Building a News Aggregator Without an Engagement Algorithm I have been building a project called WeSearch: https://wesearch.press It is a free news aggregator that pulls from hundreds of sources, keeps discovery mostly chronological, adds source/bias context where available, preserves permanent daily archives, and allows anonymous discussion on stories. The project started from a simple frustrat
A deep, opinionated, practical guide for the human running a software business alone. Hard-won lessons, decision frameworks, and the actual mechanics of going from idea → first dollar → first $10K MRR → first $1M ARR — without a co-founder, without a team for as long as possible, and without burning out. If you read only one section first, read §2 Mindset, §4 Validation, and §6 Distribution-First.
Three weeks ago I shipped IndieOps — a free invoicing and client management tool built specifically for freelancers. Here's the honest version of how it went. It handles the boring-but-critical stuff that eats freelancer time: creating professional invoices, collecting payments via Stripe, sending automatic payment reminders, and keeping a client directory. All free. No "upgrade to send more than
I used to send out application after application and hear nothing back. Not a single reply. At first, I thought my resume wasn't impressive enough. So I made it fancier. Added columns. Played with layouts. Tossed in some icons. Still nothing. Then I learned about Applicant Tracking Systems. Companies use software like Lever, Greenhouse, and Workday to scan resumes before a human ever sees them. If
I built Clever Deploy because every time I wanted to ship a small side project, the deploy story turned into a project of its own. 1. Surprise bills. I'd push a side project to a "free tier" 2. Complexity. I've setup Jenkins in Kubernetes for clients - believe me, you don't want that kind of complexity. What I wanted was simplicity and no unexpected bills. A deploy platform with two rules: Click D
When setting up infrastructure for a startup, cost control is not something to “add later.” It has to be built into the foundation from the very beginning. AWS operates on a pay-as-you-go model. That flexibility is powerful, but it also means that a small misconfiguration, an unused resource, or an unexpected traffic spike can quickly turn into a serious bill. On Day 1, we focused on security (roo
When I first started building my real-time chat platform, most of the focus was on the core experience: instant access no signup low friction fast WebRTC connections Initially, almost all traffic went to the homepage. But over time, I realized something important: Instead of targeting only broad keywords like: anonymous chat random video chat I started creating country-specific and intent-focused
I needed to coordinate background scripts running across different machines. The obvious answer was Redis. Everyone uses Redis for this. The tutorials all use Redis. The Stack Overflow answers all say "just use Redis." So I looked at what deploying Redis would actually cost me: A running Redis server I had to maintain A broker to connect workers to it Celery or RQ on top of that Memory-based stora