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PRESENTED BY

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

This founder walked away from his VC-backed edtech company and now he’s at $1M ARR with a five-person team.
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: Rebrand the second your name stops sticking.

Justworks handles HR, payroll, and benefits complexity, so you can focus on building your small business.

He shipped v1.0 in a weekend, hit $1M ARR in 9 months 🛠️

Miquel Palet left a 120-person, VC-backed edtech company to bootstrap a developer tool. Ten months later, Zernio is doing over $83K/month by selling a social media API to developers who want integrations in minutes instead of months. Pretty wild. Especially because the first version was built in a weekend.

The product covers posting, analytics, DMs, ads, and 20+ social platforms. On positioning, Zernio sells to developers, not end users, and goes after bottom-of-funnel searches like "social media API" where low volume still converts because the intent is dead obvious.

In our interview with Miquel, he breaks down why he left VC behind, how a weekend build turned into months of scope approvals, why his early infrastructure choices eventually hurt, and why he hired a team earlier than most indie founders would.

There's a lot in here for anyone building dev tools, API products, or self-serve SaaS.

Read the full article →

Own Google & AI search across your category 🔎

“SaaS founder: “We’re ranking well, but signups from organic have stalled.”

dofollow: “Because buyers don’t just discover products through Google anymore.”

SaaS founder: “Where are they finding them then?”

dofollow: “AI search. Reddit. Comparison articles. Industry blogs. Trusted SaaS websites.”

SaaS founder: “So SEO alone isn’t enough?”

dofollow: “Not if nobody talks about your brand outside your own website.”

That’s why more SaaS teams are investing in off-page authority.

dofollow.com helps SaaS brands earn placements on trusted SaaS and industry sites that influence both Google rankings and AI-driven search visibility.

Vibe coding tools to try 🧑🏻‍💻

Hatch: Ditch ChatGPT. Use the most productive AI assistant ever made. Thoughtfully crafted by the founders of Indie Hackers.
Aider: Pair program in your terminal with AI that commits clean, test-ready code.
Bolt.new: Prompt an app — Bolt spins up and deploys the full-stack in one click.
Apidog MCP Server: Let AI assistants read your API docs directly for instant code and test generation.
Tabine: Code completions from a fast AI model you can run locally.

See all 30 tools in the directory →

Bite-sized growth tip 🍪

Rebrand the second your name stops sticking.

Ben Peterson and Ryan Sanders, founders of BambooHR (HR software for small and mid-sized companies), originally launched under the name “Human Services HQ.” Even their own customers couldn't remember it. So they killed it and rebranded to BambooHR, leaning into the imagery of something green, flexible, and renewable.

The new name actually stuck in people's heads, which made every other marketing dollar work harder. The company now does $19.8M/month.

The uncomfortable truth: if you have to remind people what your company is called, you don’t have a marketing problem. You have a name problem.

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. Pterocos: HTML CSS JS Code Editor with AI chat Pterocos: HTML CSS JS Code Editor with AI features and free forever!	▲ 15

	2. Recurflux: Payment recovery and churn prevention for SaaS We serve where no one else does.	▲ 14

	3. ZOL AI Studio: AI fashion creative platform. Generate virtual try-ons and 4 Why are fashion photoshoots still so expensive for small brands?	▲ 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 🐦

But what if there are no more new industries after AI?

—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: Weekend MVP to $1M ARR, post-AI industries, fix your product name