#17: I'm back. And this time it's different

I'm back 💪

It’s been over a year since you heard from me.

No “I was busy.” No excuse.

Here’s what happened, no filter:

What worked:

• Tanzania + Finnish Lapland with my wife and 3 kids (Oh yes, I had a third boy)

• 50K followers on X

• Sold Proofwall (my first SaaS exit, small but real)

• Became, I think, genuinely good at Claude Code

What didn’t:

• Took a Growth AI Ops job. Startup ran out of cash to pay me. Job over. But great experience

• Realized that employment, even the cool kind, just isn’t for me.

Chaos is the indie hacker’s playing field. Not the problem.😂

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🎯 What I’m doing now

I set myself a challenge: 3 SaaS per month.

2 weeks building. 1 week on distribution. Ship, learn, repeat.

This week: YTFinder is live. First real MRR of my life. Small, but real. In progress: a tool to generate leads on Reddit without getting banned.

I’m building in public. You’ll see everything, wins, flops, numbers.

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⚡ Tip of the week: Build fast with Claude Code

Here’s how I use Claude Code to ship a SaaS in a few days:

1. Start with a CLAUDE.md Before writing a single line of code, create a CLAUDE.md file at the root. Describe your stack, your conventions, what the project needs to do. Claude Code reads it as context and you stop repeating yourself 50 times a session.

2. Give it atomic tasks, not visions :

❌ “Build my lead management SaaS”

✅ “Create a POST /leads route that validates an email, saves it to DB and returns a 201”

More specific = cleaner code on the first try.

3. Make it write its own tests After each feature, ask: “Write unit tests for this function.” You catch bugs before shipping them.

4. The magic loop Ship, break, ask Claude to fix, review, ship again. Never let Claude write more than 200 lines without reviewing. You stay the pilot.

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Want to follow the challenge live?

Reply to this email with what you’re currently building. I read everything.

And if you know someone building solo with AI, forward this to them.

See you next week with YTFinder’s real numbers.

See you soon builder

🧢 Victor -Serial Buidler