I just launched Dev Circle — a community for developers and indie hackers who are actually shipping side projects.

Instead of just running it behind the scenes, I'm going to build this thing in public. Every week I'll share what's working, what's not, and the real numbers.

Week 1 update:

• Built the entire community in one sitting (Whop made this stupidly easy)

• Set up a members-only chat, announcements feed, and resources section

• Priced it at $19/month — low enough to not overthink, high enough to keep the room serious

• Wrote a launch post (you're reading it)

What I'm focused on next:

• Getting the first 10 members through direct outreach

• Posting daily value content to attract organic signups

• Setting up weekly accountability threads where members share what they shipped

The goal: 50 paying members in 90 days. That's ~$950/month in recurring revenue from a community I genuinely enjoy running.

If you're a dev with a side project (or an idea for one), this is the room to be in. We do code reviews, share wins, call out when someone's overthinking instead of shipping, and generally keep each other accountable.

Follow along — I'll post updates every week.

Hot take: most "MVPs" aren't minimum at all. They're full products that took 3 months to build and nobody uses.

Here's what an actual MVP looks like:

• A landing page that explains what you're building

• A waitlist form (literally just an email input)

• Maybe a Loom video showing the concept

That's it. If you can't get 50 people to give you their email, adding Stripe integration isn't going to help.

I see devs in my DMs all the time: "I'm 4 months into building my SaaS and I haven't launched yet." Brother, you don't have a product — you have a hobby.

The uncomfortable truth: building is the easy part for developers. Talking to users, marketing, and putting your work out there before it's "ready" — that's where the growth happens.

Stop building features. Start getting feedback.

The best developers I know ship ugly v1s in under 2 weeks. Then they iterate based on what real users actually want.

Which camp are you in — still building, or already shipping?

I was spending $200+/month on dev tools for my side projects. Here's what I switched to and never looked back:

1. Cursor — AI code editor that actually understands your codebase. Replaced GitHub Copilot + VS Code extensions for me.

2. Supabase — Postgres database, auth, storage, and realtime in one. Free tier is absurdly generous for side projects.

3. Vercel — Deploy a Next.js app in 30 seconds. The free tier handles more traffic than most side projects will ever see.

4. Resend — Transactional emails that don't look like spam. Free up to 3,000 emails/month.

5. Plausible Cloud — Privacy-first analytics. Lightweight, no cookie banners. Way cleaner than GA4.

6. Linear — Project management that doesn't feel like project management. Fast, keyboard-driven, actually enjoyable to use.

7. Figma — Still free for personal use. Design your landing page before you write a single line of code.

The meta here: you don't need to spend money to build something real. The tools are better and cheaper than ever. The bottleneck is you actually shipping.

What tools are you running your stack on? Drop them below.

Most devs have 5 unfinished side projects. I used to be one of them.

The problem isn't ideas or skill — it's building in isolation. You spend 3 weeks on a feature nobody asked for, get stuck, lose motivation, and move to the next shiny thing.

Here's what actually changed for me:

Ship in public. Tell someone what you're building and when it'll be done. Accountability is the hack nobody talks about.

Talk to users before writing code. Even 3 conversations will save you weeks of wasted work. Most devs skip this because it's uncomfortable.

Set a 2-week launch deadline. If it can't ship in 2 weeks, scope it down. The first version should embarrass you slightly.

Find other builders. Not mentors, not influencers — other people in the trenches, shipping their own stuff. That energy is contagious.

That's what Dev Circle is about. A small group of devs and indie hackers who actually ship. We do code reviews, share wins and failures, and keep each other accountable.

If you've got a project collecting dust, come build with us.