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

This founder launched on Reddit and Facebook groups instead of Product Hunt. Now his product fuels a $1M ARR business.
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: Raise your prices on existing customers.

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.

From help desk to $1M ARR 🛠️

Thomas Mahony spent years working the IT trenches, from a five-person managed service provider to consulting projects at Capgemini, until he hit a workflow he couldn't believe still existed: packaging apps for Microsoft Intune. (Yeah, I'd never heard of it either.) He built Pckgr as a side project, launched it free in the exact Reddit and Facebook groups where IT admins were already griping, and rode it to over $1M ARR.

Pckgr is a point-and-click, browser-based tool that turns Intune app packaging into a "select Chrome, deploy" flow. Thomas paid Microsoft MVPs (independent technology experts in the Microsoft ecosystem) to demo the product on YouTube, and those videos still send him signups years later.

This one is dense with actionable information, so I wouldn't skip it! Enjoy.

Read the full article →

Join 55,000 startups building with JetBrains at 50% off. 🚀

88 of the Fortune Global Top 100 build with JetBrains tools. So do tens of thousands of startups. What does a two-person team have in common with a company that has thousands of engineers? The environment where they write code.

JetBrains makes professional IDEs that developers rely on every day: IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, GoLand, and more. Each one reads your whole project, catches mistakes as you type, and refactors across the codebase without breaking things. That's the kind of help a small team feels most, since a broken build costs you a day you don't have when you’re moving fast.

AI is wired straight into the editor, and it's model-agnostic. Bring your own key, switch between LLMs, or run models locally to keep your code private. It's part of the editor, so it sees your whole project the way you do.

The JetBrains Startup Program hands all of that to early-stage teams, with a 50% discount for five years on up to 10 licenses for any JetBrains tools, including the All Products Pack with AI. If your company is under five years old and privately held, you probably qualify.

Apply for the JetBrains Startup Program.

Vibe coding tools to try 🧑🏻‍💻

Hatch: Ditch ChatGPT. Use the most productive AI assistant ever made. Thoughtfully crafted by the founders of Indie Hackers.
Cursor: AI code editor that predicts your next edit and understands your project context.
Continue: Create custom AI copilots in VS Code or JetBrains with one open-source plugin.
v0: Type a prompt — v0 drafts production-ready React, Vue, or Svelte components.
Qodo: Boost test coverage fast — Qodo writes unit tests and smart code suggestions.

See all 30 tools in the directory →

Bite-sized growth tip 🍪

Raise your prices on existing customers.

Ben Thompson started Stratechery, a subscription newsletter analyzing tech strategy. Once he built up a loyal audience, he just straight-up increased his subscription price by 20%.

Existing subscribers happily stayed because the writing was too good to give up, and new subscribers paid the higher rate because of word-of-mouth. Stratechery now pulls in over $267,000 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. Client Koi: An open-source Google Maps scraper for B2B lead generation I built an open-source Google Maps scraper to automate B2B lead gen (Free).	▲ 12

	2. AscendMe: Ascend And Looksmax 3,000 visitors but 0 customers. What am I missing?	▲ 3

	3. Azrivo: AI Assistant, debate engine, planning & execution I got tired of AI agreeing with me, so I built a room that argues back.	▲ 3

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 🐦

For the founders out there with co-founders, employees, etc. Communicating on a small team is similar to communicating in any other intimate relationship.

—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 from Reddit, raising prices 20%, emotional intelligence