Durable distribution channels that led to $50k MRR

Rahul Pandey went from Stanford to FAANG to Y Combinator, building "durable" distribution channels along the way.

Now, he’s making $50k MRR. Here’s how he does it. 👇

Seeing a need and differentiating

James: Where did this start?

Rahul: I'm a Stanford Computer Science graduate and former software engineer who worked at companies like Pinterest and Facebook. In 2019, I started a YouTube channel to share what I learned climbing the ranks in a tech career.

James: How did that do?

Rahul: I eventually reached 100k subscribers and realized the demand for career growth advice from credible people. So I built Taro.

When I started my career, I had no idea how to navigate things like promotions, onboarding, and code review, so this is the platform I wish I had when starting out.

I left my full-time job at Meta two years ago, and Taro went through the 2022 summer batch of Y Combinator.

James: Where's Taro at now?

Rahul: We’re currently at about $50K MRR with our membership called Taro Premium.

Taro is a freemium model. Most of the content on Taro is entirely free, but to unlock the full course catalog and community, you need to join Taro Premium. We operate in workforce upskilling.

James: How do you differentiate from the big dogs in the online courses space?

Rahul: We focus on durable leadership skills that become more important as you become more senior and our instructors are all ex-Big Tech who have worked at companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Uber, etc. The needs of employees at these companies are different compared to others.

We also go beyond single-player courses to multiplayer community and events.

YC is awesome

James: Tell me about YC.

Rahul: YC was awesome. If you're a first-time founder and you get into YC, you'd be stupid not to take it.

James: How did it benefit you?

Rahul: The benefits are huge:

1. There's a ton of signaling value from getting into something well-known like YC.

2. The pressure and mentorship of the program really helps.

3. The $500k capital is enough to give you a full year or two of runway if you have a small team.

James: Any negatives?

Rahul: The only negative about YC is that it is more dilutive than other forms of funding.

But as a founder, my goal has always been to increase the size of the pie instead of my share of the pie. I'm very glad I did YC.

Above average communication

James: Why do you think the product is so successful?

Rahul: We have a humble team of three and we've all been engineers at FAANG companies. So we have deep technical depth paired with above-average communication skills for teaching.

The Venn diagram of people who are both good engineers and good teachers is narrow. Our value comes from our ability to package up time-tested ideas and tactics for engineers who can potentially earn tens of thousands of additional dollars.

James: What makes you above-average teachers?

Rahul: Above-average teachers don't waste time. They choose words wisely and edit out parts that don't contribute.

They explain the “why” behind what they're doing, and their instruction feels "high density."

James: Lots of indie hackers share their learnings when building in public. Any tips for becoming an above-average teacher?

Rahul: My number one tip is to start teaching now. Today. Put something out there for public consumption, whether that's a LinkedIn post, a blog post, or a YouTube video.

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Stay small

James: You mentioned your humble little team.

Rahul: People often say to hire people so that you can focus on higher-leverage work.

This might work when you're a big company, but a big part of our success so far is keeping the team very small and staying in the weeds with pretty much everything: Talking to customers, creating content, building the product, and more.

James: Why has this played a role in your success?

Rahul: It has allowed us to learn a lot faster and adjust as needed.

James: How has it made you faster?

Rahul: My philosophy is that you want to construct a life where you don't need much courage or insight. Build a system around you so that good decisions are easy to make.

When you have a large team, the founders need a huge amount of courage to pivot, kill a product, or make a big change. People may have joined you because you sold them a specific vision, but these things frequently change in an early-stage startup.

With a small team, it's much easier to be nimble and make optimal decisions.

Durable distribution channels

James: What do indie hackers need to know about growth?

Rahul: It’s important to create durable distribution channels.

James: What’s a “durable” distribution channel?

Rahul: Durable means that you can rely on that distribution channel for months or years from now to share updates or value about your product.

We spent years investing in YouTube and LinkedIn.

James: What’s the most durable channel?

Rahul: Email is almost always the best since you have direct access to the user without relying on an algorithm. After that, pick channels that give you a relationship with the user, like podcasts or YouTube. Podcasting is really powerful since it creates a really deep relationship with the user.

LinkedIn is pretty good too since it's not hard to show up frequently.

James: Let’s dive into the channels you chose.

Rahul: LinkedIn and YouTube are our primary growth drivers:

My cofounder, Alex, and I post on LinkedIn almost every day, which leads to millions of post impressions per week (and tens of thousands of clicks into Taro). LinkedIn posts are cheap since we just share the most interesting discussions on Taro with some commentary.

James: How do you get millions of views?

Rahul: I've posted on LinkedIn 3+ times per week for more than three years now.

James: So it's just consistency?

Rahul: The most important part of LinkedIn is having a strong hook that incentivizes people to read the rest of your post.

It's also important to share a strong point of view. If no one can disagree with your statement, the post probably won't do well.

James: Makes sense.

Rahul: Figuring out a repeatable playbook for growing on LinkedIn and then translating that into traffic took us a year, but is critical to our growth now.

James: What is your playbook?

Rahul:

• We find a good discussion topic on Taro

• Add some personal narrative or opinion about the topic (common themes include compensation, management issues, lazy tech workers)

• And add a link to the discussion on Taro to drive traffic and signups

My cofounder Alex is the expert with LinkedIn and gave a talk about it here.

James: And YouTube?

Rahul: YouTube is extremely powerful for building a deeper level of trust with the consumer. But creating good YouTube videos requires way more time, often 20+ hours per video.

James: What makes a good YouTube video?

Rahul: A good idea, title, thumbnail, and editing.

James: Is it worth the time investment?

Rahul: Yes, a common pattern we've seen is that people will initially discover us through YouTube, then follow us on LinkedIn before creating an account on Taro.

James: How do you find time for it?

Rahul: Sometimes, I don't! Especially recently.

My advice when starting out is to stay on the treadmill and commit to at least one video per week.

Do that for a year and then you'll be able to see what works and what doesn't. Remember that no one will think about or remember a bad video, so make a lot of them! After you make enough bad videos, you'll start to make good videos.

James: Any other tips?

Rahul: Figure out how you can tell a personal story or share an insight that is unique to you.

In my case, the obvious one was about my high compensation working in Big Tech, and what I learned by earning that much money. These stories are effective since they are uniquely human; not some regurgitation of a blog or ChatGPT.

James: For sure.

Rahul: Beyond that, think a lot about the thumbnail and title of the video. I'll force myself to generate at least five versions so I can figure out the best option.

And it's important to have a consistent narrator behind the videos.

James: What hasn’t helped you grow?

Rahul: We have made attempts to generate traffic through SEO, as we have lots of organic discussion and blog posts, but so far this has been unsuccessful.

James: Why?

Rahul: I'm not sure, I'd love to get feedback on that myself!

One potential issue is that we simply don't have enough content, with a few thousand discussions on Taro with 1-2 comments on each thread. So we might just need more volume.

Get clarity from users

James: After doing YC and building a product to $50k, what have you learned that indie hackers need to hear?

Rahul: Two things. First, you need clarity in what you’re solving. Not having this clarity is a very common mistake I see.

In the early days of Taro, our value prop was muddy. A combination of unorganized videos, a few live events, and a Slack community. It took us a while to hone in on what engineers actually wanted.

James: How did you find clarity?

Rahul: We talked to users and asked them to describe the value of our product.

You'd be surprised how different their view is from what you intend.

James: I bet.

Rahul: So you have to make sure you’re clear on what they're getting out of it. And then you need to iterate on your landing page until it's clear that they understand your value.

I believe this applies to all software products, but especially for those that have a B2C angle.

James: And the second nugget of wisdom?

Rahul: Creating a successful business requires a ton of patience. Some entrepreneurs are looking for immediate "market pull" and will pivot to another domain if they don't see it.

It's hard to learn anything with this approach, and pivoting so frequently is exhausting.

James: So what should the impatient indie hackers among us do?

Rahul: Figure out where you have an unfair advantage. Explore opportunities there. Build it. And... be patient.

James: Where can people find you?

Rahul: I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter, and you can find my profile on Taro too. I'm happy to help founders who reach out!

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