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

• This founder bootstrapped for over a decade instead of chasing VC money. Now he’s at $7M ARR and on track to cross $10M this year.
• 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: Soft-launch where the stakes are low.

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

Sameer Narkar bootstrapped Konnect Insights for over a decade, funding the early product through finance consulting gigs and hiring fresh interns because experienced developers were out of budget.

That scrappy start now serves 500+ enterprise brands across 30+ countries, and the company is at $7M ARR with a 150-person team, on track to clear $10M this year.

The platform does a lot. It consolidates social listening, omnichannel ticketing, social CRM, and analytics into a single stack, which is a direct response to the fragmented tooling Sameer kept encountering with his finance clients. Pricing is modular: customers start with one product and steadily layer on the rest.

Think of this interview as the bootstrapper's playbook for cracking the enterprise. Enjoy.

Read the full article →

ChatGPT is already recommending products in your category.

Your ideal customer might be asking for a tool like yours right now.

If you’re not mentioned in those answers, you don’t even make the shortlist.

AI search is becoming the final comparison layer before a buyer clicks anything.

You need to know where you stand.

Lucid Engine helps maker teams:

• Track how they rank across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews
• See which competitors are mentioned instead
• Identify the exact prompts driving recommendations
• Get a clear, prioritized roadmap to improve visibility

No hype. No guesswork.

Just structured data and actionable steps.

Run your AI visibility audit →

Use code INDIEHACKERS20 for 20% off until April 12.

1. Hatch: Ditch ChatGPT. Use the most productive AI assistant ever made. Thoughtfully crafted by the founders of Indie Hackers.

2. Kilo Code: Open-source AI assistant that orchestrates complex tasks, writes, and self-repairs — all inside VS Code.

3. Junie: Chat, refactor, and generate tests across JetBrains IDEs with context-aware AI.

4. Repo Prompt: Generate and edit code across repositories using AI-driven prompts.

5. Bolt.new: Prompt an app — Bolt spins up and deploys the full-stack in one click.

See all 30 tools in the directory →

Soft-launch where the stakes are low.

Joseph Mambwe, founder of GymStreak (a fitness app with 3D exercise animations), didn’t blast the app everywhere on day one. He launched first in smaller English-speaking markets, watched for crashes, fixed the rough edges, then slowly increased ad spend once the app could handle real traffic.

That mattered because paid ads only work if the product doesn’t leak users immediately. Once GymStreak was stable, Joseph could scale Facebook and TikTok with confidence, eventually reaching $208K+/month.

The sneaky move: he treated launch like a pressure test, not a parade.

Read the full growth report →

Every day, indie hackers post updates about the products they're building. Here's what the community voted to the top yesterday!

	1. Flashlog: AI that captures bugs and turns them into ready-to-fix tickets How we learned to log bugs properly	▲ 26
	2. Flowly: Finally know where your week went. I was losing $13,000/year and all 4 of my apps were working perfectly	▲ 20
	3. LiFast: Autopilot your LinkedIn B2B Marketing Turned 10 minutes of setup into $12K in new clients last month	▲ 18

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 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.

You should say these things in order to be comfortable investing in yourself, not in order to make others comfortable investing in you.

—Channing

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