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

Six failures later: Jacob Seeger spent two and a half years failing at no-code apps. His seventh hit $1M ARR in 10 months!
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: Sponsor a conference before your product works.

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Six failures, then $1M ARR 🎬

Jacob Seeger is a songwriter who spent two and a half years building six different SaaS apps on Bubble that completely failed. Then he launched app number seven. Faceless․video started out simply reading Reddit stories over Minecraft footage and posting the clips automatically. Ten months later, the platform was sitting at $1M ARR with 2.5 million users.

Faceless․video became the first platform to run faceless social channels on autopilot. The initial validation came from a single $250 Twitter thread promotion that pulled 300,000 impressions and thousands in revenue on the first day. Jacob just kept reinvesting those early profits into more paid Twitter threads until he cracked short-form video, and things really took off.

I love this interview for many reasons. A big one is that I've come across Jacob's product many times in the wild and wondered how things worked behind the scenes. It's a case study not just about how indie hackers can go viral, but also how they can build engines that help other brands go viral. Hope you like it!

Read the full article →

Build products. Build momentum. Build with Uplers. ⚙️

Every startup reaches a point where the roadmap outpaces the team. That's the moment Uplers exists for.

Uplers connects founders with engineers who don't wait for a spec to start moving- IITians, ex-founders, and ex-MAANG builders who've already lived the version of "figure it out" that early-stage startups run on every day. They own outcomes, make calls without a playbook, and build like the company is theirs too.

From the first hire to Series A, Uplers has helped startups put the right engineer in the right seat, fast, and without the guesswork that usually comes with early hiring.

Startups don't have time to hire the slow way. Uplers make sure they don't have to.

Start hiring with Uplers today.

Vibe coding tools to try 🧑🏻‍💻

Hatch: The next-generation AI assistant for getting real work done.
Blackbox AI: One platform to orchestrate 300+ AI models for autonomous coding and parallel task execution.
Devin: Autonomous AI software engineer managing local and cloud agent fleets from a single command center.
Fine: AI-powered rapid application development tech, now integrated as the core engine for HoneyBook.
Roo Code: Discontinued AI coding agent for VS Code.

See all 30 tools in the directory →

Bite-sized growth tip 🍪

Sponsor a conference before your product works.

Zach Moreno and Rock Felder were building SquadCast, a remote podcast recording tool. A student eventually convinced them to sponsor Podcast Movement, which is the industry's biggest conference.

Their product was barely an alpha. Zach was literally still writing code in the car on the drive there.

But five minutes after setting up their booth, someone walked up and said they came to the entire conference just to learn about SquadCast. Zach and Rock left with their first paying customer, their first advisor, and dozens of warm leads. Today, the company makes over $250,000 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. SaasOffers: Unlock $500,000+ in SaaS Credits for Your Startup I was surprised Notion offers this to startups.	▲ 34

	2. Eye Drops Reminder & Tracker: Simple, free eye drop reminder — built for myself Built a free Android eye drop reminder app for myself. Hope it helps others too.	▲ 14

	3. ConvertProKit: Free AI, PDF, Image & File Conversion Tools We built ConvertProKit – A free platform for AI, PDF, Image & File Tools.	▲ 7

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

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.

Channing's Tweet Pick 🐦

If you're reading this newsletter, I doubt you're a stranger to agentic coding. But I'm still convinced even the most in-the-know founders aren't using it enough.

—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: $1M ARR after 6 failures, sponsor before you build, too little AI coding?