May 2023 Recap

In May I finally started writing consistently, organizing Twitter Spaces, creating content, and growing my personal Twitter. As a data-minded builder doing many things for the first time, I’m using monthly recaps to track progress and motivate continued growth.

The Good

• Twitter — with no significant change in tweet volume (around 150, same as last month):
  • Followers grew from ~200 to 560
  • Impressions between 400K-500K

• Personal site
  • Nearly 2K visitors
  • ~5K pageviews

• Started expanding connections
  • Overcame introvert discomfort to proactively meet interesting people
  • This aligns with my previous article — I need to practice what I preach and build more connections

If AI is leverage, the value of “connection” gets massively amplified

Areas for Improvement

• Unclear goals
  • May wasn’t a particularly goal-driven month—mostly experimentation and gathering data points
  • June goal, per mentor Zimu’s advice and @levelsio’s MAKE book on rapid validation: start attempting paid projects

Gratitude

• @LuoBaishun: Core community member, veteran indie hacker in the Chinese Twitter space with successful commercialized products
• Thanks to @tinyfool for joining our Space discussion, and for creating #tinystudio which made video subtitling so easy. Your retweets helped our content reach a wider audience
• Zimu (程序员泥瓦匠): A powerhouse in many areas—too much to summarize. Offered strategic advice and reminded me as an indie hacker to start small and not spread too thin
• Thanks to @that_igor_ for sharing his thoughts on product building and growing indie communities. His product hit nearly 1K upvotes on Product Hunt launch day!
• Thanks to @162cm and @madawei2699 for sharing in our Space discussions
• @oolong_ym: Great conversations about beginner questions that reinforced the value of building an indie developer community
• Thanks to @MrNick_Buzz for sharing his journey from leaving Facebook to going indie—his successes, struggles, and pivots were deeply inspiring