I Made This
The most interesting things people are making on the internet, and the stories behind them.
What is I Made This?
I Made This is a free weekly newsletter that shines a light on the most interesting things people are making on the internet, and the stories behind them. If it's digital and you made it, it counts: apps, websites, tools, games, art, writing and more. Makers submit their project in about 10 minutes: the basics, three short answers about what they made, why they made it and how, the tools they used, and a few pictures. Every submission is read. There are no votes, no leaderboard and no paying to get in, and a pick can't be bought. If a project is picked, the maker gets an email and the project goes into a future edition.
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FounderPlaybooks.
What other founders did to grow.
2722 dispatches from hundreds of founders, pulled from the week's best podcasts.
I couldn't find motivation to code on my own apps after I programmed for 8 hours on my regular job. So quitting my job was actually the only chance to get this started.
Quitting the day job was the only way — you can't code your own apps after 8 hours of someone else's
Trying to build on the side after a full day of coding rarely works because the energy isn't there. Saving runway and setting a hard 12-month deadline can be the only way to lay the foundation for an indie business — the day job competes for the same scarce mental energy.
LinkedIn's mission is to provide an economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce and that opportunity is not paid... we wouldn't add anything that would ever make something that's related to uh finding a job or applying to a job a paid functionality.
Free ecosystem health drives paid subscription growth — never paywall the core value prop
LinkedIn protects free job-seeking functionality as a structural commitment — it drives the supply side of the marketplace (candidates) which sustains the demand side (recruiters paying for Talent Solutions). Making job applications paywalled would kill recruiter value. Levit's principle for any freemium product: find the free experience that sustains the ecosystem, protect it vigorously, and build premium only on top of features that help users achieve more — not features that restrict baseline access.
There's a play for whatever you're stuck on.
Read all 2722 playbooks