A people guide
Cool People Stories
Hyping cool people early before they become superstars.
Indie hackers, creators, and builders with more than one thing going on, written like a great restaurant review.
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The directory
Collections: Indie hackers · Builders · Creators · Designers and artists · Design engineers
Krzysztof Grzybacz
Paints by taking the paint off, so the colour left behind is the picture
Antony Szmierek
Put his poems over house beats and went to number one on the dance chart
madamestarlet
Writes it, sings it, produces it, films it and edits it, out of a bedroom in Chicago
Paul Giovannini
Made a chess game without being a chess player, and sold 200,000 copies of it in two weeks
Amelia Wattenberger
Argued that chatbots are the wrong interface for AI, in an essay you could play with, then went and designed the replacement
Arkin Pal
An Indian country musician, which was not a category before he made one
Bartosz Ciechanowski
Spends a year on one article, and every diagram in it is a working simulation
Craig Mod
Walked a thousand kilometres of an old Japanese highway in forty days and made it a book about toast
Gaurabh Mathure
Designed the Nike FuelBand, sold his company, then went on YouTube and taught himself to sell a $99 subscription
Nicky Case
Made forty-two games and essays about hard ideas and put every one in the public domain
Piotr Kulpinski
Built an $80k-a-year directory in one weekend, then sold the blueprint to everyone copying it
Rashid Khasanov
Cannot code, runs four SaaS products, clears $42,000 a month
Simone Giertz
Built machines designed to fail, which is much harder than building ones that work
Ahmad Shadeed
Writes from Tulkarm, read by the whole industry
Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Left Google for a neuroscience PhD, then wrote the case against having a plan
Damon Chen
Calls himself a mediocre engineer, has the receipts to prove otherwise
Emil Kowalski
His code ships fifty million times a week, his name almost never does
Josh W Comeau
Teaches the most tactile thing on the web, once spent six months unable to touch a keyboard
Vivek Aithal
Sells software that reads data for you, still reads it himself for fun
Surendra Singh Choudhry
Posts as destruction, spends his days repairing
Aashish Kumar
Ten years designing for other people, now shipping his own
Gaurav Sharma
Put music in a hundred million hands, now handing over the controls
Lucy Blakiston
The pen pal who built a newsroom
Aditya Agarwal
Built the obvious things, now funds the unformed ones
KP
The Build In Public guy, professionally
Yasser Elsaid
Solo founder who never took the money
Abhishek Chaudhary
Product designer and illustrator, Chaudhary Ki Diary
Gary Vaynerchuk
Loud in the micro, patient in the macro
Greg Isenberg
CEO of Late Checkout, host of The Startup Ideas Podcast
Simon Sinek
Anthropologist by training, optimist by trade
Andrew Tattersall
Software engineer and creator, building The Polymath App
Joseph Carlson
Founder of Qualtrim, host of The Joseph Carlson Show
Karthik
Founder of Daydream
Mia McGrath
Creator and author of Frugal Chic
Nadya Okamoto
Co-founder and CMO of Pie, co-founder of August
Rand Fishkin
Co-founder and CEO, SparkToro. Co-founder of Moz.
Rob Hoffman
Co-founder and CEO, Contact Studios
Abhinav Asthana
Co-founder and CEO, Postman
Abhishek Chakravarty
Engineer and co-founder, Youform
Akash Mukherjee
Data and AI product by day, side quests by night
Alex Lieberman
Co-founder of Morning Brew, Founder and CEO of Tenex
Arvid Kahl
Founder of Podscan.fm, author of Zero to Sold
Brendan
Hardware engineer, Build With Brendan
Caroline Zook
Artist and co-founder, Wandering Aimfully
Carson Scott
Creative strategist, Orange Tree Studio
Catherine Goetze
Creator of CatGPT, founder of Physical Phones
Chase Engelbrecht
Co-founder and CTO, Codemoji
Colleen Yu
Filmmaker and creator, Film With Colleen
Danielle Baskin
Artist and parallel founder of 23 businesses
David Heinemeier Hansson
Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals
Davis Baer
Co-founder, OneUp and Youform
Francesco D'Alessio
Founder, Tool Finder
Ian Mitchell
Founder, The Knoble
Jack Friks
Indie maker, Post Bridge and Lovelee
Jesse Hanley
Founder, Bento
Jonathan Graham
Founder, Daily Courage
Jordan Rogers
Sports marketing consultant and keynote speaker
Kamal Kannan
Founder, Sanklad Digital
Kat Espinosa
Designer and founder, Moonfrank
Livio Bolzon
Co-founder, Codemoji
Lois van Baarle
Digital artist, Loish
Marc Lou
Serial shipper, ShipFast and DataFast
Mark Pincus
Founder, Zynga
Milly Tamati
Founder, Generalist World
Mirza Beširović
Director of Product, AI Agents at Zendesk
Nadieh Bremer
Data visualization artist, Visual Cinnamon
Pieter Levels
Solo founder, Nomad List and PhotoAI
Sachin Kamath
Co-founder and CEO, Neolemon
Sally Huang
Product designer and founder, Saltee
Shirley Wu
Independent data visualization engineer
Shruti Gandhi
General Partner, Array Ventures
Steph Smith
Creator, Internet Pipes
Susie Lu
Data visualization engineer, Netflix
Tobi Lütke
Founder and CEO, Shopify
Tony Dinh
Indie hacker, TypingMind
Tushar Madan
Co-founder, Avianna
Wassim Khouas
Backend builder and co-builder, GitFut
Yasmin Saira
Founder, Theory of Khaos
Younes Ferradji
Full stack developer and builder, GitFut
Zara Zhang
AI tinkerer, opinionated software as storytelling
Jason Zook
Professional weirdo, calm-business evangelist
Mackenzie Child
Design engineer who ships the pixels and the pull request
Tom Orbach
Unconventional marketer, viral experiment machine
Jeff Li
Design engineer turned builder-in-public
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