... Over the past few days, I ve been following a heated discussion about how Marc Lou is selling parts of his body in some kind of simulation to promote products (ad placements in the form of virtual tattoos) and making a lot of money from it. I swear, the whole thing has gone mainstream. And, of course, some frustrated makers joined the conversation, saying they can work their asses off building tools and will never make that kind of money ...

... years ago, shipping constantly was almost a marketing strategy. Pieter Levels, Jennifer Dewalt, Marc Lou building fast gave people a reason to follow the journey. Every launch created another story and more momentum. But AI changed the equation. Now anyone can ship an app every week, and a lot of them are buggy, generic, and make $0. Shipping itself is no longer impressive. Do you still think launching lots of products is a good strategy, or is focus more valuable ...

... product and spend years making it successful. This makes sense when you are building a venture-backed company and trying to create one huge outcome. But I am not sure it is the best strategy for indie hackers. The alternative is what I call the many-donkeys thesis . Instead of betting your entire career on one product becoming a unicorn, you build a portfolio . You might create ten products. two eventually make $10K+ per month five make between ... ... main businesses. By 2019, the two had reached more than $1 million in combined annual revenue. But they came from years of launching and experimenting with different ideas, not from correctly identifying the perfect company on day one. Marc Lou

... other words... what are your capabilities? What are your multi-project management skills? Because I feel like people like Marc Lou or Levelsio do a lot of them and as solo founders, they are pretty fast and versatile (but they probably delegate some things to other freelancers - that's my guess). How many projects can you handle at once? Either solo or together? For example, I was handling 5 or 6 at one time, but it soon took its toll ... ... answer is 1. One project deserves your full obsession before you add another. The makers who look like they're handling 5 things are usually just very good at finishing one thing fast before moving to the next. Marc Lou

... Tibo and JK Molina were doing with TweetHunter. The way they built in public, iterated fast, and turned a simple idea into a real business was hard to ignore. And sell it really quick. At the same time, Marc Lou and Pieter Levels have been constants on X for a long time. Both proving in very different ways that a solo founder with the right distribution can go incredibly far. So I'm curious: Who was the founder or builder ... ... enjoy distribution more than building. Especially in 2026, I think it s become relatively easy to build a product. But distributing it definitely hasn t become easier. If anything, it s harder now, because there are so many more competitors

... social media to sell a product (or themselves). It always depends on the final customer; I can clearly see that companies usually bet on a few things: their personal brand (often LinkedIn and X, e.g. Levelsio and Marc Lou for B2B, or Instagram in the case of influencers and their products) purely paid ads (across Meta e.g. minimalist phone, where there is almost no organic content) community-driven growth (Discord, Reddit, Facebook groups, Slack communities, etc.) Social media ...

... meant hiring at least 2-3 devs, a designer, maybe a marketer. Now it's just me and AI tooling, and I'm shipping faster than some teams I've worked with. But I think the framing of "solo vs company" misses the real shift. It's not about headcount anymore, it's about leverage per person. A solo founder with the right AI stack can absolutely compete with a 10-person team on product. Where it gets harder ... ... companies at the center. The real bottleneck may stop being production and shift toward attention, credibility, and demand exactly the issue you re pointing at with "who will buy all this?" So the interesting question may be less solo vs

... Good rule I follow: Free = helps you understand the value Paid = helps you actually get results If users can fully solve their problem for free, they won t upgrade. So free should feel useful, but slightly incomplete. Your general vs specific approach is already a very solid way to think about it Comment from Calin Rasniceru(@calin_r): @busmark_w_nika  Yeah, that's also true. I believe at the end of the day it's a good ... ... feels cleaner, but usage limits let people try everything before they commit. Anyone here tried both and found one converts better? Comment from Takahito Yoneda(@y_taka): Your general versus

... Twitter, it is classic many of us follow YCombinator people, Angel Investors, or big indie makers. The most popular are: Garry Tan Levelsio Marc Andreessen Marc Lou Michael Seibel Naval Do you know any other person worth following because of their good takes on entrepreneurship and practical pieces of advice? It can be smaller accounts, too. [P.S.: I do not know why it shows that US flag, I just copied some Twitter link. But I can frame it like: Happy ...

... comes to books, I'm glad I added them back to my evening routine, as reading really helps to wind down at the end of a tough day. Comment from Alex Cloudstar(@alexcloudstar): @busmark_w_nika  Probably Marc Lou. Dude just keeps building quietly and improving every time. No hype, just progress. Comment from Alex Cloudstar(@alexcloudstar): Love this. I ve been in the same loop working, building, launching nonstop. What helped me most was switching context instead ...

... workflow without them now. Comment from Sanskar Yadav(@sanskarix): Oh yes, I just saw @abod_rehman 's comment, two exactly the same tools :D Comment from Nika(@busmark_w_nika): @yingjun_cheng  That reminds me that Marc Lou launched the MRR detector (whether profits from screenshots are real or not) :D https://trustmrr.com/ Comment from Nika(@busmark_w_nika): @t0ha  The most visible for me were Raycast and Obsidian. Haven't heard much about Wellstory and TablePlus. Gonna ...

... want it. As for the MRR, I learned to ignore it personally as it is hard to verify and founders could be incentivized to pump the numbers to artificially increase their credibility. Comment from Alex Cloudstar(@alexcloudstar): @byalexai marc lou for example is doing a good job with his newsletter Comment from Alex Cloudstar(@alexcloudstar): @byalexai oh nice. What do you think about his content? Comment from Alex Cloudstar(@alexcloudstar): I still think build in public is worth ...

... Body: Tired of missing out on crucial domain insights? Meet DailyDomain your essential tool for staying ahead in the ever ...

... make the ambassodor.producthunt.com page work. Comment from Nika(@busmark_w_nika): @jordansvision  I reckon you are a dev, right? Maybe some sneak peaks, learnings, recaps or small milestones could start more interest in your audience. Yesterday read Marc Lou's newsletter. There was a good thought: "4. Post your wins Got 300 visitors from Reddit? Made $19 this week? That s content. That s how you grow." Comment from Nika(@busmark_w_nika): @adam_martelletti  Which product ...

... Alex Saint I m a solo indie hacker based in Paris, and fun fact I only started coding thanks to AI tools. I got inspired watching Marc Lou s videos on YouTube, picked up some tools, started building and tweeting. A few months later: Grew a 3.7k+ following on X (started mid-January) Built the Fail in Public community, which hit 6,000 members in under 3 months At the core of everything, I ve always wanted to help ...

... goal was to learn the exact parts of each stack so that I can build a SaaS, not every tidbits of it. This is not something I can learn all by myself. Final & successful attempt: CodeFast by Marc Lou ( https://codefa.st/?via=90daystocode Affiliate link) Marc's course worked amazingly well for me. The course is basically a hand-holding session of building a simple product feedback board from start to deploying. I completed it by deploying my first software ... ... built all by myself. I understood the most part of it on the first try, some needed revisiting. Started building another product immediately. This time, I switched my code editor from VS

... fast If you ve got a ready-to-sell SaaS or AI tool and want visibility without giving up half your margin, let s talk. Happy to answer any questions here or via DM or louis@yakuraapp.com Comment from Lou Rossi(@yakuraapp): @rodrigo_soviero  I'm grateful for the opportunity to collab and look forward to helping each other out! Comment from Rodrigo Soviero(@rodrigo_soviero): Just sent you an email. Sounds interesting ...

... known networks. 3) Use no-code or AI tools to build the MVP 4) Ship the MVP to the market for validation and feedback 5) Only if Step 4 works, invest time and money to build further. Comment from Lou Rossi(@yakuraapp): "You know what feature you should have ..." A safe working build, Landing Page, collaboration time. Everything else is cut. Comment from Nataliia M(@nataliia_makota): Maybe it's a mistake, but I really want to take ... ... just smarter it s more sustainable. Wishing you all the momentum as you launch. And honestly? No more abandoned GitHub ghosts sounds like a great milestone in itself. Comment from Ambika Vaish(@ambika_vaish): @yakuraapp  You nailed it, Lou

... super structured yet, but I m just trying to get a feel for things before diving in too deep. Would love to know how you're approaching it! Comment from Ambika Vaish(@ambika_vaish): @yakuraapp  Hey Lou, thanks for the tip! Deployment definitely seems like it could be a big hurdle. Docker and AWS are on my radar now. I ll make sure to spend some time on that part once I get closer to having something functional. Appreciate ... ... encouragement hope to have more to share soon! Comment from Lou

... good to have both a website that can convert your user, and Gumroad as well (if they happen to convert from their store, why not, == free users) Comment from Maria-Cristina Muntean(@mia_k1): Hey Lou :) We use a combo of strategies for sales for Yahini: We occasionally run LTD campaigns (with FB communities) and that's great for reaching PMF faster, however I highly recommend you think this thoroughly as your business model needs to match the lifetime deal ... ... enough to put up a website LP and call it a day anymore. Anyone can do that. You need to put in some effort. Happy to answer more questions if you have any! Comment from Lou

... After my data engineering internship last year, I started building stuff on the internet. Found out about the whole indie hacker world through Marc Lou. Since then I've built a SaaS that let's you chat with PDFs ( pdf-interact.live ), a free tool that let's you add text to images and edit them ( add-text-to-image.editmania.tech ) and a website serving as a hub for calculators ( calcverse.live ) which went viral on Hacker News last week. While I've launched the first ...

... place where most projects are more "corporate" or funded by VCs but there is still some amount of buildinpublic makers, indie hackers or solopreneurs. Do you have your favourite besides those big ones? (I mean besides Levelsio or Marc Lou) For me, it is e.g. @andreihudovich with BlueskyMeter  Analytics for Bluesky social media @lera_kuntsevich1 with ClipWing a tool for video creation @iuliia_sh  with PaperMark a tool for LinkedIn post creation and growing the follower base ... ... bring them back soon :)) Comment from Tasos V(@cryptosymposium): Amazing , finally some women in the list. Thanks for sharing that, they were off my radar. By the way i laughed a lot at the apart from Levels and Marc lou

... comments receive upvotes, and decreases when they are downvoted. Avoid posting external links if you're new Many subreddits have strict rules about sharing links in posts and comments. Always review the rules before posting. Search for your competitors on Reddit Look for older posts about similar products and consider posting your launch information in those subreddits. Pay attention to how marketers describe their products, keeping your introduction concise and easy to understand. Avoid presenting your product launch like ... ... gamifykaran  So helpful! Thank you Comment from Ghost Kitty(@ghost-kitty-2821142): Comment Deleted Comment from Tania Bell(@taniabell): look for ppl who successfully launched on Reddit and see what they've done and where they post. Marc Lou

... have a chance of being a sustainable biz if you're going with a one-off payment model. Comment from Tasos V(@cryptosymposium): Strange, I was thinking about this today and I read a nice article from Marc Lou about this. I would say for early stages, especially during validation phase (PMF) it would be better to have an one-time payment to your product. That way, you can validate and generate revenue fast. Especially as a solopreneur, giving ...