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PRESENTED BY

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

From breakdown to $35k MRR. Jack Friks on failing for four years before building Post Bridge.
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: Weaponize your ethical stance against the market leader.

Your inbox knows what happened. FounderFlow knows what matters. FounderFlow is an AI Executive Chief of Staff that surfaces opportunities, risks, and next actions before they are missed. Stop managing information. Start managing attention. Join the beta.

From a breakdown on a walk to $35k MRR 😢

Jack Friks spent four years feeling like a total failure. He tried it all: print-on-demand, 2,000(!) YouTube videos, affiliate blogs, and a crypto wipeout. He eventually learned to code, but his first app barely moved. One day, he actually broke down crying on a walk with his fiancée, convinced it was never going to happen for him.

Three months later, he built Post Bridge to solve his own social media headaches. It blew up on Twitter. And today it's at $35k MRR. He even managed to double the revenue in the last six months after an eight-month plateau.

Post Bridge is a social media scheduler for small teams. Jack built the first version in just a month to automate the manual cross-posting that was slowing him down. He still runs it solo and has one firm rule: no free plans. He relies entirely on hard paywalls or credit card trials to filter for users who actually value the tool.

This interview is a masterclass in persistence and knowing when to stop doing things manually. Read the full piece to see the TikTok format he reused 300 times and how he handled being DDoSed as a new coder, among other things. Enjoy!

Read the full interview →

Built for businesses ready to scale. Simplify your tech stack with HighLevel 😱

If your business runs on scattered tools, disconnected automations, and half-built funnels, you are not alone.

Most marketers and business owners only scratch the surface of what HighLevel can do. They use a few features, launch a campaign, and never tap into the full power of the platform.

HighLevel was not built to be just another tool in your stack.

It was built to run your entire system.

With HighLevel, you can capture leads, build high-converting funnels, automate follow-up, manage your pipeline, and deliver seamless client experiences all in one platform.

Inside HighLevel you can:

Capture and convert more leads
Build funnels that actually perform
Automate follow-up and nurture at scale
Manage pipelines and close more deals
Deliver seamless client experiences
Create predictable, repeatable revenue

Everything works together in one place so you can spend less time duct-taping tools together and more time growing your business.

Start your 30-day FREE trial of HighLevel and see how powerful your business can be when everything runs on one platform.

Vibe coding tools to try 🧑🏻‍💻

Hatch: Ditch ChatGPT. Use the most productive AI assistant ever made. Thoughtfully crafted by the founders of Indie Hackers.
Lovable: Describe your idea — Lovable builds a full-stack app and reusable prompts in seconds.
Qodo: Boost test coverage fast — Qodo writes unit tests and smart code suggestions.
Pieces: Store snippets of code offline and use a “long-term memory agent” to search, fix, reuse.
Windsurf: AI-powered IDE that anticipates your next move.

See all 30 tools in the directory →

Bite-sized growth tip 🍪

Weaponize your ethical stance against the market leader.

Uku Täht and Marko Saric built Plausible Analytics as a privacy-first middle finger to Google Analytics. Instead of trying to match Google's massive feature set, they leaned hard into what Google simply could not do: respect user privacy.

They shared their revenue, their code, and their "why" across every community they could find. By being aggressively transparent and open source, they turned privacy from a boring legal checkbox into a compelling reason to buy. That clarity helped them grow from $400 a month to over $188k MRR in just three years.

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. IbexAI: Finds high-intent leads on LinkedIn The future is in micro-SaaS	▲ 16

	2. AI News Agent: AI-powered niche news aggregator for Telegram bots I built an AI news aggregator for Telegram in two weeks — here’s how it works	▲ 12

	3. Psilynx: Bring order to your website performance at scale We recently added AI-powered recommendations to Psilynx	▲ 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 🐦

Sorry to all the "Claudes" who work in tech these days!

—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: $35k MRR after a breakdown, weaponize an ethical advantage, the "Claude" dilemma