From Our Desks: Making the Community Great Again

Welcome to From Our Desks, where the people behind Indie Hackers share the stories behind the headlines. This week, we talk build-in-public leaderboards, drama at Postmark, and founder burnout.

@StephenFlanders (Stephen Flanders, journalist): The John Rush and Jason Cohen debate over directories solidified in my mind how pointless it is to build B2B software. Think about it. The options are try to validate your idea with directory #100000, or spend months building “valuable” software that has probably already been built a million times before. 

Not exactly enticing.

Meanwhile, there are consumer founders making tens of thousands of dollars basically overnight because they are funny on TikTok. So, build another SEO tool that will never go anywhere or build a LooksMaxing app that retires your bloodline? Super tough choice there.

B2B indie hacking is largely dead, and AI isn’t going to bring it back. Skate to where the puck’s heading, not where it already is.

@ChanningAllen (Channing Allen, co-founder and editor-in-chief): One of the downsides of our transition from community business to media company is that it's harder these days for indie hackers to contribute to the website.

We still have an online forum, but forum posts don't have much of a presence on our homepage compared to our in-house journalism. Which is by design, of course — our media company is steadily growing in revenue and subscribers month-over-month — but we also recognize that a core part of our identity is the Indie Hackers community, and it's been a bit of a bummer watching community activity flow increasingly away from the site to X and Bluesky, etc.

So we've done a lot of work to evolve the product leaderboard into The Build Board, a daily leaderboard of build-in-public posts, which is now featured prominently on the homepage.

@krhignett (Katie Hignett, journalist): I took a little break from AI coverage this week to finish up a report on transactional email service Postmark. It’s been a favorite among indie hackers for years, but more and more founders seem to be reporting issues with the service. Get in touch if you think you might have some insight into the issue.

We’re not trying to write hatchet jobs with our original reporting. But we are interested when companies aren’t serving bootstrappers as well as they could, or as well as they used to. When they’re forgetting about the little guy, if you will.

Have any tips or think we should be looking into something in particular? Send us an email at [email protected].

@IndieJames (James Fleischmann, journalist): This week, I interviewed two founders who are, by any standard, wildly successful. Both spoke enthusiastically about the importance of expanding into enterprise clientele.

Be warned: This is not a simple matter of adding a new tier with a “Contact Us” button instead of a “Pay Now” button.

It’s a new market, which means you need to find product-market fit again. We're talking new features. New loads/stress (I’m talking about your tech here, but it applies emotionally too!). New messaging. Outbound sales. White-glove service. Even big pivots…

It’s an entirely different ballgame that — if done well — can take you to the major leagues.

It also brings a layer of risk, particularly when a single big customer is keeping you afloat. That’s why one of these founders is currently diversifying. But that’s a good problem to have.

Start small, but always keep an eye upmarket.

@Michal_kanka (Michal Kankowski, journalist): The grind and burnout story hit close to home for me. Over the past few years, I’ve faced burnout 2–3 times. Trust me, it’s no walk in the park. The first time? Man, it nearly broke me. But getting through hell taught me how tough I really am — and how to deal with it better. Turns out, practice makes perfect.

Another thing I poured a lot of energy into this week was diving into the dating scene of Indie Hackers. Honestly? Way more hopeful than I expected! I mean, I’ve been in a long-term relationship for years, and so have big names like Levelsio, Tibo, and Marc. But, I've always assumed most Indie Hackers were single. But boy, was I off! Turns out, 60% of Indie Hackers are in relationships! It really flips the stereotype on its head. Huh...

Anyway, this week’s been a rollercoaster — burnout lessons, Indie Hacker love stats, and a ton of caffeine-fueled late nights.

@zerotousers (Darko Gjorgjievski, journalist): The pace at which the AI field is moving is crazy. That's what I've mainly paid attention to.

Google releasing Gemini 2. Claude making Haiku 3.5 more generally available. OpenAI's 12 days of ship-mas.

And it's not (yet) the end of the week.