Interview: Alexandre Grisey - From Employee to Successful Indie Hacker

Alexandre Grisey is the first member of our community to reach a 300-day streak of active days on Uneed 🤯! To celebrate this achievement, we decided to launch a new interview series, in which we'll dive into the entrepreneurial journey of our most active members. Alexandre is an Indie Hacker, recognized for his expertise in programmatic SEO. With over 12 years of experience in web and mobile development, he has successfully built a career as a solopreneur. In this interview, he shares his journey, current projects, and advice for future entrepreneurs.

Enjoy 😊!

Journey and Transition to Indie Hacking

Could you introduce yourself to our community?

I'm Alex, a French web and mobile developer with 12 years of programming experience. I'm now a full-time solopreneur, which allows me to make a living from my personal projects.

How did your transition from employee to indie hacker unfold?

My journey to indie hacking was gradual. I first worked 5 years as an employee, then 5 years as a freelancer. During these 10 years, I created countless projects, but most of them were never completed. The ones I published didn't achieve the expected success, mainly due to a lack of marketing.

The turning point came in January 2023 with the unexpected success of my project "Suit me Up", an AI image generator. Developed in 5 days, it started generating revenue almost immediately, thanks to organic SEO.

That was the signal I was waiting for. After a few more months of client work to save money, I decided in January 2024 to fully commit to indie hacking.

Expertise in Programmatic SEO

Could you explain what programmatic SEO is to our readers?

Programmatic SEO involves creating multiple SEO-optimized pages using a limited number of templates. For example, an agency could create hundreds of indexable pages based on location, with a single template like "agency in {city name}".

I have a different approach: I prefer to create a limited number of landing page versions (15-20) rather than thousands. I've noticed that it's easier to get indexed by Google with 20 pages than 2000, especially for a new website. So I carefully select my target keywords and generate different versions of my landing page by incorporating them.

I've actually created a masterclass around this technique (https://seo-programming.com/), which includes 8 videos and provides code for most JavaScript frameworks.

Current Projects and Future Vision

You've published many projects on Uneed. What are you currently working on?

I've recently changed my strategy. Last year, I mainly focused on creating products for developers, sharing my experiences in creating B2C products. However, I overestimated my ability to sell to developers, who are a tough crowd.

So I'm back to my first love: creating B2C mobile apps.

I've just started a challenge: creating 12 mobile apps in 12 months. It's quite a big challenge, and honestly, I'm not sure I'll succeed, but it has two goals: 1) keep me motivated, and 2) attract an audience to make my build-in-public strategy easier.

Speaking of building in public, I've decided to try a new format: publishing shorts on TikTok, and maybe Instagram and YouTube. It's just an experiment, we'll see how it goes!

What advice would you give to people just starting their Indie Hacker journey?

Ship it! Especially at the beginning, it's very likely that your first products won't work - or at least not right away. So don't waste time spending months on a product. Limit yourself to 2 weeks of development, ship it, and talk about it.

Making your product public is the best way to validate it.

Using Uneed and Future Improvements

How do you use Uneed in your daily workflow as an indie hacker?

Uneed is a great way to discover new products, either to use them or to get inspired. Most mornings, I take a few minutes to browse the products of the day and find new sources of inspiration. I upvote the ones I like the most, even if they're not always products I would use.

As a developer with many projects, I'd like to see Uneed become more of a platform for buying and selling projects. I know the feature already exists, but I think it's not pushed forward enough. With the indie hacking movement becoming more mainstream, more and more developers will want to sell their startups, even those that don't generate revenue, for small prices. It could even be a parallel product, using Uneed's database - I'm sure there's something to try!

Yes! As I mentioned, I'm working on my 12 mobile apps in 12 months challenge! I'm building it in public the old way, on X.