Marie Ng 🦙
@threehourcoffee
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🦙 Founder of @LlamaLife ⏰ Helping people focus 1 second at a time 🧠 Late-diagnosed ADHD 🎙 Co-host @TheWeeklyBuild 🫶 I love making things
Melbourne, Australia 🇦🇺
Joined April 2009
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My journey so far!
👩🏻💻 2019: learn to code watching YouTube
🌱 2020: solo indie maker, built & launched
@LlamaLife
🚀 2021: bootstrapped to 700 paid customers!
💰 2022: single founder, raised $680k pre-seed fr
@Jason
@CapitalSheep
👩👧👦 2023: grew the team to 3, built iOS app
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Cancelled my paid chatGPT sub.
Might renew again later, but recently been getting into these situations:
Me: can you help me with this coding problem?
CGPT: yes here is the answer
*lots of back and forth*
Me: could I also do it like <insert simpler way>?
CGPT: oh sorry yes
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My journey so far...😅
💸 2018 quit $200k+ job
👩🏻💻 2019 started learning to code by watching YouTube videos
🦙 2020 launched Llama Life!
🌱 2021 as a solo indie maker, bootstrapped Llama Life to 700 paying customers
📈 2022 raised $680k pre-seed from
@Jason
and
@CapitalSheep
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I'll never get over the rush from these notifications.
It's not the money.
It's the feeling that other people value THE WORK.
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@adhdjesse
Spends hours designing new daily routine
Pats self on back
Never completes day 1
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Hey all, so BIG news. Still processing but wanted to share...
Llama Life has raised a pre-seed funding round!
Was originally US$650k but due to demand it got oversubscribed to $690k 🤯
Led by Black Sheep Capital (
@CapitalSheep
) with additional investment from
@jason
Calacanis!
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@adhdjesse
I also have this thing where sometimes I hear something, but my brain doesn’t process it.
So a few seconds later I say “what?”
And then they start to repeat themselves..
But half way through I go “oh yeah” and start answering them 😂
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We did it!!
iOS app is now live in the AppStore 🎉
I am so excited and nervous at the same time!
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Waking up to this just never gets old!
It's not the revenue itself, it's that people value the work and that is a ridiculously good feeling 🥹
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Omg my heart is pounding.
Someone has shamelessly ripped off Llama Life.
The UI, the features, the NAMES of features. They haven't even tried to be different.
I put my heart & soul into making Llama Life. Not sure what to do, very upset right now 🙁
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Bit of weekend coding…
Doesn’t feel like work when you love it ❤️
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@NiallHarbison
Hi Niall, thank you for all you do!
Wanted to recommend Canine Lullabies! Their nursery rhymes with a heart beat playing in the background. You can find them free on Spotify.
My dog, Homer, used to be very stressed toward the end (rip my sweet guy).
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A year ago we introduced a Free plan, essentially a freemium model.
It did not work. Was just not sustainable.
So today I sent this email to our customers, saying the Free plan is no longer available.
It was pretty nerve-wracking. I was a bit worried there would be nasty
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Holy crap thanks everyone! 🫶
Yesterday:
"I don't think we'll do a Black Friday sale this year, too much effort, probably not worth it"
Today:
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My journey so far:
👩🏻💻 2019: learnt to code watching YouTube videos
🦙 2020: launched
@LlamaLife
!
🌱 2021: as a solo indie maker, bootstrapped to 700 paying customers
💰 2022: raised $680k pre-seed from
@Jason
,
@CapitalSheep
🎢 NOW: growing my startup to be the
#1
brand...
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Still my favorite smartwatch of all time. And my daily driver 😃
Anyone else still using
@Pebble
?
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Sometimes being a female developer is frustrating 🤦🏻♀️
(and it wasn't a custom integration)
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My heart is in pieces.
I lost my best boy yesterday.
He was 13 but it still felt sudden.
I know a lot of you know Homer as he was often in the background of my pics.
He was the sweetest, funniest and most loving little guy, and I feel very grateful to have had spent such a
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This mouse highlighting shortcut is a game-changer for me!!!
A friend (who's not on twitter) just told me about it.
Had to share.
Made a video to demonstrate.
Double click, then drag, to highlight words not letters.
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Less than 1yr ago, our conversion from Free plan -> Paid plan had fallen to ~1% (ouch!)
Today, we've gotten it back up to 15% 👍
(ignore the sales spikes)
Some stuff we did that helped below...
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If your startup is a subscription SaaS...
I know it's common to show the monthly equivalent for buying an annual plan eg '$x per month, billed annually'
But at $2.50/mth would it just be better to just show $30/year?
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I love making apps in the browser ❤️
No waiting for app store approvals 👮🏻♂️
Finish a feature, push straight to production ⚡️
Live a few minutes later 🎉
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Startups waiting for customers to come when they have done zero marketing
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Feels SO good to fill in that last square!
1000 PAID users goal...ACHIEVED! 🎉
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Launched a new feature this afternoon 🎉
And celebrated a (belated) birthday this evening 🎂
I’d say it’s been a pretty good day! 🥰
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My 'paycheck' for this last week 🤯💖
While this is certainly NOT reflective of a typical week - far, far from it - it has given me the confidence to keep going on this indie journey.
Thanks to all who made this a reality 🙏
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I might have gone a bit overboard haha.
When the delivery man dropped it off the box was open. So he said you better check it.
He waited while I pulled out each one by one 🤣🤣
Probably thought I was crazy haha
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Finally get to update the whiteboard!
900 paying customers!! 🎉
Thank you all, you rock 🙌
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Holy cow! This NEVER happens 👀
Must be putting out some good karma or something 💜
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Looks like Meta just released a llama / alpaca to-do list app.
Am I worried? No 🙅🏻♀️
I'm aware of some big competitors but am just staying focused on my own product, and making it GREAT.
Stay focused, keep shipping, keep marketing. That's the best thing you can do! 🎉🦙
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You guys are incredible. Thank you for all the support 🤗❤️
Will share updated numbers after the Lifetime deal ends.
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Was tempted, but decided not to get the new MacBook Pro.
My M1 Air (base model 8g ram) is an absolute beast and has handled everything I've thrown at it. Plus... No fan! 🥰
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I DID IT!
Just hit 500 PAID customers! 🎉
Thanks
@dsabar
for being Llama Life's 500th! 🙏
And thanks everyone for your ongoing support 🥰
Now I can crack open this bottle of wine I've been saving 🍷 (had been stored in a box to resist temptation 😂)
Not quite (currently 286 / 500) but saving this nice bottle of wine for when it does happen 👇.
It’s on my dining table so I see it every day.
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When you’re stuck on a coding problem…
Go for a walk.
If that doesn’t work…
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So excited to share the mobile app with everyone!
We’ve been testing and bug fixing all day 🐛
So close!! 😅
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@adhdjesse
I tell my friends I’m not hyper on the outside but my brain is pretty hyper on the inside.
And when it goes too fast it actually causes everything else to crash and hang like a computer.
And that’s when that spacey, foggy feeling kicks in.
At least that’s what I imagine
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When they said live and breath your startup I’m not sure this is what they had in mind.
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Startups waiting for customers to come when they have done zero marketing
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That feeling when someone thinks your app was built by an entire team and you’re a solo indie maker 💪
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When a customer emails good feedback, and you suddenly go from dog tired to let’s add a new feature at 9:25pm 😝
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Am not getting an M2 MacBook.
My M1 MacBook Air (2020, base model) is still an absolute BEAST and has handled every single thing I’ve thrown at it 💪
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I won a Product Hunt Maker Grant! 🥳
For a side project I built…a free noise generator, called “Shhh Noise” 🤫
Thank you
@ProductHunt
! And for the cool tee!
You can check out Shhh Noise here:
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Finished a new project!
Introducing 'Shhh Noise' 🤫👂
It's a free soundscape generator designed to increased focus and relaxation 🎶
I made it to learn about sound and will later transfer these learnings into
@llamalifeco
Any RT appreciated! Thanks 🙏
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After 6 1/2 months of building from scratch and re-designing the desktop version...
We have submitted our iOS app for Review!
And now...we wait 🤞🤞🤞
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The other day I looked at some coding interview questions from FAANG...and I swear 100% I would fail this interview 😂
On the flip side, I taught myself to code, built my own SaaS startup, and we have paying customers who love our product!
For me, Product is the end goal!
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My weekend project turned into a quest to make the most realistic, satisfying virtual fidget spinner 🤪
I'm pretty happy with it! What do you think? ✨
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Woke up to 10k followers this morning! ☀️
Thank you all for coming on this crazy startup journey with me, for all the support, and for making me laugh every day 🌈
Having Twitter friends and this maker community is just simply amazing - you keep me going! Thank you 💜🙏
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Absolutely insane day today. You guys are crazy.
Thank you 😅
🚨 Announced our Lifetime deal ($99) is ending in a few days and... 🤯
NOTE:
We're not offering this deal once the app launches because of the apple tax. But if you get it now, you'll have access to both mobile &
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One of those things where you think you've designed a simple UI for a feature, but everyone is confused... 🤣
The solution seems so simple but hindsight is always clearer...
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Re-designing our pricing page.
Told myself, get a template.
Ended up making it custom 🤪
Quite proud of the result :)
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I took a break from X bc I wasn't enjoying the content anymore.
But I really missed some friends on here so am back
I'd love to Follow some new folks!
If you love building stuff, showing your progress & supporting other indie makers pls comment below so I can follow you 🫶
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Still can't believe we got this twitter handle!
Just changed everything over 😃✨
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Hi all! I’ve got some huge, huge, did I say HUGE?? news to share for Llama Life 🦙
I don’t really know how to put it into words yet and it’s late here in Australia so am going to sleep on it…
But will tell you more tomorrow!!!
Absolutely stoked!! 😃
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So...last few days have been slightly stressful
Llama Life banks with SVB so needless to say I've been a bit distracted, keeping up with all the updates and worrying if / when we'll be able to access our funds
That said, I'm feeling optimistic. We've been quite lucky because...
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Last couple of weeks did heaps of technical SEO changes to the landing page!!
Learned a lot!
Here's some of the stuff we did...
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When startups spend all their time building features...
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On the home stretch!
Doing final formatting across all screen-sizes, notch / no notch, home button/no home button etc..
Hoping to submit the app next week!
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If your SaaS product has a relatively low price point, affiliate programs don't work (for context we charge $39 annually and $6 monthly, with affiliates earning a 20% commission)
After a year we decided to shut down our affiliate program.
The issue was that:
- affiliates
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25 min before boarding. Perfect time to add a new feature
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Sunday morning coding session. Let’s go! 😃
PS - spot Homer 🐶
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Nailed my latte art today!
Happy Saturday (in Australia 🇦🇺) everyone!
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#1
rule for naming your startup...make sure there is a corresponding emoji 🦙🦙🦙🦙🦙🦙
(jk - but some truth to it!)
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Hey all, had to have surgery on Monday so have been a bit quiet on Twitter. Now back home and taking a few days off. Everything went well, now to rest and recover 👩⚕️
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So keeps giving, and giving, and giving.
I built it over a weekend to learn some new stuff (and because I needed a little break from Llama Life)
Now, it is a constant SOURCE of traffic TO Llama Life.
Engineering as marketing is amazing 🚀
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Oooh people at
@stripe
have been checking out Llama Life 🤯
93 visitors from Stripe HQ in past 7 days...
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Currently sitting on 899 PAID users 👀
1 more to fill in the ◻️!
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Massive family gathering today, some who I hadn't seen in over 6 months...
Every single person:
"How's the business going?"
Me:
** hm, they probably don't know what MRR is, or Churn, or CAC, or LTV, or about IP rate limits... **
"Yeah, good".
** Eats food **
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Alright everyone, let's do this 💪
"The Big Indie Maker Black Friday Sale, 2021" is here! 🥳
A growing collection of best indie maker deals from the community 💗
Feel free to share, RT, add more deals.
Hope it's a great sales season for everyone! 🚀
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First time being the one to WRITE one of these letters 😃
Made my first hire for
@llamalifeco
🚀
Next year is going to be a blast!
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4 PAID CUSTOMERS away from hitting this long-term goal of 1,000 paid customers!!! Come on!😝
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Ok, I don't normally post about these things, but this is possibly the worst cold email I've ever got 🤣
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Just hit 850 paying customers for Llama Life 🦙🎉
Filled out another half of a square on the progress bar ▨
Now...no one churn! 😝
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Absolute bonkers as I never started Llama Life thinking that I'd raise money.
Bootstrapped it to 700+ paying customers as a solo founder after teaching myself to code 2yrs ago.
It started off as a way to practice my coding skills and all the stuff I'd been learning...
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Wow. Just had a whole family buy Llama Life!
4 Annual plans just came through. Same last names🩷🙏
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Hey guys, so last year I knocked up this Black Friday site in a weekend, to help everyone circulate their deals.
Any interest in it this year?
I checked and I still have the code, would just need to buy a domain and deploy.
100% free and self-service to submit. Let me know!
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Just when we thought we did the perfect new feature launch... 😆
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Ok so this week I messed up badly.
It was one of the biggest face-goes-white-panic moments I've ever had in my life.
I accidentally deleted users tasks, in Production 😫😫😫
But out of this super stressful event, two amazing things happened...
1. Our team got stress tested,
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Startup founder after realizing they spent 6 months building a feature nobody wanted
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One thing I was not prepared for, managing a SaaS, is the number of failed payments. There are a lot.
Thought subscriptions would be an easy, regular payment, but it takes a lot of management too
Usually the reason are "insufficient funds", "card expired", "declined by bank"
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