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

This founder got sued by LinkedIn and lost his $10M ARR business. Now he’s back at $15k/mo 6 months later.
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: Buy out your competitors' contracts.

Still using ChatGPT for serious work? Try Hatch instead.

Built by the founders of Indie Hackers, Hatch is the most productive AI assistant ever made. Use code INDIE30FREE for 100% off your first month.

Sued by LinkedIn, back to $15k/mo in six months ⚖️

Steven Goh's last company, Proxycurl, was doing $10M ARR scraping LinkedIn. Then LinkedIn sued him. He settled out of court, sold the business to a competitor, and then (to add injury to insult) fractured his foot. Immobile on the couch with a Claude Max subscription, he prototyped and launched NinjaPear in two weeks. Six months later, it's at $15k/mo and profitable.

NinjaPear is a B2B enrichment API rebuilt on the exact premise that killed the last one: use LLMs plus deep web research to generate company data from scratch (so there's no LinkedIn to sue him lol). The app even surfaces data points LinkedIn doesn't have, like customer lists, competitor research, and product catalogs. He owns the audience from Proxycurl, including a 20k+ newsletter list and the SEO on a domain he kept in the sale.

So buckle up and enjoy this interview! Steven goes deeper on his "fail 10x" launch strategy, his working theories on churn, and how a solo founder running servers on solar power plans to hit $1M ARR.

Read the full article →

AI assistants are evolving. Hatch is the next generation. 🧠

AI models have evolved. ChatGPT has not.

We're still using the same old AI assistant products we were using in 2022, even though the models underneath them keep getting better.

It's time for the next generation of AI assistants.

Introducing Hatch, the most productive AI assistant ever made.

From the creators of Indie Hackers, Hatch was thoughtfully crafted to help you get real work done. From floating windows to tagging documents¡, we've reimagined every aspect of your daily AI assistant to help you operate at a higher level.

Try Hatch free. Use code INDIE30FREE for 100% off for 1 month.

Vibe coding tools to try 🧑🏻‍💻

Hatch: Ditch ChatGPT. Use the most productive AI assistant ever made. Thoughtfully crafted by the founders of Indie Hackers.
Augment Code: Context-aware AI agent that navigates huge repos and writes fixes like a senior dev.
Continue: Create custom AI copilots in VS Code or JetBrains with one open-source plugin.
Amazon Q Developer: Build and refactor AWS apps faster with AI that understands your stack.
Cline: Plan, act, and execute tasks inside VS Code with an open-source dual-mode agent.

See all 30 tools in the directory →

Bite-sized growth tip 🍪

Buy out your competitors' contracts.

SavvyCal founder Derrick Reimer knew people hated the awkwardness of sending standard scheduling links. He built SavvyCal to fix it. But getting users to switch from the dominant incumbent proved tricky when they were already locked into annual plans.

So Derrick offered to buy out their existing contracts if they switched. It removed the biggest friction point for adoption. Covering a few months of a competitor's cheap plan was a small price to pay for a new, loyal subscriber.

Think about the hidden switching costs keeping your future customers away. Paying them off directly might be the cheapest customer acquisition strategy you use.

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. Alongly: A home for everything you're building in public. Most social platforms are bad for building in public — so we built Alongly.	▲ 7

	2. Live Font Generator: Custom Font Generator, Interactive Font Preview I built a font generator with 200+ styles — here's what I learned.	▲ 7

	3. Leapd: AI that builds and runs your business — 24/7 AI that builds and runs your business, 24/7.	▲ 6

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 🐦

Cringe as this is, it's at least conceivable that Fable wrote it. Kinda insane!

—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: $15k/mo after LinkedIn lawsuit, buy competitor contracts, "Aeslop's Fable"?