EDIT: I've stopped responding to reddit comments for this post. I'm adding an FAQ to the original post based on the most common high quality questions. If you have a question that you're dying to know the answer to and that only I can help you with (vs. Google, ChatGPT, etc.), DM me.

I retired at 32 years old, in large part thanks to a B2C SaaS app that I developed on my own. Now, I don't have to work in order to cover my living expenses, and wouldn't have to work for quite a while.

In other words, I can finally sip mai tais at the beach.

I've condensed how I got there into this post. First, a super simplified timeline of events, followed by some critical details.

Timeline

• 2013 Graduated college in the US
• 2013 Started first corporate job
• 2013 Started side project (B2C app) that would eventually lead to my retirement
• 2020 Started charging for use of my B2C app (was free, became freemium)
• 2021 Quit my last corporate job
• 2022 Retired: time freedom attained

Details

First, some summary statistics of my path to retirement:

• 9 years: time between graduating college and my retirement.
• 8 years: total length of my career where I worked at some corporate day job.
• 7 years: time it took my B2C app to make its first revenue dollar
• 2 years: time between my first dollar of SaaS revenue and my retirement.

"Something something overnight success a decade in the making".

I got extremely lucky on my path to retirement, both in terms of the business environment I was in and who I am as a person. I'd also like to think that some of the conscious decisions I made along the way contributed to my early retirement.

Lucky Breaks

• Was born in the US middle class.
• Had a natural affinity for computer programming and entrepreneurial mindset (initiative, resourcefulness, pragmatism, courage, growth mindset). Had opportunities to develop these mindsets throughout life.
• Got into a good college which gave me the credentials to get high paying corporate jobs.
• Was early to a platform that saw large adoption (see "barnacle on whale" strategy).
• Business niche is shareworthy: my SaaS received free media.
• Business niche is relatively stable, and small enough to not be competitive.

"Skillful" Decisions

• I decided to spend the nights and weekends of my early career working on side projects in the hopes that one would hit. I also worked a day job to support myself and build my savings.
• My launch funnel over roughly 7 years of working on side projects:
  • Countless side projects prototyped.
  • 5 side projects publically launched.
  • 2 side projects made > $0.
  • 1 side project ended up becoming the SaaS that would help me retire.
• At my corporate day jobs, I optimized for learning and work-life balance. My learning usually stalled after a year or two at one company, so I’d quit and find another job.
• I invested (and continute to do so) in physical and mental wellbeing via regular workouts, meditation, journaling, traveling, and good food. My fulfilling non-work-life re-energized me for my work-life, and my work-life supported my non-work-life: a virtuous cycle.
• I automated the most time-consuming aspects of my business (outside of product development). Nowadays, I take long vacations and work at most 20 hours a week / a three-day work week .
• I decided to keep my business entirely owned and operated by me. It's the best fit for my work-style (high autonomy, deep focus, fast decision-making) and need to have full creative freedom and control.
• I dated and married a very supportive and inspiring partner.
• I try not to succumb to outrageous lifestyle creep, which keeps my living expenses low and drastically extends my burn-rate.

Prescription

To share some aphorisms I’ve leaned with the wantrepreneurs or those who want to follow a similar path:

• Maximize your at bats, because you only need one hit. Bias towards action. Launch quickly. Get your ideas out into the real world for feedback. Perfect is the enemy of good. If you keep swinging and improving, you'll hit the ball eventually.
• Keep the big picture in mind. You don't necessarily need a home-run to be happy: a base hit will often do the job. Think about what matters most to you in life: is it a lot of money or status? Or is it something more satisfying, and often just as if not more attainable, like freedom, loving relationships, or fulfillment? Is what you’re doing now a good way to get what you want? Or is there a better way?
  • At more of a micro-level of "keep the big picture in mind", I often see talented wantrepreneurs get stuck in the weeds of lower-level optimizations, usually around technical design choices. They forget (or maybe subconsciously avoid) the higher-level and more important questions of customer development, user experience, and distribution. For example: “Are you solving a real problem?” or “Did you launch an MVP and what did your users think?”
• Adopt a growth mindset. Believe that you are capable of learning whatever you need to learn in order to do what you want to do.
• The pain of regret is worse than the pain of failure. I’ve noticed that fear of failure is the greatest thing holding people back from taking action towards their dreams. Unless failure means death in your case, a debilitating fear of failure is a surmountable mental block. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. When all is said and done, we often regret the things we didn't do in life than the things we did.
• There’s more to life than just work. Blasphemous (at least among my social circle)! But the reality is that many of the dying regret having worked too much in their lives.

As Miss Frizzle from The Magic Schoolbus says: "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!"

Original post

I sent this interview out via my newsletter, but pasting it here in case it's of interest.

High-level data

• Asking price: $25k
• Revenue multiple: 25x
• TTM Revenue: $1k
• Expenses: Staff, a bit of tech and very basic marketing
• Customers: 10-100
• Date founded: July 2023
• Tech stack: Shopify, Salesforce, Laravel, PHP, SQL
• Competitors: Paysafe, CashtoCode
• Link to listing: Listing removed

Seller takeaways

• Listing your business on a marketplace doesn’t mean you have to sell.
• $25k is the maximum asking price Acquire.com allows with zero revenue.
• Be honest. Otherwise, you’ll waste your own time and everyone else’s.
• Make sure you’re selling on the right marketplace for your product.
• Don’t wait too long to list. Just put your feelers out and see what the response is like.

Buyer takeaways

• Beware location- and expertise-dependent products.
• Ask sellers how much money is needed to give the product a real try.
• Every product will have upsides and downsides — no getting around that.
• There are options other than full buyouts. Be creative.

The product

James: Tell me about the product.

Piero: Kasssh uses all the latest payment technologies to fully automate and digitize cash payments for online purchases, which is normally physically impossible!

So a consumer checks out for their order and selects Kasssh as their payment option. The consumer then receives an email with a unique barcode requesting cash payment. They take this email to a network of pay-in stores, and once paid, the eCommerce site instantly receives that payment into their existing payment provider.

The business is tech-heavy, fully built, and live. And we have particularly powerful partnerships with Shopify, Big Commerce, Salesforce, and Mastercard.

J: I imagine the nature of this business makes it location-dependent.

P: Right, the company is only set up to work in the UK at the moment. We have a deal with PayPoint, which has 28k agent locations to deposit the cash — that’s more than all bank and post office branches in the UK, combined.

We’re also working on expanding into the US — I am talking to a large provider with a similar network as the UK one. And there are many other networks we can tap into as well for many different markets all over the world.

The Target

J: Who’s the end user?

P: We’re targeting people who use cash.

Contrary to most people's thinking, this does not mean old people; it’s income driven. Those with lower incomes have a high propensity to use cash, mainly for budgeting reasons, or for fear of online fraud. These people pay their utilities, top up their phones, etc. with cash.

So that’s the target consumer market for more developed countries. But the tech enables us to go to other countries quickly, as well, even developing markets

Looking at options

J: Why is now the time to sell?

P: We aren’t completely sure we want to sell. We were just looking at all the options.

Do we raise more money?

Do we strategically partner with other payments businesses?

Do we sell?

As I have learned in life: Always ask the question. So we did.

J: How did you come to your asking price?

P: To be honest, our asking price was never really set. It was more an invitation to discuss. Acquire.com set a limit on how much I could ask for at my revenue amount, so we set it for the maximum — $25k — despite the fact that we raised at a $3M valuation.

Deciding on an actual price, if we sell, will be difficult. But at this point, I’d even sell a majority stake for a small amount to the right buyer — a buyer who can invest in marketing and sales.

Why he’s selling

J: $3M? So you’re getting investment at a high valuation. What’s the problem? Why sell?

P: That was the last round’s valuation. We had revenue but not much. What we need is a big e-commerce retailer in order to increase revenue. And we are in discussions with one, but implementation got pushed back to the end of 2024 or beginning of 2025, which timed us out.

J: And you can find other retailers?

P: The business needs £500k to really give it a chance for 18 months. This would be spent mainly on sales and marketing people. There is a brand push needed. That’s the only way to get more retailers.

We have raised small amounts over the last two years — increments of roughly £50k every few months. But it hasn’t been enough. In fact, I’ve had to pare back on sales and marketing to give us more cash runway. That means low sales. Investors want to see more revenue, but we have no money to enable it. Vicious cycle!

Maybe it’s time to let someone else give it a go.

The selling process

J: Why hasn’t it sold yet?

P: We only just started asking and only put it on one platform. Also, I’m too honest for my own good, as there’s no point selling it if the buyer turns around and gets stuck in the same position as me. It’d be immoral.

The thing is, this is not a product for people who just want to buy it and tweak it.

I keep telling people: I could give it to you for free, but you will need funds to make it work. Either that, or you need to be a super-connected eCommerce/retail guru. And either way, you’ll need to have some knowledge of payments, as this is a regulated industry.

J: Yep, that was enough to give me pause.

P: Despite that, I’ve been surprised by how much interest there’s been. It makes me think that we have built something that is unique and exciting. Maybe it’s founder bias or a small ego stroke, but startups are lonely and hard, so positive voices are well received.

Either way, people seem to like that it’s unique and solves a need — but most are only curious and maybe acquire.com is the wrong platform for us.

Honesty in M&A

J: Not every seller is so honest.

P: I don’t like wasting time, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to be honest about everything with potential buyers.

Yes, I want to maximize the potential of selling Kasssh, but I don’t want to spend ages on a deal where the buyer pulls out or ends up feeling cheated.

All businesses have their good sides and their areas for improvement. If a buyer doesn’t get that, then that is a red flag in itself.

J: True enough.

P: Business is based on trust. If you’re selling something and then in due diligence something comes up that should have been shared, and you knew it, that seed of doubt will cause most deals to collapse.

Takeaways from the selling process

J: What else has jumped out at you through this process?

P: I was surprised to find that, despite being on an acquisition platform, many of the conversations became about investment or purchasing a controlling share, rather than a full buyout.

So there are other options available, depending on the buyer.

And speaking of Acquire.com, I learned that, while it’s a good platform, you have to be particular about where you sell there — Kasssh isn’t a micro-SaaS. It needs deeper pockets.

Advice to sellers

J: Any advice for sellers?

P: Don’t procrastinate, don’t assume. Put the feelers out and see what people think. You don’t have to sell, but you may be pleasantly surprised.

And don’t leave it too late. If you’re going to sell — or raise money for that matter — it’s going to take 3-6 months. If you’re considering it, then start the process while you still have runway to spare.

What’s next

J: What’s next for you?

P: I’m considering my options. I may keep trying to build Kasssh, or I may keep trying to sell.

I love working with payments so, eventually, going back to corporate is an option. But I’ll ideally try to work for a startup – I have the bug!!

Thousands of new SaaS apps get built every day. It can feel like all ideas are taken.

But listen, you don't have to come up with the next Google or Apple.

You just need to build something that solves a problem that people will pay $50+/mo for.

How I'd start:

Talk to 5-10 founders on calls, ask what software they use and love. Ask what could be improved about them.

Note down all options along with:
- how big the market is
- how hard it would be to build
- how much you could charge per month
- how you can make it better than existing solution

From there, pick whatever one you think you can sell and build easiest given your skills, weighing how big the market is and how much you can charge.

e.g. if market is 100 people and you can only charge $20, don't build it! assume in a good case you capture 1% of market

Now you need to sell your solution to that initial founder with the idea. They'll probably be supportive and willing to try your thing.

Can't sell it? Congrats, you are validating you should NOT do it, (saving yourself from wasting time!) pick a different one.

If you sold it however, DON'T BUILD YET!!! (but charge them)

Sell to 2-5 more people. Validate it. The last thing you want is to spend 20 hours developing it and then the first customer cancels on month 2. It's probably not validated.

Once you sell to to 5 or so folks, start building it. Spend a week in build mode only and get it shipped. Maybe 2 or 3 weeks. Doesn't need to be self serve. Just make it solve the problem you sold it to solve. Can have shit design, that will get improved throughout the next year.

From here, make these people happy. Get testimonials from every single one. Pay someone $300 to build a super sleek landing page.

Pick a marketing channel:
- Forums/X/Reddit/Fb groups
- Cold outreach (LinkedIn, email, X, not reddit though because it doesn't work well)
- Cold calls (hire someone in Egypt to do it for cheap)
- SEO (use Blawgy for content, fiverr for backlinks)
- Ads (probably not yet, ROI won't be there)

Try each for 2-4 weeks and scale whatever works best. That is your marketing channel.

Now you are on your way to $1k/mo.

Disclaimers/other thoughts:
- fiverr people are good for starting backlinks, but eventually high quality ones are needed
- I wouldn't do ads until $5k+/mo
- blawgy is my tool but I am working daily to make it the best ai content writer in the market
- at $1k/mo hire someone to do task level stuff like development. but make sure all tasks are clearly defined
- take breaks when you work 24/7 for a few days in a row or you will damage your mind and body
- never stop doing sales and marketing... never. always have deals in the pipeline

Hope it helped. Dm with questions.

I launched my first project lifeistooshort.today about 30 days ago with really no experience at all in webdev.

It's a really simple website where the visitor can enter his current age and select a country and will get a rough estimate how much of his life is left. It's based on the average life expectancy in the selected country.

The website tends to create a strong emotional reaction in the visitors. I thinks thats why it went viral.

I posted about the traffic on X and people started to reach out for ad placements on my site. The interesting twist is that the ad is only displayed if the website visitor selects a certain country. Giving me the opportunity to make multiple ad placements without overloading my one page website.

Done with my final fixes, have been working on this for weeks. Everytime i launched a new product i had to repeat the cycle of listing the product to directories - next 48 hours just gone. So i automated it

I am still doing beta testing and so...

will list 1 website for FREE to 100 directories using this Bot, reply with your product link & I’ll choose 1 randomly

https://indiehackeros.com/listing-bot

Worked as the sole-Product Manager for an app and amassed over a 100m downloads. Things turned sour when the incoming CEO and I could not see eye-to-eye. Being a product guy, it always made me wonder if we were that good at building products, why were we not building them ourselves? Must be the lack of technical skills right? So, I had to put myself to the test. Left a toxic environment, started a design agency to keep some bills paid and started my journey into indie hacking.

Thank God for me, as I was starting out on the journey, it was right about the time the A.I. capabilities were being rolled out to the masses. This gave me an unfair advantage, to make full use of every A.I. tool that was coming out and test them even before most Engineers working a 9-5 could.

Despite taking a little over 1.5 years, I finally rolled out my first web app built, designed, conceptualised, entirely by myself. For most people, they might find this the exciting part, but for me, it was the most scariest part. You see, I am 36 years old in 2 days. Being an avid Product guy, who helped many businesses build their apps along the way, this was like the biggest test of what I pride myself for. I found myself struggling to launch until I had everything perfect.

After launching, there was some sense of urgency and I felt alive again. But it quickly died after the initial hype and visitors. It has been about 3 months now since launching, and I have yet to do any paid ads or real content creation around marketing the idea. So far, it has been mostly video tutorials and some A.I. generated short films trying to sell the idea. The visitor numbers are obviously low now, but I strongly think it is because of the lack of marketing.

Looking back, why do I not feel proud of how far I have come? For some reason, there is this sense of "failure", which I was ready to embrace, because that is what most motivational videos tell you to do. But it stings primarily because of the expectation of the money (reward). Being human, I cannot help but take a peek at people around me. Big salaries, fancy holidays, new cars, I can look past all of that. But it is starting to feel like it is really unfair to my wife and 2 kids. Despite all these being literally just for them.

Not sure if this entrepreneurial pursuit is really what it was supposed to be like, or if I am just being stubborn to not go work a regular 9-5. Has my ego grown too big to get back into the workforce? Take instructions, quite possibly be led by someone younger than me because of my 1.5 years of absence? So many questions and they were not lying when they said how lonely a path this is. Any advice to just keep holding on to some faith that it will all work out, is very much appreciated.

I have unwavering faith in my God, but I do catch myself questioning some of the things happening FOR me. Like really? I come from a rough neighbourhood in Singapore, and the circles I grew up around are mostly associated with gangs and illegal trades. Makes me wonder why do they have it easy, with one illegal source of money funding 10 other legitimate businesses and living comfortably, while I spend days, nights, weekends, hours upon hours, building something that I do not even know would bring in enough to sustain the family.

Help a brother out here..

The great thing about this playbook is it worked even if I don't have a large audience (e.g, not a lot of followers, newsletter subscribers etc...).

It worked for 3 of my projects.

1. Problem

Can be any of these:

• Scratch my own itch.
• Find problems worth solving. I read negative reviews + hang out on X, Reddit and Facebook groups.

2. MVP

I set an appetite (e.g, A few days or weeks to build my MVP).

This forces me to only build the core and really necessary features. Lets me focus on things that will really benefit users.

3. Validation

• Share my MVP on X, Reddit and Facebook groups.
• Find posts on X and Reddit that are complaining about my competitors, asking alternatives or recommendations and posts encountering a problem that my product directly solves. I use this lead finder tool that I built to save time and effort because it automates these things. Then reply to these posts by recommending my product.
• Do cold and warm DMs.

For me, one of the best validation is when users pay for my MVP.

When my product is free, when users subscribe using their email addresses and/or they keep on coming back to use it.

4. SEO

ROI will take a while and this requires a lot of time and effort but this is still one of the most sustainable source of customers. 2 out of 3 of my projects are already benefiting from SEO. I'll start to do SEO on my latest project too.

That's it! Simple but not easy since it still requires a lot of effort but that's the reality when building a startup especially when we have no large audience yet.

Happy to share more information in detail, just leave a comment if you have a question.

Hey everyone,

I’m working on a side project called phalternatives.com, where I’m compiling a list of platforms where indie founders and devs can launch and promote their products, outside of Product Hunt.

PH is great, but I figured it’s worth exploring other options. Right now, I’ve listed a few alternatives, but I’m sure there are a lot more out there that I’m missing.

If you’ve used any other platforms or communities for launching, I’d love to hear about them! Also, any feedback on the site itself would be really helpful as I keep building it out.

Being a shy dev. I was always struggling to get meaningful feedback on my early stage projects, which frustrated me so much. I was wondering: how cool it would be to get systematic feedback everytime we need from other indie hackers?

After I had not found an already existing solution, I built IndieVoice. This is a supervised, favor-based community platform, where indie hackers give and get detailed feedback (in terms of idea, UI/UX, core features etc.) on each others' projects! Indie hackers are motivated to give feedback to others, as this is the currency to get feedback on their own projects.. And it is FREE!

I have become so committed to this mission to help like-minded solo-makers that I've even stepped out of my comfort zone, joining communities, sending DMs to other indie hackers, and submitting IndieVoice to a lot of startup directories.

To my greatest surprise, people are incredibly open and positive about this concept, which indicates that if you really try to ease the pain if your potential customers, they would willingly try your stuff!

If you are interested, check the link in the comment!

IndieVoice is still in the early phase, therefore any feedback are welcomed!

PS: The indie hacker community is like a huge village, where everyone's back is itching... Introducing some reciprocity the whole community will be better off!

What is your business and what’s the total revenue?

How long did it take you to get to this point?

What’s your work/life balance?

Was it worth it?

I don’t want to fail in keeping my words

I gave myself a challenge - for every $1 I make this month I’ll do 1 pushup

Current Revenue - $99, completed 99 pushups yesterday

It’s #buildinpublic - sharing my progress on Twitter everyday

This will be a test of my physical strength & values, it’s not just about money anymore

Last month, I finally got my first subscriber ever that was using audiolizer daily.

I followed his activity for a while, checking for bugs and unwanted interactions with the platform. After 3-4 days I quit following his audiolizer journey, thinking that everything should work fine.

In the meantime, I knew that audiolizer had a bug with the text-to-audio sync, where the chapter in the audio, is not found in the text. So when a user would press on chapter A, the text would show a different chapter B from the paper. The bug was happening once every 20 papers or so, and it was really hard to replicate.

So I didn't prioritize it.

3 days later, while randomly checking the subscriptions, I see that the client canceled.

It was a hit from the start, because I thought his usage is validating my app. More than that, he took the time to describe word by word the bug that I was aware off and didn't prioritize.

What did I do? Instead of crying out loud as I wanted, I spent the next 10 or so hours improving the search algorithm on both front-end and backend, tested everything tens of times until I could say that the text-audio sync won't fail anymore.

And then I emailed the client. I offered one free month, and 50% off for the following month after that. But he didn't answer.

Although he didn't answer, the important thing here is that you should take action as fast as you can. Don't build fancy features if you know you have bugs. I wouldn't pay 10$ for an app that has bugs, so I don't know why I'm expecting others to pay.

The other lesson is that you should talk to your clients more. Offer value, like extended free trials, discounts, or anything that they can use, and get their feedback. You might think that a bug is rarely appearing, but they might saw it at their first try.

The story ended well though. He never responded to my email, but he started to use audiolizer again after a few days

Hey Reddit! Jason here. I'm still in high/secondary school, but I love tech/ai and building helpful (well, trying to) projects.

I recently released PainPoint.Pro, a new way to find consumer pain points and product ideas - I got a pretty decent response with about 1.6K visits to my site, I did not stop there though, I kept iterating and adding new features much requested by some awesome people here giving me feedback. Here's what it does and why I built it:

So, I noticed all these indie hackers scraping Reddit and X for product ideas. But I thought, why not look somewhere else? Somewhere with tons of opinions and complaints...

YouTube comments.

People are always complaining in the comments or voicing their opinion, think about MKBHD's videos, people are always pointing out the negatives of the tech he reviews.

That's why I created PainPoint.Pro. Here's what it does:

1. You give it a YouTube video URL (We have search functionality if you can't be bothered to open youtube)
2. It scans all the comments.
3. You get a neat report with:
   • Common complaints grouped together
   • Ideas for products to solve these issues
   • Highlighting of comments where people are saying "I wish there was a" or "I would pay for" etc etc
   • Most negative comments
   • A search function for all the comments

We give 1 free credit, try it out and lmk your thoughts! :)

However, If one Youtube video is not enough:

1. Enter a Youtube niche, eg tech or sports
2. It scans (up to) 10 videos in that niche to give you an even better report (This will be increased very soon just currently scaling my infrastructure)
3. You get the full report like mentioned above

Although this is quite costly for me to do, but I'm interested in a new type of pricing for the monthly plan:

1. Months 1 & 2: Pay the regular price of $3.99 per month.
2. Month 3 and Beyond: Your monthly price drops permanently by $2—pay just $1.99 per month for unlimited analysis - niche & individual youtube videos!

Let me know what you think of this pricing strategy!

As long as you stay subscribed, you'll continue to enjoy the low price and I'll have enough to cover the infrastructure! Pro monthly plan price will never increase.

Lifetime members will receive all features forever. (Price will be increased when I expand to more platforms)

I'm not done here though and I will never be done, I'm working on more platforms which will be here soon. I understand the importance of speed and so I am working quickly to get this out.

Social proof is also much needed, so any constructive feedback is welcome.

The biggest thing I learned from this is understanding the concept of doing what you love, and genuinely have a passion for. When you have that drive, you overcome all the difficulties in development. Never do it solely for the money, you will fail.

If you want to see my full journey in building amazing (at least trying to) products, I am very active on X - https://x.com/ardeved - Send me a message here if you have any queries!

I have 53 ideas in my notepad (12 are stupid) which I will work on soon, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on my latest project - https://painpoint.pro!

Hello reddit community 😁

I am part of a small team working on our own startup and trying to understand the real struggles of product validation and finding product-market fit (especially for tech founders). We know that often times, founders get their hands dirty with programming and building the “next big thing” without proper research beforehand, therefore they fail😐

If you’ve faced challenges getting your product or service ready for launch, I’d love to hear what worked (or didn’t) for you.

Here’s what we’re curious about: - What were the biggest challenges you faced when launching your product? - How did you overcome them?

Thanks and best of luck to everybody 🚀

Hey r/indiehackers! 👋 I’ve been working as a solo indie hacker in Japan for a while now, and while the freedom to work on my own terms is great, the isolation has been a challenge I didn’t fully expect. If you’re thinking about going full-time on your startup or indie project, here’s what I’ve learned so far about balancing the highs of freedom with the reality of feeling cut off from others.

1. The "freedom" was what attracted me.

Like many of you, I wanted to work on something I'm passionate about. The flexibility is real, and it’s one of the best things about indie hacking. I can dive deep into product development when inspiration hits, work from a café in Tokyo, or take breaks when I need to. It’s incredibly liberating.

The good part: I’m no longer stuck in the 9-to-5 grind. Every decision is mine, and I have full control over my schedule.

2. But the isolation hits.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the isolation that comes with this freedom. Being an indie hacker, especially here in Japan where I'm not familiar with the startup and indie scene, can feel lonely.

The lows: Even though Japan is an amazing place to live, it’s hard to find fellow indie hackers or entrepreneurs to connect with. The cultural and language barriers make it a little tougher to build a network, and being in a different timezone from many startup communities adds another layer of isolation.

1. Trying to stay sane.

To keep the isolation in check, I make sure to balance work with life outside the screen. I try to get out of the house as much as possible, whether it’s working from a local café or taking a break to explore the beautiful outdoors here in Japan. Though its really hard some days.

The hack: Train rides.

Well this leads me to hopping onto reddit in hope to connect with fellow solo founders and indie hackers to build a virtual support network. If you’re also a solo indie hacker (or thinking about becoming one), I’d love to hear how you deal with isolation or if you have any tips on staying connected! AMA about working solo in Japan, the ups and downs, or anything else.

Hello hackers,

I built a solution to make adding/managing announcement bars for your website easier. This is like a practice project for me to take on bigger projects further.

I haven't setup any pricing. Feel free to use it. No catch at all

here - www.announcement.bar

Most suited beneficiaries:

1. E-commerce websites: Promote sales, discounts and special offers.
2. Non profit organizations: Highlight fundraising campaigns/volunteer opportunities.

If you have any requests or for general discussion, DM me.

I spent this morning researching the email automation market to see if there are any opportunities for indie developers. Here are my findings:

• Email automation market valued at $36 billion annually
• 60 million potential users globally
• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) varies across providers, showing diverse customer needs
• Great opportunity for indie developers to create simple, cost-effective solutions
• Current providers are lacking in key areas: confusing terminology, complex segment setup, technical glitches, unreliable APIs, and poor data analysis tools
• Demand for API-first tools with streamlined interfaces is high
• Plenty of room for success, even with competition

Here is the full report

About a month ago I started realizing how many failed SaaS projects I had just sitting in my repo and realized I couldn't sell on aquire because they were pre-revenue. I knew they still had value so I decided to build www.swap-ify.com, an online marketplace to buy or sell low to no revenue software products. Now those products have life :)

I currently have a steady stream of about 100 visitors a day and was really proud to see the first product get sold the other day.

If you have any projects just sitting in the repo, feel free to post them. Also, it's really early so I can feature the first few, just let me know. If you are building multiple products and not all work out due to marketing, cost, passion, etc., I hope this can help.

StockLibrary launched on Product Hunt today! 🤩

With StockLibrary, you can create ultra-realistic, on-brand stock photos.

Some features include:

• 4x upscaling feature
• Royalty-free stock photos
• Upload a reference image
• Diverse and include photos.

Check this out for more - https://www.reddit.com/r/GrowthHacking/comments/1fuc2vj/stocklibrary_create_ultrarealistic_onbrand_stock/

Putting the links out there in comments to try and provide feedback.

Hi fellow indie hackers,

There's been a lot of negativity surrounding Product Hunt in the indie hacking community lately.

Many say that Product Hunt don't give indie hackers a real chance and prioritize VC backed startups with deep pockets.

We're two brothers that have been doing this indie hacking thing for 7 months now.

We just launched on Product Hunt and we're having a close fight with VC backed companies.

But we need your help in this battle.

We're close to securing the 3rd spot and proving that indie hackers can fight back against the VC backed companies.

With your help, we can do it.

👉 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/buildpad

Your support is much appreciated.

Well, I did it — I launched my first mobile app this past Wednesday.

The app is a goal oriented firearms training logger. If interested you can check it out at https://trainfactor.app/

Here are my immediate thoughts and takeaways after launch:

Marketing of some kind is a requirement during development. Outside of posting in BuildInPublic throughout my building phase I did nothing else, and it showed. I have 8 installs on iOS and 1 on Android. I wasn't expecting some crazy numbers, but just kind of a "duh" reminder that building is not enough.

With my app being gun related I will have some challenges when it comes to content marketing. I already ran into this with Facebook not allowing me to post a launch post for the app. This made me decide to create social accounts for the app itself instead of trying to do it all from my personal/indiehacker account.

My plan to get more eyeballs with no marketing budget is to start with posting on Instagram and TikTok. After initial feedback and confirmation everything is running smoothly I am going to put together a PR bundle that I can send to influencers and see how many I can get to post about it.

Overall I'm proud that I fully followed through and did something I have been wanting to do for a long time. My immediate next goal and milestone is to get my first paying customer in the app.

I'm already looking forward to building out my indie app portfolio.

Hi, let me present my recent project, Sheetmatcher:

What I’ve noticed in over 15 years of experience as an IT consultant, particularly supporting finance departments, is that one crucial yet often underestimated task is comparing two Excel files.

It always starts believing that a couple of formulas will be enough, but then you start adding a check here and there, and 30 minutes are gone. Errors can easily happen at any time, just by dragging wrong a formula.

It can take a lot of time depending on:

• your skills
• the complexity of the files
• which insights you are looking for

With Sheetmatcher, you have a certain result and you will save a ton of time!

With Sheetmatcher you don't need to know anything about Excel: just drag and drop 2 files, select the key field and you are done! You will instantly know about differences or missing records.

If columns or records are sorted differently it is not a problem!

Sheetmatcher is made with simplicity in mind so that it can be used by everyone.

To give it a try, just sign up and you will be accessing the demo version:

https://www.sheetmatcher.com/

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments!

PS: If you really like it, I'm willing to collect some reviews to be posted later on the homepage as social proof / social wall: please do it here: https://senja.io/p/sheetmatcher/r/19o9Va

Thank you, Francesco

30 secs preview:

https://reddit.com/link/1ftlz24/video/kgm10dz8t4sd1/player

Hey hackers! 👋

I launched the waitlist for my first project getfiddo.com about 1 week ago with no real experience on building/selling products. It's a really simple tool where makers/founders/indie devs can collect feedback from their customers, prioritize features, and build products users (really) love.

My main goal here is not selling anything but to build connection with people and gather feedbacks around the overall project.

Waiting for your feedbacks/questions!

Happy building! 🤙