The Ramen Club Podcast 🍜

Growing the #1 B2B QR Code Generator: Ramy Khuffash (Hovercode)

Charlie Ward — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Welcome back to The Ramen Club Podcast, where we talk to our community members about building startups without funding. 🍜

For episode 13, I spoke to my friend and long-time Ramen Club/Ramen Space member, Ramy Khuffash (founder of Hovercode).

Hovercode is the #1 B2B dynamic QR code generator - helping all sorts of businesses create, manage and track QR codes.

He shares many insights on how to use SEO analytics to find great ideas (hint - focus on the intent, not just search volume), how to do small bets well vs badly, and the value of landing pages (instead of blog posts) to capture search traffic.

Guest Links:

Hovercode site
Ramy's Twitter

The Ramen Club Podcast brings you in-depth conversations with bootstrapped entrepreneurs building profitable internet businesses. We exclusively speak to members of the Ramen Club community. Ramen Club is building the community, insights and tools supporting founders to ramen profitability, and beyond. We also just launched a founder co-working space in London... Ramen Space 🍜

Bootstrapping the #1 Maid Service SaaS: Amar Ghose (ZenMaid)

Charlie Ward — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Welcome back to The Ramen Club Podcast, where we talk to our community members about building startups without funding. 🍜

For episode 12, I spoke to my friend and long-time Ramen Club/Ramen Space member, Amar Ghose (co-founder of ZenMaid).

Amar co-founded ZenMaid over a decade ago, to help maid service businesses schedule and manage their organisations.

He shares his (many) insights on how to find great SaaS opportunities (hint - competitive markets), the importance of deeply understanding your target customers, and why the best marketing means creating free value for your audience.

Guest Links:

ZenMaid site
Amar's Twitter

Building a $720k/yr GMV CGI Marketplace: Henning Sanden (Flipped Normals)

Charlie Ward — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 07:00:00 +0100

Welcome back to The Ramen Club Podcast, where we talk to our community members about building startups without funding. 🍜

For episode 11, I spoke to my friend and long-time Ramen Club member, Henning Sanden (founder of Flipped Normals).

Henning is a Norwegian 3D artist who's worked on major movies like Pacific Rim, Venom, Alien: Covenant, Ghostbusters and much more.

He pivoted to creating CGI educational content and then eventually, with his co-founder, Flipped Normals: the #1 CGI marketplace for 3D artists, making $720k/year GMV (Gross Merchandise Value).

Henning shared great insights on building a business in the creative industry, the impact of AI on artists, and the importance of maintaining stability while pursuing creative ventures.

Guest Links:

Flipped Normals site
Flipped Normals YouTube
Henning's Twitter
Henning's IMDB profile

Growing a hosting platform to $400k ARR: Elston Baretto (Tiiny Host)

Charlie Ward — Tue, 06 May 2025 07:00:00 +0100

After a hiatus, The Ramen Club podcast (formerly Ramen FM) is back!

For episode 10, I spoke to my good friend friend and long-time Ramen Club member, Elston Baretto (founder of Tiiny Host).

Tiiny Host is the simplest way to host and share your work online - uploading HTML, PHP, PDFs & Zip files (plus more soon) in seconds.

Started 4 years ago, Elston grew it to $400k ARR as a solo, bootstrapped founder primarily using SEO.

I asked him his frameworks for identifying startup opportunities, choosing the best marketing channel for your startup, what he'd build if he started now, plus much more. This episode was packed with actionable advice - get out your pen and paper!

The Ramen Club Podcast brings you in-depth conversations with bootstrapped entrepreneurs building profitable internet businesses. We exclusively speak to members of the Ramen Club community. Ramen Club is building the community, insights and tools supporting founders to ramen profitability, and beyond. We also just launched a founder co-working space in London... Ramen Space 🍜

Growing an SEO Content Agency to $700k ARR: Julian Canlas

Charlie Ward — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 16:00:00 +0000

On this episode, we spoke to a friend and long-time Ramen Club member, Julian Canlas, the co-founder of Embarque.io.

Embarque is an on-demand content marketing productised service. Started 3 years ago, it’s now making $700k+ ARR, having worked with clients like VEED, Riverside FM and Buy Me A Coffee to name just a few.

We discussed the future of SEO, how to grow productised services, Julian's advice to bootstrapped founders, and so much more. We think you'll love this one.

Ramen FM brings you in-depth conversations with bootstrapped entrepreneurs building profitable internet businesses. Including both members and friends of the Ramen Club community. Ramen Club is building the community, content and tools supporting founders to ramen profitability, and beyond.

Building Fathom Analytics to 450k+ Sites: Jack Ellis

Charlie Ward — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 13:00:04 +0100

We spoke to Jack Ellis, Jack is the co-founder of Fathom Analytics, along with Paul Jarvis, and host of the Above Board podcast. Fathom is a privacy-focused web analytics SaaS and excellent Google Analytics alternative. I use Fathom personally on about 5 different websites and can confirm that it’s far easier to navigate and use, in addition to being respectful of privacy laws like GDPR. At the time of our discussion, they were on 450,000+ sites (it'll be even more now), had billions of monthly page views and clients like GitHub & IBM.

We discussed the unique challenges of building privacy focused products, Jack's advice to bootstrapped founders, and so much more.

Boostrapping to $25k/month: Dominic Monn (MentorCruise)

Charlie Ward — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 12:57:45 +0100

We spoke to Dominic Monn, a longtime Ramen Club member, about bootstrapping MentorCruise - the go-to marketplace to find a career coach or mentor. They help career professionals turn their knowledge into a marketable coaching business, and also make it possible for mentees to find a perfect mentor with just a few clicks. Covering all sorts of topics from software engineering, to design and everything inbetween. They’re now making $25k per month or $140k monthly GMV.

We discussed how journey reaching this figure, balancing a full-time job in AI with indie hacking, the unique challenges he faced as a marketplace founder, plus much more.

Growing an email lead list builder to $20k MRR: Valentin Wallyn (FindyMail)

Charlie Ward — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 12:32:14 +0100

In this episode, Ramen Club founder, Charlie Ward, has a conversation with long time member, Valentin Wallyn. His main product, FindyMail, is now at $20k MRR. It's a high quality email finder tool with an automation layer. Designed to help B2B salespeople build lead lists faster for cold outreach. It lets you scrape Sales Navigator, Apollo and much more.

We discussed the difference between indie hacker twitter and so-called money twitter, his approach to cold email and Valentin's advice for indie hackers, among other things.

Ramen FM brings you in-depth conversations with bootstrapped entrepreneurs building profitable internet businesses. Including both members and friends of the Ramen Club community. Ramen Club is building the community, content and tools supporting founders to ramen profitability, and beyond.

Scaling an Airtable extension to $10k MRR: Andy Cloke (Data Fetcher)

Charlie Ward — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 10:21:59 +0000

In this episode, Ramen Club founder, Charlie Ward, has a conversation with long time member, Andy Cloke. They discuss Andy’s unconventional journey to becoming a software engineer, how he discovered indie hacking and how he’s grown not one, but two, successful bootstrapped projects.

His current product, Data Fetcher, is a tool that allows you to bring in data from hundreds of apps into Airtable automatically. Since starting it in 2020, he’s grown it to $10k MRR.

The Ramen Club Podcast brings you in-depth conversations with bootstrapped entrepreneurs building profitable internet businesses. Including both members and friends of the Ramen Club community. Ramen Club is building the community, content and tools supporting founders to ramen profitability, and beyond.

3.2m YouTube Views Growing Weight Loss Business: Richa Prasad (Coach Viva)

Charlie Ward — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 17:09:18 +0000

We interviewed Richa Prasad, Co-Founder of Coach Viva, on growing her weight loss business large enough to make a living from it, using YouTube as an effective growth channel (3.2m+ views) and much more.

The Ramen Club Podcast brings you in-depth conversations with bootstrapped entrepreneurs building profitable internet businesses. Including both members and friends of the Ramen Club community. Ramen Club is building the community, content and tools supporting founders to ramen profitability, and beyond.

$15m GMV by age 19: Che Sampat (SuperPay)

Charlie Ward — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 17:05:00 +0100

We interviewed Che Sampat, Founder of SuperPay & SuperPortal ($15m GMV).

Growing a maid service SaaS to $1.8m ARR: Amar Ghose (ZenMaid)

Charlie Ward — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 15:26:57 +0100

We interviewed Amar Ghose, co-founder of ZenMaid, on growing his maid service SaaS to $1.8m ARR.

Growing a mobile app to 500k downloads: Matthew Callery (CV Engineer)

Charlie Ward — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 13:39:04 +0100

We spoke to Ramen Club member Matthew Callery on growing CV Engineer, his iOS/Android native resume building app to 500k downloads and 90k Daily Active Users.