Denis Kim

Solo dev on a mission to ship 300 apps. No funding, no team, no plan B. 🛠 8 shipped, 292 to go.

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

Never introduced myself.

I'm Denis. Couldn't land a dev job, so I'm building my own way instead.

Attempting something unreasonable: shipping 300 apps, solo, no funding, no team.

8 shipped in 3 months, 292 to go.

Follow along for the wins, flops, and real numbers.

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

Did you know there's such a thing as good debt?

Elon didn't sell Tesla stock to buy Twitter — he borrowed against it instead. Selling would've meant giving up future upside.

Genuine question: avoid debt at all costs, or a tool if used right?

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

Worked with a junior dev for the first time. Learned 3 things the hard way:

1. They won't share progress unless you ask
2. They won't ask questions unless you invite it
3. They'll assume instead of asking, and build the wrong thing

Anyone else learn this the hard way?

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

Used to think ideas come from staring at a blank doc in your room.

They don't. Every decent idea I've had came from watching someone struggle with something small and annoying in real life.

Where do you actually find your ideas?

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

Built an app. People try it once. Almost nobody comes back.

I keep asking myself: is it the onboarding, the core loop, or just... the idea?

If your retention is bad, where do you start fixing it first?

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

Started using Orca instead of Discord for session management with my team.

Realized something: half of Discord's biggest pain points (notification chaos, no structure) are exactly what a small, focused tool can charge for.

Anyone else notice this gap?

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

Grew a side project with $0 marketing budget. Ranked the channels that actually worked:

1. SEO
2. Comments on other people's posts
3. Community threads
4. Instagram
5. ASO

Which one surprised you most? For me it was #2.

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

Google refused to index my site for months.

Reason: I was too cheap to buy a domain, so I ran it on a subdomain instead.

Bought the domain. Indexed in days.

Cheaping out cost me way more than the $12 domain would've.

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

@otoclip haha exactly, I've bought like 5 productivity apps this year and my actual output didn't change lol. the tool was never the bottleneck

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

@ismluxe exactly, that silence is somehow more brutal than a bad review. at least a review tells you what to fix

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

@MotlalepulaSel6 @fazley111 same honestly, one lucky viral post could do more than months of grinding. fingers crossed for both of us

[Tanmay kumar Chaurasia @tanmayKumar2026]

Finally green ticks😮‍💨 after hours of debugging and prompting.

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

@tdinh_me day one adoption on new models is wild, love that TypingMind stays current that fast. saving this for whenever I need a non-Claude opinion on something

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

@otoclip yeah, boring wins over exciting every time in the long run. wish someone told me that before I burned out chasing shiny new tools

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

@MotlalepulaSel6 @fazley111 glad it's not just me lol, guess we're all in the "attached to sunk cost" club

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

@fazley111 appreciate it 🙏 292 apps to go, wish me luck lol

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

@ismluxe exactly, way cheaper than any survey tool too. people just tell you straight up if they don't care 😅

[Ajax @ajaxships]

What was the first ever thing you built in public?

[Denis Kim @deniskim_dev]

@aniketsauravv honestly can't keep up anymore, by the time I read the changelog for one model there's already a newer one out. building on this stuff feels like standing on quicksand lol

[Jon Yongfook @yongfook]

At some point Claude switched from doing things deterministically (e.g. knowing the position of an element based on its css) to wanting to eyeball everything (take screenshot, make some judgment).

I disabled claude-in-chrome but it's still finding a headless browser to use.