run small businesses on Lee because Stripe wanted to honor that, did this whole thing work out? So this is actually a pretty good example of a company of one working within a much larger business. But it on Lee makes sense when the smaller company has freedom and autonomy, like indie hackers does with stripe. So it has to be a win for both sides. Foreign acquisition like this to work. So every new business that shows up online it takes payments is a win for stripe and Indy hackers reaches those new small businesses. So wouldn't have been in stripes best interests from a P R or a positioning stance if, on day one of the acquisition, they turned into hackers into a walking billboard for stripe or basically just a corporate mouthpiece. And on the indie hacker side not having to worry about generating revenue or finding sponsors or running ads because striped covers their costs is a win for them. So this works. A tiny business inside a large business works. This alignment of vision on both sides is a win,

so companies of one as I wrote about in my book can work as teams within massive companies, but it has to be good for both sides in orderto work out well, just like we've now seen it does for indie hackers and Stripe Company of one is hosted by Paul Jarvis. Hey, that's me. If you haven't already, check up my book. Also called Company of One, which is available around the world in digital audio and physical formats. Thanks again for listening to the show.