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

This founder went into debt for 6 years after COVID killed his retail startup. Now he's at 5-figure MRR with 4,000 clients.
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 free product identify who should pay.

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.

Six years in debt, then 5-figure MRR 🔧

Jung Hong Kim's third company crashed when COVID wiped out retail stores. He spent the next six years grinding as a consultant to dig himself out of debt. But he used that time to spot a pattern of failure in enterprise software, and eventually hand-coded Klipy․ai's MVP in three months without even knowing Next.js when he started. Today, it's serving around 4,000 companies at a 5-figure MRR, with a $1.5M ARR target for 2026.

Klipy is an "AI Chief Revenue Officer." It auto-logs communications from email, LinkedIn, and meetings. The team charged from day one and settled on results-based pricing because it makes closing deals easier.

So many good reasons to read this one, from the personal story of Jung's persistence to the insights on building B2B AI tools. Enjoy.

Read the full article →

Focus that outlasts the longest build night 🌙

Indie hackers rarely stop when the workday ends — the builds, bug fixes, and launch-day pushes always run longer than planned.

Roon is a zero-nicotine, zero-sugar focus pouch made for exactly that grind. It takes the familiar pouch format and rebuilds it around focus instead of nicotine: one sits under the lip and delivers a clean, precisely dosed focus stack — 80 mg of caffeine alongside L-theanine, Dynamine®, and TeaCrine®.

Built to last 6–8 hours: Dynamine® slows how quickly the body clears caffeine, effectively stretching its half-life, so a single pouch holds focus through the long stretch instead of spiking and fading after the first hour.
No crash, no jitters: L-theanine takes the edge off the caffeine, and TeaCrine® adds smooth energy the body does not build a tolerance to.
Nothing to guess at: every dose is printed on the label — no proprietary blend, no brewing, no cans, no pills to track.
Discreet by design: hands-free and quiet under the lip, so founders stay in flow without breaking for a coffee run.

Made in the USA to best-in-class standards by a team of MIT and Harvard scientists who built it because they needed it first. Indie Hackers readers get 54% off Roon subscriptions — the best deal anywhere.

Claim 54% off Roon and stay locked in long after everyone else logs off.

Vibe coding tools to try 🧑🏻‍💻

Hatch: The next-generation AI assistant for getting real work done.
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 🍪

Make your free product identify who should pay.

Patrick Campbell built ProfitWell to track subscription metrics, but he realized people don't log into analytics software often enough to pay high prices for it.

So he made the core tool completely free. Since that free tool was literally plugged into a company's financial data, it knew exactly when a business hit the friction points that required his paid add-ons.

Instead of guessing who to upsell, ProfitWell just pitched its premium products at the exact moment the customer actually needed them. The strategy worked out! He eventually sold the company for $200 million.

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 My client's site started getting cited in AI after 2 weeks (just from Reddit).	▲ 45

	2. Humble Ledger: A humble ledger for careful money, in any currency I launched a finance app with no bank syncing, on purpose.	▲ 12

	3. Greve: Personalized landing pages for every prospect Greve turns cold email clicks into personalized experiences.	▲ 8

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 🐦

Question is, what do shovel sellers want to buy?

—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: 5-figure MRR after 6 years in debt, letting free tools spot buyers, selling to shovel sellers