What's New: Takeaways from tech's hottest new conference

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

Here's what you'll find in this issue:

• The hottest new conference in tech, the Network State Conference, had 40 speakers, including Pieter Levels. Here's what we went down there.
• It's cheaper than ever to build on top of AI models. Looks like the future of AI may be open source (or so says Meta).
• $4K MRR with a browser extension for design. Erwin Lengkeek built in 2 weeks, launched on Product Hunt, and promoted with a newsletter.
• ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode this week, after a four-month wait.

Want your product seen by over 105,000 founders and businesses? Sponsor an issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter. Choose between 3 affordable tiers that can fit almost any budget.

You can also run a native website ad on the Indie Hackers homepage for an entire week.

Top takeaways from tech's hottest new conference 🔥

What event attracts speakers from Vitalik Buterin and Naval Ravikant, to Bryan Johnson and Pieter Levels?

The Network State Conference, of course.

The "Network State" is tech entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan’s idea for an internet community that inhabits a physical space and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from other nations.

It’s a radical idea, but it’s very appealing to those interested in decentralized technologies, like crypto and remote work (hence, Vitalik’s and Levels’s appearances at the conference).

Luckily for you, we watched all 10 hours of it so you don’t have to.

Here are the top takeaways.

You get it all done 💪

This issue is sponsored by Duckbill

You don’t have to do it all yourself, though.

Duckbill is an executive assistant for your personal life, led by expert humans, and enhanced with AI superpowers.

Simply hand Duckbill the things you dread, or that should be on autopilot. Life is short. Focus there.

Let Duckbill do the rest.

AI model prices are plummeting 📉

It's becoming cheaper to build on top of powerful AI models.

Last week, Mistral, one of the world's largest AI companies, announced a new free tier for developers.

You read that right: Free API access for an AI model.

Here's what this means for indie hackers.

In the news 📰

🎁 Don't sleep on TikTok Shop to make sales this holiday season.

🔎 20 places where your clients hang out for Indie Hackers: Get it now! #ad

👀 Meta Connect 2024: Here's how to watch the event.

📱 Telegram will now hand over your phone number and IP if you're a criminal suspect.

🤖 How do we write software for robots?

🚀 The rebirth of a controversial mobile game.

Leveraging social media and building in public 💻

After two failed projects, Erwin Lengkeek decided to ditch his social media shyness and start building in public.

When he started out, he only had 300 followers on X, but his first demo video hit 70K impressions and 500 likes.

His design tool, Tailscan, is currently at $4K MRR.

Here are his marketing hacks and fails.

Courtland's tweet pick 🐦

Fiiiiinally! I can't think of any other tech I've been more excited to try this year. I constantly talk to ChatGPT in voice mode and it's incredibly useful.

The gap between people who make a habit of interfacing with AI vs those who don't, will be bigger than the gap between people who made a habit of Googling things vs those who never did. —@csallen

Enjoy this newsletter? 🏁

Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.

Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Stephen Flanders, Darko Gjorgjievski, and Katie Hignett for contributing posts. —Channing