What's New: WordPress founder bans WP Engine, causes uproar

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

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

Ish went down this week when WordPress founder, Matt Mullenweg, banned WP Engine from the WordPress ecosystem. Here's the drama, explained.
What if you had a blueprint for indie hacking successfully? This Bali-based group just published one, and it's getting tons of buzz.
$1M ARR with a community building platform. Anshul Gupta has been indie hacking for 17 years, and he's been both bootstrapped and funded.

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.

WordPress founder bans WP Engine ❌

WP Engine is one of the world's largest WordPress hosting services. In a shocking move that's sending ripples through the tech world, Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, has just banned WP Engine from the WordPress ecosystem.

This decision has ignited a firestorm of speculation and debate, with supporters praising the move, and critics decrying it as a heavy-handed abuse of power.

What's going on? Well, several days ago, Matt published a post entitled "WP Engine is not WordPress."

In the post, he calls WP Engine a "cancer" to WordPress.

Here's why.

The fastest way to build AI apps 🤖

This issue is sponsored by Writer

Writer is the full-stack generative AI platform for enterprises.

Quickly build and deploy AI apps with Writer AI Studio, a suite of developer tools fully integrated with our LLMs, graph-based RAG, and AI guardrails.

Start building now with AI Studio!

This legendary indie hacking community has gone global 🌎

One of the most influential indie hacking communities in the world just launched a blueprint for anyone who wants to set up a new international chapter.

Hackagu is a group based in Bali, and since its inception, many superstar indie hackers haved passed through its doors, including Danny Postma and Jon Yongfook.

The community follows a simple formula:

Members meet every Thursday at a co-working space to hack together, and get feedback on their projects.
Each session starts with introductions, and ends with demonstrations of what attendees have built that day. This step is designed to keep them accountable.

The group recently published its blueprint.

In the news 📰

💻 OpenAI was a research lab...now, it's just another tech company.

🛍️ This Latin American e-commerce platform is outperforming Amazon.

🥸 Google Maps will now warn you about businesses with fake reviews.

💲 Link to your product here. Our most affordable ad.

🙅 Online discounts are getting stingier.

🤪 Here's why free stuff makes people irrational.

Saving smartly, not aggressively 💰

Years ago, Anshul Gupta launched India’s first OTT platform. Later, he moved to Luxembourg and started Razrtech, a managed services company that built consumer web and mobile products.

Razrtech made its first dollar from a social app for celebrities, and it later went from $0 to $1M ARR.

Then, Anshul launched Socially, a SaaS-based community building platform that helps businesses sell memberships, plan events, launch private groups, etc.

Socially has served more than 150K users, and is now at $1M ARR.

Anshul shared his advice on when to stay bootstrapped, and when to bring in VC funding.

Courtland's tweet pick 🐦

Being a founder is about making good decisions about how to best make use of your limited time and money. And making good. —@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 Darko Gjorgjievski, Katie Hignett, and Anugraha Sundaravelu for contributing posts. —Channing