The Indie Hackers podcast has 290 episodes.
And in 2026, it barely publishes.
Courtland and Channing Allen built the best interview show for bootstrapped founders. Real revenue numbers, real failures, no unicorn worship. Then the cadence dropped off, and a lot of us were left refreshing a feed that rarely updates.
I get it. I built my entire indie hacker podcast diet around that show for years.
So here are 8 podcasts that scratch the same itch: founders you've never heard of, sharing numbers they probably shouldn't share, explaining exactly how they did it.
Quick heads up: the first one is mine. I rank it first because I built it to fill exactly this gap. Judge for yourself.
How I picked these
I listen to founder podcasts the way some people read the news. Daily, on walks, at 1.5x. So I have opinions.
Three filters got a show on this list:
→ Guests share real numbers. If a founder says "we're doing well" instead of "$40K MRR", the episode teaches you nothing.
→ The host has skin in the game. Every host here has built or sold their own business. It changes the questions they ask.
→ It's worth subscribing to in 2026. One exception below (I flag it), but the rest publish on a schedule you can rely on.
Feedspot-style lists rank 45 shows nobody checked. I actually listen to these 8.
1. Profitable Founder Podcast
Full disclosure: this one's mine.
I started Profitable Founder because I wanted what Indie Hackers used to give me every week: a bootstrapped SaaS founder walking through their actual numbers. Not "we raised a round and we're crushing it". The real stuff.
Every week I interview founders making $100K to $10M a year. A few recent ones:
- Marc, who bootstrapped Chatbase to $1M ARR in 117 days
- Filip, who runs Tally at $5M a year
- Arnaud, growing Breakcold past $25K a month
- The Sideshift founder, quietly doing $8M a year
I ask the questions Courtland used to ask. Where did the first customers come from. What almost killed the business. What would you do differently at $5K MRR.
If you miss the old Indie Hackers energy, start here.
2. Startups For the Rest of Us
Rob Walling has been doing this since 2010. 1,126 episodes.
That's not a typo. While other shows launched and died, Rob shipped every single week for 16 years.
He sold Drip in 2016, then built TinySeed (a fund for bootstrappers) and MicroConf (the conference where half the indie SaaS world met each other). And he still gets on the mic weekly to answer listener questions about pricing, churn, and when to quit your job.
Episodes average 34 minutes and get straight into it. Rob skips the 20-minute warmup most shows make you sit through.
A recent episode I loved: the 10-year arc of Wash-Dry-Fold POS, a founder building point-of-sale software for laundromats. (Laundromats! This is exactly the kind of unsexy business Indie Hackers made famous.)
Best for: SaaS founders who want stage-appropriate advice, not startup entertainment.
3. The Bootstrapped Founder
Arvid Kahl sold FeedbackPanda in 2019, wrote two books about bootstrapping, and now documents building Podscan in public.
New episode every Friday. Solo deep dives, 30 to 40 minutes, one topic each.
Earlier this year he spent an episode breaking down six months of building Podscan almost entirely with Claude Code, including the exact prompting setup. His recent one on why your moat has almost nothing to do with your product is worth two listens.
This is the closest thing to having a technical founder two years ahead of you thinking out loud.
Best for: solo founders who build and want the unfiltered operator view.
4. Indie Bites
15-minute episodes. That's the whole pitch, and it works.
James McKinven interviews indie hackers who built small, profitable, bootstrapped products, and he keeps every conversation tight. 131 episodes in the catalog.
Honest note: the show has been quiet since late 2025. But the back catalog is gold. Marie Martens explaining how Tally hit $150K MRR. Andrew Gazdecki on the smartest way to sell your indie SaaS.
If early Indie Hackers hooked you with founders making $2K a month (not $2M), this is your show.
Best for: commute-length hits of real founder stories.
5. The SaaS Podcast
Omer Khan has run this for 12 years. 493 founder interviews.
Every week, one founder breaks down how they grew: the numbers, the mistakes, and what they'd do differently. The latest one is Rick Knudtson of Workshop, on how a customer complaint he ignored for 9 months led to his first $10M.
Omer preps harder than almost any interviewer in this space. The episodes follow a structure: idea, validation, first customers, growth, near-death moment.
Best for: founders who want the full playbook of one company per episode.
6. My First Million
Sam Parr and Shaan Puri, 850+ episodes, and the best business idea brainstorm on the internet.
This isn't an indie hacker show. It's two guys who sold companies riffing on opportunities, frameworks, and the occasional billionaire interview (episode 856 was Wade Foster of Zapier).
Why it's on this list: the idea generation muscle. Indie Hackers taught you how founders executed. MFM teaches you how to spot what to build next.
I ranked their closest alternatives in podcasts like My First Million if this one clicks for you.
Best for: filling your ideas backlog on a walk.
7. The Startup Ideas Podcast
Greg Isenberg publishes twice a week and gives away startup ideas for free. 4.6 stars across 229 ratings on Apple Podcasts.
The format is very 2026: AI agents, community-first products, build-in-public playbooks. A recent episode walked through 5 GitHub repos you can turn into products this weekend. (I broke that one down in a full article because it was that good.)
Greg runs Late Checkout and advised Reddit and TikTok, so the ideas come with distribution thinking baked in.
Best for: founders hunting their next product in the AI wave.
8. How I Built This
The zoom-out pick.
Guy Raz interviews the founders of Airbnb, Patagonia, Spanx. Household names, not indie hackers. So why is it here?
Because every episode digs into the moment of doubt. The year of no revenue, the co-founder fight nobody talks about on stage. Strip away the scale and these are the same problems you're fighting at $10K MRR.
Listen to one of these for every five indie episodes. It resets your ambition.
Best for: remembering that every giant started as a side project.
How to actually use this list
Don't subscribe to all 8. You'll listen to none of them.
My suggestion:
→ Pick ONE interview show (mine, Omer's, or Rob's) for founder stories.
→ Pick ONE ideas show (MFM or Greg) for what to build next.
→ Raid the Indie Bites back catalog when you only have 15 minutes.
Two subscriptions, one back catalog. That covers 90% of what the Indie Hackers podcast gave you.
And one habit that changed things for me: when an episode mentions a number that stings (someone two years in doing 10x your MRR), write down what channel got them there. I keep a note with maybe 40 of these. It's the cheapest growth research you can do.
FAQ
Is the Indie Hackers podcast still active?
Barely. The show has 290 episodes, but new ones have been irregular since 2023. The community and website are still active, and the back catalog remains one of the best free founder educations available. Just don't expect a weekly feed anymore.
What is the best podcast like Indie Hackers for SaaS founders specifically?
Startups For the Rest of Us for tactics, and Profitable Founder for interviews with bootstrapped SaaS founders sharing real revenue numbers. I also keep a ranked list of the best podcasts for SaaS founders if you want more options.
Are there short podcasts like Indie Hackers?
Indie Bites is the best one. Every episode is around 15 minutes, and all 131 of them interview small, profitable, bootstrapped founders. The show has been quiet since late 2025, but the catalog holds up.
What made the Indie Hackers podcast so good in the first place?
Specifics. Guests shared their actual revenue and acquisition channels, mistakes included, instead of vague startup advice. Every show on this list was picked for the same quality: numbers over narratives.
Are these podcasts useful if I'm not building SaaS?
Mostly, yes. My First Million, The Startup Ideas Podcast, and How I Built This cover every kind of business (Sam Parr built a media company, Guy Raz interviews everyone from Spanx to Patagonia). Startups For the Rest of Us and The SaaS Podcast are SaaS-specific, so skip those if software isn't your thing.
One more thing
I spent years listening to other founders talk about their businesses.
It helped. But interviewing them myself, asking exactly what I needed to know for my own SaaS, changed how I operate.
That is what Profitable Founder is. The questions you'd ask a founder doing $100K MRR if you had them on a call.
