Hello everyone! It’s Tony again.
In the past few months, I’ve been head down working on my product TypingMind and traveling/surfing. I want to share some updates with you.
So many things to do
I’m in love with building with AI.
I feel extremely lucky to have created TypingMind, a product that allowed me to both work on things I love (building software) and stay in touch with the AI trends.
Since the beginning of this year, I have added so many cool features to TypingMind:
Support so many new models, improvements, and bug fixes.
My goal is to make TypingMind the best chat app for LLM models so people can chat with AI models with more freedom and features. There is still so much more I want to do to achieve this.
On the business side, TypingMind is making ~$130-160k/month, and the recurring revenue from the B2B Team version has exceeded 50% of the monthly revenue. So I’m no longer dependent on the one-time purchase of the personal version.
Most of my sales are from word-of-mouth. I’ve been attempting other marketing channels from time to time, but so far, nothing has worked for me. In my latest paid ad campaign, I’ve spent $600 so far, resulting in only 2 conversions.
I really suck at marketing in general, but I’m not worried too much about it. I believe that if I can make an exceptionally good product and have a decent initial user base, customers will come naturally.
Financially independent
It’s crazy to think about this, but my little weekend project, TypingMind, has helped me reach financial independence for the past 2 years.
When I first reached $5,000/month in 2022 from my previous product, Black Magic, I thought I was free, so I started spending more time traveling, pursuing other interests, and cutting my working hours to an enjoyable amount (~4 hours a day).
However, I was only partially “free”. $5,000/month is a good income, but I knew I still had to continue to work for money in order to keep that income level and sustain my lifestyle. The pressure was still there.
I told everyone that I build software because I love doing it, but because of that ever-present pressure, I wasn’t so sure if I truly love it or because I was afraid of losing my only income.
But now I do.
With TypingMind making more than $1M a year, I now have an option to stop working entirely and live off my investment interest. My lifestyle is not very expensive and has not changed much since I started traveling.
I have been conditioned to play the “money-making game” since I was born, so whenever money is involved, it’s hard to honestly tell what I really want. I could only rely on observing my actions, what I do, not what I think or say.
I’ve been creating software since I was 15, so that’s one data point. Now that I have reached financial independence and gotten out of the game for a while, I’m still passionate about creating software and writing code every day. That’s another strong data point. I think I’m finally at peace with myself about my true passion, and I should embrace it.
The funny thing about this, when I follow my passion and create new, useful things for the world, it usually rewards me with more money. It is fortunate (or unfortunate?) that money today is the most reliable metric to measure your net contribution to the world.
So at the end of the day, you will still see me making more money and can judge how hypocritical or greedy I am.
One thing I know for sure is that I enjoy making money from my creations much more than from my investments. I’m now more dedicated than ever to make TypingMind the best software ever for AI chat and maybe create more new products soon!
Travel around
My wife and I are on a trip around the world. We visited more places this year than in our entire passport history: Korea, Taiwan, France, Switzerland, Spain, Australia, etc.
Everywhere we go, other than coding, we try to find a surf town and surf there. It’s actually a great way to spend the time in each country, as we get to experience a more authentic experience as a local compared to the busy mainstream tourist cities.
So far, I’m most impressed with the beautiful nature of Switzerland, the over-expectation food experience in San Sebastian (Spain), and the amazing waves of Bali (Indonesia).
I started reading about history recently, and traveling around really makes the experience so much better. I was able to connect the things I read with the things I see.
My purpose in life now is to explore, gain new knowledge (for me), and create new things (for the world).
Hacker Residency in Da Nang
Just by pure chance, I met with David and Travis in Da Nang, Vietnam, earlier this year, and both are very passionate about the idea of a hacker residency full of indie hackers. I have always been passionate about inspiring more people to become indie hackers, so I joined and supported the project in every way I could.
Together with Phuc, the four of us (mostly led by Travis) decided to run an experiment: a 1-month Hacker Residency in Da Nang City. We rented a beautiful villa and invited 10 indie hackers over to build products.
Our goal is to raise awareness about the alternate path to building a startup and to inspire more people to become indie hackers. The secondary goal is to see some successful products out of this experiment, in which case, we may be able to do this again every year or so!
This will happen in November 2025. I’m excited to see how this turns out.
That’s all for now!
I will try my best to write more often, but sometimes I have doubts that this is really useful, or am I just rambling?
If you could just let me know if this helped you in some way (by like/comment below), it would help a lot!
I’ll see you in the next ones!
Amazing to read ur story! Congrats on the journey and keep enioying the ride!
PS: where did u find waves in Switzerland ?
Bro, super valuable insight. Enjoy reading your newsletter. Keep going.