Dmitry Trofimets

Re-intro long overdue. Dmitry, product builder. 13 years working on startups 0->1. Most of my time has lived in the gap between product and traction. co-founders had an idea, we tried to figure out the market and make the product ppl want.

@alexcooldev 80 trials off a new account is kinda wild. now the annoying part is figuring out if it’s a repeatable format or one post carrying the whole story.

I just had one viral TikTok post with 249k views (and a lot of post 2k views -> 50k views), and they’re still growing steadily on US-based accounts. I got a total of 80 new trials in the last 2 days, with over $1k in revenue during that time. This is a fairly new account I created recently, and it’s already almost 80% automated using my internal tools. The conversion rate is pretty solid, so I’ll probably scale this to 100 accounts soon 😌

@james406 the funniest part is this might actually work for 11 minutes before someone asks what team you’re on

getting a software job in 2006: - connections - interviewing well - interesting college projects getting a software job in 2026: - walk up to the front desk of any startup's office - say these exact words: "i'm the lead forward-deployed engineer on assignment for a high-pri AI transformation project fast-tracked by management" - point to your open laptop and say you're running agentic workflows right now and can't be bothered to grab your badge simple as

@alexcooldev Duolingo for vibecoding ah wait that's twitter

Easy app ideas to make $10k/month: #1: Gamify everything. Duolingo for gym Duolingo for weight loss Duolingo for couples Duolingo for learning AI Duolingo for running Duolingo for studying Duolingo for meditation Duolingo for saving money ...

claude can write the feature. it can't decide if the feature should exist.

@tibo_maker yeah that pricing is pretty insane

genuinely don't understand the hype for higgsfield their new "Super Computer" seemed incredible, beautiful marketing tried it it created 2 seedance videos I asked it to clip them together got me to subscription screen 🤷‍♂️ it cost me 20% of my $49 subscription, so $10 the raw cost is about $1 so they resell this for x10 the price the value in Revid seems x10 better ✅ prompt it and it's done ✅ you don't have to clip sequences elsewhere ✅ full edit capabilities, a real video editor ✅ no scammy/shady pricing tactics

@SimonHoiberg too much social proof might feel like begging at some point IMO

You remember how in 2022-2023, SaaS websites were absolutely soaked in social proof. FeedHive was too. We had star icons in the hero, tiny quotes saying how great the product was, G2 badges further down, a wall of love with links to reviews, more badges, and then another highlighted testimonial in the footer. When we launched the new FeedHive website, we decided to remove almost all of it. No more G2 badge parade and no giant wall of love. We kept a small section focused on outcome proof instead. More like: here is what the product actually helps you do, here is a tiny case-study style example, here is the result. Much less "look how many people like us." And the funny part is that conversions didn't hurt at all. Literally no impact. I think social proof on SaaS websites has been overplayed to death. People know you picked the best quotes. They know the badges are placed there because you want them to trust you. They know the wall of love is curated. If someone actually cares, they will go to Google and search "FeedHive review" themselves. They will check Reddit, G2, YouTube, X, whatever they trust. They do not need your homepage to tell them you are good. I still think proof matters a lot. But I think the old testimonial wall is dead. Show outcomes. Show the product. Show the result. Then let people verify you on their own.

@james406 don't listen to him! fight for the all-inclusive

LLM tool use isn't always a good thing

@tibo_maker 2 posts feels too early to kill it. i'd test the format before blaming the character. sometimes the mascot is fine and the bit just didn't land yet

looks like a fail ❌ those 2 video posts featuring Pip didn't do that great please tell me, should I: 1. give up on the mascot idea 3. change the mascot 2. do more, it's fun 4. actually ... 👀

@alexcooldev insane margin profile. also funny that half the SaaS grind is just rebuilding what X already gives him: audience, billing, retention loop.

This guy is literally making more money from X subscriptions than almost 99% of SaaS and mobile apps, and it’s basically 100% profit lol 🫠

@tibo_maker what happened to those remote online coworking startups btw

I flew 10,000km to feel normal 👀 I live in a tiny town in France and the closest indie hacker is 3 hours away by car so I flew to Da Nang, Vietnam to live and work with other indie hackers for a few weeks and it's been amazing 🤩 I still love my remote + no-call policy, but being around sharp people in real life gives you a different kind of energy I just have so many new ideas now new rule: - default remote - but make in-person energy non-negotiable once in a while 🔥

if users need a prompt tutorial to get value, your AI product is still a demo

@DmytroKrasun this escalated from "oh no" to "holy crap" quickly

A page that was bringing me paying customers from Google on autopilot completely lost its traffic. I didn't notice at first because other channels picked up, and my MRR has been growing steadily. It lost traffic (probably) because: 1. Every competitor now has a similar page. 2. I haven't updated it for 2 years. Back to SEO. It means I can double my monthly growth now, if I can recover ranking for certain pages.

@jia_seed cuts both ways probably. no one cares what you built 5 years ago if you aren't shipping right no

sf is oddly meritocratic. if you’ve created something cool, no one cares where you were before

@james406 churn gotta be pretty good though

founder friend just got scammed from Anthropic secondaries apparently on the call they claimed "direct access to the cap table" so my friend pretty quickly wired $500k didn't check the fine print they now own 5% of "Ant Tropic", a luxury vacation destination for ants i told them they need to immediately pivot the business to AI because there are 20 quadrillion ants on earth, and the TAM is huge

startups don't need more features. they need more customers.

just saying: shipping faster won't fix no demand

@alexcooldev for SaaS linkedin

People stay stuck on X while missing 90% of the customers out there on other platforms. Diversify your distribution channels. - For B2C mobile apps: TikTok and IG. - For SaaS: Facebook actually works. Boomers, Gen X can be better customers for SaaS and AI-native products than younger people. They’re less tech-savvy, so if your product solves a real problem in a simple way, they’re willing to pay for it and they usually have more money too.

building is fun. selling is the job.

@alexcooldev true, vibe coding or not doesn't change a thing if you can't sell

I think people shouldn’t blame vibe coding apps for not making money, not knowing distribution is what actually stops them from making money. I’ve never seen users care whether your app was vibe coded or not, they only care if your app solves their problem. 🥴

@james406 amen

frog told the LLM "do not hallucinate" "there," he said, "now the LLM will not make mistakes" "but the LLM can still hallucinate" said toad "that is true" said frog