Steph is a growth marketer, writer, and indie maker. She regularly blogs about remote work, continuous improvement, women in tech, and learning to code. She started learning to code in Feb 2018 and has built several projects that support women in tech.
The Essentials
- Visit her main website at StephSmith.io
- Follow Steph on Twitter at StephSmithio
Steph is Senior Analyst at The Hustle, where she is working to build and grow their new product, Trends.
Previously, she had worked at Toptal. She started on the growth team in 2016, where she worked for nearly 2 years. She was the Head of Publications for 1.5 years. She wrote about moving from Toptal to The Hustle at Antifragility at Work: Change is the Only Constant.
You can learn a lot from her experiences with remote work and her side hustle experiments.
Steph Smith.io
Steph launched her website in December, 2018.
In January, 2019, she decided to openly share her goals and created an open page, to share her progress. She later automated most of the page to pull stats directly.
Her best articles on remote work are shared below:
- The Guide to Remote Work That Isn’t Trying to Sell You Anything
- A New Age: Finding Non-Tech Remote Jobs
- Best Practices for Managing Remote Teams: A Psychological Perspective
Standing Out In 2020: Doing Content Right
In late July, 2020, Steph stumbled upon a 4000-word *outline* of a guide that she’d been planning in 2019. She sent out a tweet, asking if her audience would be interested. Later that day, she set up a presale.
Within 15 minutes, she’d pre-sold 13 copies. Less than 24 hours later, she was at nearly $3000 and 147 sales. Within 48 hours, she’d pre-sold 181 copies and earned over $4k. She reached $10k in sales shortly before the launch.
She launched the guide in mid September. She posted a case study on Indie Hackers the following day at Sold 500+ copies and $14k of my first book! Within 10 days of launch, she had sold 1000 copies and made $30k in sales.
Her success was featured at Indie Hackers in the forum post Why do you think Steph Smith’s ebook is working out so well? Steph contributed to the discussion.
You can check out the ebook at Gumroad.
Side Hustles
Steph shared an overview of her experiences, as well as lessons learned on her journey, at Finding Programming Inspiration: Learning to Code and Launch in Months. She strongly advocates that You Don’t Need to Quit Your Job to Make.
Eunoia
Eunoia is a searchable directory of words that don’t translate. Steph built the website during a 24 hour startup challenge in 2018. She live streamed the experience on Twitch. The product has been viewed by over 20k people across over 150 countries, and made it to #2 on Product Hunt. She wrote more about the experience at Gaining Perspective Through Untranslatable Words
Femake
FeMake is the aggregation of data on female makers. The dataset is based on Product Hunt data and reports on female presence across its 5 years of history.
She wrote more about the importance of the project at FeMake — Understanding Inclusion in Making.
Make Yourself Great Again
Make Yourself Great Again is a reflection tool and calculator for visualizing time. It was #1 on PH
Personal
Steph originally did a degree in chemical engineering.
She shared more about her writing process at Writing is Thinking: Learning to Write with Confidence
She used to travel the world playing chess as a child.
Yearly reviews
Features
Interviews
Carving a 21st Century Life & Career – Steph Smith at Reimagine Work
Digital Nomad Steph Smith talks learning coding while working full-time at No CS Degree