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PRESENTED BY

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

This founder launched after Y Combinator rejected her and now she’s at $36M ARR, fully bootstrapped.
5 vibe coding tools. Some of the latest apps for coding with AI. (Plus a bonus resource!)
Yesterday's build board winners, including three new product launches from indie hackers.
30-second growth tip: Fake the product before you build it.

PDF Generator API gives you the PDF layer you can embed in hours, not months. Visual template editor, storage per customer, white-label branding, and built-in electronic invoicing. 1,500+ SaaS teams ship six million documents monthly through the platform. Perfect for founders ready to skip the infrastructure grind. Create a free account.

She launched after YC said no 💌

Rebecca Shostak waited two years for someone else to fix the email tooling gap she spotted while running her template shop for photographers. When nobody did, she pooled $90k with her cofounders, got rejected by Y Combinator at a moment when tech had written email off as dead, and shipped Flodesk anyway.

It hit profitability in two weeks, $1M ARR in four months, and is now at $36M ARR with around 90 employees and zero outside funding.

Much of this came down to pricing. While every other email platform punished list growth with per-subscriber tiering, Flodesk launched at a flat $38/month with unlimited subscribers and unlimited sends. A "Made with love by Flodesk" footer on every customer email turned the product itself into the top of the funnel.

In our interview with Rebecca, she breaks down why their first prototype flopped so badly that an early tester physically sank into her chair, explains how 76% of their affiliate revenue comes from small voices rather than big influencers, and shares the somatic coaching practice she credits with changing how she leads. Plenty more in here worth chewing on!

Read the full article →

Grow your team without the growing pains. 📈

You've built something real. But once your team starts growing, you’re suddenly drowning in payroll processing, benefits enrollment, and compliance questions you never signed up for.

That's where Justworks comes in. We handle the parts of running a business that don't deserve your attention: automated payroll that actually works, benefits your team will actually use, international hiring without the legal minefield, and tax compliance you can trust. When things get confusing (and they will), our team of small business experts is there 24/7 with actual answers — no automated responses, no AI agents.

Thousands of founders have freed up their time for what actually matters. Whether you're just hiring your first employee or scaling your team, Justworks grows with you, without the growing pains.

Visit www.justworks.com to see how other makers are building without the busywork.

Vibe coding tools to try 🧑🏻‍💻

Hatch: Ditch ChatGPT. Use the most productive AI assistant ever made. From 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.
Idea Kitchen (bonus!): An indie newsletter with simple recipes for using AI. It's how we heard of many of these tools!

See all 30 tools in the directory →

Bite-sized growth tip 🍪

Fake the product before you build it.

Mike Taber, founder of Bluetick (a tool that automates sales email follow-ups), spent three weeks making clickable mockups that looked like a real working app. Then he booked 40 calls with potential customers and walked each one through the "product" like it actually existed.

The reactions he got were way better than anything his past ideas had pulled. That was his green light to start coding for real. Bluetick eventually crossed $100K/month.

What he was really testing wasn’t the idea on paper. It was the look on someone’s face around minute four.

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. LiFast: Autopilot your LinkedIn B2B Marketing Went from 3 pity likes to 47 comments and actual leads in my DMs	▲ 18

	2. Voiden API Client: Build and Test APIs like you build code Building and Testing APIs like you code (Offline, Open source)	▲ 9

	3. LU: AI Travel App - find your travel inspiration Why Your New App Won't Be Seen	▲ 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 🐦

Gotta get bad before you get good.

—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: From YC reject to $36M ARR, get bad before you get good, fake it till you build it