Indie hackers to follow

This is a short list of people whose public record is specific enough to learn from. The pick rule is simple. They write or post in a place you can open later, not only as a disappearing reply. Their work already sits inside the history of small independent software, so the follow is a primary source, not a suggestion from an ad.

Nobody paid for a slot. A missing name is the list being short on purpose. Income is not the sort order. A quieter founder with a real product can be a better model than a loud month. The feed will not show you that person. This page will not pretend it has a full directory.

How the list was picked

A primary source. A blog, a newsletter, a podcast they host, or a post that states a number and a date. “They are big on X” is not enough.

A role in the public history. They named a tactic, ran a community, or shipped a product this record already has to explain. The timeline is the spine.

No pay-for-placement. If that ever changes, the page should say so in the first paragraph. It has not.

Founder-reported revenue stays labeled. Follow the person for the archive. Check the figure before you repeat it.

Pieter Levels

Dutch maker, levels.io. Nomad List and Remote OK are the 2014–2019 proof that a laptop product could be a company. Later posts cover Photo AI, a year of coding agents on a VPS, and a September 2026 claim of $10 million a year that he defines as revenue plus investment gains. Read the hub before you repeat the ten. The two stories already on this site are the cancelled SaaS stack and the investment mix.

Follow him for primary posts with dates. Do not follow him as a financial plan. He has said the brokerage notes are not advice. This page repeats that.

Marc Lou

Marc Louvion, marclou.com, newsletter at Just Ship It. Product Hunt’s 2023 Maker of the Year after a year of launches. ShipFast, then DataFast, CodeFast, and TrustMRR. A free book landing page states a founder-reported $3 million across 36 startups. The hub and the $3 million story keep the pile from becoming a fairy tale. The HYROX auction is a different week: attention sold on a body, not a SaaS month.

Follow him for what a public portfolio looks like when the engine changes. He has also written the line the audience era needs: a following does not guarantee a startup will work.

Courtland Allen

Started Indie Hackers. The 11 August 2016 Hacker News thread is the naming moment. The about page is still the cleanest test of who counts: customer revenue, not an employer, and no extra requirements about being solo or technical. Stripe bought the site in 2017. In 2023 he and his brother Channing said they were running it independently again.

Follow the site more than the personality. The interviews are the archive the word came from. Channing is part of that operating story, not a separate genre of advice.

Tony Dinh

news.tonydinh.com. Black Magic, sold after Twitter’s API pricing changed, and TypingMind, which he has reported as a much larger subscription product. The newsletters are monthly enough to be a record: numbers, travel, what broke. He is the build-in-public case this site already uses, not a proof that the median maker is fine.

Arvid Kahl

The Bootstrapped Founder. He sold FeedbackPanda, wrote books about audience and bootstrapping, and hosts a podcast and a Friday-style essay practice. His 2023 answer to Levels — less hacky, not dead — is one of the few “is it dead” pieces that stays attached to a definition. Follow him when you want the argument written in paragraphs, not only a quote-tweet.

Nevo David

Founder of Postiz, an open-source social scheduler that grew a second customer: AI agents. The interesting follow is not a lifestyle thread. It is a product that published an API, a CLI, a skill, and an MCP server, then showed Stripe-connected revenue on TrustMRR. The hub and the story have the checkpoints. His own follower count was small when a stranger’s article moved the product. That is part of why he is on a “who to follow” page that refuses follower count as the criterion.

Rob Hallam

@robj3d3, SuperX, and the newsletter My First Dollar. The public path he has told is a layoff, failed products, posts that traveled, then a tool for growing on X, then a course pre-sold before the videos existed. The hub explains why this page uses his name rather than the product as the slug. The pre-sale story is the receipt from 25 September 2026. Follow him if the subject is attention as a business. Do not generalize his ladder of course prices to a SaaS that sells something else.

Jonathan Wilke, with a short record

outbid.lol, launched 19 August 2026. He is here because the live plot of 2026 is bidding, not because a long archive makes him a teacher. Week-one figures that circulated — on the order of 1.36 million visitors and about $221,000 — are his report, as relayed by secondary write-ups, not a census of clones. Follow the product if you are watching the attention auction. Do not treat a one-month category as a career template.

Who this list leaves out on purpose

Damon Chen’s Testimonial.to milestone is a real 2021 exhibit. One shared post is a thin reason to build a parasocial habit. The timeline already cites it.

Investors, growth influencers, and “I will grow your MRR” accounts are a different job. If the content is mostly prompts to buy a seat, it fails the primary-source test even when the person once shipped a product.

This site’s editor is not on the list. A page about who to follow that includes its own author is an ad.

For the writing itself, use the newsletters and the podcasts. For rooms that are not a single face, use communities. Personalities are a narrow door into a wider practice.

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