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

This founder built his own data infrastructure instead of renting it. Now he’s at $31k MRR.
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: Make your educational product look like the game your students already play.

Still using ChatGPT for serious work? Try Hatch instead. From the creators of Indie Hackers, Hatch is thoughtfully crafted to help you get real work done. Use code INDIE30FREE for 100% off your first month.

This Founder Built the Data Layer Himself 📊

Nic Mauro saw short-form video becoming the internet's dominant format, then built Virlo to help people understand what works across TikTok, Reels, and Shorts. The early product had broad appeal, but agencies seemed to like it the most. So Nic rebuilt the offer around their research workflow, and grew from roughly $1k MRR in March 2025 to more than $31k today.

Virlo now helps agencies identify relevant creators, analyze content trends, develop client ideas, and produce reports. Interestingly, instead of relying on third-party data providers, the team built its own collection infrastructure. This gave them tighter control over data quality, costs, and the API.

In our interview with Nic, he explains why he switched from a hard paywall to a free trial, the direct-outreach offer that gave prospects something useful before a sales call, and how he thinks about expansion without letting costs or churn get ahead of growth. Enjoy!

Read the full article →

You built the product. Now who's doing the marketing? 🚀

Trusted by 100,000+ companies.

Most founders know that building a great product is not enough, it is the marketing and distribution that really moves the needle for the business. But building a full marketing team takes time, money, and people most startups don't have.

Okara is an AI CMO built for SaaS companies, AI startups, and lean teams. Its specialized AI agents plan, create, publish, and optimize marketing across multiple channels.

SEO & GEO: Improve visibility across Google and AI search.
Content: Create SEO-optimized articles, landing pages, and product content.
Social: Create and publish content for LinkedIn, X, and Reddit in the brand's voice.
Influencers: Find relevant creators, manage outreach, coordinate campaigns, and handle payments.

Instead of hiring and managing a full-sized marketing department, Okara puts an AI marketing team to work in minutes.

Claim your free trial today

Vibe coding tools to try 🧑🏻‍💻

Hatch: The next-generation AI assistant for getting real work done.
Cody: Enterprise AI assistant that understands your entire codebase to write and fix code faster.
Cursor: AI code editor that predicts your next edit and understands your project context.
Kilo Code: Open-source agentic engineering platform for orchestration across IDEs, CLI, and Cloud environments.
Lovable: Describe your idea — Lovable builds a full-stack app and reusable prompts in seconds.

See all 30 tools in the directory →

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. Adeli: Unified social media & marketing API Hello, world!	▲ 6

	2. BotGauge: AI Agent Red-Teaming & Evaluation Platform What we learned building AI red-teaming and evals tools for agents	▲ 5

	3. ICT Edge: ICT/SMC trading alert bots for gold, US indices and crypto Building ICT Edge in public: trading alert bots, demo first	▲ 4

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

Bite-sized growth tip 🍪

Make your educational product look like the game your students already play.

Lane Wagner built Boot․dev to teach backend programming languages like Go and Python, then gave it the look and feel of a fantasy RPG. Students get character progression, XP, and achievements as they work through the courses.

This gave Lane a reason to market Boot․dev in gaming communities. People who wanted to learn to code could start with an interface that already felt familiar. The growth report lists Boot․dev's peak revenue at $110,000 a month.

Read the full growth report →

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 🐦

Can't say if this is true for successful people in general, but it's definitely true for successful indie hackers.

—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: $31k MRR with custom infrastructure, make learning look like a game, obsession with self-education