In this episode we talk to Zeke Gabrielse, solo founder and owner of Keygen, a licensing and distribution API. We get deep in the weeds of running a solo business (much can be applied to any solo-type career working on the same project), how he handled the worst day(s) of his professional life, and much more!

Zeke's Links
Zeke on X

Keygen on X

Keygen website: https://keygen.sh/

Jeremy's Notable Blog Posts

How to Build a Webhook System in Rails Using Sidekiq

That one time Keygen went down for 5 hours (twice)

Keygen is now Fair Source

No calls

In defense of linear

Self-promotion
Steering the ship

In this special crossover episode, we make a slight departure from our typical format to chat with Adrian and Yaro from the Friendly Show and Jason from the Code with Jason podcast about a topic near and dear to our hearts: organizing regional Ruby conferences. Adrian is the organizer of Friendly.rb in Bucharest. Jason is the organizer of Sin City Ruby in Las Vegas. And as long-time listeners may know, Jeremy co-organized Blue Ridge Ruby in Asheville, NC back in 2023.

A few episodes ago, Garrett Dimon shared the story of how he sold his SaaS product Sifter. In this episode, we complete the story arc by catching up with JD Graffam, the buyer and current owner of Sifter. JD is an agency owner who started buying SaaS product companies in 2012. We talk about how his background, how he got started buying businesses, and his approach to making deals and finding the right people to work with.

Relevant Links

JD's website
JD's Twitter
Simple Focus
Audience Ops
Sifter
Ballpark
Metalab
Garrett's Episode

In this episode, Jess and Jeremy chat with Radan Skorić, a long-time Ruby and Rails developer and team lead, co-organizer Ruby Zagreb, and author of the forthcoming book: Master Hotwire. We talk about Radan’s background in software, his discovery of Rails in the mid-2000s, technical blogging, writing a book, and technical aspects of Hotwire.

Related Links
Radan’s Blog
Radan’s Twitter
Book: Master Hotwire

This week, Jess and Jeremy get into the nitty-gritty of resource allocation for indie makers: how to make the most of your limited time, energy, and capital. As solo and small-team entrepreneurs, we constantly have to make tough calls about where to invest. It's not just about money; it's about what will actually move the needle.

They talk through the realities of running lean: how to balance building, learning, and staying sane along the way. From daily reading habits and favorite podcasts to managing information overload and keeping personal playbooks, they share the unpolished, behind-the-scenes strategies they use to grow without burning out.

If you’re bootstrapping, juggling roles, or just trying to make smarter bets with your time, this one’s for you.

In this episode of IndieRails, co-founders Ben Curtis and Joshua Wood share the origin story of Honeybadger, an application monitoring tool for Ruby on Rails applications (and many others).

They discuss their motivations for starting the company, the challenges they faced in the early days. The conversation also covers their approach to product development, marketing, pricing strategies, expanding into new markets and the lessons learned from their journey.

Honeybadger

Ben Curtis
Mastodon
Bluesky
LinkedIn

Josh Wood
Mastodon
Bluesky
LinkedIn

Our guest for this episode is Garrett Dimon. Garrett is a developer, author, conference speaker and multi time business owner. With some partners, he’s recently formed a company called “Very Good Software” where they own and operate several SaaS apps.

Garrett Dimon is a seasoned software developer and entrepreneur with a passion for front-end development and Ruby on Rails. His journey began in 1998, experimenting with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript before earning a Computer Science degree from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2000. Over the next eight years, he honed his skills in front-end development and information architecture through consulting roles with organizations of all sizes. During this time, he also shared his expertise through a column on front-end design and development for Digital Web Magazine.

In 2008, Garrett started his entrepreneurial journey and launched Sifter, a bug and issue tracking application built with Rails, which he ran until its successful sale in 2016. His experience building and selling Sifter inspired him to write and self-publish Starting and Sustaining, a book about building and running SaaS applications. After Sifter, Garrett took some time off from entrepreneurship and joined Wildbit and then egghead.

Eventually he went back on his own independent consulting where he helped clients Fireside.fm and Flipper. Little did he know that later on, he'd become part owner of these companies. In the fall of 2024 the one time business seller became the buyer. He, John Nunemaker, and Kris Priemer are operating Very Good Software, where fireside.rm and Flipper are core products.

Links:
GarrettDimon.com
BlueSky

Fireside.fm
Flipper
Very Good Software

Books

Recent podcast appearances:
Taking Over Fireside with John Nunemaker & Garrett Dimon
Master of Generators (with Garrett Dimon) | Dead Code

Our first-ever IndieRails guest returns to the podcast just shy of two years later. Joe Masilotti shares about niching down on Hotwire Native, changes in the related open source libraries, the direction of his consulting work, his parental leave last year, and the process of writing his forthcoming book, Hotwire Native for Rails Developers. (Special discount for listeners in the episode!)

Related Links
Twitter
Bluesky
Website
Hotwire Native for Rails Developers
Pragmatic Bookshelf page
Hotwire Native docs
Rails World 2023 Talk: Just enough Turbo Native to be dangerous