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PRESENTED BY

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

This founder bootstrapped for eight straight years instead of taking VC money. Now he's at 7-figure ARR.
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: Keep a public list of things you refuse to build.

Still using ChatGPT for serious work? Try Hatch instead.

Hatch is the most productive AI assistant ever made — thoughtfully crafted by the founders of Indie Hackers to help you turn chats, docs, files, email, and calendar context into real work.

Use code INDIE30FREE for 100% off your first month.

He bet eight years on a native desktop Git client ⚙️

Tobias Günther and his cofounders started Tower out of a small web agency, building a Git GUI for themselves because the existing Git GUIs weren't good enough. Ten months of development, no desktop app experience, no product experience, and two months of runway left. They launched in 2011 anyway. Almost eight years later, Tower had crossed seven-figure ARR with 100,000+ customers, including developers inside Apple, Google, and Amazon. Saas․group acquired it in 2021.

The big calls were unfashionable. Tobias kept Tower native on macOS and Windows when cross-platform web tech would have been easier, betting developers would reward performance and polish. Then in 2018, he moved from one-time licenses to yearly subscriptions, a risky switch for a desktop app with years of existing users. That stubbornness became Tower's edge with the kind of developers who notice when tools feel native.

Tobias unpacks all of it, and then some, in our interview. Enjoy!

Read the full article →

#NYTechWeek: Invite-Only Evening with Dmitry Shapiro, CEO @MindStudio (ex-CTO @MySpace, ex-Lead PM @Google), on Why Product Agents Replace Coding Agents

Here's the problem with coding agents: they're missing a PM.

Remy thinks like your best PM and ships like your best engineer — turning plain language into a spec doc that’s used to build a deployable, full-stack app: backend, frontend, database, auth, integrations, and deployment.

Join us for an intimate evening during NYC Tech Week with Dmitry Shapiro and a room full of founders, operators, and builders also shipping with AI.

Walk away with $250 in Remy credits and a free month of MindStudio to turn your idea, prototype, or half-built project into a full-stack app.

Co-hosted with LvlUp Ventures and Sip & Scale.

Request your spot. Space is limited.

Not in NYC? Follow along on Luma for upcoming events.

Curious about Remy? See how it works.

Vibe coding tools to try 🧑🏻‍💻

Hatch: Ditch ChatGPT. Use the most productive AI assistant ever made. Thoughtfully crafted by the founders of Indie Hackers.
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.
Lovable: Describe your idea — Lovable builds a full-stack app and reusable prompts in seconds.

See all 30 tools in the directory →

Bite-sized growth tip 🍪

Keep a public list of things you refuse to build.

Matthieu Rouif and Eliot Andres, founders of Photoroom (an AI photo-editing app that removes backgrounds and creates studio-quality product shots for small businesses), do something most founders never do: every quarter, they write down what they will not build. That “no” list is just as important as their roadmap.

It keeps the team locked on commerce photography for solo entrepreneurs, instead of getting pulled into every shiny AI trend. This discipline has shown up in the numbers. Photoroom hit $50M ARR in three years and now does $4M/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. AEO Audit Pro: AI-powered Answer Engine Optimization auditing SEO is dead for my tech stack. So I built an AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) audit tool.	▲ 15

	2. LiFast: Autopilot your LinkedIn B2B Marketing How I went from 0 to 11 inbound leads per month without posting daily	▲ 11

	3. Mastros: Browser-Based Telegram Exporter First Paying Customer	▲ 6

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 don't quit, you won't fail.

—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 | 120 Westlake Avenue N, Seattle, Washington 98109

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🗞️ What's New: 7-figure ARR betting on Git, founder stats, refusing to build