Bill Yang

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 Podcast00:21 Guiding Principles for Building Products03:45 The Journey to Becoming a Coder12:30 Early Entrepreneurial Ventures14:24 Building Tomato.gg19:10 Introducing Rybbit: A Google Analytics Alternative23:36 Rybbit's Market Position and Competitors28:18 Differentiating Through Design29:18 Building the Marketing Site30:08 Using AI Tools in Development30:56 Launching the Product33:10 Technical Stack and Frameworks35:14 Open Source Strategy42:50 Marketing and Promotion50:12 Reflections and Future Plans57:31 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)