Patrick Posner

My "Year in Review" post will probably take until January, but to give you a glimpse: I travelled almost 80.000 km (50.000 miles).

Today I launched something I couldn't be more proud of. Veils of Fate: Tales of Eldermoor, a browser-based RPG built around choice, consequence, and a world I've been dying to share with you! Play it free now veilsoffate.com

@troychaplin Looks great, I'll give this a shot (already watched a few of the streams already, haha)! If you want a quick break from your RPG - I also launched my game recently (it's a card game about indie hacking in a cyberpunk-like style): mrrbattle.com

@JNYBGR @tibo_maker Episode 29: How to Get Startup Ideas in 2026, OpenClaw Business Opportunities, Londonmaxxing, and more Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how… Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/7oSf4W… Transistor FM: napkinmath.fm/29 YouTube: Coming soon!

@charlierward Hands-down, this is slowly evolving into my favorite podcast!

👀

@_lhermann This is just genius, haha 😂

It looks so much better now!

@pootlepress @theMicemade YES! I ended up sharing the game with family and friends already to give them a (fun) way to understand how business works today (especially if we are not talking about a brick-and-mortar shop)!😅

@patrickposner_ @theMicemade I’ve wanted to build something like this for a while, mainly as a way to teach my kids how to start a business. Think lemonade stand… just updated for the AI era.

Drop a comment with something cool you’ve built with AI recently. Curious what people are making 👀

@theMicemade @pootlepress You play against other indie hackers (or AI) to reach profitability first (MRR = Monthly Recurring Revenue) by using cards like "Product Hunt Launch" (increases your MRR) or "Review Bomb" (decreases your opponent's MRR) - who reaches 1k MRR first, wins!

@patrickposner_ @pootlepress I totally don't understand what's this site about ... what kind of game (?) is it?

🚨 Huge day for Ollie — we just released an eCommerce pattern collection and a whole suite of designs, blocks, and templates for WooCommerce. Beautiful eCommerce made simple. Check it out here and watch the video in the thread below: 🛍️ olliewp.com/ollie-for-wooc…

@theandreboso Haha, I wish that would work for me! I usually plan out the entire week, broken down into specific tasks, but still.. 😅

@patrickposner_ The trick is deciding what you're going to do the night before so you wake up and just do it!

The biggest mindset shift for indie founders who want to be successful is to start thinking of marketing as their main (part-time) job. I realized this when one of them told me they couldn’t find a couple of hours to do some exercises I gave them. No! I told them they need to start planning their entire morning around it and do everything else later. What I mean is literally block all of your mornings on your calendar and write “marketing.” You’re not allowed to do anything else in that time. I get so much pushback every time I say this but every now and then someone listens and gives it a try.

@nico_jeannen We all should! I think most of the legit people are just too scared AND too busy trying to fix it (me included, haha 😅)

@patrickposner_ Thanks! 😄 I wish more ppl would share the bad stuff too

have been stagnating like crazy since then 💀 MRR is actually lower now, back under $900 (less if I only count Adkit) I spent 3 days investigating trying to figure out what's happening using Claude code connected to Posthog, Stripe and Heyo Chat to investigate (more on that later if anyone interested). First, I got way less traffic, but also every new subscription I got was negated by other people canceling = no growth. So it’s like less traffic + bad retention, so it’s guaranteed fail The Churn indicated by Stripe is tricky, it showed ~10% but it was closer to 40% actually 😬 Reason is because churn updates retroactively when ppl cancel, so if you just check the last 4 weeks in Stripe it will always be lower cause ppl won’t have churned yet (it’s been less than a month). But when I switched to 3 month view I saw it was much higher than expected. I thought the product was fine but it was not at all TL:DR: most people did not use the app that much and canceled after 2-3 month (either cause of bugs, forgetting about it, not knowing all the features or just because they only needed it for a short time) For ex in Adkit, to get the value of the product (ads competitor tracking), you can either follow advertisers already in the db, or add your own. But the empty state when you search and no advertiser is found makes it looks like if it’s not there then you can’’t do anything about it I thought it was obvious cause there is a big button “add advertiser” but apparently not (I saw session replays of users getting frustrated) In this case. I think the fix is just to add a better empty state with a CTA to make it very clear that people can track their own competitors Another issue is that I didn’t took the time to setup email sequences, so people who purchased kinda forgot about the app and also might not know all the features available. Then they cancel cause they don’t really use it. So now I’m making a full onboarding sequence to help users take habits of using the app, give them tips, etc. (@bento is the best for that). And then the other issue is getting started. From the data I got, people who have 5+ advertisers tracked are more likely to keep using the app and stay subscribed. So one thing I’m going to add is Starter Packs = users can follow a bunch of handpicked advertisers for a specific industry in one click That way they don’t have to browse the list of advertisers to get started => Less manual work => Less friction => (hopefully) more usage There is many more issues (lots of actual bugs), I fixed a good chunk of them already so hopefully this could improve things Big mistake is that I stopped talking to users. I did it at the beginning while launching the app but then I stopped. So now I’ll try to talk to one customer per week minimum. Either people who use the app a lot, started using or churned. Only way to truly understand users IMO. ====== Now that was ONLY for activation/retention (keeping existing users). This is only half the issue. Other half is acquisition (getting new users) I thought the app was growing well on its own, but turns out most traffic came from X (launch post + general traffic) The launch posts died out after while so traffic died eventually. Then I also stopped using X in January / Feb to detox mental health (and it did work!). but then it meant I lost most of my traffic source. I dint launch ads yet cause of all the issues I have to fix etc, but it will be time to start! Relying launch for long terms is not a strategy, esp when it comes from just one platform. I should probably try to post more about the app again But I need to get rid of doom and political posts in my timeline cause it makes me angry/depressed :D Started working on SEO a bit but never got any success with it so I don’t hope much. My friend @aurelien_dio is helping a bit so maybe this time it will work (he did SEO for big French corpo). === So, TL:DR, issue is that not only I don’t have enough water filling the bucket but also the bucket has a hole so any effort I put in is wasted. First fix the bucket, then pour more water. I know Adkit has potential, I just have to put the pieces of the puzzle together. I managed to get from 0 to 1 but now I need to figure out how to go from 1 to 2. Plan rn is to fix issues, then try new acquisition channels SaaS is fking hard, cause you dont just have acquisition, you also have activation and retention, that's like 3x more stuff to work on compared to one-time purchases (that’s why I recommend doing one-time when you start out btw, much less to manage). But it's ok, learning on the go and (hopefully) figuring things out over time I know I can make a great product, and I will ==== Some great resources that helped: longform.asmartbear.com/max-mrr / longform.asmartbear.com/customer-devel… by @asmartbear (insane this is free) Product-Led Growth by @wes_bush Deploy Empathy by @mjwhansen (best resource to talk with users IMO)

Here is the human-first, scale later product service I am trying to see if it's needed. It is suited for e-commerce business owners who don't want to lose sleep over broken checkouts, especially after new features/updates. tryupcheckout.com

@JamesWelbes @SimplyStaticWP I know, but you said "I'm trying to collect a good amount of data" - leaving Static WP out of the CWV comparison leaves a large number of sites specifically optimized for speed out of the data set.

@patrickposner_ @SimplyStaticWP It's not my graph

dang, shots fired. I haven't looked into this yet, so I'm not making any claims of accuracy, but I will say, that this statistic is much more valuable/meaningful than "over 40% of all websites in the world are on WordPress". Also I don't believe for a second that almost half the websites in the world are on WordPress. I'm working on providing evidence to back up my suspicion. Will probably announce it in a couple days. I'm trying to collect a good amount of data so the WP Bros won't spit their kool-aid all over their screens and scream "bUt ThAt'S aNeCdoTeL!!11!"

@pootlepress I could be wrong, but one reason @BuildWithOllie is still "low" on installs is that we put zero effort into playing the SEO game within the repository. Simply look into themes and search for FSE (or enable the site editor filter) Half of these aren't even block themes..

I’ve been a bit worried that block themes are still too complex for the average WordPress user. Ollie is great, but it’s sitting at ~4,000 active installs, and the download pace feels modest (around ~200/day) compared with Kadence (around ~4,000/day). Is this a signal that “full site editing” still isn’t clicking for most people, or am I reading too much into theme stats? What’s your experience building with block themes, for you or for clients?

@theandreboso 100% - I'm back in Germany now since January, and it definitely helps with focus. Now, I only need to fix the work-life balance again.. 😅

@patrickposner_ Don't you miss having a stable routine in the same place?

I’ll never understand how digital nomads are able to work, just a few days away from home completely destroys my productivity, without my routine I function at maybe 30%.

@SybreWaaijer @learnwithmattc @syedbalkhi @mikemcalister 100% agreed, haha. It's by far not a scientific approach😅

@patrickposner_ @learnwithmattc @syedbalkhi @mikemcalister You can only see increments of the most significant number. Perhaps the plugin was at 1,995, and you gained 5 users. Or it was at 1050, and you gained 950 users. Who knows? Oh... right.

A few days at the top of the "Featured Plugins" screen and @mikemcalister 's Ollie Menu Designer 3xd their largest download day ever. Smart move to also ship an update now too Mike 😎 If you've ever wondered if the .org Plugin Search can drive discoverability wonder no longer.