For those meeting me for the first time, nice to meet you! 👋 Here's a little background on how I ended up here: I decided to become an indie hacker 6 years ago So I packed my life into 2 suitcases, quit my SF tech job, and off I went to Taiwan! 🥳 Why? A few reasons: 1. Autonomy. I wanted freedom over my time & future 2. Creative freedom. I wanted to build my own projects after years working in B2B 3. Future-proofing. I have profound and progressive hearing loss. I didn't dare gamble my future on employers So no matter how I sliced it, indie hacking was the path that made the most sense to me. And I had some craving for Taiwanese lu rou fan too As for the next 6 years......ummm, yeahhh, I wish I can say I have a bunch of success stories and hacks to share. But it's just me making every classic dev mistake. Several times over. 🙃 Allow me to share some of my greatest hits: 1. I love going all-in → Spent a year building each project. Without validation 2. I love learning new things → Spent half the time learning the next shiny new tech 3. I love building perfect products → Never shared my work until they're nearly "perfect" I know, I know, I want to go back in time and smack myself too. Anyway, here's my track record so far: 4 failures 1 small win (took 4 years to reach $500 MRR) 1 in progress (Conteflow) Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. One thing I did different this year was make an X account. For context, I am a super introvert who avoided social media for over a decade. But I was really tired. Of building stuff no one wants Of projects not getting any visibility Of not having any feedback So yeah, screw my comfort zone. I'm not the most prolific poster But I LOVE chatting with people who comes by my little corner and becomes a friendly face. So feel free to drop a hi sometime! 👋

Since a month ago, I noticed a tiny but extremely engaged group of users using my app differently They've basically ignored all the social media & content creation features (you know, the whole point of the app 😅) Instead, they're ONLY using the AI chat feature. Like, multiple times a day, every single day So here goes nothing… I’m going to extract that feature into its own standalone AI chat app and see what happens 👀

I'm like a couple months late but finally launched Conteflow's web app (conteflow.com)! 😭 Aaaand I got my first stripe subscription from web app 🥳

I disappeared for weeks because life went full chaos mode for a while Got hammered with a wave of back-to-back emergencies: • One grandparent in ICU from cancer tumor • Other grandparent in ICU from stroke • Close friend diagnosed with cancer • One parent caught in legal crossfire as scapegoat Thankfully the worst has passed for now. I'm back building

People either love or hate my app's onboarding This split drove me crazy for months: One half loved how comprehensive the personalization is The other half hates how long it is and drops out I finally found the perfect solution and I'm kinda mad I didn't do this earlier A simple social profile import is all that's need to: - extract writing styles from past posts - build a profile bio - generate voice profile - generate content categories Pretty excited to see what the onboarding analytics will look like after this is pushed to production!

oof, trying to work while sick was NOT A GOOD IDEA Even more mortifying was almost fainting at the grocery checkout line of all places 😭

Suddenly getting a lot of love from Google Play and I still have no idea why 😳 Users that discovered the app through Google Play literally jumped from <10 users a week to >200 a week

Welp, always check balcony drains before a typhoon Had to go out in my bathroom slippers to clear clogged drains cuz rainwater was flooding into the bedroom💀 At least the rain was warm

I think I'm feeling a tiny hint of burnout lately Maybe cuz I'm like 1-2 weeks away from launching the web app so it gives a false sense of seeing the finish line when it's actually another starting line At least it's nowhere near as bad as this really bad burnout I had couple years ago That time was so bad that I couldn't open my IDE or look at code for several months Learned my lesson this time and pacing myself better to keep the burnout demons away 💪

Setting up cross-platform subscriptions between web and mobile is loads of fun 🙃

Currently in that magic flow state where features are just flowing 😌 Knocked out voice profile analysis, AI interviews, post generation, quick posts, AND draft editor Just a few more to go: - Schedule - Published - Onboarding - Settings - Stripe Aiming to launch by end of next week! 🚀

So I'm building this voice profile feature and discovering all these weird writing habits I never noticed before Apparently I start like 25% of my posts with 'So' (which I'm literally doing right now)

Got 3 additional months of runway from 1 week of client work 💰 Finally free for the next couple months to focus on building!

Taking an involuntary break from my app turned out to not be so bad Not being in the weeds helped put some distance and i ended up thinking a lot about the bigger picture and future directions lately It gave me some tentative ideas and clarity about who I’m building the app for Need to talk to more people to validate these though

People who juggle a day job AND building a business on the side are seriously built different I'm working on a client project for only a week and I'm unable to context switch to my app at all You guys are superhuman (or killing yourself lol)

Got some feedback from a couple generous users 🙏 And the verdict is: hurry up and build the web app and add voice mode to interviews 🫡