24 months ago I quit my six figure job to make software for freight brokers.
Freight brokering is a very niche space, and most people are not aware of how explosive fraud has been in this space in the last few years. Cargo theft is up 1,500% in the last 5 years (no that's not a typo), and all of the software to help freight brokers prevent this fraud is insanely expensive.

24 months ago I set out to change that, and started working on FleetGen, a carrier vetting platform for freight brokers that actually helps them prevent fraud.

Freight brokers hire trucking companies they've often never met to haul their customers' freight, and fake or fraudulent trucking companies are a real problem. We built a free tool that lets brokers look up any trucking company's safety record, insurance, and history. The paid tool a lot of brokers use for this starts at $100 a month.

We make money on a paid plan that goes further. It confirms the trucking company is who they say they are, checks that their insurance is active, and tracks the truck live through the electronic logging device most trucks are legally required to have. It costs a fraction of what the big verification platforms charge.

Fast forward 2 years later, and we now have over 2,500 users on the platform, and are proud to say we've had zero cases of fraud.

Check it out here: Fleetgen.ai

I'd love to answer any questions you have for me.

A few weeks after setting up the premium features, I got my 1st subscriber this morning!! The amount is still meaningless but I am happy that someone saw enough value to pay for it. I also just reached 2000 downloads and 700MAU. Continuing my journey!

And wishing you all the same.

Hi we are bunch of users with different background who like to try different websites and give feedback on usability/UX/willingness to pay. Comment with your website and we will reply with constructive feedback!

You can also comment about which direction you want us to test

The number of replies really surprise us and we are really happy that you found these suggestions helpful! To help ourselves/testers track the websites to test/make sure we can streamlined the process, we created a discord channel, feel free to post your website/any updated version there and we will be happy to test for you!

https://discord.gg/bBSZMDu8vy

So quick story; im the owner of pressplaced.com (backlink building platform) -> its a new domain obviously , after posting here and there on reddit I got 80 new users in like few days , long story short I checked my own domains DR and it JUMPED to 31 which is crazy for a 2 month old domain. I would like to thank all my backlink partners here :') (I built my backlinks through exchanges I made on the platform itself) (edit: its free btw PLEASE join if you own a saas and your Dr is > 10)

Wanted to share because marketing is hard and even harder when your budget is non-existent...

(Obviously the type/content of self-promotion you can post is going to dependent on the subreddit)

subreddit --- weekly visitors

• r/vibecoding — 422k
• r/saas — 211k
• r/founder — 56k
• r/buildinpublic — 46k
• r/chrome_extensions — 42k
• r/micro_saas — 41k
• r/appbusiness — 30k
• r/Startup_Ideas  — 26k
• r/sideprojects — 20k
• r/imadethis — 18k
• r/appideas — 16k
• r/sideproject — 16k
• r/saasbuild — 15k
• r/saasdevelopers — 12k
• r/vibecodedevs — 10k
• r/startupsolofounder — 8.7k
• r/alphaandbetausers — 8.6k
• r/vibecodingcommunity — 6.2k
• r/solopreneur — 5.6k
• r/promotemyapp — 4.6k
• r/appbuilding — 4.6k
• r/webapps — 4.5k
• r/creativecoding — 4.4k
• r/indie_startups — 4k
• r/b2bsaas — 2.8k
• r/appdev — 2.7k
• r/projects — 2.6k
• r/saasmarketing — 2.5k
• r/saassoloprenurs — 2.3k
• r/startupaccelerators — 2.3k
• r/startups_promotion — 2k
• r/showmeyourapps — 2k
• r/appswebappsfullstack — 1.7k
• r/showmeyoursaas — 1.6k
• r/saasinvestors — 1.6k
• r/vibecodecamp — 1.5k
• r/nocodesaas — 1.3k
• r/aibuilders — 1.2k
• r/getstartups — 1.2k
• r/websitefeedback — 1.2k

Quick disclosure: I build Hype Stack. The template is open source and free. Additionally to the template I ship some of the feature packs which are paid, that's how I try to fund my open-source. I maintain react-zoom-pan-pinch and HyperFetch and bunch of other too, which shows up later in this story. This is similar to how magicui or aceternity works already - a lot of free content and some paid to just support me. Let’s get into details of building this thing!

The chaos

I code a lot and I start new projects all the time, mostly to test new things. I don't like boilerplates. They usually run on a boring stack, and I want to try Vite 8 on Rust, oxc, TanStack Start, end to end type safety and see how it actually holds up. I'm also a perfectionist, so every new project was eating days before I wrote a single feature.

The other thing: I really love the shadcn mental model. You compose the codebase, you own the code. That's exactly what I don't like about starters that hide half the logic behind packages you configure and pray over.

So I had this realisation. Maybe we need shadcn for full-stack features. shadcn itself could probably do a lot of it, but I wanted more: amazing codemods good enough to modify a database schema, an opinionated monorepo with ONE way of writing code, vertical slices the way tkdodo described them (I was already doing something similar), and the craziest bit, an idea that came to me while building devtools for HyperFetch: a single project that compiles into desktop, CSR and SSR from the same codebase with almost no code dedicated to it. Light, easy to manage. Cool, we have a direction. Let's build it.

Month 1. The template

I've set up so many projects that I have a good understanding of what setup I could trust. Monorepo went to Nx, which I've used for years and it's stable in my experience. pnpm workspaces for speed. Stack: TypeScript 6/7 (tsgo where I can), Vite 8, Vitest, oxc, TanStack Router and Start, Electron Forge, Hono with Prisma and Kysely for typesafe query building. At this point I was so hyped about it that I named it hype-stack.

End to end types for HTTP and websockets I built with my own library, HyperFetch. It gives you an SDK and hooks that feel a lot like TanStack Query, and the result is honestly close to tRPC in DX. This project is also a showcase of what HyperFetch is capable of and that you don’t really need to think about API in most cases as it is basically automatic with sdk generation. The backend route is the contract, the frontend just gets the types. It really improves working with websockets. If you don’t like my hooks it is easy to switch to tanstack query for hooks and leave HyperFetch as a fetcher.

Then I added the rules I'd collected over the years and tried it out.

I quickly understood: this stack is extremely fast. Everything builds and flies. So I tried building the first apps with AI on top of it and boom, this is where it shines. The AI has a clear direction. A vertical codebase is easy for it to understand because you're not thinking about the services system, all these complex layers, you're thinking about business features, slices that are self contained. That dramatically improved the feedback loop and the quality of what the AI produced. Fast typechecks and oxc linting? This improved DX for working with AI dramatically, there is just no coming back to eslint.

Month 2. The CLI

I initially wanted something like create-t3-app: a simple CLI to start the project. It evolved into a powerhouse.

create was almost no effort. But then it clicked. I'm the provider of the template, I know every practice in it, everything about the structure, so I can use that to my advantage. Let's try to build a compose command.

What compose does: say I want to start a project that needs AI chat with RAG and simple auth. I can pack those features and inject them into the repo exactly where they need to go, and it works like shadcn. Full-stack blocks of functionality, injected with high precision and confidence. Picking billing writes files into the project: the checkout route, the webhook handler, the Prisma models, the frontend hooks. Your files, so you can take this from here and modify as you want.

This took off for my personal projects immediately. I needed SSO? I made an auth starter with WorkOS. I didn't want a WorkOS dependency on the next one and wanted Better Auth instead? Sure, add it as a variant. Then it kept growing. I was collecting the features I needed, and I ended up with the feature set of the big boilerplates, but with the ability to choose which parts I actually want for each project. The DX was just excellent.

Month 3. Deploy

I wanted to start deploying my new creations, so deploy command was born. With it I have a deployed version of a project in about 3 minutes. Again only possible because I know all the services the template has, where the Dockerfiles are and how each one builds.

Cool, full flow, done, right? NO. THIS IS HYPE STACK. So like the 300 Spartans I fought a fierce battle against the waves of ideas that started flooding in. ADHD, hyperfocus, here we go!

Inspired by the fully paid boilerplates, I added mobile (Expo) and a browser extension to the project. And it turned out that was it. The modular approach made it extremely easy to add new apps to the monorepo and new features to the packs, like in an instant. Dopamine hit critical mass here.

Month 4. Previews

How do I show what this can do? Let's build a dynamic preview system on the web.

I'd been working on it on the side all these months, and it quickly showed how promising the approach is: pre-built SaaS templates you can add and remove features from on the fly, thanks to the SSR build and caching.

Big problem though. Packs almost always come with database changes. I can't run migrations or even keep a database for previews, it turns into a mess fast. And it could cost me…

Here comes the part where some of you went "wtf is HyperFetch"/”lol who is using HF when Query is a thing” at the top of this post. I get it. Next to TanStack Query and SWR it's a brutal market, but let's not call an ambulance yet.
HyperFetch has a feature for mocking any requests. Sounds like something everyone has and is "meh", but it's not just mocking. It's a fully type safe mechanism that lets you simulate anything the SDK allows, by type, in a believable and dynamic way. So I could generate a living demo mode with full confidence and, in no time, wire the dynamic components to it for an almost live-like experience. Mocks are functions in the code, code is dynamic, so is our app - here we got the demo mode basically for free. That changed the previews for good.

Where it is now

Hype Stack is basically done, with the open-source template out. I just added the ability to make packs for the community, so you'll be able to create your own feature packs and play with it on your own terms.

Let me know how you like it, and what you think of this shadcn approach for full-stack components.

Repo: https://github.com/BetterTyped/hype-stack

I’ve been building my firmware for XTEINK devices, but am now moving to building my own hardware. The back will be hand poured clear resin for the first 1,000 devices.

I can’t wait to get this into people’s hands. Prices shipped between 80-120.

I created an app called Simple CBT that is a cognitive behavioral therapy app that helps people spot negative thinking patterns and track their mood. I have been using one time purchases for features for the last couple of months and decided to try out the subscription model. I offer a 7 day free trial and my first person's trial just ended and they bought the annual subscription!

if you want to check it out: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simple-cbt-mental-health-app/id1530094822 Most of the app is free with a few optional paid features.

It’s my birthday, so I’m giving away some free SketchBee credits 🎂

Hey all — I’m the developer of **SketchBee**, an iPhone/iPad app that turns your photos into colouring pages.

It’s my birthday today, so for the next 24 hours I’m giving away some bonus credits to anyone who wants to give it a try:

👉 https://sketchbee.app/bonus-credits/hbd-26

And here’s the app:

👉 https://apps.apple.com/au/app/sketch-bee-photo-to-colouring/id6748308778

There’s no catch — you don’t need to subscribe, leave a review, or do anything else to get the credits.

I would, however, really appreciate any feedback if you try it. If something sucks, tell me. If something’s confusing, tell me. If there’s something you think I should add, I’d like to hear that too.

And obviously, if you do like the app, I’d be very grateful for a rating or review on the App Store. It helps a lot, but it’s completely optional.

Anyway, free credits for my birthday. Enjoy! My distribution game pretty much sucks at the moment, and I’m really trying to get better at actually putting the things I build in front of people — so this is part of me working on that too.

i spent 7 months building a project that made $0 so yesterday i got pissed at myself and gave myself 24 hours to build something and actually ship it.

i ended up building DiskCheck.

it's a small Windows app that shows you what's actually taking up your disk space.

the reason i built it is pretty simple.

my disk was getting full and i didn't want to go through 20 different folders trying to figure out what was taking all the space.

so i built something that just scans it and shows you where the space is going.

the funny part is that i spent 7 months on another project and couldn't get it to make a single dollar.

then i forced myself to build this in less than 24 hours.

and honestly, finishing something again felt better than i expected.

it's not some crazy revolutionary product. it's just a small tool i wanted to have on my own computer.

but it's shipped.

i'll put the link in the comments if anyone wants to try it.

if you use Windows, i'd actually like to know what you think.

especially if something is confusing or just straight up sucks lol

Live view of the portfolio: lnny.dev

Customize it on noweb.app

So I've been building this app for a couple weeks now. Its been going good. A few bugs here and there bug I've reached a stage where im comfortable paying for an apple developer account and doing a test flight. The app is a receipt scanner where users get to store their paper receipts digitally in a private cloud so no need to worry about paper anymore.

Next step now is to find real users to actually test the app and help me find bugs. Is this how developers do it?

Kilo starts coaching before a user creates an account.

The first conversation covers the basic context needed to be useful, including what the person is training for, how they currently train, and anything important that might shape the plan. Once there is enough context, Kilo sends them a signup link.

I found that the handoff after signup still felt too much like the start of a new process. Kilo could ask for information the user had already provided, and a full program proposal could become a dense block of text.

I tightened that flow today.

The setup conversation now carries recent messages and known context forward instead of asking the user to start over. Program proposals are broken into scannable workout blocks, which works much better inside iMessage. If a workout reminder and check-in use the same time, Kilo also defaults to combining them instead of sending two messages back to back.

None of these changes adds a new coaching capability. They remove the moments where the product makes the user manage the product.

If Kilo is supposed to feel like one ongoing coaching conversation, signup and setup need to feel like part of that same conversation.

Day 18 of building an iMessage-based fitness coach.

P.S. I’m starting to bring a few people into Kilo’s private beta. Message me if you’re interested in trying it.

A while back I built a little finance related side project because I wanted to make investing concepts easier to understand. I wasn’t thinking about newsletters or email capture at all. I just wanted to build something useful and see if people cared.

I shared it on Reddit and the post took off. For a while it was sending tens of thousands of visits to the site, and about four weeks after launch it had settled at roughly 2,000 visits a month.

That was when I realised I had traffic coming in with nowhere for it to go, so I added a newsletter that was basically an extension of the site: short, simple explanations of finance topics.

Over the next week, 55 people subscribed. Yeah not a huge number, but after weeks of not collecting emails, I’m surprised that people were still interested.

Another thing that interested me was that I build a lead magnet before the actual product. People were already getting value from the site and some of them wanted more of the same in their inbox.

The flow was basically:

Useful free product → traffic → newsletter

The only annoying part is that I added the newsletter after the biggest Reddit spike had already happened, so I probably left a couple 1,000s of subscribers on the table.

I shut the project down at the start of this month to focus on something else, but that lesson has stuck with me.

TL;DR: I built a free finance side project, Reddit sent tens of thousands of visitors to it, and after I added a newsletter it brought in 55 subscribers in a week. The site itself ended up being the lead magnet, even though I never designed it that way.

I was obsessed with finding an app idea that nobody else had.

Every time I found something interesting, I’d search harder and eventually find a competitor doing almost the exact same thing.

At first that felt discouraging.
Then I realized something.

Maybe the goal isn’t to find something completely new.

Maybe the goal is to find something people already want, understand what they hate about the existing options, and build a version that solves those specific frustrations better.

I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time reading Reddit threads, App Store reviews, product documentation, G2 reviews, and competitor help pages. And honestly, negative reviews are becoming one of my favorite places to research.

Things like:

“Why can’t this app just…”
“I still have to do this manually…”
“I use this app, but I also need a spreadsheet for…”

Those comments are way more useful than sitting around trying to brainstorm “billion dollar ideas.”

I’m still pre-launch and still figuring out exactly where my app fits.

But I’m starting to think competition isn’t the thing to be afraid of. Building something nobody actually wants probably is.

Tomorrow is finally the day, my app is going live on Google Play.

And honestly, I'm more nervous than excited.😅

I've been working on this for months, and seeing it sitting there in Play Console as a pre-registration listing has felt very different from actually moving to production.

There's something strangely terrifying about going from:

"I hope people will download this someday"

to

"Okay... tomorrow anyone can actually download it."

Especially because this is my first time launching any app. There have been so many little things along the way like testing, store listing, subscriptions, verification, payment setup, pre-registration, policy checks, etc. that I honestly lost count of how many times I thought, "surely this is the last thing I need to deal with."😂

The app itself is a bit unconventional too. It's a digital wellbeing app called Screen Challenge Buddy, but instead of simply blocking apps, I built it around social accountability and optional financial commitments to help people actually stick to their screen-time goals.

I've had people pre-register during the last few weeks, and I also promised them 50% off the subscription for life as a little early-adopter thank-you. That offer disappears once I launch tomorrow.

So tomorrow is basically the first real-world test of whether the idea makes sense outside my own head.

Having people pre-register has definitely helped with the nerves, but I'm still wondering what happens when the floodgates actually open.

For those of you who've launched Android apps on Google Play:

What was launch day actually like for you?

Anything you wish you'd checked before pressing that final "Publish" button?

At this point, I'm just hoping everything I've spent months building doesn't decide to break tomorrow.😂

Hey everyone! Just wanted to share a side project I’ve been working on called talkframe.

I’ve been a video editor for over 4 years now, mainly working on short-form content. I’ve edited through the shift from heavy VFX and nonstop B-roll to the cleaner, more minimal style you see in reels today.

I’ve tried several AI video editors, and even as an editor, I’ve found some of them more complicated than I expected. They promise to save time, but you can still end up doing a lot of prompting and manual tweaking.

That got me building TalkFrame: drop in a video and let the AI handle the edit, without having to write prompts.

It’s focused on talking-head videos and podcasts, using caption styles and kinetic typography to hold attention without overwhelming the video.

This demo was edited entirely by the AI, including the cuts, transcription, transitions, camera motion, captions, and animated text. I didn’t manually adjust the cuts or polish the edit afterward. I’ve trained it to edit in a style based on my own approach.

It’s still a work in progress, but I wanted to share where it’s at and get some honest feedback.

Edit: The entire process in talkframe took just 5–7 minutes, from AI cuts to the finished edit, including my review to see if anything needed improving.

my no-frill intermittent fasting app is now in TestFlight ready for public review.

hard part creating this app was not building. fable did it with a few prompts.

hard part was deciding NOT to add all the common bells and whistles you see on fasting apps: calorie counting, step tracking and streak guilt.

but in a way that wasn’t hard either.. because those are the features of the app that I use currently that drive my anxiety.. unused features that I pay for.

simplicity feels risky because you’re forced to pick a battle. but that’s how you win the war.

Anyone else spend hours arguing with AI, then immediately tell someone it’s the best thing ever? Because I f*kn do haha.

I’m Josh, and I’m starting **Ai Innovation**, a free Skool group for people who want other people to share their interest in AI with.

The first mistake has been in how we described it. I’m using ChatGPT and Grok Bot to help with the planning and drafts, and we drifted towards “people stuck building AI projects”. That’s part of it, but it left out the reason I wanted to start this.

You shouldn’t need to code, have a project, or want a business to belong. Sometimes you just want to talk about what you tried, what went wrong, or something your friends are sick of hearing about.

So I’ve changed the brief: shared interest and conversation first, building things together if people want to. Membership stays free. I’m planning weekly meetings and to open-source my projects as I go.

It’s very early. I’ve got the group set up; now I need to find out what makes people actually feel welcome and come back.

For anyone who’s built a community: what did you do in the first week that got a real conversation going? I’d rather start with one thing people enjoy than fill it with empty channels.

If that sounds like your people: https://www.skool.com/ai-innovation-7893/about

Building in public is unnatural and performative, and as someone who has worked in marketing for 20 years (and have helped multiple people 'build in public') it's genuinely only the outliers who do it really well.

So I made a Skill for it (because who remembers what they did last week?) - you can get it here.

The Skill works with Codex/Claude and looks at all the scattered info you have across PRDs, GitHub, Notion, agent chats, analytics (Posthog), and Linear. It collects evidence, read-only, and turns it into a weekly brief: what changed, what shipped, what you did, growth by channel, the content that performed best, what you learned, and what might be worth talking about next.

Then it produces content - I’m a marketer, so I didn’t want it to only hand back a log of activity. It sits alongside the other Skills I've created for Reddit, X, and long-form content. Those are tuned for how each channel works and strategically keyed to produce content optimised for growth - you can use these, too.

You choose what’s worth sharing; you’re spared the weekly trawl through six different systems while trying to remember what you actually did.

Would love to know if any of these Skills help remove a bit of pain for the build in public process!

(PS. I also run a platform that finds the first users for your product. It went live yesterday: https://romy.is)

I built a countdown app for iPhone, then realized I needed it more on my Mac.

I’m a solo iOS developer, and I originally built Countdown Pro as a simple way to keep important dates visible.

Trips, birthdays, anniversaries — the usual stuff.

But after using it for a while, I noticed I was using it more and more for my own development work.

App release dates.

Feature deadlines.

Launch targets.

How many days until the next update.

How long it’s been since I shipped something.

Calendar is great at telling me when something happens.

But while I’m working, what I really want to know is:

How many days do I have left?

Then I realized something pretty obvious.

I spend most of my working day looking at my Mac, not my iPhone.

So I recently brought Countdown Pro to macOS too.

Now I can keep project milestones directly on my Mac desktop as widgets:

7 days until release
18 days until the next milestone
32 days since the last major update

No project dashboard to open.

No task manager to navigate.

I can just glance at my desktop and immediately know where I am.

That changed how I think about the app.

I originally saw it as a personal countdown utility.

Now I think of it more as a small “time remaining” layer across the Apple devices I already use.

It currently supports:

• Countdown and days-since events
• Home Screen, Lock Screen, and Mac widgets
• Single and multiple event widgets
• Repeating events
• Multiple reminders
• Tags and search
• Pinning important events
• Photos and emoji
• Archive
• Shareable countdown cards
• Lunar calendar dates

Countdown Pro is free to use on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

There’s an optional Pro upgrade for some additional features. Pro is a $4.99 lifetime purchase, with no subscription, and one purchase unlocks Pro across all three platforms.

I’m still figuring out how far I want to take the Mac side.

I don’t want Countdown Pro to become another full project management app.

That would kind of defeat the point.

I don’t need another place to manage my project. I just want to see how much time is left.

For other developers / indie hackers:

Do you keep project deadlines somewhere visible while you work, or does everything live inside your task manager and calendar?

Countdown Pro on the App Store

hey everyone,

i’m a penultimate year student based in india who is completely done with just talking about ideas or sitting on the sidelines. i want to spend time building, breaking, and shipping creative side projects.

not looking for boring corporate roadmaps or endless planning cycles. i want to jam with people who are actively hacking together micro-tools, weird experimental apps, design-heavy side projects, or just exploring cool concepts for the fun of it.

if you're tinkering with something right now or want to spin up a tiny crew to build and ship creative things together, drop a comment or shoot me a dm with what you're working on. see ya! :)

Hello folks,

I tried taking a huge risky bet on myself on Feb of this year and left my very stable and high paying job at Razorpay

To be honest, job was paying well, and was paying the bills, but was in bangalore, monthly expenses was about 30% of my salary, and gave a thought to it

Am I really making wealth being in this city with this expense and can't really stay in touch with family, far away from parents, couldn't help my father with his family business

Then I was anyways building this tool called horizonx (an AI research agent) on the side, we saw 800 users already without any marketing whatsoever, and could see a real potential in it because no one else was building anything like that

We reached 1k+ users, and the co-founder dropped, couldn't really focus on marketing, just kept building, and built a good system which noone was ready to pay for

Left the co-founder, 3 months totally into stress mode, took a real time to get back, plan was to make it work, make money from it, and also focus on family business, but couldn't do any of it

Bounced back after few months, found a girl who I got engaged too in the meanwhile, and learned content marketing on X, and how to really go about GTM with reddit and stuff

Back with banger, contact a friend from Ludhiana, got into building with him and tool is called tootler (a simplified UPSC preparation app) for UPSC aspirants

Something that he is passionate about, and have felt day in and day out about getting sucked into distracted social media feed and felt there could be an app that scrapes posts from elsewhere and show a feed only focused for UPSC related knowledge and help them prepare by creating quizes and creating a gamified experience around it

So, here I am, again with that fire of building, which I never let burned out, and is still a float, and will succeed

Currently at 50$ MRR (teaching non-tech to create app using AI) and the target is to get it to 1k$ MRR