Ben

The start of 2026 Total Revenue - £0m ARR X followers - 0 Number of Clients - 0 Projects shipped - 0 We’ll see how this changes by the end of 2026! What are you at?

@themkmaker That's a proper full circle moment. Competing on price in the forms space takes serious conviction too, most people would look at Typeform and just give up. Fair play for sticking with it.

i used to silently read Indie Hackers in 2018. today, they published my story 🥲 Here's how we grew Youform to $18,000 MRR in 2-years in a highly competitive market: indiehackers.com/post/competing…

@APompliano Everyone makes it sound like you just plug AI in and it works. The reality is it takes way more persistence than people let on. Building culta.ai I've found the same thing, the results are incredible once you get there but the process of getting it right is brutal.

Here are 13 things learned after making a big push to integrate AI into our companies: 1. We haven’t replaced a single external SaaS tool with something we built internally. 2. We have refrained from hiring numerous entry level jobs because AI can do the work faster/better/cheaper. 3. The automation provided by AI highlights how much time every person was wasting on tedious tasks daily. 4. Each company is capturing more revenue and each employee is becoming more productive. 5. There is still a bit of apprehension in giving agents full control of machines or systems. 6. There has been no obvious trend in age, gender, or role for those who adopt AI the fastest. More of a mindset than anything. 7. Many non-technical people have started to create software tools or products, which has changed the speed of execution across the companies. 8. One downside is the AI slop across written documents/memos. If humans don’t review the content, it is painful to read and I worry critical thinking gets lost. 9. The implementations of AI are incredible once you get them done, but it is much more difficult to build/implement than most people want to communicate online. Persistence needed! 10. We have walked away from numerous potential small acquisitions because we realized we could build the product ourselves for a fraction of the cost. 11. Our best engineers are invincible now. They produce high quality products at warp speed. Forget 10x engineers, they are 1,000x engineers now. 12. The adoption of AI starts at the top. If the company leader is not constantly asking “how do we automate this?,” it is harder to drive internal change. 13. I am personally working harder than I have in a long time and having more fun than ever. It feels like a moment in time that has to be seized. Overall, I believe AI is underestimated, not overestimated. The worries about SaaS software are probably overblown. The labor market impact is very real and only accelerating. Businesses are fundamentally changing. Start paying attention!

@ky__zo That is actually insane, wo exits so quickly after learning to code is immense. Congrats, this is the sort of stuff that keeps the rest of us going through zero MRR land.

Fluar just got acquired in an all cash, 6-figure deal I built it solo for 14 months, now it’s going to an industry leading team that can really scale it this is the second startup I’ve sold since I learned to code 3 years ago life is incredible, what a time to be alive 🫡 LFGG

Not even a hot take honestly, this is just true. Building is the part where you have full control and can see progress every day. Marketing is shouting into the void and hoping someone hears you. I've built culta.ai to a point I'm happy with but getting anyone to care is a completely different skill and honestly the harder one to learn.

Hot take: Marketing your product is harder than building it. Change my mind.

@pcshipp Just keep working man! Get that conversion rate better and you will be golden!

How do people make $10K MRR or even $100K MRR while I’m still stuck at $9 MRR? - $9 MRR - $2 revenue - 198 New users - 206 Active users No idea how to start marketing

This is my perspective exactly, I know how hard I work. And eventually, people like us get that one lucky break. At the end of the day, thats all its about, making it impossible for you not to eventually "get lucky". For some people that happens on there first venture, for others its going to be years, but like Hormozi says - "do so much work that it would be unreasonable for you to fail" (or something along those lines).

I know I will make it one day. Not because I am better or smarter than others, but because I won't stop. Even if it takes 10 or 20 years, so be it.

@cinamarina Congrats on shipping, getting that first one live is the hardest part. Already building the next one is the right mindset too. Curious how you found Rork for the build, haven't tried it yet myself.

Launched my first app on the App Store! Already building the next one for my dad. A lot of people asked, so here’s my stack: >Rork: for building the app >Supabase: to store all the data >RevenueCat: for subscriptions >Claude: my AI cofounder

Most founders share numbers when they look good. I'm sharing them now because this is the part nobody documents. The messy middle where nothing works yet but you haven't quit. If you're in the same spot: you're not behind. You're just in the part that gets edited out. Follow along @BenToFound

Cost to build culta.ai so far: about £60 in hard costs. Plus hundreds of hours of my time. If I valued my time at even £20/hr, the real cost is well into the thousands. The £60 feels cheap. The time is the expensive part nobody accounts for. What it taught me: "It's free to build" is a lie founders tell themselves. Time has a cost. Track it. It changes how you prioritise.

I've been building culta.ai for 30+ days. Here are the real numbers nobody asks you to share, and what each one actually taught me about building a SaaS from zero. No rounding up. No vanity metrics. Just the truth.

This is actually really useful. One of the biggest problems I've run into with vibe coding is things getting messy fast. When you're building quickly you skip structure and then 2 weeks later you can barely navigate your own codebase. Having a clean architecture doc from the start would save so much time down the line.

🚨THIS might be the MOST IMPORTANT prompt in vibe coding right now. One paste → your messy repo turns into a CLEAN, production-ready ARCHITECTURE doc. → Full project structure → System design (Frontend → Backend → DB) → Core components clearly defined → Data stores + integrations → Deployment + infra → Security + testing Basically… You go from: “it works somehow” To: “any engineer can understand this in 5 mins” Most people are just shipping vibes. This gives your codebase REAL structure. Steal this.

@aditiitwt The people who understand this are going to do really well. Vibe coding is a tool, not a replacement for actually understanding what you're building. I've been using AI tools a lot but every time I skip understanding the output, it comes back to bite me later.

AI WONT MAKE YOU A DEVELOPER AI WONT MAKE YOU A DEVELOPER AI WONT MAKE YOU A DEVELOPER AI WONT MAKE YOU A DEVELOPER AI WONT MAKE YOU A DEVELOPER AI WONT MAKE YOU A DEVELOPER AI WONT MAKE YOU A DEVELOPER AI WONT MAKE YOU A DEVELOPER AI WONT MAKE YOU A DEVELOPER STILL VIBE CODING?

@Hartdrawss Exactly, honestly extremely impressive. Sell the shovels.

> Replit just raised $400M at a $9B valuation 85% of fortune 500 already use it > This is what happens when you build for the vibe coding wave before anyone else took it seriously > The builders who started using it 2 years ago aren't surprised > The ones who ignored it are now scrambling to catch up > Pick your tools before the crowd does

@ilavanyajain Really interesting point, and one that I hadn't thought about before, will definitely be considering the newsletters.

most people in growth are just copying each other here's what actually works if you're 21 and trying to figure out gtm: find the weird channels first if you're marketing where everyone else is, you're already behind. > sponsor random newsletters with 2k subs > build in public on platforms nobody else cares about > go where your users actually hang out, not where marketers wish they did fall in love with the problem, not your solution if you're only hyped on your product and not the pain it solves, you'll bail the second growth slows down. and it will slow down. your users know your product better than you just assume they do. always. they'll tell you how to position it if you actually listen. automate the boring or get buried by it my current stack for staying sane: > kairos for scheduled stuff + browser automation running quietly > claude for thinking through positioning > supabase for everything else growth comes in sprints. never a marathon. a "sprint" mindset brings high energy, intense focus, and a sense of urgency, which can lead to faster results than a slow-and-steady marathon approach. be antifragile (for real) campaigns flop. products tank. budgets vanish. none of that is new. write it down. learn. ship again. kill your echo chamber the best growth ideas i got came from people who thought my plan sucked. find people who'll roast your messaging. travel if you can. build if you can't. both do the same thing - show you markets you didn't even know were there. that's where the good stuff is.

Completely agree. The companies that got lazy because switching costs were high are about to have a really rough few years. When a bootstrapped team of 2 can build something that genuinely solves the same problem but actually listens to feedback, the bloated enterprise tool doesn't stand a chance. Best time to be a small builder honestly.

The SaaSpocalypse is a good thing Big enterprise companies who haven't given a toss about their users for years will be replaced with smaller bootstrapped companies that do care

Hot take: The best use of AI in a SaaS product in 2026 is not a chatbot, not an agent, not a copilot. It's running silently in the background, catching the thing the founder was about to miss. A payment that doesn't match. A margin that's sliding. A cash flow gap 6 weeks away. The best AI doesn't talk. It taps you on the shoulder.