The Best Build in Public Builders to Follow Online

Twitter is full of fake gurus posting rented Lamborghinis and dropshipping courses. But there's a different corner of the internet - one where solo builders share real revenue numbers, talk about their failures, and document the actual process of building software businesses from nothing.

These are the builders worth following. They've built real products, generated real revenue, and shared the journey publicly. Not for clout. Because transparency is how they built their audiences, validated their ideas, and held themselves accountable.

Here are the builders you should follow, what they've built, what they earn, and what you can learn from each one.

Marc Lou - The Volume King

X/Twitter: @marclouvion¹ | YouTube: 145K+ subscribers

Marc Lou is the most prolific indie hacker you'll find. He was fired from his software engineering job, decided to stop applying for new ones, and started building. Three years later, he had launched 30+ startups, with 13 making money and 2 "changing his life."

His revenue is public on TrustMRR² - a product he built to verify Stripe revenue with read-only API access, combating the fake screenshot problem. In January 2026, he did $94,799 across his portfolio.

His products include TrustMRR ($33K/month), DataFast ($20K/month), CodeFast ($15-30K/month), and the legendary ShipFast boilerplate ($9-21K/month).

What to learn from Marc: Volume beats perfection. His famous line: "12 startups, 12 failed, 13 made money, 2 changed my life." He ships constantly, kills what doesn't work, and doubles down on what does. He also sticks to one tech stack (Next.js + Tailwind + MongoDB + Stripe) and never changes it.

Key content: His video "I made these 23 websites (and earned $562,943)" has 758K views and is a masterclass in public transparency.

Pieter Levels - The Godfather of Indie Hacking

X/Twitter: @levelsio³ | Products: PhotoAI⁴, Nomads.com⁵, InteriorAI⁶

If Marc Lou is the volume king, Pieter Levels is the godfather. The Dutch programmer taught himself to code in his late twenties, launched 40+ projects, and makes roughly $3 million per year with zero employees.

His tech stack is the most controversial in the industry: vanilla PHP, jQuery, and SQLite. No React. No Next.js. No Kubernetes. He deliberately uses simple tools because they don't break, don't require learning, and let him ship in days instead of weeks.

His biggest product, PhotoAI, does $138-161K per month. His revenue record was $420,000 in a single month (September 2024). His profit margins sit around 80% overall, and InteriorAI runs at over 99% margin with a $200/month GPU bill.

What to learn from Pieter: Speed beats perfection. He launches when products are 70% done. He charges money from day one. And he famously believes that "every employee makes your company slower." His appearance on the Lex Fridman Podcast (#440)⁷ is a 3-hour masterclass in the indie hacker mindset.

Tony Dinh - The Quit-Early Rocket

X/Twitter: @tonydbinh⁸

Tony Dinh's story is what every aspiring indie hacker dreams of. He was a Big Tech engineer in Vietnam who quit his job when his side project hit $600 MRR. His flagship product, TypingMind (a ChatGPT UI client), launched in March 2023 and did $22,000 in its first 7 days. By January 2024, it hit $50K MRR. By October 2025, it reached $130-160K MRR.

He also sold BlackMagic.so for $128K and Xnapper for $150K. His total peak revenue across products hit approximately $160K MRR.

What to learn from Tony: Timing matters more than planning. TypingMind exploded because it launched right when the ChatGPT API became available. He also diversifies across multiple products rather than betting everything on one: "If one product fails, by the market or by accident, I will still have other products that bring in revenue."

Danny Postma - The SEO and AI Wave Rider

X/Twitter: @dannypostmaa⁹ | Product: HeadshotPro¹⁰

Danny Postma is the master of riding technology waves. When Stable Diffusion launched, he built HeadshotPro in 30 hours and grew it to $300K MRR within a year. He previously built Headlime - a GPT-3 tool that started as a $19 eBook, became a SaaS, and sold for approximately $1 million in just 8 months.

His growth strategy is relentless SEO: programmatic pages, Product Hunt backlink building, and targeting high-intent keywords. He also built Landingfolio and ProfilePicture.AI.

What to learn from Danny: Start before you're ready, and ride technology waves. When a major AI model drops, the window for building on top of it is 6-12 months. Move fast.

Jon Yongfook - The Marketing Balance

X/Twitter: @yongfook¹¹ | Product: Bannerbear¹²

Jon Yongfook hit $75K MRR with Bannerbear - an automated image and video generation API. But his real insight isn't technical. After 10 years of corporate failures, he discovered the 50/50 rule: split your time evenly between coding and marketing.

He also ran the "12 Startups in 12 Months" challenge (like Levels), all of which "failed" - but built skills and an audience that eventually led to Bannerbear's success.

What to learn from Jon: Marketing is not a side activity. If you're coding 80% of the time, you're doing it wrong.

Justin Welsh - The One-Person Empire

X/Twitter: @thejustinwelsh¹³

Justin Welsh built a $10 million business in 5 years with an 89% profit margin and zero employees. Unlike most builders on this list, his business isn't SaaS - it's digital products and courses built on the back of his LinkedIn audience. But the principles transfer perfectly.

He treats content as product. Every post is an experiment. The ones that resonate become products. The products that sell get expanded into courses. It's a flywheel: audience validates ideas, ideas become products, products fund more content.

What to learn from Justin: Your audience is your moat. Distribution is harder than product. Build the audience first, and they will tell you what to build.

Daniel Vassallo - The Portfolio Philosopher

X/Twitter: @dvassallo¹⁴ | Community: Small Bets¹⁵

Daniel Vassallo left a $500,000/year job at Amazon to go indie. Instead of betting everything on one idea, he took a portfolio approach: many small bets, each cheap to try, with the expectation that most will fail but one or two will hit.

His Small Bets community now has 4,500+ paid members and generates $400K+/year. He made $720K in 2022 alone across info products and the community. His philosophy: "Diversify motivation and attention. Expose yourself to new opportunities, new good fortune."

What to learn from Daniel: Don't go all-in on one idea. Run cheap experiments. Kill fast. The goal isn't one big win - it's a portfolio of small wins that compound.

What They All Have in Common

Here's the surprising answer: none of these builders followed the same playbook, but they all share three traits.

1. They ship publicly. Whether it's revenue screenshots, product updates, or failure stories, they put their work into the world before it's perfect. This creates accountability, attracts early users, and builds distribution.
2. They optimize for speed. Levels ships in days. Tony builds MVPs in a weekend. Marc launches 30 startups in 3 years. Speed is their competitive advantage - not because they're the best engineers, but because they get to feedback faster.
3. They don't hire until they have to. Every builder on this list stayed solo (or close to it) far longer than conventional wisdom suggests. They automate with tools, not headcount. And now, with AI agents, that approach is more viable than ever.

Where to Follow Them

The best content from these builders is distributed across platforms:

Don't just follow - engage. Reply to their posts. Ask questions. Share your own progress. The build-in-public community rewards participation.

Whether you build in public or in private, the goal is the same: ship something people want. GetLaunchBuddy helps you assess your launch readiness, close GTM gaps, and get your product into the world. Stop lurking. Start launching. Visit launchbuddy.com today.

Related Content

• To Build in Public or Not? A Realistic Assessment
• The Lonely Builder: A Mental Health Survival Guide for Solo Founders
• What New Agent Capabilities Mean for You as a Solo Builder

Sources and notes

1. @marclouvion: https://twitter.com/marclouvion
2. TrustMRR: https://trustmrr.com
3. @levelsio: https://twitter.com/levelsio
4. PhotoAI: https://photoai.com
5. Nomads.com: https://nomads.com
6. InteriorAI: https://interiorai.com
7. Lex Fridman Podcast (#440): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-gQLqvskf0
8. @tonydbinh: https://twitter.com/tonydbinh
9. @dannypostmaa: https://twitter.com/dannypostmaa
10. HeadshotPro: https://headshotpro.com
11. @yongfook: https://twitter.com/yongfook
12. Bannerbear: https://www.bannerbear.com
13. @thejustinwelsh: https://twitter.com/thejustinwelsh
14. @dvassallo: https://twitter.com/dvassallo
15. Small Bets: https://smallbets.co