You can learn more about Ben by reading this comprehensive feature at Maker Mag Ben Tossell: making his mark on the maker world.
Main Projects
Makerpad
Makerpad is the worlds leading destination to learn, share and work together to create software—without writing code.
Ben started working on it in January, 2019. He went full time on the project in September/October 2019. (source)
newCo
newCo was a platform providing a bunch of tools for makers. It was launched on Product Hunt in October, 2018, however had been running since May.
He posted about some of the journey at Startup Struggles — 29th August and Startup Struggles — 30th August.
He closed it at the end of 2018. He wrote about the journey at Doing too much: shutting down a company with $6k MRR.
Product hunt
Ben was the community lead at Product Hunt from August 2015 to August 2017. He wrote about how a non-technical wantrepreneur landed a Community Manager position at Product Hunt at his medium blog.
He posted more about his Product Hunt experiences at:
- 2 months working @ProductHunt
- 4 months at Product Hunt & visiting San Francisco HQ
- My New Years Resolutions to the Product Hunt Community (2016)
He wrote Thank you Product Hunt & AngelList to announce that he was leaving Product Hunt.
Side Projects
10 Startups in 24 Hours
In 2017, he challenged himself to launch 10 Startups in 24 Hours. The goal was to build 10 mini-startups with ~2 hrs build time per project.
He posted a reflection at 10 Startups in 24 Hours, Lessons Learned
Marketing Stack
Ben launched Marketing Stack in July, 2015. It was the #1 Product Of The Month of Product Hunt.
He shared the story at Launching on Product Hunt for my birthday
The website is no longer available.
Backa
Backa was a website that allowed users to post their startup ideas (at whatever stage) to gain insights from early adopters to help you close the feedback loop. It is no longer active.
Building Backa Using Slack (on #startup)
Interviews
How Ben Tossell Made 6-Figures in Revenue Teaching People How to Build Without Code on Makerpad
On this episode of Gritty Founder, Kreig Kent talks with Ben Tossell about his journey as an entrepreneur and how he built Makerpad. Ben shares valuable advice on how to launch your idea as quickly as possible so you can learn from users and see traction.
Makerpad: How Ben Tossell Bootstrapped a $240K Side-Project – with Ben Tossell [238]
Although Makepad isn’t technically a SaaS product, Omer Khan invited Ben on the show for two reasons:
- There are a lot of parallels with Ben’s experience of Makerpad and what new SaaS founders have to go through
- He wanted to talk about how the no-code movement is helping non-technical founders build and launch SaaS products without writing any code.
Creating a $200k Side Project Without Writing a Line of Code with Ben Tossell of Makerpad
In this episode, Indie Hackers talks to Ben about how he grew Makerpad to over $100,000 in revenue in 6 months with almost no expenses, and why he has no plans to go full time on such a successful side project.
Founder Interviews: Ben Tossell of newCo
A 2018 interview at Hacker Noon.
Makerpad: Low Code Tools with Ben Tossell
Ben joins Software Engineering Daily to talk about his experience building low-code tools, the use cases for these tools, and his predictions for how they will impact the future of software.