... Was at the Indie Hackers x Cognition meetup in Dubai last night. @marclou showed the list of boring stuff every ...

... 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 ... ... Chief of Staff I built after running a software company, a care home, and a cafe at once. Identifying what's important now is easy to say but hard to do daily across separate businesses, curious how automated vs

... 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 ...

... 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. company and more "who owns trust and distribution in an AI-abundant market?" Comment from Paulinus Jua(@paulinus_j): I actually think teams even at smaller scales, will still win because two human heads are always better than one, even ... ... 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

... have time to use it within the first 3 days. When I circle back to try it 10 days later (when I really have time), the trial has already expired. Maybe A/B testing day-based trials versus usage-based (like using units) trials would be an interesting experiment :) Comment from Nika(@busmark_w_nika): @yogesh_joshi9  I am more curious about those tools that have like 3 features and you know... they need to incorporate that free + paid aspect ... ... just letting it rip . I m very curious whether others have struggled with free trial 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 ...

... Nika(@busmark_w_nika): @alexcloudstar  He is in great shape too! :D Comment from Nika(@busmark_w_nika): @theo_crewe_read  I literally cannot decide :D 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 Nika(@busmark_w_nika): @sanskarix  Hahaha, cool. I didn't know this about you :) always learn something new about members of this community :) Comment ...

... 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 ...

... public is alive, but it needs to shift more toward lessons and less toward vanity stats. Comment from Alex Cloudstar(@alexcloudstar): @byalexai oh nice. What do you think about his content? Comment from Alex Cloudstar(@alexcloudstar): @byalexai marc lou for example is doing a good job with his newsletter Comment from Mayas Haddad(@mayashaddad): I think building in public can be a good marketing boost when your audience is also your commercial target Other than that, it's at best ...

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... already connected on LI :) 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): @raniazyane  Hey Rania :) Thank ...

... 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

... 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 Rodrigo Soviero(@rodrigo_soviero): Just sent you an email. Sounds interesting! Comment from Lou Rossi(@yakuraapp): @rodrigo_soviero  I'm grateful for the opportunity to collab and look forward to helping each other ...

... just 1 hour a day to build what would you cut? And what would you never sacrifice? I d love to hear how you d play it. Comment from Ambika Vaish(@ambika_vaish): @yakuraapp  You nailed it, Lou. It s wild how often we overbuild before we even have a stable version or a clear offer.Cutting everything down to Does it work? Can people see it? Can I build with others? that s real momentum. Comment from ... ... screwdriver to a painter needs to be framed and hung. Totally agree on skipping the feature checklist syndrome,it s tempting, but a time sink when you ve only got an hour. Appreciate the clarity here. Comment from 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 ... ... that. Maybe that's the reason why I haven't completed anything because I want to know many things :D Have you somehow tested the problem with other (possible?) users? I mean, whether there is a demand. Comment from Lou

... curious to hear from others, what has worked for you? Any unexpected wins or challenges? I d love to hear real-world experiences - curious to learn from the community. 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 ... ... product in their store, it's 30%. So it's 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 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 ... ... your favourite makers btw? :) 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

... place to grow your following tho. that's worth keeping in mind. 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 is one guy who deff launched on Reddit. worth checking his profile Comment from Ghost Kitty(@ghost-kitty-2821142): Comment Deleted Comment from Nika(@busmark_w_nika): I would like to know about such Reddits as well :D Especially those ones where they ... ... 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

... 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 ...