We hit 10,000+ Founders and distributed over 854,000 Product impressions 2,135$ MRR this is a huge milestone for us
We just crossed 10,000+ founders, generated 854,000+ product impressions, and reached $2,135 MRR.
This is a milestone I’m genuinely proud of.
But what makes it meaningful is remembering where we started.
The last time I posted about Founders Today on Indie Hackers, we had just 100 community members, $0 MRR, and 36 products on the platform.
Those 36 products had generated about 14,000 impressions.
I shared the entire breakdown here:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-we-helped-36-startups-generate-14-6k-product-views-with-our-first-100-members-bdaa202886
Today, we have:
10,000+ founders
854,000+ product impressions
50+ products launched
$2,135 MRR
So what changed?
We stopped thinking of Founders Today as just another founder community.
One of the hardest things to build in 2026 isn't the product.
It's distribution.
With tools like Claude Code, Cursor, Lovable and Bolt, building software has become dramatically easier.
Getting your first 10 users?
That's still brutally hard.
So instead of only asking founders to bring their products to another platform full of founders, we started building a distribution network around them.
Here's what we built.
We started acquiring and partnering with tech bloggers whose audiences already consume startup and technology content.
Their websites display our product discovery widget.
When a founder launches on Founders Today and chooses to BOOST their product, our system distributes that product across our publisher network. But without boost we still push their visibility around our community through out the week our launch days are mondays only
The products aren't randomly displayed.
Our system considers things like:
• Product category
• Content/topic relevance
• Publisher audience
• Founder targeting preferences
• Traffic quality
The goal is simple:
Put products in front of people who aren't already sitting inside a founder community.
We currently have 5 publisher partners, with a combined minimum of roughly 80,000 monthly page views across their sites.
And publishers earn through our eCPM-based model, meaning they can generate revenue from qualified impressions rather than relying entirely on clicks.
That's the distribution layer we're building.
SEO became another major acquisition channel.
We started ranking for a growing number of founder and SaaS-related searches.
One newsletter feature from Apsense, where we were highlighted as one of the fastest-growing indie hacker communities, generated 800+ signups for us.
At one point, our Google rankings for "best SaaS community" generated roughly 1,200 signups before Google eventually moved the page down.
Other organic keywords brought in another 900+ signups collectively.
We've also received signups from:
ChatGPT: 200+
Bing/Microsoft: meaningful additional growth
X: the majority of the remaining acquisition
And here's the part I'm most proud of:
We did this without having impressive DR or DA.
For a long time, I thought that was a huge disadvantage.
I assumed that if we didn't have strong domain metrics, we couldn't compete in search.
Turns out, I was wrong.
Google doesn't just rank a website because it has a high DR.
You still need useful content, relevant pages, internal structure, backlinks, topical relevance and, most importantly, something worth ranking.
We've also built free SEO tools that founders can actually use, including tools that pull keyword data from providers such as Semrush and Ahrefs.
That has helped us create useful pages around the problems founders are already searching for.
You can try the toolkit here:
https://founderstoday.org/toolkits/seo-boost
And now we're opening the distribution network to more publishers.
If you're a tech founder, blogger or publisher with 1,000+ page views per day and you're looking to monetize your audience, we'd love to talk.
You can earn when our product discovery widget is viewed by qualified visitors on your site, even when they don't click.
We use traffic-quality and fraud filtering to protect the network and focus payouts on legitimate traffic.
Learn more here:
https://founderstoday.org/publishers
And if you're a founder building something...
We're also opening free launch slots.
Launch your product on Founders Today and, when eligible for distribution, your product can be surfaced through our product discovery network.
You don't need to pay just to launch.
Submit here:
https://founderstoday.org/launches/submit
Looking back, the biggest lesson isn't that we reached 10,000 founders.
It's this:
You don't need perfect metrics to start building something meaningful.
You don't need a massive audience.
You don't need a high DR.
You don't need everything figured out.
We started with 100 members and $0 MRR.
Now we're at 10,000+ founders, 854,000+ product impressions and $2,135 MRR.
We're still early.
But we're finally building the distribution infrastructure I wish existed when I started building products.
If you're building a startup, running a tech publication, or simply curious about how we got here, ask me anything in the comments.
I’ll answer honestly.
https://founderstoday.org/posts/ask-me-any-question-about-founders-today-c76e3a47
