In the very first episode of Trial to Paid, Rob Morgan chats with Bill Yang, the indie hacker behind Rybbit — a privacy-focused, open-source web analytics platform that hit $1.6K in revenue just 35 days after launch.
Bill shares how he went from thinking he was “too dumb to code” in high school to building a high-traffic gaming analytics site (1.5M sessions/month) and then leveraging that experience to launch Rybbit. We dive into his origin story, why he chose open source, how he engineered a viral launch with zero ad spend, and what he’s learned along the way — including smart moves like embedding a live demo directly into his landing page.
If you're into indie hacking, open source, or bootstrapping SaaS from scratch, this one’s packed with real talk and tactical insights.
Chapters
00:00 Welcome to the Trial to Paid Podcast
00:21 Guiding Principles for Building Products
03:45 The Journey to Becoming a Coder
12:30 Early Entrepreneurial Ventures
14:24 Building Tomato.gg
19:10 Introducing Rybbit: A Google Analytics Alternative
23:36 Rybbit's Market Position and Competitors
28:18 Differentiating Through Design
29:18 Building the Marketing Site
30:08 Using AI Tools in Development
30:56 Launching the Product
33:10 Technical Stack and Frameworks
35:14 Open Source Strategy
42:50 Marketing and Promotion
50:12 Reflections and Future Plans
57:31 Advice for Aspiring Developers
Bill's Links
Rybbit: https://rybbit.io
Tomato.gg: https://tomato.gg
X: https://x.com/yang_frog
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-yang-/
Rob's Links
Trial to Paid: https://trialtopaid.io
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/rbdmorgan
-----
Music: "Nightfall" by OlexandrMusic (https://soundcloud.com/olexandrmusic)