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Since reaching DR70, I get ~40 backlink requests in my inbox every day (they go to a special super spam). Many of them inquire about my rates for inserting a backlink.
This would be dumb to do, but if I converted 25% of these for $25 (cheaper end).
20 BL x 30d x $25 = $15k MRR
Good way to find out what *not* to build is taking a quick glance at acquire.com and checking what the majority of low-revenue listings are about.
Used to be – web3 crypto apps, "chat to a PDF", LLM chat UIs. Now: writing assistants, video + image generators, . ..
A year ago, a founder reached out to recruit me as CTO for their competing app. They had just raised $7M and she had over 250k followers on LinkedIn + lots of HR contacts.
In her words, they were going to "crush me in 18 months" if I didn't join.
Checked their website today 🤭
Meh, I'd be surprised if failure rates in marketplaces and SaaS wouldn't be eerily similar.
Someone that's engulfed in the surfing community and has contacts at major surfing shops makes a decision to run a surfboard rental marketplace vs. a B2B surf shop management SaaS.
Who wins? Even odds imo
It's the common super recycled advice, but honestly in 2025 I see fewer people make money with half-baked boilerplate-course-microSaaS combos than I do with a proper marketplace...
One of my mentees who runs a surfing marketplace just broke $1M ARR
I'm assuming there must be 1000s of these, but is there an API that lets me make a call to any of the leading AI APIs with the same syntax + pick the model based on a flag / per best availability / cheapest etc?
This is coming from someone who built a B2C talent marketplace, simply because he didn't know any better.
While I love the indie startup scene, I'm not keen on building "easy build, hard grow" startups.
Founders outside of the bubble try their luck at marketplaces, ecommerce and hardware – and stumble on $$$ doing so.
They don't know what is deemed "too hard" so they just try it.
What's the easiest way to get a small batch of books printed (or print-on-demand)?
I bring text and images, their tool lays it out well (or lets me lay it out). High-quality binding and paper choice.
Current obsession: Designing in the digital world, and bringing those creations into the physical world.
i.e. 3D printing, working with CNC shops, PCBs etc.
Imagine not being a generalist in 2025
Small tweaks I've been doing at MentorCruise over the past few months to make it better:
- Small core team, with pro consultants (currently 50/50)
- Focus on very few things, but nail them
- I'm the only dev (only project dev hires as needed)
- Delete (almost) every backlog
Thinking daily of the guy who installed our ceiling lamps.
- Ranks #1 for "install lamps"
- Calendly scheduling
- Stripe pre-payment
- $75 per lamp (all inclusive)
- Only works in a 30km radius
- Solo biz
He told me he does 5-6 of these / day.
5 x ~4 lamps on average x $75 x 20 days = $30k/mo
Yup, added China to get a managed challenge every time now
What's your LI?
Hey, I'm getting DDOSed 👋
This happens every few days, large influx of requests from China from thousands of different IPs.
They go until the site goes down or I go into Cloudflare's "Under attack mode".
Anyone know the @Cloudflare setting to prevent this automatically?
Crucial to find what type of creating suits you: inventing, tinkering, selling, designing, writing, filming.
The easiest path to burning out is being pre-occupied with one type of creating, when another one suits you better. E.g. a tinkerer having to monetize and sell.
Indie startups make for horrible places to work for (no moonshot stocks, HR dept., or promotions & training)
Most tend to attract pretty mediocre talent that burns them.
Even more important as founders to make the offer sweet – great pay, bonuses, time off, flexibility & give responsibility early
PSA – Postmark's click tracking domain has been up and down the past few days. I reported it but got no response for a week (holidays, fair).
Turn off click tracking or your users will see this...
when launch
Stripe is fine. We registered with VAT MOSS and use Taxjar to monitor the US.
- aggressive marketing towards small startups to reach compliance (who don't need it)
- struggling with proper compliance themselves
- charging 3x processing fees
- bad mouthing all other solutions without nuance
- paying / giving priority support to industry influencers to spread the word
The market is going up in flames, I don't care about the specific players.
Seeing the predatory MoR industry go up in flames when they've had shady business practises and have done more damage to small indie businesses than anyone else 💯
Yoo
I was in the same boat a couple of years ago. It was when monicalent.com suggested that a small bootstrapped startup can "only afford A players" or will go down in flames.
I totally agree now. Hire the best, or don't hire at all.
Whenever folks are frustrated about hiring for their startup, I'm looking at their team and they pick the $5/h outsourced freelancer on Upwork every single time.
Folks, an investment in your team is an investment in yourself and your product. Hire THE BEST people you can.
The new composer is unreal
Make it happen, I'll be there :)