What's New: Founder of Twitter and Medium launches a new social app
(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)
Here's what you'll find in this issue:
- Mozi, Ev Williams' new app, wants to make social media social again.
- OpenAI users who spend $1K+ per month will have API access to o1.
- $1M ARR with a client data collection tool. Jimmy Rose's decision to pivot helped him break through a plateau.
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Founder of Twitter and Medium launches a new social app 🚀
What happens when the founder who created Blogger and Medium, and cofounded Twitter, realizes he doesn't have "a robust set of friendships" in his life? Well, he launches an app to help people deepen their connection with others.
Ev Williams has laid low since his exit from Medium in 2022. Now, he's back with Mozi, a social contacts app.
There are no public profiles. No followers. No stories. So, what is there? Hopefully, real relationships with people.
The Build Board 🪧
Every day, indie hackers post updates about the products they're building. Here's what the community voted to the top yesterday!
- CodeFast: Learn to code in weeks, not months.
- Creator Buddy: An AI coach to help you create better content on X.
- TypingMind: The best chat UI for AI models.
- Blitzit: Remove distractions, focus on what matters, and get things done.
- Coverr: Unsplash for videos.
Enjoy building in public? Post an update to your product page on Indie Hackers, and it will automatically be added to the daily leaderboard.
OpenAI rolls out o1 API access to high-paying developers 💻
Developers paying OpenAI at least $1K per month through the company's API will be able to wrap their own products and services around the advanced o1 reasoning model.
o1 spends more time processing answers and mulling over its responses step-by-step, so it can spot errors and make improvements before responding. The result? More accurate answers, and better solutions to complex problems.
SaaS Watch 👀
SaaS Watch is a roundup of all the latest micro-SaaS acquisition opportunities. Here are the top three for this week!
- Real time analytics platform for Bluesky users: $300 MRR, 10K-100K users, $5K asking price.
- Tool for checking the availability of domain names and social media handles: 10-100 users, $10K asking price.
- VPN/ad blocker combo for iOS: $2K MRR, 10K-100K users, $45K asking price.
Stuck at $300K ARR before pivoting to an unlikely industry ✨
I'm Jimmy Rose, founder of Content Snare. The most challenging period for us was a prolonged plateau at around $300K ARR. Everything seemed fine. Churn wasn’t too bad, we were getting loads of amazing feedback, and our site got plenty of traffic... but, somehow, we just weren't growing.
Mentally, it was pretty rough. It seemed like we were doing everything right, but with underwhelming results. I started working on other things because I almost lost faith in the product.
The breakthrough came by finding a new industry to serve: Accounting.
We'd love your feedback! 🏁
Did you like today's stories? Did they suck? Which ones?
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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Stephen Flanders, Katie Hignett, and James Fleischmann for contributing posts. —Channing
