Indie Dev Post-Mortem: Distribution Is Harder Than Building
Meris-Dabhi · reddit · 2026-07-11
The author reflects on why 4-5 consecutive products failed as a freelancer and indie developer: it wasn't an inability to build, but rather spending almost all their time on development while neglecting distribution, marketing, and user reach. They note that in the AI era, building web or mobile apps is no longer the hard part; the real challenge is getting people to find, trust, and use the product. Their focus has now shifted to: - Distribution and personal branding - Solving real user problems - Finding demand from Reddit comments and community complaints They also admit to being obsessed with chasing new models, scrolling through AI news, and testing new features, which only wasted time and money. The real focus should be talking to more users.
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