Get live statistics and analysis of Marc Lou's profile on X / Twitter

7 years as an entrepreneur and 1 takeaway: Ship more

I visited the Trump Gold Card website and went for lunch. When I came back, it had downloaded 3.5Gb of data. The site is nice, though.

Airbnb just blew my mind. Last month, my wife and I booked a place ($277 per night) for 4 weeks in the south of France. The place was nice, but we kept having issues: slow wifi, broken appliances, noisy neighbors. We messaged the hosts every time something happened (this is important). They were kind and fixed everything they could. I didn't leave a review after the stay because I'm a labrador and I don't like to share negative stuff. If I had to, it would be 3 out of 5. Airbnb reached out by email asking what went wrong. They knew we had constant issues. I think they analyze threads between hosts and guests using AI. I didn't reply to the first email. A few days later, they refunded the ENTIRE stay ($7,756) without us asking anything.

Why I'm leaving Bali after 6 years: - Far from everything - Not cheap anymore - Air is polluted - Food chain is polluted - Ocean is polluted - Not walkable - Too hot all year - Wife gets catcalled often I want mild weather, walkable areas, organic shops, clean air, tax-friendly, and young vibes. It's a utopia, of course, but I'll choose the place that ticks the most boxes.

I made an app to turn web analytics into a Severance episode. Every page on your site is a department. /pricing is a department. /blog is a department. Your visitors are innies now. When they visit your site, they arrive through the elevator. When they navigate to another page, they walk to the next department. When they bounce, they walk out. It's called MACRODATA: https://t.co/mVKikEQpYy

I spend most of my time behind a computer... But I think I've found my perfect fitness routine: - That is easy - That costs almost $0 - That gets me energized Here are 6 rules I follow every day:

Proof luck doesn’t exist.

What ‘overnight success’ actually looks like:

Learn how to code a SaaS from 0 using AI. I made this free course for beginners to build an internet startup: 1. Learn the coding fundamentals 2. Build a SaaS with a modern tech stack 3. Code and design 10x faster with AI (the video is 3 hours long, bookmark this)

hold on Claude

How I would learn to code in 2024 (if I could start over): (WARNING this is NOT for people who want to get a 9-5 but for those who want to learn to code fast, build a business, and quit their 9-5) 🧵

Bye Bye fake MRR screenshots 👋 I built https://t.co/MZc8tG9xWi, the database of verified startup revenues. 1. Upload a read-only Stripe API key 2. Get a free page showing your verified revenue 3. And a nice dofollow backlink as a bonus There's no way to game the system. It's all running on my server, and users can't edit the revenue data. + It comes with the leaderboard of startups with the most revenue in the last 30 days. Go get verified!

Twitter, let's talk?

Anyone can get 1,000 visitors for $0 by doing this: - Post in r/SideProject - Post in Show Hacker News - Launch on Uneed - Launch on TinyLaunch - Launch on Product Hunt - Make a short video for Instagram - Make a longer video for YouTube - Write 280 characters for a tweet - Write your story on IndieHackers - Cold outreach an influencer, give your product for free No visitors yet? Build a free tool (aka. your own advertising board) and repeat all the above.

I’ve met hundreds of people with great ideas who never made it. But I’ve never met anyone who launched 20 startups and failed.

Why I'm leaving Bali after 6 years: - Far from everything - Not cheap anymore - Air is polluted - Food chain is polluted - Ocean is polluted - Not walkable - Too hot all year - Wife gets catcalled often I want mild weather, walkable areas, organic shops, clean air, tax-friendly, and young vibes. It's a utopia, of course, but I'll choose the place that ticks the most boxes.

What's stopping you from coding like this?

I spent a few weeks in France and half the businesses asked me to pay in cash. This can’t end well.

Bye Bye fake MRR screenshots 👋 I built https://t.co/MZc8tG9xWi, the database of verified startup revenues. 1. Upload a read-only Stripe API key 2. Get a free page showing your verified revenue 3. And a nice dofollow backlink as a bonus There's no way to game the system. It's all running on my server, and users can't edit the revenue data. + It comes with the leaderboard of startups with the most revenue in the last 30 days. Go get verified!

7 years as an entrepreneur and 1 takeaway: Ship more

Everyone around me is buying houses right now. They tell me it’s the smartest thing to do because "real estate always goes up." But when I mention investing in the S&P 500, they say it's too risky because I could lose everything. It’s not a perfect comparison, but if you put $100K down on a $500K house, or invest the same amount in the S&P 500, after 20 years—accounting for inflation, taxes, and fees—the stock market historically gives you a much higher return. I don’t know. Maybe I missed something.

Twitter, let's talk?

Airbnb just blew my mind. Last month, my wife and I booked a place ($277 per night) for 4 weeks in the south of France. The place was nice, but we kept having issues: slow wifi, broken appliances, noisy neighbors. We messaged the hosts every time something happened (this is important). They were kind and fixed everything they could. I didn't leave a review after the stay because I'm a labrador and I don't like to share negative stuff. If I had to, it would be 3 out of 5. Airbnb reached out by email asking what went wrong. They knew we had constant issues. I think they analyze threads between hosts and guests using AI. I didn't reply to the first email. A few days later, they refunded the ENTIRE stay ($7,756) without us asking anything.

Is it me, or GPT-5 is not that good? It's slow, and it wrote vanilla JavaScript in a <script/> tag in my NextJS project. Surprisingly, it's the more PR release. My X feed and YouTube are full of clips from the keynote. I switched back to claude-4-sonnet for now.

I’ve met hundreds of people with great ideas who never made it. But I’ve never met anyone who launched 20 startups and failed.

Typos is how you prove you’re not NPC

Where do I start… For a big part of my life, I didn’t fit in. At school, I’d argue with teachers because I didn’t like what I was learning. At university, I got bad grades and drank way too much to build a personality. At my short 9–5 job, I kept wondering what I was doing there. I joined Twitter in November 2021. When I discovered the indie hacking community, I felt a sense of belonging for the first time in my life. It’s hard to describe, but I loved the idea of working on your own thing and sharing everything publicly. It felt like freedom. So I started building startups. 1 in 2021. 10 in 2022. It took almost a year to reach 1,000 followers. I never planned to build an audience. I thought that if I kept building things, some people might discover my work. In my wildest dreams, maybe 10,000 followers? So I kept building. 10 more startups in 2023. As I shipped many small bets, some started to take off. They paid my rent. More people followed. Then ShipFast launched in August 2023. It reached $50k/month, and my audience started growing faster. In June 2024, my account passed 100k followers. It felt unreal. A few days ago, I saw my profile picture in the 𝕏 App Store screenshot. Today, my account crossed 300k. Now, some people recognize me in the street. None of this was planned. None of it was expected. I’m beyond grateful. Thank you for being here. You gave meaning to this whole journey. ❤️

What's the best book you read recently? 📚 I'm looking for something to read with my morning coffee ☕️