426 indie products shipped by makers

marla

@molaerga

Day 90 of 184 - road to $10k MRR - MRR: 0 - Downloads: 0 - posted: 2 - did huge progress with my SaaS (been waiting WEEKS to get those API approvals and finally got 2/2 today!!) - continued working on my app x.com/molaerga/statu…

Michel Lieben

@MichLieben

Why leave a $7M ARR agency to sell an API key? I'm going live with @InstantlyAI on Wednesday to answer it. The short version: 1. Why software over services Louis, one of the GTM engineers on our team, dictated 3 sentences to Claude Code. 27 minutes later there was a full cold email campaign sitting in Instantly, with a verified list and the copy written, and all that was left was reviewing it (one caveat: he'd mapped a 10,000+ lead TAM and built an ICP Matrix first) I'm convinced running GTM from a coding agent is the best move a GTM team can make, and I wanted to build the layer that makes it work. So in July we split the company. My co-founder kept the agency, and I kept ColdIQ to turn it into that layer. 2. What replaces the tool stack Claude Code can already call most GTM tools directly. You still need to know which provider to call for which job, and you still end up holding 8-12 API keys to do it. So ColdIQ is now one key in front of 40+ providers, with each step routed to the provider that does that job best: → The list from whichever B2B database fits the ICP (Apollo and Prospeo both sit behind the key) → Emails through a waterfall of seven finders. One provider alone covers around 40% of a list, the waterfall gets past 80% → Buying intent from PredictLeads plus 1-2 other signal APIs The routes come from testing 3,000+ tools on real campaigns across 275+ B2B companies. Your sequencer stays where it is, the campaign just gets built in Claude Code and pushed into Instantly through its API. The rest is on the live. Details to join in the tweet below.

Darius Pop

@tyd3n_

Day 43 of Building in Public 🤺🤺 Goal: €1k MRR 🏅🏅 Current: €54.90 🤯🤯 Finally, today we launched the new version of minimalistscreens.com and Smoke Off got approved. The new version of Minimalist Screens creates really high-quality screenshots. I’m not saying we’re at the level of a designer yet, but we’re getting pretty close. Smoke Off also got a huge upgrade. It looks completely different now and feels much more useful for the end user. I also did some SEO for Minimalist Screens and I’m learning a lot about SEO/AEO along the way. Tomorrow we’re starting again with organic content, and we’ll kick off the day by recording new demos. That’s it for today. Tomorrow is going to be a busy one. #buildinpublic #buildinginpublic

How they grewSEO and organic content

Ziga Potocnik

@zigapoto

We finished #1 Product of the Day on @ProductHunt 🏆 This year we launched on Product Hunt 4 times before this one: #3 Genie #3 Databox MCP #2 Skills Marketplace #2 Artifacts Yesterday, MCP Connectors took #1. Here's what it does and what we learned 👇 Your dashboard shows you that a number moved. It doesn't tell you why. The why lives somewhere else. A stalled deal in HubSpot. A pricing objection in a Slack thread. A bug in Linear that shipped on Tuesday. Finding it means opening three tools and piecing it together yourself. With MCP Connectors, you connect those tools to Genie, our AI Analyst. Ask "why did MRR drop 8%?" and you get the number and the reason, with links to the actual deal or thread behind it. Genie can also act on what it finds. 3 things the launch comments made clear: 1. Almost nobody finds the "why" in their dashboard. It's always in the CRM, Slack, support desk, or a doc somewhere. 2. People want more than answers. They want AI to take action, like pausing an ad campaign that's burning budget. 2. Trust matters most. The best questions were about where an answer came from and which tool you'd let AI touch first. Thank you to the @databoxHQ team for shipping this, and to everyone who upvoted, commented, and tried it. So, which tool would you connect first?

How they grewProduct Hunt launch

Dr. DIG

@CiprianiRanieri

🚀 Day 358/365 building in public 👥 Followers: 4,173 💰 MRR: €3000 👀 Impressions (7d): 60k ✅ Shipped: new City Fight leaderboard on BuildersMap ✅ Outreach: 10 messages to agencies ✅ Training 🏋️ 📝 7 days until my first year on X. Posting every number from here, good days and bad ones.

How they grewPosting in public and outreach to agencies

Pedro-AGB

@compound1studio

Designed a landing page for an AI hiking safety startup from brief to shipped. A startup like this targets $5M ARR in year two. That means the site has one job: turn a curious hiker into a paying subscriber before they find an alternative. What this landing page does for that goal: - Converts first-time visitors into free signups - Upgrades free users to the $9/mo Summit plan - Builds enough trust that someone hands it to a family member - Makes the SOS feature feel essential, not optional Built in @framer

Sarthak Rawool

@sarthakcore

I'm 16. Solo founder from Mumbai. Based in India. Building Coherent, a live looping software making $334 MRR with two of my other saas products. Looking to make friends with more builders on X, say hi! :)

Sebastien

@sebastien_t_

Solo founder from France. Based in Cape Town. Building Izeat, a calorie tracking inside ChatGPT and Claude for people who quit tracking apps making $0.6k MRR alongside my 9-5. Looking to make friends with more builders on X, say hi! :)

Joseph P. Zanini III

@joezanini

I just hired a PM. She’s a Grok bot named Connie. I’ve been having too much fun running Lursa AI with bots as the crew. Debbie is the engineer. @lursa_ai MCP + Cursor SDK. CI/CD through an AWS IAM role. The Librarian keeps the graph library fresh and writes diffs straight into Neo4j Aura over MCP. I found open-source product-management repos, then had Devy build Connie a “brain” — a local directory she treats as long-term memory. Those repos stay off the Lursa library. No clear Apache/MIT license, no graph. Strict rule. Then I had Grok write the founding-PM prompt, pasted it into a new Grok bot, and named her Connie after a PM I actually liked working with. Honest bit: still no paying users. Backend isn’t free. If this doesn’t get profitable, I can’t keep the lights on. I dropped Connie into a group chat with Devy, Voice, Publisher, Scout, and the Librarian. They introduced themselves. They’re already arguing, approving, and shipping. Marketing, engineering, product — all bots for now. The goal is still humans on payroll. #buildinpublic #startup #AIstartup #LursaAI #Grok #AIagents #MCP #indiehackers #solopreneur #foundersjourney #productmanagement #developertools #Neo4j #sideproject

harshith.builds

@harshithOG

I'am almost 26, Solo founder from india. Based in hyderabad. Building trycorto, a ai ugc ads app from your url making $0 MRR alongside my other small projects. Looking to make friends with more builders on X, say hi! :)

Adi Loloi

@Adi_loloi

I'm Adi. Solo founder building in public, road to $100k MRR. Right now: - Agent Jeremy: rental alerts in Amsterdam & Rotterdam, ~$1K MRR. agent-jeremy.com/nl - Dendedo: iOS app that turns a big goal into today's tiny task, ~$100 MRR. dendedo.com

Jonathan Lis

@ZenModeJon

Hi I’m Jonathan 👋 38 year old solo Founder from London, UK 🇬🇧 Ex @Google employee, and built/launched zen-mode.io earlier this year - a LinkedIn automation tool that simplifies lead generation for B2B professionals. Already at 50 active subscribers and ~$2k MRR. Big fan of Guinness, Arsenal football club, lifting weights and travel - I previously lived in The Philippines for 14 years 🇵🇭 Looking to connect with anyone/everyone in the tech industry - SaaS builders, founders, GTM professionals, AI evangelists, as well as VCs/Angel investors/pre-seed connections. Follow me for my build in public journey 🚀

Ayush Sharma

@iamayeush

I run @QuickReelHQ We have 350K+ users I'm thing of building in public - all metrics, revenue, challenges & solutions. Is it the right choice? Any indie hacker that can help me out with it?

INDIE | KAI

@adityaa_behera

I’m 19. A solo founder. I am doing graduation I built a lot of random things: Barcode scanner Own customer finding leads Pdf generator But every project taught me something. I built a small utility $0 revenue 97 users Would love to connect with builders and tech people!

Liz Q

@lizlizzzliz

I'm 23 Solo founder from Germany, buildind AI content agency (23$ MRR so far) Looking to connect with more entrepreneurs and marketers here! x.com/giutheginger/s…

Dan

@dcarps14

Wow so I definitely did NOT expect a second post about DeepSieve.ai to hit 1M+ views in as many weeks!! Thank you all for the shares and early access signups! 🙏 This has been a fun ride already and we're barely even at the starting line. To be clear again, the post was BOOSTED (as was the last one that hit 1M) but it achieved wayyyyyy beyond the little X said I was paying for over which tells me the interest is certainly there for deep research that's kept fresh for you and your agents. Boost recap: - $125 ($25/day x 5days) - 1.5M views (by time boost ends) - 429 engagements (likes/shares/comments/bookmarks) - 206 site visitors - 15 signups Yes the $8 CPA is high and may not be sustainable long-term (we'll see once I open the app to the public), but my focus this early on is awareness and the 8¢ CPM is unbeatable. I can't get anywhere close to that CPM on legacy marketing channels, so I'm going to keep leaning into the AI community here on X. I post mostly organic AI industry takes and how I'm leveraging it all as a solo founder, plus a sprinkling of boosted DeepSieve.ai announcements. You guys ROCK!!

How they grewBoosted posts on X; organic AI industry takes and DeepSieve.ai announcements

Kaushtubh Agrawal

@KaushtubhAgraw1

8 days ago I started this series as THE $0 FOUNDER with a confession: trophies everywhere, traction nowhere. Law #7: Launch is not a day you hope for. It's a moment you engineer. What went live today📄: -> Contracts deployed and verified on Arc Mainnet. -> The first attested print on mainnet, the category's birth certificate. -> The x402 pay-per-call API, now settling on mainnet. Why today and not when the code felt ready: Sep 22, BlackRock published The Machine-Native Economy. Oct 5, CME launches compute futures. You launch inside the wave (Law #6), and you stack every announcement into one strike (Play Bigger's lightning strike), because a solo founder can't win by volume. Only by concentration. So here's the ask that makes today matter. I'm opening 3 pilot seats😅: -> If your agents spend real money on inference or GPU, I'll produce your first Machine TCA statement free. -> What your agents paid, what they should have paid, receipt-matched against attested prints. -> White-glove onboarding, me personally, this week. You get your blind spend number. I get my first proof. DM me "pilot". First 3 teams whose agents actually spend. The 9-day story so far, for anyone arriving with the wave: won ETHOnline as Machine TCA → coined the category, timestamped → BlackRock's paper dropped the next day → mainnet today. Scoreboard: customer revenue $0. Pilots: 0 of 3. Room: 0 of 8. Mainnet: SHIPPED. #BuildInPublic #The0DollarFounder #DAY8 #AgenticPayment #FounderJourney

How they grewDM "pilot" for the first 3 teams

Semih

@its_meseba

Day 11 Google approved the android update, the launch crash fix is finally live -- real users are opening the app again, no android errors in the first hours. The reviewer-only login I built yesterday worked, so if you use magic link sign-in, prepare a demo account with a password path for the reviewers before you submit. Today I worked on ASO with a new tool, Sonar. I was using appeeky before but I didn't find it useful at all -- it wasn't doing what it should do properly, they kept adding new features but none of them was working fully. So I switched to Sonar and it is great so far, the CLI works well with my agents too. I also decided to actually learn ASO myself instead of only letting the agents do it, I asked Claude to teach me from zero with my own app's data. I want to understand what I am changing and why, otherwise I cannot judge what the agents give me. Some things I didn't know: - ranking is not only the words in the title, subtitle and keywords, the ratings and whether people download after seeing you matter as much - on ios the long description is not used for search at all, on android it is -- I was writing both the same way - the biggest keyword in my category has popularity 59 and difficulty 79, it is not winnable for a small app rn, so I am picking relevant keywords with popularity 30+ and difficulty under 50 instead - my app ranks #4-5 on android in two countries but only for its own name, which means new users searching for the problem are not finding me yet - in some non-english countries people search the App Store in english, I had marked one market as dead because I only checked the local words The 20 market store listing pass is finished as well, the local loop on claude went through all the regions with the daily quota. In most markets the everyday local word beat the formal word I was using. From now on I will run it weekly -- check the ranks, pick 5 winnable keywords, one change per market, wait 2-4 weeks and measure. TBH I was shipping features for weeks and guessing on the distribution side, ASO is a craft of its own and I want to understand it properly. I will keep posting this journey.

How they grewASO across app stores; 20-market store listing pass with Claude and Sonar

Moin Channa

@moinchanna

She was deleting photos one by one and snapped at me. So I built the app. Now she says I saved her life. Still zero paid users. Still shipping. #Shipaton #BuildInPublic #indiedev #solodev

Son Le Thanh ⛴

@thsonvt

Three days ago, I started building Pippa. Today: five early users and my first community demo. 🚀 Pippa is a personal scheduling assistant you can message on WhatsApp. I’m building it to solve a problem I have myself—and learning in public as I go. Here’s how I’ve approached the journey so far: 🧭 Start with the user journey. What is someone trying to get done with scheduling meetings? What should the assistant ask, remember, and do next? That gives me a starting point for deciding what to build. 📋 Keep the work in one place. I use Linear as the single source of truth for bugs and features. Real conversations with the bot are already turning into concrete things to improve. 🛠️ Use OpenAI Codex intensively throughout the process. Brainstorming. Writing code. Building the landing page. Shaping the launch message. And, yesterday, preparing my presentation. Yesterday morning, I received an invitation to speak at the Agentic Night event hosted by GlobalAI SG community meetup at IMDA. By that evening, I was demoing Pippa. I spent about an hour preparing the slide deck and speaker notes with Codex’s help. 🎤 Several people wanted to know how I built the app. That’s the part I want to share more of: the customer journey, the decisions, the tools, and the bugs we discover along the way. It’s early. There’s plenty to improve. Having five people willing to try it gives me a much better way to learn what matters next. 🌱 Want to try Pippa and help shape it? Comment “EARLY” or send me a DM to join the early-adopter list. 👇

How they grewComment “EARLY” or DM to join the early-adopter list.

Matt Mullin

@matthewwmullin

The USGS LiDAR app just crossed 37,000 users in less than 1 month! Main takeaway: people love exploring the data, but it needs to be faster. The current version pulls from USGS as you move around the map. That keeps it cheap and gives national coverage, but speed depends on live requests + processing. So I built a new version that preprocesses LiDAR + aerial imagery into multi-resolution tiles. As you zoom in, it only loads the detail you need. The result is lightning fast... smooth flying, instant LiDAR/imagery comparison, and real-time elevation rescaling. The problem is storage. Massachusetts: ~100 GB, Colorado: ~1 TB, Entire US: 60+ terabytes. At full scale, hosting would cost $6k-12K/year. Also learned that 68% of users are on mobile, so a better mobile version is coming. Hope to have a faster version soon when I figure out how to pay for it! Happy exploring on the original app: mattmullin.space/state-lidar

Carolina Terrain

@carolinaterrain

Founder update. No polish, just what is on my mind. This year I stopped trying to do everything and focused on the business that pays the bills. It paid off. Best year in Carolina Terrain history. Profitability roughly doubled. Bank account has never looked better. Here is what that focus taught me and where we go next. 1. We are moving toward B2B only. The goal is no more residential. Our target customers going forward are HOAs, property managers, and municipalities. The work is stormwater SCM inspection, maintenance, and compliance under StormwaterSCM.com. 2. We are selling the work trucks. Carolina Terrain is moving to a pure subcontractor model. Licensed, insured subs do the installs. We do the diagnostics, the inspections, the project management, and the paperwork nobody else wants to do. 3. The paperwork is the product. Every HOA with a retention pond, a wet basin, or a bioretention cell has maintenance obligations. Most of them keep records in a board member's inbox or a filing cabinet. Then the county asks for proof and nobody can find it. So I am building a stormwater compliance records repository. Inspections, photos, maintenance logs, reports. One place. Ready when the inspector calls. For the first time in company history, Carolina Terrain will have recurring software revenue. 4. The big players are consolidating. Stormwater compliance software is getting bought up and pointed at large municipal utilities. That leaves a gap: the small HOA with two ponds and nobody watching them. That gap is where we live. 5. Now the honest part about $TRN. Nobody is using it. That is on me. I built the ecosystem and then went heads down on the real business. Posting hype was never going to fix that. Real use will. So here is the plan. The token gets one job, tied to real work: Every compliance record in the repository gets anchored to TerrainGuard for tamper-proof permanence. Each anchor burns a small amount of $TRN. Every burn will be public and traceable to a real inspection on a real site. HOAs never touch crypto. They get a report with a verify link. The chain just proves the record existed and was never changed. The token earns attention by doing work, not by me shilling it. 6. January is build month. Winter is the off-season. That is when the repository, the anchoring system, and a public ledger page get built. I am also putting AI agents to work in the business: field photos in, draft inspection report out. Fixed supply: 1.25B. Mint revoked. LP burned. Founder tokens locked on-chain. I want to hear from you: If you sit on an HOA board, how are your stormwater records kept today? If you are in the trades, where would you want a verified record of your work? If you hold $TRN, what should the public ledger page show? Drop it in the comments. I read all of them. Proof over Promises. CA: Dm7FAcF4kzVgsrn6VPEp2C5bN3tGPkydpWaR26wtDR8m #Stormwater

John | Web and Mobile App Dev

@JohnOlorun90448

An app I built JsonExport.com in February this year, gets around ~ 50/60/80 users daily. App is totally free. No ad spend or any real advertising. We know number of daily visitors through cloudflare web analytics (which works with the injected Clouldflare analytics code snippet). Another app, a mobile app published around March 2026 has around 100+ users. Again, no paid ads nor existing audience to market to. Now, would you say this is a failure or otherwise?

How they grewNo ad spend or real advertising

Prasad

@theprasad_

Things I am going to do to scale my agency memoirslab.com: (discarding previous mistakes I made) 1. Making outreach my first priority This is the mistake I made for years. I relied purely on inbound leads which is great and easy to close. But what I never added was regular warm outreach to prospects already in my audience. I never looked up to getting more & more clients even when I not needed them. I became complacent with the money I was making and stopped aiming higher. If you are not doing money making activities(outreah & content) every single day your business will eventually die. I am not going to repeat that mistake with Memoirslab. Going all in on mass cold email, warm outreach and building a dream 100 list. 2. Sharpening my content strategy My 5 content pillars: 1. Personal branding (how I grow my accounts and my clients brands) 2. Building Memoirslab in public 3. My story and journey as an agency founder & writer 4. Entrepreneurship and the mindset that goes into it 5. Insights on marketing, branding and copywriting Current output: - 14 tweets per week - 5 LinkedIn posts per week - 2 newsletters per week - 3 Instagram reels per week The goal is to build trust with my ideal clients and generate predictable leads from my audience consistently. 3. Delivering top notch service to existing clients Getting clients for your offer is one thing and delivering them spectacular service is a whole other ball game. I have been delivering great results for my clients for the last 3 years. So I am pretty sure that I will keep doing the same now. Will keep sharing the updates here so make sure you follow this journey. 4. Creating more lead magnets When I started in 2023 I had multiple lead magnets running. I stopped updating them. That changes now. I have plenty of ideas to create new lead magnets and these lead magnets will help me attract more targeted audiences and clients. 5. Growing my newsletter I have around 1800 subscribers on my list. That list has generated me over $17,000 to $18,000 and I was never even consistent with it. That is changing. Subscribe prasadbambarkar.substack.com to get insider insights on what it actually takes to build a personal brand and make real money from it. The goal across all of this is to build predictable lead generation channels and become truly prolific at my craft which is writing great content for founders. Building my own personal brand as an agency founder will pay dividends for years. And in a world being taken over by AI it is my strongest long term edge.

How they grewmass cold email, warm outreach, dream 100 list, content

Petr Homoky

@homoky

The Edicek browser extension 1.0 is done. It finally looks like the share sheet in our iPhone app. But nobody uses a feature they don't know about. So, everything after "done": • a 17-second animation of the old popup turning into the new one, made in the video tool I built with Claude Code • a marketing cut of it with the timeline visible • the changelog entry • 22 drafts of one changelog illustration, generated from the Edicek brand system • 20 drafts of a background for the video • this post, an announcement on @heyedicek, a blog post, Reddit posts I planned 3 hours for that list. It took almost 4 days, and it grew by about 10 things I didn't plan, a YouTube video among them. Until now the Chrome Web Store listing had 1 screenshot, a one-line description, 6 users and a single 1-star rating. That's what "shipped" looked like. Everyone says building is easy and distribution is king. I don't buy it. If you can build a product people like, you can learn to distribute it. The other way round is much harder. But a feature without a moment is a line in a changelog nobody opens. I call them marketable moments, and I'm done wasting them.

How they grewChrome Web Store listing, video, changelog, Reddit posts, blog post, announcement on @heyedicek

Pixie 🦝👑Princess Vtuber

@ladypixelheart

Hey did y'all hear?? My customizable furry vtuber model (that I made FREE) now has over 170+ downloads?? 😱

Paras Dev

@ParasDev964445

From a simple idea to 100,000+ downloads! 🚀 ​Incredibly proud of what we're building at Netraksha AI with the 'When?' app. A massive thank you to our 100K+ users who believe in a privacy-first personal timeline assistant. ​#Startup #WhenApp #100kDownloads #BuildInPublic

toksana

@toksana_dev

Small milestone: react-native-remote-paywall just hit 165 weekly downloads on npm 🎉 Update your paywall's layout and copy remotely, no app store release needed. Zero dependencies. Repo below 👇feedback welcom #ReactNative #BuildInPublic

Darius Pop

@tyd3n_

#buildinpublic #buildinginpublic Day 42 of Building in Public 🤾🏻‍♀️🤾🏻‍♀️ Goal: €1k MRR 🏅🏅 Current: €54.90 🤯🤯 This weekend was more about taking a break from everything, but I still managed to submit the new version of Smoke Off to the App Store. My brother and I decided to wait a couple of days before posting organic content because we’re launching new versions of both minimalistscreens.com and Smoke Off, so we need to record new demos first. That’s it for today. Tomorrow we’re back at it and pushing toward our goals again! #buildinpublic #buildinginpublic

How they grewOrganic content, with new demos before launch

Nihal

@imNihalN

Day 8 → Road to $10K MRR 🚀 Shipped outbound links on Webyz, then noticed each page had its own green and red. 😅 The same colour pair was written out in 7 places. Now it lives in one. Back to building. 🔥 #BuildInPublic #SaaS #IndieHackers

Benjamin | Tape Engine

@Onlybenjamin_

I built a tech publication and a small AI tool. Now I'm selling both. CortexHub (AI/startup news, directory, newsletter) + Savio AI (270+ installs, 28 active users). Great starter bundle for a creator or founder. Open to offers, DM me 👇 #buildinpublic #indiehackers

sandip.

@sandip_dev_07

$0 MRR. 240+ signups in my SaaS. - Slugy: branded links, QR codes, bio pages, analytics. - Track every click that turns into leads and sales. #buildinpublic

Bibin O

@bibinomathew

10 Paying customers for Gallerylink. Products i thought no one will use is now having customers . #buildinpublic #growth

Anubhav

@Anubhavbtw

I made my first $1,000 this month. And my first thought was: I should make more. A few months ago, I was fully focused on Framer templates. Then Framer 3.0 launched in the same month I got my first template accepted and made my first sale. The whole marketplace changed pretty much overnight. It took me a while to get back to my usual 3–4 sales a month, and somewhere along the way I started looking at client work too. Not because I had planned to. I just got an inbound lead. And that turned into my first client project. The project itself started pretty simply. The client liked a Framer template and wanted to use it for their business with some changes. After about a week of back and forth, it became a much bigger project. Custom pages, more interactions, effects, and eventually a 13–14 page website designed and built in @Framer. And that's how I got to my first $1,000. Not all from the client, and not all in one month, but around 80–85% of it came in a single month. And honestly, this month was kind of crazy. Noren was another big part of it. I built it in 12 days and ended up making around $300–350 from it across the month. The funny part is that the Noren money was completely passive. I was buried in the client project, and I'd randomly get a notification that someone bought the template. The client project went well too. The client was reasonable, the feedback was straightforward, and somehow we didn't even have a single call. I had spent time thinking I'd need to prepare a whole presentation just to get the project started. Didn't need it. After making the money, my first thought was obviously: I should make more. More clients. More templates. More content. But I'm actually going to do the opposite for a week. I'm taking a break. This month basically swallowed my entire routine. I gave almost all my time to the project, and I think I've earned a few days where I'm not trying to turn every waking hour into another dollar. $1k isn't some huge milestone. But getting here from where I started still feels pretty damn good. Maybe there was some luck involved. A few template sales. An inbound lead. Good timing. Maybe not. Either way, I did a hell of a job getting here. So this week I'm getting back to some things I've been putting off. I'm playing Cyberpunk 2077, which I know I'm about a few years late to. I'm finally starting to learn Japanese too. Today I literally just copied a few Japanese sentences into my notebook. I don't understand a single character yet, but honestly, it looks pretty cool. Then I'll slowly get back into my old routine. For now, I'm taking the week.

How they grewtemplate sales; inbound client lead

Joshua Pi'Rwot

@pirwot

Someone quoted a number at me in a group chat three weeks ago. The median profitable micro-SaaS earns about 4,200 dollars a month, so roughly fifty thousand a year. He was using it to argue that going solo was more viable than people think. I went looking for where it came from. Mostly curiosity. I found a second published median for what looks like the same population in the same year: five hundred dollars a month. And a third at around two thousand. Three medians, one sector, an eightfold spread, and no one anywhere reconciling them. That is when the interesting question stopped being how much solo founders earn. 𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘯𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘰 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥. 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘀, 𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Here are the numbers in circulation, with what each is actually measuring, as far as I could establish. 𝘼𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 4,200 𝙙𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙧𝙨 𝙖 𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙝 Widely quoted in 2026. Note the qualifier that travels with it and then gets dropped: median profitable micro-SaaS. Profitable. It is a median of the survivors, and the word doing the work is usually lost by the second retelling. 𝘼𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 500 𝙙𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙧𝙨 𝙖 𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙝 From an analysis of a thousand-plus products, published 2025. This one counts listed products rather than profitable ones, which is a wider and less flattering net. 𝘼𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 24,000 𝙙𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙧𝙨 𝙖 𝙮𝙚𝙖𝙧, 𝙨𝙤 𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙡𝙮 2,000 𝙖 𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙝 A third figure, sitting neatly between the other two, from survey-adjacent reporting. Each one is honestly reported. None of them is wrong. They are answers to three different questions that are all being asked in the same words. And the further any of them travels from its source, the more confident it gets, because the qualifiers fall off first. 𝘈 𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗜𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 Ask who got counted. Everything turns on that. If you measure the products that are currently listed on a public directory, you have excluded everything that was taken down, which correlates almost perfectly with everything that failed. If you measure profitable products, you have excluded the unprofitable ones by definition. If you survey the members of a community built around a paid conference, you have selected for people serious and solvent enough to attend one. Every one of those is a reasonable sampling frame for some question. Each of them sidesteps the question the reader is actually asking, which is: if I start one of these, what happens to me? That question needs the population of everyone who started. It goes unmeasured for a structural reason rather than a lazy one. An abandoned side project just stops. Updates end, the domain lapses, the directory listing comes down, and the data point quietly ceases to have ever existed. 𝙒𝙝𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙞𝙖𝙨 𝙧𝙪𝙣𝙨 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙬𝙖𝙮 Failure removes itself from the dataset. Quietly. Success stays in it and gets louder, because a working business has a reason to keep its listing current, publish its revenue, and go on a podcast. So the measured population drifts upward over time without a single number being falsified. The sector is showing you a filtered photograph and calling it a census. Nobody had to lie for that to happen. 𝗪𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗠𝗼𝘃𝗲 It helps to see the mechanism rather than just be told about it, so here is the arithmetic in miniature. Imagine a hundred people launch a product in the same month. A year later the picture is what every source agrees on. Fifty sit at zero or near it. Thirty are under a thousand a month. Fifteen land between one and ten thousand. Five clear that. The median of all hundred is somewhere near zero. That is the number a founder deciding whether to start should want. Now wait two more years and measure again. The fifty at zero have mostly stopped. Their domains lapse and their listings come down. They leave the dataset rather than registering as failures, because the dataset is built by looking at what exists. Measure the survivors and the median is now somewhere in the low thousands. Every business in the picture stayed exactly where it was. The bottom of the distribution walked out of the room and took the median with it. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘦𝘧𝘵. 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘬, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵. Then add the second filter, the word profitable, and the remaining population is smaller and higher again. Two filters, both defensible, and the published figure is now several times the one a prospective founder actually needs. 𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗡𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿 Ask who is producing these figures, because in this sector almost nobody is doing it for free. Look at who publishes them. People selling micro-SaaS courses. Boilerplate starter kits. Directories that charge for listings, communities that charge for membership, and tool vendors whose customers are aspiring solo founders. An encouraging median is commercially useful to all of them. A pessimistic one costs them customers. Be careful with that, because it is a claim about incentives rather than about anyone's honesty, and the two get confused. Fabrication has little to do with it. When three figures are available and one of them is cheerful, the cheerful one travels. Hundreds of people pick it independently. Every one of them is acting in good faith. That is how a sector ends up with a consensus number that arrived by drift, with no author and no source. 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙩𝙚𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙤 𝙬𝙖𝙩𝙘𝙝 𝙛𝙤𝙧 When you see one of these figures, look for whether the qualifier survived. "Median profitable micro-SaaS" is a defensible statement. "Median micro-SaaS" is a different and much lower number. If the piece you are reading has dropped the word, the author either did not notice or did not want you to. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝘂𝗿𝘃𝗲𝘆 𝗦𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗜𝗻𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 There is a genuine benchmark in this space, and it deserves to be treated differently from the blog numbers. MicroConf's State of Independent SaaS ran its fourth annual edition in 2024, covering founders across 41 countries and 265 cities. It has a defined population and repeat waves, which is two more methodological virtues than anything else I found. I will be honest about one thing here, because it is the same disease. I wanted to give you the sample size and I cannot. One secondary source says 836 founders, another says nearly 700, and the report itself sits behind a download form I would have to fill in to check. So I am quoting the country count, which comes from MicroConf directly, and leaving the n out rather than picking the number I liked. Two things about it. First, it is two years old. The most recent edition I could locate is from 2024. In a sector where people confidently quote 2026 medians, the best real survey predates the AI tooling wave that changed what one person can build. That gap is a reason for more caution. Second, and more interesting: it found that three-founder teams grew two to three times faster than solo founders. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘰𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦. That finding rarely gets quoted. The reason is mundane: a survey result saying "you would probably do better with co-founders" fits badly into content aimed at people who have already decided to go it alone. 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗺𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗙𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗔𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗢𝗻 𝗦𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 Some of these claims fail on their face. Look at the shape rather than the number. "28 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙛𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙩 𝙗𝙚𝙩𝙬𝙚𝙚𝙣 1,000 𝙖𝙣𝙙 5,000 𝙙𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙧𝙨 𝙖 𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙝" Over what period? A churn figure without an observation window is not a statistic. It is a number. Twenty-eight percent over one year and twenty-eight percent over ten years describe completely different worlds, and the claim as published stays silent on which. "54 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙙𝙪𝙘𝙩𝙨 𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙚 𝙣𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜" Published alongside a distribution from the same source that puts about fifty percent in the bottom band. Those two figures contradict each other, and the contradiction went unremarked, which tells you how carefully these get assembled. "21 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙞𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙙, 𝘼𝙄-𝙡𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙜𝙚𝙙 𝙛𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙝𝙞𝙩 500,000 𝙙𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙧𝙨, 𝙖𝙜𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙩 𝙖 𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙖𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙤𝙛 1.4 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙩" This is the most instructive one, because the error is visible in the sentence. The sample is defined partly by the outcome: committed founders who used AI well. Then the comparison to a general average is presented as though commitment caused the difference. The source itself concedes survivorship bias and publishes the comparison anyway. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗲 𝗜𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 Here is what I think survives. The shape is consistent across every source, and the shape is a long tail with almost everything piled at the bottom. Roughly half of products earn approximately nothing. Something like one in ten reaches a level that would replace a professional salary. A very small percentage, low single digits, reaches the numbers that get written about. That shape is believable. It matches every other creative-and-distribution market anyone has measured properly. Apps, books, music, newsletters, restaurants. The mechanism is the same in all of them, which is why I trust the shape while holding every specific median loosely. Where you personally sit in that distribution is beyond what this data can say, and beyond what anyone quoting it can say either, which is the actual practical point of this article. 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗡𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄 Since the sector's benchmarks are useless for judging your own position, build internal ones. Four that are cheap and mean something. 1. 𝙈𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙝𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙧𝙪𝙣𝙬𝙖𝙮, 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙖𝙨 𝙖 𝙙𝙖𝙩𝙚 The actual calendar date on which you must have income or stop. Written down, in figures, where you can see it. People avoid this number. It is the one that decides which choices you still have. 2. 𝙋𝙖𝙮𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙧𝙨, 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙮 𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙙 Paying customers only. Signups, trials and your own test accounts stay out of the count. Use the number you could read out from memory. Below about twenty, dashboards are actively misleading because the percentages swing wildly on single events. 3. 𝙒𝙝𝙚𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙩 𝙢𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙝'𝙨 𝙘𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 Retention on a small base is the most informative number a small business has and the one most often skipped in favor of growth. Five hundred users who stay beats five thousand who pass through, and it is a far better predictor of whether the thing works. 4. 𝙔𝙤𝙪𝙧 𝙤𝙬𝙣 𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙡𝙮 𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙚, 𝙘𝙖𝙡𝙘𝙪𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙙 𝙝𝙤𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙡𝙮 Total money earned, divided by total hours worked on it, since the beginning. Include the nights. All of them. It is a brutal number early on. It should be. This is the comparison that makes "I should get a job" true or false, and most people settle that question on feeling. 𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘯𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘤𝘬 𝘰𝘯 𝘢 𝘚𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘺 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘰𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘣𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘩𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬 𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳. One condition attached, and it is the one people skip. Computed once, those four numbers are trivia. Their value is in the delta. What your runway date was in June against what it is now. Whether retention held while you were shipping. Whether the hourly rate is climbing or flat. A number you check once tells you where you are. The same number checked monthly tells you which direction you are moving, and direction is what carries information about next quarter. So whatever you use, use something that keeps the history. A spreadsheet works. Recalculating from scratch each time you feel anxious is what most people do, and it costs you the one comparison that would have helped. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗞𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗹𝗮 There is a version of this that is specific to where I sit, and it cuts in an unexpected direction. Every figure above is denominated in dollars and implicitly priced against a Western cost of living. Fifty thousand dollars a year is a modest outcome in San Francisco and a different proposition entirely in Kampala, Nairobi or Lagos. The same revenue, against a different cost base, is a different life. So the optimistic-sounding numbers are, if anything, understated for a founder here, on the income side. The distribution is harsher on the other side, though, and this is the part that gets left out. Distribution is the binding constraint in solo software. It is also where sitting outside the main market costs you most. Payment rails take longer to set up. Your home market is too small to be your first market. The audience game runs on platforms whose defaults were built for somewhere else. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘶𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳. 𝘉𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘢𝘥𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘨𝘰 𝘶𝘯𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥, 𝘴𝘰 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦 𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘳𝘢𝘸. So the local founder gets both readings at their worst. Encouraged by a median computed over survivors in a richer market. Then judged against a growth rate that assumes access they were never given. If you are building from here, the four internal numbers at the end of this piece are the only instruments calibrated to your actual situation. 𝗬𝗲𝘀, 𝗜 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗔𝗻 𝗔𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗹𝗲 𝗦𝗮𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗜 𝗗𝗼 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗞𝗻𝗼𝘄 "𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙟𝙪𝙨𝙩 𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙡𝙚 𝙨𝙖𝙮𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙙𝙤 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙠𝙣𝙤𝙬" Fairly put. What I know is narrower than what the sector claims. It is still usable. The distribution is long-tailed. The published medians disagree by a factor of eight. The best survey is stale and says something the genre would rather skip. And your own numbers beat all of it. I would rather hand you that than a confident figure I would have to abandon the moment you pushed. "𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙮, 𝙨𝙤 𝙞𝙩 𝙞𝙨 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙞𝙚 𝙝𝙖𝙘𝙠𝙚𝙧𝙨" Selection bias is general, true. But it bites hardest where exit is silent and entry is free, and solo software is close to the purest example of both. Starting is free and silent. Quitting is free and silent. That combination is what makes the measurement problem unusually severe here rather than merely present. "𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘼𝙄 𝙩𝙤𝙤𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙬𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚𝙙 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙮𝙬𝙖𝙮" Possibly, and this is the strongest objection. If one person can now build what took four, the historical distribution may genuinely be a poor guide. Two things though. The build was rarely the binding constraint, distribution was, and the tooling wave leaves distribution roughly where it found it. And the best survey predates the wave, so anyone claiming to know what it did to the numbers is reasoning from anecdote. Including me. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗨𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗘𝗹𝘀𝗲'𝘀 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 There is a version of this article that reads as discouragement. The argument runs the other way. You have been navigating with someone else's instruments, calibrated for a population you are not in. Almost every number you have absorbed about what this life pays was computed over the people it worked for. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰 𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘳𝘶𝘯𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦, 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵, 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸. 𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙡𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙞𝙛: you have ever compared yourself to a published figure and felt behind. 𝙄𝙩 𝙞𝙨 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙞𝙛: you already track your runway date, your paying customers, your retention and your real hourly rate. You have better data than this article does. The four numbers above are the ones I built FounderWise to hold. A short assessment gives you a score with the weakest category named, and then it keeps the history, so the next time you look you are comparing yourself to yourself in June rather than to a median somebody computed over survivors. Free to start, no card, one email link: app.founderwise.io Advice is free. A year spent measuring against the wrong benchmark is not. Josh

Ed15on

@junhua995

My Mac app MarginDeck just got its first sale, about 8 weeks after launch. Since July 29: 415 impressions, 38 page views, 8 downloads (one of them is me), 1 purchase. Tiny numbers, but a stranger paid for something I built. Still kind of can't believe it.

Ubaid Ur Rehman

@ubaidbuilds

Last week I launched ReachLoop with 0 paying customers. Today: 1. $79/month. A stranger put a card in after the free trial. I know $79 isn't a business. It's one person deciding the trial was worth keeping. But my last product ran 4 months and never got a single paid user. I built it quietly and told nobody. This time I posted before it was ready, said the number was zero, and gave the whole outbound system away for free. The first customer came from that. Not from a feature. From telling people. Next number I post is 10. No idea how long that takes. Reply "SYSTEM" and I'll send you the playbook.

How they grewPosted before it was ready; gave the outbound system away for free

Evgeny

@PlotnikovDev

First sale on my side project 🎉 cursed.boo - pick a name, a reason, and a punishment and send link to your "friend". → Launched: [1 days ago] → Marketing: [almost none] → Revenue: $3 (2.57 net) Tiny number. Huge feeling.

How they grewalmost none

Nick

@Nick_333ch

50 PAYING CUSTOMERS. ALL ORGANIC 😭🔥 reugc.com crossed 50 paying customers, with 99% of the traffic and customers coming from google and chatgpt. sales have been coming in without me having to promote it every day. but here’s the less exciting part: revenue this month is significantly down compared to last month. so i spent my saturday giving it some serious attention. “i’ll just improve the landing page.” you already know how that went 😂 the landing page became the onboarding. the onboarding became the dashboard. then the flows. then basically everything. and the updated version already got its first paying customer. ONE customer. i know. it doesn’t mean i’ve fixed the revenue drop. but after a whole day of working through the product, someone coming in and choosing to pay felt SO GOOD. 50 people have paid for something i built. i’m excited about what it could become if i give it the attention it deserves. still a lot to figure out. still need to work smarter. but right now? i feel alive. LET’S BUILD 🔥

How they grewGoogle and ChatGPT

Kartey R

@kartey_r

Serpex.dev reaching 100 paying customers. a year ago, a product I launched as a side project💙. Thanks to @DodoPayments for providing seamless payment infrastructure and making global payments simple for Serpex.