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

Marc Lou says he turned down $2.5M. What would it take to get him to sell TrustMRR?
5 vibe coding tools. Some of the latest apps for coding with AI.
This founder turned newsletter software into a way for customers to earn money. beehiiv's jump from $2M to $3M MRR took nine months.
30-second growth tip: Target agencies that resell your product to their clients instead of individual users.

Launch your next business or project and give it an online presence with a custom domain name. Porkbun sells domains at cost, with transparent renewal pricing plus free features like SSL certificates and WHOIS privacy, so your budget goes toward growth. Save $1 on your next domain name at Porkbun.

Marc Lou turns down $2.5M 💰

Marc Lou turns down a $2.5M offer for TrustMRR

Marc Lou says he just rejected $2.5M in cash for TrustMRR, his one-person startup marketplace. That's more than the marketplace's reported acquisition volume for the entire past year.

He passed on $1.2M back in January, too. One condition of that deal scared him after eight years of working for himself.

Someone asked what price would get him to sell. He named a number, raised it, then sounded unsure.

Read what Marc said →

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.
Devin Desktop: The AI-powered IDE you love, now with an integrated Agent Command Center.
GitHub Copilot Workspace: The agent-led developer environment for turning ideas into pull requests.
Pieces: The coding assistant with infinite artificial memory and long-term context that never forgets.

See all 30 tools in the directory →

beehiiv's third $1M MRR took nine months 🐝

beehiiv took three years to reach its first $1M in monthly recurring revenue. But the jump from $2M to $3M took only nine months, according to CEO Tyler Denk.

The platform helps creators publish newsletters and grow their audiences. Denk expects about $50M in total revenue this year, including subscriptions and its ad network.

He credits some of that acceleration to the disruption hitting search and social media. But he says there's also more going on than meets the eye.

Read what's driving beehiiv's growth →

Bite-sized growth tip 🍪

Target agencies that resell your product to their clients instead of individual users.

Mike Taber built Bluetick to automate email follow-ups. Agencies turned out to be a better fit than individual users: one customer started a trial with 100 mailboxes, then added roughly 450 more a few weeks in.

Mike still had just one support contact for hundreds of mailboxes. Agencies could reuse the same process across clients, and most of his growth came from those customers growing. In a 2023 interview, he said MRR had doubled in three months.

Indie Hackers lists Bluetick's peak revenue at $100K+/month.

Read the full growth report →

Channing's Tweet Pick 🐦

News of our deaths as programmers has been greatly exaggerated.

—Channing

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Special thanks to Yushavel Calderon for the graphic design, and to James Fleischmann for contributing a post.

—Channing

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🗞️ What's New: Marc Lou rejects $2.5M, beehiiv hits $3M MRR, sell to agencies