What I learned as a newbie indie hacker in 2025
let me set the stage right in the beginning because I don’t want to disappoint you.
I accumulated zero revenue from any of my SaaS or indiehacking projects this year.
With that out of the way, let’s see what I learnt over the last 12 months, that will at least fill up my arsenal for the coming years; because the truth is, I’m not giving up.
Lesson one: distribution is a day 1 problem, maybe even day 0
There are a (large) group of people who are just building stuff for the sake of building.
because they enjoy it.
because it is likely solving a problem of their own. scratching their own itch.
something they genuinely care enough to build a software for. and they also make a good effort into cleaning it up a little bit before sharing it with the world.
spoiler alert: I’m one of those people.
My Engineering Background
I come from an engineering background and I was a software engineering before AI was a thing.
I learned coding in a hardcore internship, programming Erlang (of all languages) in none other than an Emacs editor.
if you’re from that era, I salut you!
and I hate that my job has changed drastically over the last few years due to the rise of AI tools. I really hate it. even though I use AI everyday, even right now that I’m writing this text, the goddamn auto-completion keeps disturbing my natural flow of words and I have to keep thinking and typing faster to avoid it catching up and being able to suggest nonsense!
there are an increasing space of opportunities to include AI systems in our day to day lives for the betterment of humanity, to save us time and money, and to let us scroll a few more tiktok videos and youtube shorts with those extra minutes we save!
anyway, I’m getting sidetracked here.
The Reality of Building Without Distribution
my number one learning in 2025 has been that if you’re among that group of people like me who just enjoy building stuff and shipping them without any real distribution plan, you’re likely to end up with zero users, zero revenue, and zero impact.
I learned this lesson the hard way with my first B2B SaaS attempt, where I spent two months building FindForce with perfect architecture and zero customers.
there’s a big chance you will keep shipping and shipping and although you’re super excited about showing your masterpiece to the world, people would briefly click on it, scroll a few percentage of the page if you’re lucky, and they’ll bounce immediately as if they’ve never been there.
Building for Customers, Not Crickets
if you want serious business though, you gotta think customers before you even start building. cause if you don’t already have people lining up to give you their credit card before your run go mod init in your terminal (or next, nuxt, noxt, naxt, or whatever JS framework you’re using), you’re building for crickets. for launching in launch directories to fill your ego and do busy work.
I have been there. I AM there! and I’m not even shy of admitting it because, honestly, I came to software engineering because the problem solving aspect of it was super exciting me, the data structure, the algorithms, all that nonsense.
anyway, I’m sure you’re wiser than me and just nice enough to read my rants. thank you for that.
Lesson two: progress beats perfection. every. single. time.
I’m a perfectionist. I like to ship things nice. complete. polished.
I don’t want no messy code. I want clean code. I want my UI to be pixel perfect.
Learning to Ship Fast
but this year I was able to surmount that urge. I shipped things fast. I broke stuff in production and fixed quickly.
I learned to be the better version of myself. I didn’t hold back.
I had this in the back of my mind every time I was avoiding the git push:
the competition is shipping while you’re polishing.
- some stranger over the internet I can’t even remember.
so, in year 2025, I learned to ship faster. I learned not to obsess and attach my ego to things, to projects.
and learned to ship the goddamn ugly and unpolished version as soon as possible. even with typo.
Embracing Imperfection
let people see and read your work in progress. let them know that it’s not complete.
let them know that YOU’RE A HUMAN!
I am a human. I make mistake. I learn from them. I try not to make it again. but you know what, if AWS and cloudflare can have outages every now and then, write in their postmortem docs that they’ll never make the same mistake and still cause people a loss of money and fame, so can I!
I am a human, incomplete, sometimes even incompetent. I’m not even gonna apologize. I’m too fucking old for that.
Lesson three: put your work out there. let the universe do its thing.
In conjunction with the last point, this year I learned the valuable lesson that when you ship your work and show it to the world, you build trust and authenticity.
because you’re showing up. you’re doing the work. putting in the reps.
The Creator Economy Reality
can you believe that only 2.5% of the overall humanity is actually brave enough to build and create stuff and put it out there?
here’s the reference: https://www.demandsage.com/creator-economy-statistics/
so, in this year, I learned to put my work out there. to be brave enough to be called dumb and lame by strangers over the internet.
I learned to embrace the vulnerability of being a creator. to not let embarrassment and silly shame stop me from sharing my work.
Learning Through Building
I learned to build stuff. to show it to the world.
progressive iteration, learning from my past attempts, hardening and sharpening my skills over time…
the best part of being in the builder and creator economy is that for every work that I put out there, I learn something new.
when starting my first B2B SaaS this year in 2025, I learned a lot of useful business terminologies I’ve never been exposed to before.
things like CAC, LTV, MRR, ARR, churn rate, retention rate, conversion rate, and many more.
and on the marketing side as well.. the exit intent, the buyer persona, the ideal customer profile, the sales funnel, and so many more.
The Numbers Game
the fact that cold outreach is a numbers game.. I learned that from a kind stranger over at Reddit.
my cold outreach experiments taught me this brutally: 200+ messages sent, zero conversions. But each rejection sharpened my approach.
I learn this stuff on the go… losing time and money while I’m at it just to make sure that it sticks.
Redefining Failure
I’m not shy to say that I called my first B2B SaaS a failure after 3 months of trying to get paying customers… looking back in time, I know that I didn’t even give it a fair shot.
most builders I see at Starter Story’s youtube channel fail for at least a couple handful of years before making their first serious revenue.
you know what? I’m glad 2025 is a year I finally started this thing. why? next and last lesson!
Lesson four: I don’t want to work for someone else anymore
The Job Market Reality
in the last 2-3 years of seeing so many layoffs, seeing how the job market has tightened and tightened to the point where it is extremely hard to get a job, if not impossible and impractical…
I now learnt that I can’t put my eggs in one basket.. especially not if it’s someone else’s basket.
they can fire my ass any second they’re not pleased with my “throughput”.
they can fire me when the VC money starts to shrink faster than they generate income.
The SaaS Dream
I want to jump ship. I want to get into a point where I make SaaS.. a sustainable business that can pay the bills but also grow the product itself…
I love those sexy 5, 6, 7 figure ARRs I see on X… I love how they make progress… and I hate that I’ve done none.
I have made zero… negative actually if you count my tools, my time, my energy…
What I’ve Learned
but again, one full year has passed and I’ve learned all these valuable lessons…
now I know more and understand more when someone is talking about no-friction landing-page… about promiment CTA…
about the value of creating a solution to an actual problem people are already facing and who are not just willing to pay, but are actually taking their credit card out and buying it.
What’s next?
Projects in Progress
I’ve got a few projects and ideas that are nearly done.
you know that 20-80 rule? the Pareto principle?
a small 20 percent effort was required to result in 80% of the work being done. check.
now I just need to put a few more 80% effort to get that last 20% to the finish line :)
is any of these projects gonna make me any money? maybe, maybe not. I’m too naive of an entrepreneur to tell.
perhaps I even know that some of them are not even gonna make a single dime and I still love making them.
they’re like my little babies. I love to see them grow.
Customer Discovery Mode
I’m also doing customer discovery at the moment… I’ve got two niches on my radar that I’m talking to people in those industries to see if I can find a real problem that I can solve for them with a SaaS product.
maybe it’ll turn out to something, maybe it goes to s* and I learn something new.
My 2026 Plan
my plan for 2026 is exactly what I planned for 2025:
live a life of no regret. a life that I’ll look myself in the mirror in my final years, I’ll tap myself in the shoulder, and I’ll tell myself I’m proud of you.
ciao for now.
One last Thing
my last project is Puppeteer MCP. It allows your favorite AI agents to take control of the browser.
think: “go to reddit and find me the top 10 posts talking about AI agents with 100+ upvotes, summarize them and email me the summary”.
it has been developed specifically to run on Apify platform.
if this is something that excites you, check it out over at https://apify.com/meysamazing/puppeteer-mcp
if you do, please be kind enough to write a 5-star review :)