Jayjen
@jayjen_x
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Following
479
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505
Statuses
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Teaching programmers how to build and ship Full-Stack AI Projects 🚀 Prev: @Meta @Princeton
Learn how to build AI apps →
Joined January 2023
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Pinned Tweet
When I quit my job at Meta, I was making $297,000 a year.
But I decided to leave it and start back at $0.
And it's the best decision I've made in my life.
Here's why:
$300K.
That's a lot more money than any twenty-something year old kid deserves to make in a year.
Or at
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I learned to code from this guy:
Not the professors whose lectures I paid $56,000/year to attend
But a random instructor on Udemy whose course I bought for $15.
I still remember the first project. It was a Youtube clone with React.
I felt so empowered. I will never forget it.
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Full Stack Dev 5+ years ago:
• 740kb create-react-app bundle
• Express.js server on Heroku
• MongoDB + Mongoose
Full Stack Dev today:
• Optimized NextJS Bundle
• Serverless Backend on Vercel
• PlanetscaleSQL + Drizzle
Development has undoubtedly changed for the better.
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It takes 10 lines of code to talk to a PDF using AI with
@LangChainAI
Here's the breakdown:
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"It's not fair that Software Engineers make so much more money."
That's what my friend Mark told me two years ago as we were grabbing brunch on a Saturday morning.
Mark was a product manager at a Fortune 100 tech company. And back then, I was a mid-level engineer at Meta.
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Coding 5 years ago:
• Endless stack overflow rabbit hole
• Random Indian guy on Youtube
• 0 results found on Google
Coding today:
• ChatGPT
• Github Copilot
• 10x the speed
Are things getting better?
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A quick, no BS recap of OpenAI Dev Day announcements
So you don't have to watch a 1 hour long live-stream:
GPT 4-Turbo
• GPT 4-Turbo is now available via the API
• 128k token context (vs. 32k previously)
• More than 50% cheaper than GPT-4
• April 2023 Knowledge cutoff (vs.
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I was lying in bed when I came across this job posting at Vercel.
It’s been a while since I left my full-time job at Meta.
And I couldn’t help but scroll through this job posting with a "grass-is-greener" mindset:
• Top-notch healthcare
• Stable 6-figure salary
• Fully
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One of the best takes on unit testing came from
@ThePrimeagen
.
If you're in the indie hacker space, you'll often hear people say "Testing is bullsh*t". And that it's waste of time.
And most times, it's true.
Most devs I meet on this platform are either UI or full-stack CRUD
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Exiting a $30K MRR business:
• SaaS → $1,800,000
• E-Commerce → $900,000
• Agency → $550,000
• Consulting → $400,000
There's a reason Indie Hackers choose SaaS as their business model (bonus points for B2B SaaS).
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Becoming an Indie Hacker 101
If you're currently stuck in a full-time job, here's the 3-step process I would use to get started:
Step 1 - Get Inspired
Society tells us what you can or cannot do. Start by expanding your horizons so you can make your own informed decisions.
•
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All of my personal projects are built entirely on
@Cloudflare
.
SQL Database → Cloudflare D1
K/V Store → Cloudflare K/V
Domain → Cloudflare Registrar
Serverless/Middleware → Cloudflare Workers
Hosting → Cloudflare Pages
Across 4 side projects. For 100% free (except domain).
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NextAuth is one of the most frustrating libraries you can work with as a JS dev.
And I'm not alone in this opinion.
Here's what I think (and what you should use instead):
The docs for NextAuth are extremely difficult to navigate. The library also sits at a very awkward place
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I came across a Reddit post claiming that
@marc_louvion
's shipfast is a scam.
Their logic: There are tons of free, open-source Next.js starter templates on Github. So if you're charging money for it, it's a scam.
Another day of Redditors having extremely bad takes.
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Javascript devs have 1000s of tools to choose from.
To make things easy for you, I studied hundreds of them and picked out the very best.
Use these to save costs and launch faster.
(my personal 2023 stack is at the very end of the post)
Full-Stack Frameworks
These meta
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There are *so* many auth solutions you can use for a Javascript app:
1. Firebase
2. Clerk
3. Supabase
4. NextAuth/Authjs
5. Lucia
6. Kinde
7. Cognito
8. Ory
9. Supertoken
10. Zitadel
11. DIY with Passport.js
Which do you think is the best? Am I over-complicating things?
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If you're working on your startup on a Sunday morning, you deserve a follow.
Let us know what you're working on below 👇
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shadcn-ui is the single best React library I’ve worked with.
Here’s how it can save you 100s of hours (and make your app look beautiful):
Step 0: Tailwind
Make sure you have Tailwind enabled in your project. Every major framework has instructions in the docs!
Step 1:
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I spent the past year building various different AI tools to supercharge my life and business.
And I spent the past two months packaging everything I know into one single course.
It's the resource I wish I had when I first started out.
Pre-sales coming tomorrow!
Stay tuned 😊
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"Don't tell me about your startup. Tell me what problem you're solving."
If you're working on your startup this weekend, you deserve a follow.
What problem are you solving?
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Vercel just released their official AI SDK.
And it's a gamechanger.
Key features:
• Edge-ready
• Built-in LLM Typescript adapters (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc)
• Pre-built hooks for streaming responses
• First-class support for NextJS & Sveltekit
Full breakdown coming Monday 🔥
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June 24th: 809 Followers
July 24th: 854 Followers
Aug 24th: 890 Followers
Sep 24th: 995 Followers
Oct 24th: 3250 Followers
Here's what I started doing differently in October.
No fancy growth hacks, no fluff:
1. Leveraging technology
As you know, the algorithm rewards
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If you're not using Suspense in your React applications, you're screwing up big time.
Here's a quick 60-second tutorial:
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I tweeted 23 times last week.
And my AI-generated tweets far out-performed my hand-written tweets.
• 4 of my top 6 tweets were by AI
• 9 of my bottom 10 tweets were hand-written
• The best tweet (300k impressions) was written by AI.
It's about working smarter, not harder.
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If you've been following AI you've probably heard of
@LangChainAI
Let's see how LangChain lets your AI App...
• Talk to Google
• Run code
• Do math accurately
• Leverage regular, non-AI code you write
We'll use examples, analogies, and code to explore together!
🧵 1/7
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There are *so* many Google Analytics alternatives for Indie Makers:
• Heap
• Plausible
• Amplitude
• Mixpanel
• Fathom
• Matomo
• Woopra
Which one is the best to just plug-and-play for basic analytics?
Or is Google still the recommended tool?
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Bun took the Javascript world by storm.
And now that the hype has died down, I wanted to give it a fair shot.
My conclusion?
It's a game changer for JS developers.
Here's my
@bunjavascript
review (and how it can 10x your workflow as an indie hacker):
# What is Bun?
Let's
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I turned 27 today.
If I could go back 5 years and tell my younger self one thing:
"Stop asking for permission."
Start that Youtube channel. Build a Twitter following. Cold DM celebrities.
Getting out of your comfort zone is the first step towards anything great in life.
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@ThePrimeagen
Not going to lie.
I googled quicksort javascript implementation and copy + pasted the first result, from freeCodeCamp.
I should've read the damn code before pasting it 😅
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You're a founder and you're about to run out of money.
What would you do?
Go back to corporate? Start freelancing? Drive an uber? Get a loan?
#buildinpublic
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Astro Islands explained in 30 seconds:
Only certain parts of your app need to be interactive (these are the "islands of interactivity" a.k.a. Javscript).
The rest can be plain, vanilla HTML.
One of the coolest new tech to come out in recent years.
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I talk about SaaS a lot.
But I have to come clean.
Although SaaS has a ton of really great benefits...
• Recurring revenue
• High exit multiple
• More leverage over your time
• More potential to scale
... it's not a silver bullet.
In fact, depending on the problem you're
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I didn't think this plain, honest, journal entry would get so much engagement!
Thank you all so much.
A lot of people in DMs have been asking me the same question, so I wanted to answer it here:
"Do you think your time at Meta helped you on your indie hacker/entrepreneurial
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A Software company made of autonomous AI agents.
ChatDev is one of the coolest AI tech I've seen.
It's a simulated universe where multiple AI personalities interact with one another to ship a full product.
(You can even visually see them move around and chat together)
• The
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Now that the hype has died down, let's talk about
@bunjavascript
.
I used Bun for a small project. And I loved it.
Bun saved me from having to:
• use nodemon
• deal with esm vs cjs
• configure tsconfigs
• download & hook up jest & jest-ts
Full walkthrough coming this week.
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8 Beautiful landing page designs that I often revisit for inspiration:
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This has been my best week on X to date.
During my first 60 days:
• I had < 100 followers
• Good posts will get 3 likes at best
• I was tweeting into the void
Learn, improve, and most importantly, stay consistent.
If you're under 10K followers, we're in this together.
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I need to follow more people on Twitter.
Looking to push up my ratio to 1:1.
Who are some
#buildinpublic
or AI folks you recommend?
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First you start by having no ideas for a business.
Soon, you'll find way too many ideas to work on.
Every Indie Hacker goes through this. 100%.
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I made my X account 11 months ago.
When I first started posting, I've met a lot of peers who were determined to "tweet every day for all of 2023" or DM'd me "let's see who quits first!"
90% of those people are already gone.
Starting is not the hard part.
Consistency is.
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If you want to build a full-stack AI app, I put together a resource toolkit for you.
It has
• An overview of the full-stack AI dev process
• Curated lists of platforms, tools, and templates
• Tips on AI fundamentals like RAG
It's completely free!
Link in bio & comments
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You can't build a business out of a ChatGPT Wrapper.
I've heard this advice a lot.
From leaders in the Bootstrapped SaaS space, as well as from the likes of partners at
@ycombinator
.
But what you don't hear is when these same people talk about the exception to this rule:
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What's easier to grow as an Indie Hacker:
Your MRR or your body weight?
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@nico_jeannen
Also not looking to start a war, but here's a thorough answer from my experience.
There are so many options.
In 2023, the most popular & cutting-edge frameworks are Next, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Astro, Remix — and there are some more up-and-coming players like SolidStart and Qwik.
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I used to spend $100s on server bills.
Then I found
@Cloudflare
Workers.
Here's why Workers is a goldmine for IndieHackers:
[Info-packed thread. Bookmark for later!]
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This is Sam Altman.
He has 2.4 Million Followers here on X.
His secret?
• 3 tweets a day
• 2 threads a week
• 5 cold dms a week
• 45 minutes of replying a day
If you want an audience, steal his strategy.
Don't wast time building interesting things.
Engage on X instead.
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Everyone in
#buildinpublic
talks about buying a domain.
But I haven't seen anyone talk about which provider is the best. Namecheap? Godaddy? Google?
Anyone with a ton of domains have a strong opinion/recommendation?
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My goal for X in 2024:
No more fortune cookies.
Looking back, a big chunk of my posts from last year "don't sound like me".
Rather than sticking to my own voice, I borrowed templates from viral posts, imitated creators like Hormozi or Dan Koe, and aimed for "optimal growth".
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It's here.
If you want to learn how to build your own AI applications from scratch —
Learnnext will take you from zero to having shipped 4 unique AI apps.
See how the course can help you →
Exclusive pre-sales are available for a limited time now.
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Entrepreneurship is about working for an unknown length of time for an indeterminate reward that is not guaranteed.
If any one of these 3 variables were known, then there would be an order of magnitude more entrepreneurs.
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Use Langchain + OpenAI to generate 100 SEO articles for your website in one click.
I'm working on this twitter-thread tutorial. Full-stack with repo included!
We'll cover...
• Agents & Tools
• Google Searches with Langchain
• Web Scraping
What else would you like to see?
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@emiko_dev
If you want to learn something new, rely on courses from start to finish.
You won’t know how to use it if you don’t finish a ton of tutorials.
So make sure you master the ins and outs of whatever technology you’re learning via courses before building your own project.
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If you're building a LLM-powered app, you need a vector database.
The best options, summarized for you in an image:
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Meta is offering a commercial license for their open-source LLM.
Google, OpenAI, and Lawmakers are NOT happy about this.
Here's why (short thread) →
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Here's one of the 5 different prompts I use.
I'll probably open source everything one day, but this is just copy + pasted directly from my codebase:
======
export const messages = (audience: string, topic:
string, templates: string[]):
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One basic rule that we often forget as builders:
Go where your audience hangs out.
If you're a solopreneur building productivity apps for teachers, growing on X probably won't help your business.
Or even if it does, not as much as if you were on another platform like Facebook
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Every SaaS founder needs to send emails in their app.
If you're struggling to choose a provider, I would highly recommend Resend.
Best-in-class support, crystal-clear documentation, and a very generous free tier (3,000 emails per month).
(Bookmark so you don't forget)
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Really excited to share my AI Toolkit later this week.
It's a collection and curation of over 100 resources, including:
• Free Courses
• Free SaaS templates
• In-depth guides
• AI SaaS How-tos.
Stay tuned!
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@paulg
In fact, VCs themselves advise Startups to over-hire.
This is optimal for the VC, since this will both accelerate the killing off of weaker companies, and accelerate the growth of stronger companies.
So PG's advice is to instead hold off until you find a strong signal of PMF.
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The BEST person to learn about Bootstrapped B2B SaaS on the internet is
@robwalling
.
He's created hundreds of excellent resources.
Don't know where to start? Try:
• The SaaS Playbook (Book)
• Startups for the Rest of Us (Podcast)
• The Stair Step Method (Blog Article)
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@thepatwalls
@marc_louvion
"An all-in-one Next.js project template"
vs.
"Ship your startup in days, not months"
Positioning your offer also really, really helps as well. To add on to your point
#2
Pat, it better conveys to customers how you can save them time and money.
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Vercel now has an official, revamped, up-to-date, end-to-end Next.js tutorial.
It covers...
• Routing
• Cacheing
• Styling
• Authentication
• Databases
• Pagination
And much more.
If you ever wanted to learn Next, it's a great resource:
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"If you can build it in a weekend, someone else can too. It's not a real business."
I have some mixed feelings about this.
What are your thoughts?
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One of the most common questions I get asked is
"How do I get a tech job?"
And it's a tough one to answer. Especially in this economy.
But here's my 2-cents, coming from someone who's been on both ends of the hiring table at big companies like Meta as well as small seed-staged
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I've always hated Google Bard.
But this is amazing.
Real-time analysis of my Gmail Inbox and Google Maps in just 30 seconds.
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Every morning when I start my day, I set my desktop timer to 9:59:59.
When I go the bathroom, I pause it.
When I look at my phone, I pause it.
When I play with my cat, I pause it.
I've learned that on average, I "really work" for only 5 or 6 hours.
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I’ve been working from a WeWork in Seoul, Korea for the past week.
That’s one thing I could never do when I had my 9-5.
One of the many perks of being an entrepreneur.
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I save $1428 on my subscription bills as an Indie Hacker.
And it all starts with one little droplet.
Here's a quick overview:
The Problem
There are tons of subscription services we use regularly.
Think about things like:
• Premium analytics
• Headless cloud CMS
•
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Lean startup toolkit for Indie Hackers:
• Canva — for graphic design
• Buffer — for social media
• Notion — for notes & tasks
• Cloudflare — for hosting
• Airtable — for a no-code DB
• Capcut — for video editing
• Resend — for tx emails
• X — for procrastination
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At the start of 2023, my X account didn't exist.
Fast forward 12 months and here we are at 4960 followers and a series of life-changing experiences.
I'm glad I was able to share useful technical information with hundreds of thousands of people—
And the 30+ people who
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If you had to start over in your entrepreneurial journey and could only consume resources from ONE creator, who would it be?
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First time SaaS founder starter kit:
• B2C product
• 3+ Hours on logo design
• "Disrupt" or "Revolutionize" in H1
• Blog section with 0 posts
What else goes on here?
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This is a real stack I'm using for a project.
When I write it down and look at it, it makes me feel a little silly.
I can see why Laravel + Linode is so attractive.
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Ahir asked how I knew I was ready to quit my full-time job at Meta and work on my own projects.
Here are my quick thoughts.
@jayjen_x
I’ve read your pinned tweet in your bio, but am curious about how you knew you were ready to quit your job and move on to the entrepreneur life
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Learning to code 10 years ago:
• A 6-figure university degree
• Scattered online resources
• Expensive software and IDEs
Learning to code now:
• A laptop
• An internet connection
• A passion for learning
You already have everything you need.
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Pricing comparison of Vercel vs. Netlify vs. Cloudflare Workers for anyone building serverless applications.
Note that Cloudflare is edge-exclusive and doesn't have access to all Node.js functionalities!
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Sales masterclass → $29
Sales masterclass for B2B products → $79
Sales masterclass for high-ticket B2B products → $129
Sales masterclass for high-ticket B2B SaaS products → $199
Specificity is your superpower.
If you're selling to everyone, you're selling to no one.
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@paulg
In "Ramen Profitable", pg says that Bootstrapped companies rarely work out.
He doesn't go in too much detail on why here, but does mention that this could change as startups get cheaper to start and run.
He talks about this a lot more in the Fundraising Survival Guide:
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I don't love Langchain.
The library is very bloated and makes my workflow clunky.
BUT
There's a few use cases that still save you hours of time.
And my favorite one is text-splitting and document parsing.
Langchain's utils make recursively chunking a blog post a breeze.
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@paulg
The term "bootstrap" appears in 3 of his essays.
• A Fundraising Survival Guide (2008)
• How to be an Angel Investor (2009)
• Ramen Profitable (2009)
And in the second essay, he uses the term to describe something else, not businesses.
Let's first look at Ramen Profitable:
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Here’s a marketing hack that very few people know about:
Leveraging the Meta Ad Library.
Meta publishes ALL of their running Ads in one central library for you to browse.
This includes:
• Facebook Ads
• Instagram Ads
• Ads on Stories & Reels
And pretty much everything
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I only pay for three AI apps:
• ChatGPT Plus
• Github Copilot
• Perplexity AI
$50/month total.
And I feel each of the three services 2x my productivity.
If I find any more that I end up adding to this list, I'll make sure to share a break-down!
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35+ tutorials on creating an AI app with long-term memory using Supabase.
If you're new to RAG and want to build something that's more than a simple Chat-GPT wrapper, this is a great place to start.
(Link in description)
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I once paid $239.88 to Namecheap for a SSL Certificate.
Don't be like me.
You can get one for 100% free using Let's Encrypt.
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The most exciting AI update I've seen this year:
@Cloudflare
Workers AI Platform.
Build and deploy a Llama2 app on the edge in just TWO clicks.
No credit card required.
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The TLDR of how I learned to code:
• I learned the theory in college (pen + paper computer science)
• I learned the actual "coding" while building my own React Native project for a startup I ran.
I knew all the fundamentals of programming from my courses (loops, if
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I'm going on a short vacation to Mexico.
While I'll unplug from work for 3 days, I'm going to make sure to stay productive.
Goal: Finish this gem of a book, cover-to-cover.
Wish me luck!
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For developers sick of Javascript Frameworks:
HTMX is what you're looking for.
A simple, tiny (14kb), dependency-free extension of HTML.
You can:
• Handle data fetching
• Update the DOM
• Access WebSockets & Server Events
Without writing any Javascript.
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Here's what I think after using
@webflow
for 1 hour.
TLDR - I really like it. I'll use it a lot going forward.
Main Benefits so far:
- If you're a dev with CSS experience, Webflow's class system will feel like second nature.
- Really good tutorials & docs
#buildinpublic
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