Maksym Savchenko

SWE → indie builder. AI, products, money. Documenting the process.

TikTok idea/script generator & analytics

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

23, backend dev → indie builder

Building: TrendFuse (AI content tool for creators)
Shipping: weekly updates, no BS

Writing about real struggles of going from salary to products.

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

@dickiebush tried this for a month, just ended up with 90 pages of the same 3 anxieties rephrased

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

@petergyang been caching everything twice and still hit limit on a feature 3 people use

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

@marclou wait is this actually real or satire, genuinely can't tell

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

@Nicolascole77 same but reversed for hiring me — every job app wanted the degree, zero clients ever did

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

@Nicolascole77 same but reversed—no client ever asked for my github, but every recruiter wanted the degree checkbox

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

@jasonlk tried giving a deadline once and the prospect just went quiet for 3 months, then came back asking if the offer still stands

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

@Nicolascole77 took me 6 months to outline something, shipped it in 2 weeks, nobody read it because the outline was for me not them

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

@rauchg the ones who ship were already shipping, they just got faster

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

@elonmusk ⚡️⚡️⚡️

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

@gregisenberg solid take

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

@dickiebush solid take

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

@Nicolascole77 the tricky part is most things feel terrible at hour 30 but click at hour 60

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

Set up Postgres triggers, Redis caching, and a job queue for a feature that gets 4 requests per day. over-engineering is just procrastination with better documentation.

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

AI code tools made me 3x faster at shipping. also made me 3x faster at building things nobody wanted. speed is not the bottleneck. knowing what to build is. anyone else optimizing the wrong variable?

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

Spend 10 hours building a feature or 00 on a Upwork developer. I picked the 10 hours because I did not trust anyone else to do it right. that is not resourcefulness that is control issues dressed as productivity.

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

Launched on Product Hunt. got 47 upvotes. felt like a win until I checked traffic. 11 signups. 2 stuck around. the gap between launch hype and actual traction is brutal. what was your PH reality check moment?

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

Here is the actual stack: Next.js, Supabase, Vercel, Stripe. deploys in 4 minutes. costs 0/month at 0 users. scales to 10k users without changing anything. boring works.

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

Rewrote the same SQL query 6 times trying to optimize it. final version runs in 340ms instead of 380ms. users will never notice but I will die on this hill. is this what they mean by technical debt or am I just stubborn?

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

Every founder says ship fast. nobody mentions the part where you ship fast to zero users and then sit there wondering if you should pivot or just tweet harder.

[Maksym Savchenko @variandr_]

Asked ChatGPT to recommend a tool in my category. it named 4 competitors. not me. checked Perplexity. same result. if AI does not know you exist, your SEO strategy is already outdated.