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Here's what you'll find in this issue:

This founder paid $500/month to study a competitor, then hit $10k MRR in 60 days.
5 vibe coding tools. Some of the latest apps for coding with AI.
Yesterday's build board winners, including three new product launches from indie hackers.
30-second growth tip: Negotiate for your dream domain years after launch.

Before you make your next hire, ask whether AI can take one recurring workflow off your plate.

Hatch is choosing three Indie Hackers businesses for a hands-on pilot. After a feasibility review, we'll build and install one working system over two weeks.

Fixed implementation fee: $5,000, plus Hatch usage. Apply for a pilot →

This founder paid $500/month to study his competitor 🎯

Before Ivan Nedelkovski wrote serious code for his AI agent Lancer, he paid $500/month to use his biggest competitor's product. He wanted to know how many Upwork freelancers were active, what they could spend, whether the incumbent's $2M ARR left room for another player, and whether its product was actually beatable. It was.

Lancer hit $10k MRR within 60 days and has since grown to $20k with a two-person team.

Lancer automates lead-finding and proposals for freelancers and agencies on Upwork. Ivan first built a version over a weekend for his own agency, then shared it with friends, who closed clients with it in the first week. An Upwork coach who had been promoting a competitor switched sides and brought 30 paying users at roughly $300 ARPU.

The full interview covers many aspects of Ivan's playbook and is a really great read. Enjoy!

Read the full article →

Before you hire someone, let us automate the work 🦿

Every growing business accumulates work that has to happen every week: researching leads, preparing reports, sorting customer feedback, creating content, following up with prospects.

Usually, getting that work off your plate means hiring. We think some of it can become a reliable AI system instead.

Hatch is choosing three Indie Hackers businesses for a hands-on automation pilot.

We'll begin with a short feasibility review to scope and approve one valuable recurring workflow. If it's a fit, we'll spend two focused weeks learning the process, building the system in Hatch, testing it on your real work, and handing it over to your team.

This isn't a course, a strategy deck, or a folder of prompts. We do the implementation. You get a working system your team can run without turning AI automation into another project on your own plate.

The best fit is work that already happens at least weekly and consumes meaningful time or money, or causes missed opportunities. If we don't believe we can automate it reliably within the sprint, we won't accept the engagement.

Fixed implementation fee: $5,000, plus ongoing Hatch usage. Three spots!

Tell us about the work you want to stop doing by hand.

Apply for a pilot →

Vibe coding tools to try 🧑🏻‍💻

Hatch: Ditch ChatGPT. Use the most productive AI assistant ever made. Thoughtfully crafted by the founders of Indie Hackers.
Fine: AI-powered rapid application development tech, now integrated as the core engine for HoneyBook.
Bolt.new: Build and scale full-stack applications instantly by simply chatting with an intelligent AI agent.
Claude Code: A terminal-based coding agent capable of parallel subagent execution and autonomous codebase management.
Qodo: AI-powered code integrity platform for automated testing, cross-repo reviews, and governance.

See all 30 tools in the directory →

Bite-sized growth tip 🍪

Negotiate for your dream domain by waiting years (if you have to).

Glenn Rogers built Float, a resource scheduling app for agencies, and launched it as floatschedule․com because float․com was taken.

Then, two years in, float․com became available. Glenn spent another year and a half negotiating with the owner before finally buying it. The shorter domain made the brand easier to remember and, frankly, look a lot more established.

Float now counts NASA and Vice among its customers and makes $230,000 a month.

Read the full growth report →

The Build Board 🪧

Every day, indie hackers post updates about the products they're building. Here's what the community voted to the top yesterday!

	1. Smooth Bundle: Publish assets once. Use them everywhere. Publish assets once. Use them everywhere.	▲ 18

	2. PickTests: Quick, free tests for reaction, speed, focus, and memory. I’m building PickTests, one small browser test at a time.	▲ 17

	3. Hivemind: AI strategist built from Myosin's top marketing minds You built a data refinery, and your homepage sells it as a pipe.	▲ 8

Enjoy building in public? Post an update to your product page on Indie Hackers, and it will automatically be added to the daily leaderboard.

Channing's Tweet Pick 🐦

I've lost count of how many people who have never started or worked in indie businesses have given me business advice.

—Channing

We'd love your feedback! 🙃

Did you like today's stories? Did they suck? Which ones?

We're constantly changing things up to make this newsletter more useful, so let us know what you think by replying directly to this email. We read every reply!

Special thanks to Yushavel Calderon for the graphic design, and to James Fleischmann for contributing a post.

—Channing

Indie Hackers | 522 W Riverside Ave #6526, Spokane, WA, 99201

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🗞️ What's New: $10k MRR in 60 days, negotiate for your dream domain, don't be this guy!