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

• This founder coworked with strangers instead of hiring a coach. Now he's at 7-figures in 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: Offer to fix people's content for free. Slip in your links.

Build the app you can’t stop thinking about at the Remy Hackathon next weekend (May 1–3) — fully virtual, async, and actually fun ⚡ Join hundreds of builders (Meta, Google, Oracle + more), build a real product with no coding, and compete for $5,000+ in prizes. Spots filling fast → RSVP for Opening Night

Taylor Jacobson spent years too ashamed to ask anyone to keep him company while he worked. Then in 2015, a guy in his men's support group was stuck on an investor deck, and Taylor suggested they just hop on a video call together and work in silence. Two hours later, they had a ritual.

A decade later, Focusmate is at 7-figure ARR with over 13 million sessions logged.

The product itself is almost aggressively simple: book a slot, get matched with a stranger, share what you're working on in the first minute, mute, work, check in at the end. It sounds too basic to charge for, which is probably why Taylor launched it free and priced it at $5/month when he finally monetized. He now admits he left serious money on the table.

There's a lot to steal from this one: Taylor's take on why surveys point founders in the wrong direction, the 2020 crisis that unexpectedly helped his company, the strange PR dynamic around Focusmate, and why community mattered for him more than product complexity. Enjoy!

Read the full article →

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1. Hatch: AI assistant that keeps your docs, chats, and files together, so you can stop re-explaining and start getting real work done.

2. Continue: Create custom AI copilots in VS Code or JetBrains with one open-source plugin.

3. v0: Type a prompt — v0 drafts production-ready React, Vue, or Svelte components.

4. Qodo: Boost test coverage fast — Qodo writes unit tests and smart code suggestions.

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

See all 30 tools in the directory →

Offer to fix people's content for free. Slip in your links.

Sol Orwell built Examine.com to $1M ARR. One of his SEO strategies sounds almost too simple: he reached out to editors at publications like Men's Fitness and Men's Health and offered to clean up sections of their articles. For free.

In exchange, he got to add links to Examine․com where relevant. The publications got better content. Sol got backlinks from high-authority domains. Everyone won.

This works because most content teams are understaffed and overwhelmed. They have articles that need updating but no bandwidth to do it. You're solving a real problem for them while building your domain authority.

Granted, you need to have genuine relationships with the people who control the content. Cold pitches get ignored. Sol nurtured connections with editors over time, then made offers that actually helped them.

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. Atomic Tab: Chrome new tab for notes, todos, habits, and Pomodoro Chrome new tab for notes, todos, habits, and Pomodoro	▲ 15
	2. GetWhiteBG: Your product is not the problem. Your main image might be. Good Products Get Ignored for a Really Dumb Reason	▲ 6
	3. Pickitoo: Manage all online orders and in-store fulfillment in one sys Every Channel - One Hub	▲ 5

Enjoy building in public? Post an update to your product page on Indie Hackers, and it will automatically be added to the daily leaderboard.

I try to do this too, but I usually lack the discipline to actually go to bed, which breaks the entire cycle.

—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