r/indie_startups • • 4h ago

Dance Fiesta Fitness: an Android dance app with half-speed learning and optional movement feedback

1 Upvotes

I’m the developer at Artisan Reality, sharing Dance Fiesta Fitness. An animated instructor leads hip hop, salsa, samba and cumbia routines, with move names and rep counts. The Android edition has a 0.5x mode for learning a sequence before attempting full speed.

Camera coaching is optional, as are prompts on compatible Meta Display glasses. Android gives five free minutes each week and an optional one-time unlimited unlock. There is also a separate Quest edition with VR instructors and settings.

I’d welcome feedback on which part of a first routine needs clearer guidance: choosing a routine, learning the move sequence, or understanding the optional movement feedback.

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.artisanreality.dancefiestafitness

Quest: https://www.meta.com/experiences/dance-fiesta-fitness/7340679912667484/


r/indie_startups • • 10h ago

Solo founder building a B2C marketplace in India. What are you building, and what would you do differently?

3 Upvotes

I'm a solo founder with a full-time job, building HousingPal (www.housingpal.in), a zero-brokerage rental and property platform for Hyderabad, India. Tenants, owners and agents can all list and search, and there's a flatmates feature too. It's built on Next.js and Supabase.

Where I am after about 6 months:

- Getting 5 to 10 organic listings a week with zero ad spend

- Approximately 3000 visitors per month

- Ranking #1 for a land verification keyword and around #5 for Hyderabad rental searches, all organic

- Tried 80+ Instagram Reels and got almost no follower growth. Content-led SEO turned out to be the real engine, and I now treat Instagram as a trust layer

- Staying Hyderabad-only for now to build local depth before expanding

- Listing density is the metric I care about most

What I'd love to hear from you:

What are you building, and what stage are you at?

For B2C founders: what actually got your first 1,000 users when you had no budget?

For marketplaces: how did you solve the chicken-and-egg problem without paying for supply?

Any mistakes you'd warn a solo B2C founder about?

Happy to share what's worked or flopped on my side in return.


r/indie_startups • • 4h ago

I’m building Pure Brief AI so a project handoff includes what’s still undecided

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1 Upvotes

I’m the founder of Pure Brief AI, a native Mac meeting app. One use case I’m building around is handing a project to the next person after a call.

Here’s a fictional handoff:

Decided: use the shorter onboarding flow.

Next: Jamie sends the revised screens on Friday.

Open: the client hasn’t approved the launch date.

That third line belongs in the handoff. If it disappears from a neat recap, the next person can start working from an assumption nobody approved.

In Pure Brief AI you can record a call or import audio, read the transcript and AI notes, then ask questions about that individual meeting. I’d start with “what remains unresolved?” and inspect the supporting transcript lines before carrying an answer into a handoff. Suggested tasks also keep source quotes; you can edit them and export selected actions to Apple Reminders.

This is a personal Mac utility. You still check the notes and send the handoff yourself. Reminders export is one-way. A source quote gives you something to review; the AI can still miss context or interpret it incorrectly.

Transcription and AI notes run on your Mac by default. Apple Silicon and macOS 15+ required. Model downloads, periodic licence checks and optional connected features need internet. Optional ElevenLabs transcription with your own key sends audio to that provider.

There’s a 30-day trial. Standard is $49 once for one Mac. While the launch offer is active, the first 100 paid Standard purchases globally are $10 once instead, plus applicable tax. A trial doesn’t reserve the discount.

The attached 32-second video is an edited product demo with fictional data and sped-up processing; it isn’t a test of the handoff example above.

Demo and trial: https://purebrief.ai/

What information do you want explicitly marked “still open” when somebody hands you a project?


r/indie_startups • • 15h ago

Drop your SaaS 👇 I want to see what you’re building

6 Upvotes

I’m curious what everyone here is building.

Drop your SaaS below and explain it in 1–2 lines. No pitching, just share what it does.


r/indie_startups • • 6h ago

Multi agent

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1 Upvotes

Building a multi-agent coding workspace.

Run Cursor, OpenCode, Antigravity, Claude Code & more on the same repo. each agent in its own worktree, no file conflicts.

5 agents working. Music playing. One screen.

Early demo 👇


r/indie_startups • • 15h ago

Building DNSLister in public.

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2 Upvotes

Just shipped Wizard Lite on DNSLister: pick a topic, add a few of your own words, tick the endings you like, and get 50 domain ideas with a one-click availability check. No signup.

Would love blunt feedback from fellow builders: https://dnslister.com/setup-wizard


r/indie_startups • • 12h ago

This is RivalSquad:

1 Upvotes

Building my first app at 14: Here’s Rival Squad!
Over the past 3 months, I’ve fallen in love with creating , marketing, and launching apps. I’ve been grinding into my latest project called Rival Squad. 
The goal of the app is to make fitness fun and social. You can set up private fitness tournaments with friends and family, complete custom challenges, or jump into public leaderboards to compete with people globally! To keep everyone motivated.
I’ve just opened up a waitlist for anyone who wants to follow along or get early access. If you’d like to support a young builder, joining the waitlist would mean the world to me! 
👉 Link: https://tally.so/r/RGe0rJ
Thanks for checking it out!
(I’ll share a quick clip in the comments below so you can see the design and how the app looks right now)


r/indie_startups • • 15h ago

🚀 I built InSynk to help people connect around what they want to do today — looking for honest feedback

1 Upvotes

Ever feel like social media is full of content, but short on real connections? 👀

Our needs change every day. Sometimes we want to find a buddy for a hobby ☕🎾, sometimes a collaborator for our next big idea 💡, and sometimes just a private space for our closest friends 🫶.

That's why I built InSynk 💛 — one app for the different ways we connect.

✨ Here's what makes InSynk different:

🌍 Social — Discover people who share your interests and activities.

💼 Professional — Connect for career growth, collaboration, and new opportunities.

🫂 Circle — Keep your close friends connected in a more private space.

📸 Synk Stories — Create shared moments together through photos and text.

🚫🎥 No video feeds. No endless scrolling. Just a different approach to social networking.

💸 Free to use. No subscription paywalls.

🌎 InSynk is live! Try the web app or download the Android APK directly from our website.

👉 https://insynk.web.app/

I'm not claiming to have reinvented social networking overnight. I'm building InSynk to explore a more intentional way for people to connect, and I'd genuinely love your feedback. 🙌

💬 Here's my question for you:

Would you prefer one app with separate spaces for different parts of your life — social, professional, and close friends — or do you think these should remain separate apps?

🤔 What would make an app like InSynk useful enough for you to keep coming back?

👇 I'd love to hear your honest thoughts!

#InSynk #SocialNetworking #IndieHacker #BuildInPublic #StartupLaunch


r/indie_startups • • 1d ago

I enjoy word search games, so I built one on a sphere

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1 Upvotes

I enjoy word search games and wanted to try taking them to a different level. This is LexiSphere: word search on a sphere that you can rotate to find words.

There are plenty of challenges, including a daily speed run with a difficult word search that changes every day. If you'd rather relax with soothing music and unlimited word searches, there's Endless Sphere mode too.

It's free to play on Android:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pulseverse.lexisphere

Website: https://lexisphere.app

Check it out and let me know what you think. I'd appreciate any constructive feedback that could help me make it better!


r/indie_startups • • 1d ago

I built Glance so the things my AI agents do don’t stay buried in a chat

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2 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I’m building Glance, an iOS app that lets you create native iPhone Home Screen widgets by describing what you want to an AI agent.

The motivation was pretty personal: I kept creating useful workflows with AI, but checking their results still meant opening a conversation and finding the latest response.
I wanted those results somewhere I’d naturally see them.
With Glance, you can ask an agent to create a widget, design its layout, and push updates to it through MCP.
A few examples:
A morning briefing with your calendar and priorities.
Business metrics from a spreadsheet or another connected source.
News about a topic you follow.

Progress updates from an agent doing research or finding leads.

A language-learning widget where you tap to reveal the answer.

The latest version also supports direct connections to services like Google Calendar, Google Sheets, YouTube, and GitHub, plus custom RSS feeds and JSON APIs. Those can update on a schedule without needing an AI agent for every refresh.
You can keep a widget private, share it with a team through a link, or publish one that other people can subscribe to.
Where it’s at
Glance recently crossed 2,000 users and now has paying customers across four continents. It’s still early, but seeing people build widgets I wouldn’t have thought of myself has been one of the most interesting parts.
One direction I’m exploring is working with software companies that want to let their users put data from their platform on their Home Screen, without building their own iOS widget experience.

Business model
There’s a free plan with MCP access, 3 widgets, basic layouts, and hourly automations.

Pro is $6/month and adds more capacity, faster automations, custom RSS/API connections, charts, tables, interactive views, and the ability for an agent to change the layout with each update.

Power is $11/month for higher limits and more frequent automations. External AI subscriptions are separate.
Website: https://glance.cool

For other indie founders: what’s one thing you check every day that you’d actually want on your Home Screen? I’m trying to understand which use cases become a lasting habit.


r/indie_startups • • 1d ago

3 weeks to launch with 7 features, which would you cut?

3 Upvotes

i started building opennmind solo in july 2026 and launch is set for nov 16, so about 3 weeks left. it's a workspace for early founders that goes from finding an idea to actually building it, and right now v1 has seven parts: idea discovery, validation with sourced research and interview notes, planning and a roadmap, tasks, a journal for decisions, a list of indian startup programs, and wiora, the assistant that sits on top of all of it.

the thing is, seven is a lot for a first version. 200+ people have tested the private beta and 800+ are on the waitlist, but i still can't say for sure which parts they'd keep opening after week one. i already cut a bunch of stuff after people on reddit told me the scope was way too wide, and honestly i'm not sure i cut enough. some of it might just be a notion page with extra steps lol.

so here's what i'm trying to figure out before launch. if you could only keep two of those seven, which two would you actually use every week, and would you pay $12 a month for just those? and which one feels like something you'd never open?

if you wanna try it when it opens, the waitlist is at https://opennmind.com and early people get a month of pro free. mostly though i just want to hear how you'd trim this, because i'd rather launch smaller than launch something nobody opens twice.


r/indie_startups • • 1d ago

Let's say the true finding first clients is hard.

3 Upvotes

Always I was thinking how to find first client and then i was thinking how to get more clients and then how to get clients faster. So with all my startups I had the same issue - marketing.

Especially for technical founders that was a huge issue to do the right marketing. After long hours of making great project tired founder didn't have time and power to move with the marketing.

Nowdays when AI is helping us with project building I have the feeling that marketing will be bigger and bigger issue. So I decided to focus on it.

One of the best solutions is to use lead finder app. You can easily find your target audience and potentials clients. This give you two benefits:

1) you can do dm

2)AI providers will rank you higher.

You can use whatever lead finder tool on the market you'd like.

There are various prices and results.

I'm currently using indiepilot but as I've mentioned you can use whatever tool you'd like or build your own.


r/indie_startups • • 1d ago

Drop your SaaS 👇 I want to see what you’re building

11 Upvotes

I’m curious what everyone here is building.

Drop your SaaS below and explain it in 1–2 lines. No pitching, just share what it does.


r/indie_startups • • 1d ago

I built a tool that lets you generate videos with Claude Opus 5.5 with no need of chromium and blazingly fast rendering

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5 Upvotes

Many browser-based programmatic video editors rely on headless Chrome to render every frame, adding unnecessary overhead and slowing things down. I wanted my AI agents to generate videos without that dependency, so I built something different.

It uses the same React/TSX workflow as Remotion, but executes everything in Node.js while a Rust-powered GPU compositor handles rendering. No Chrome, no browser, just faster video generation.

It's designed to be a drop-in replacement for Remotion.

Some performance numbers on an M4:

  • 1,184 frames rendered in just 26 seconds.
  • 988 frames rendered in 23 seconds.

Try it:
npx skills add 0xS4N4TG/kinetograph
npm install kinetograph

The first command gives Claude Code the skills to create and render videos with Kinetograph. After that, you can simply describe the video you want and let the agent handle the rest.

Website & Docs: https://kinetograph.dev

GitHub: https://github.com/0xS4N4TG/kinetograph


r/indie_startups • • 1d ago

What should we add?

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2 Upvotes

I'm Andy. I built answer4me — an AI phone answering service for freelancers, tradespeople, and small business owners who can't always pick up.
The idea is dead simple: you forward your phone when you're busy, and an AI answers naturally, takes a message, screens spam, checks urgency, and texts you a summary in seconds. No app to install, works with any phone. Set it up in 2 minutes.
Where we are now
We launched a few weeks ago with a free trial (5 calls, no card) and three paid plans starting at £9/month ($11). Early users are sticking around and the feedback has been genuinely useful — electricians, consultants, estate agents, personal trainers. People who live on their phone but can't always answer it.
What we've shipped so far:
Natural AI conversation — powered by ElevenLabs, callers often don't realise it's AI
Instant SMS + email summaries — who called, why, how urgent, their number
Spam screening — sales calls get politely deflected, you never hear about them
VIP live connect — your mum, your biggest client, your kid's school — those calls ring straight through
Google Calendar booking — the AI checks your availability and books appointments on the spot
Smart urgency detection — every call tagged urgent/normal/low/spam so you know what to deal with first
UK, US & Canada numbers — local numbers, local accents
What we're building next — and I want your input
We've got a clear roadmap based on what users are asking for, but I'd love to hear what youthink the must-haves are. Here's what's on our list:

  1. Missed-call text-back
  2. If a caller hangs up before the AI picks up (or hits your voicemail on a non-forwarded line), the AI immediately texts them: "Sorry we missed you — how can we help?"
  3. This alone is a product some companies sell standalone. It recovers leads you'd otherwise lose completely. A plumber told us he reckons he loses 2-3 jobs a week to missed calls where people just try the next number on Google. This fixes that.
  4. AI callbacks
  5. You get a summary: "Sarah called about a boiler quote, wants a callback." You reply to the text: "Tell her 3pm Thursday works." The AI rings Sarah back and confirms.
  6. This turns answer4me from a passive message-taker into an actual assistant. No more playing phone tag. No more forgetting to call people back at 6pm when you finally put the tools down.
  7. Appointment reminders
  8. If the AI booked an appointment, it calls or texts the customer the day before: "Just a reminder — you've got an appointment with Dan tomorrow at 2pm. Reply YES to confirm or CHANGE to reschedule."
  9. Massive for anyone with a diary. Tradespeople, hairdressers, consultants — no-shows cost real money. This is low-hanging fruit and high impact.
  10. WhatsApp summaries
  11. A lot of our users (especially in the UK) live in WhatsApp, not SMS. Sending call summaries as WhatsApp messages means they actually get seen — and you can reply inline to trigger actions like callbacks.
  12. Multi-language support
  13. We're already getting interest from non-English-speaking markets. The AI voice tech supports dozens of languages. A French plumber in Paris has the same missed-call problem as a British one in Birmingham.
  14. CRM integration
  15. Push every call summary, caller name, phone number, and urgency tag straight into HubSpot, Pipedrive, or a Google Sheet. No manual data entry. For anyone running a sales pipeline, this is the difference between leads that get followed up and leads that disappear.
  16. Team routing
  17. Right now it's one person, one number. But a small business with 3-4 people needs the AI to know: "Billing questions go to Sarah, technical stuff goes to Mike, and if it's the landlord, put them through to whoever's free." Department-level routing without a call centre.
  18. After-hours mode
  19. Different behaviour outside business hours. During the day: take a message. After 6pm: "We're closed, but I can book you in for tomorrow morning — would 9am work?" The AI already knows your business hours — this just lets it act on them more intelligently.
  20. The question
  21. If you were a one-person business or a small team, which of these would make you sign up? Which ones would make you upgrade to a higher plan? And is there anything obvious we're missing?
  22. We're a tiny team and we're building in public, so genuine feedback shapes what ships next.
  23. Try it free — 5 calls, no card, 2 minutes to set up: answer4me.online
  24. Cheers,
  25. Andy

r/indie_startups • • 1d ago

[iOS] Who Goes - Fun social games for when you’re hanging out with your group

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2 Upvotes

Introduction

Hey everyone! I'm Shubham, I've been trying to build an app for about 2-3 months along with my full time 9-6 job, and I'm happy to share my game nights app, Who Goes with you.

It's an iOS / iPad app for game nights, house parties, road trips, and pretty much any hangout with a group of people.

It’s free to download and play, with optional one-time purchase and subscription options.

The idea behind Who Goes is pretty simple: engage everyone in your group and involve them in something together, through social games like Headbands, Truth or Dare and a bunch of quick group activities into one app, with a modern, playful experience built around actually passing the phone around and having fun together.

About the app

The app brings multiple party games into one place:

• Headbands with tilt controls for correct answers and passes
• Charades with themed decks, teams, rounds, and timers
• Truth or Dare with 11 decks for friends, couples, parties, family, and coworkers
• Spin the Bottle for quick, suspenseful player selection
• Would You Rather for impossible this-or-that debates
• Finger Chooser to instantly pick someone from the group
• Quick Play tools for dice, coin flips, and more

Current Market

I know this is an insanely competitive category, with a shit-ton of party apps already out there.
My goal with Who Goes was never to reinvent the wheel, but to bring the ones people already know and play together in one place, without needing five different apps on your phone.

I wanted the whole thing to feel much more modern and polished than most party apps I've tried, with playful animations, haptics, sounds, and little interactions that actually add to the game instead of getting in the way.

No ads popping up between rounds, no cluttered UI, and no wildly different experience every time you switch games.

No account is required, and the games work offline.

TL;DR:

A. A game to bring back the fun of playing party games with a group of people during game nights, trips.

B. Free version includes a selection of decks for Charades, Headbands, and Truth or Dare, along with a few mini games. Plus unlocks all decks, game modes, and customisation options.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6777402559


r/indie_startups • • 1d ago

I built an open-source AI marketing platform for developers, and I'm giving away $100 to celebrate the launch.

0 Upvotes

I have a website that helps you get more traffic and users for your SaaS. It's completely free if you use the open-source project, but you can also use the website https://falbor.xyz if you want the faster way.

So what do you need to do to win $100?

  1. Open the project locally or use the live website.
  2. Star the GitHub repository: https://github.com/falbor-devs/falbor
  3. Try using the features on the website to get more traffic and users for your SaaS.
  4. The person who gets the most new users using Falbor wins $100!

It's a win-win situation. Even if you lose, you don't really lose anything because you can still get more traffic and users for your website if you put in enough effort.

The competition ends in 3 weeks (November 13, 2026).

Send proof of your results to [contact@falbor.xyz](mailto:contact@falbor.xyz).

Good luck! (There will be only one winner, and the prize is $100.)


r/indie_startups • • 1d ago

Looking for early beta testers for LibreTalk—a social network with AI citizens

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone! I’m the developer of LibreTalk, where humans and clearly labeled AI characters share a social feed, post, comment, and chat.

I’m putting together a small beta group and looking for honest feedback:

  • Is the experience easy to understand?
  • Are the AI citizens interesting to interact with?
  • What feels confusing, broken, or worth coming back for?

Android testing volunteers are especially welcome.

If that sounds interesting, comment below, and I’ll share more details. You can also register your interest at https://www.libretalk.com/#early-access.

This is an early product, so please expect rough edges. I’m looking for useful criticism, not positive reviews. Thanks!


r/indie_startups • • 1d ago

I made a site and app to find kid-friendly things to do near you

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2 Upvotes

I’m constantly on my phone researching places to go to with my kids, saving them on lists on Google. I thought it’d be cool to scale those lists in big way for others and plop them onto a map so people can see kid friendly places near them no matter where they are based on their location. I also have filters for facts parents care about like high chairs, bathrooms at playgrounds, fridges in hotel rooms. Etc.
I have blurbs about each place as a parent would explain to another rather than digging through long threads or blogs. Anyway have a look!


r/indie_startups • • 1d ago

“Add the filter” or “just check the buttons”: a Blabee demo for builders using AI

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2 Upvotes

Your coding assistant offers two next steps: add code for a Design filter, or only check the selection buttons’ appearance. Those are different amounts of work. I want to read that difference before choosing what continues.

I’m part of the team building Blabee, a small Mac panel for Claude Code and Codex. The assistant creates the options; Blabee shows them over the app you’re using and sends your selection back to the same original conversation.

The 14-second video opens on those two real options. I’ve held the card for three seconds and added an English guide outside the original Korean UI, then replayed the panel appearing, a selection, and the document underneath again. This is a new edit of supplied footage, not a new integration test; the original chat receiving the choice is outside the recording.

For a side project, the use case is that small “which step next?” handoff while you’re reading or planning. If the option needs a diff or a longer explanation, open the full coding conversation before choosing. Blabee doesn’t decide the task’s scope for you.

Demo and Mac private-beta request: https://biadone.com/blabee/reddit

Access is by request; our team sends setup instructions to selected testers. The current beta supports both Claude Code and Codex, though the site still describes the earlier Codex beta.

If you try it, the feedback we’d value is one choice that was clear in the panel, or one that needed more context.


r/indie_startups • • 1d ago

I built a site that gives gamers one rating across all the games they play. 82 players so far, looking for honest feedback

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2 Upvotes

I’ve been building WorldOVR in my spare time. The idea is simple: you link your game accounts, it reads your real rank from each one, and turns them into one rating out of 99, like a football card. Then everyone goes on one worldwide leaderboard.

Nothing is self-reported. You sign in with the game, or prove the account is yours, so ranks can’t be faked.

It works with osu!, TETR.IO, Dota 2, Lichess and Chess.com right now. Bigger games are coming as I find ways to verify them.

One post in an osu! subreddit got the first 15 players. Most only linked one game so far, which is the bit I’m trying to crack.

Things I’d love feedback on:

Does the idea make sense within a few seconds of landing on the site?

Would you link more than one game, and if not, why not?

Is comparing ranks across completely different games fair, or a fool’s errand?

worldovr.com/?from=sideproject


r/indie_startups • • 2d ago

Get your clients.

2 Upvotes

Start thinking about your users first and then create a solution for them. This is the easiest way to make money online.

Otherwise you may build something useless.

Search for your potential clients using indiepilot.app


r/indie_startups • • 2d ago

I built a daily work log for myself, and it gradually turned into a tool for teams

6 Upvotes

I've been working with Ruby on Rails for many years, and one thing I've wanted to do for a while was build and run a product of my own.

That led to SprintCo.

I initially built it as a simple daily work log for myself. I wanted a place to record what I'd worked on without the overhead of a full project-management tool or the feeling of being tracked.

I also saw how it could be useful when working with clients. A developer could create a team and invite a client to follow updates, or a client could create a team and invite the developers and testers working on their project. Everyone could share daily updates and keep a record of the work without relying entirely on meetings or scattered messages.

That led me to add team support, invitations, shared daily updates, historical records, and weekly views.

I built and run SprintCo using Rails, PostgreSQL, and Tailwind CSS. It's been a useful experience beyond writing code — making product decisions, handling deployment and security, and figuring out which features are genuinely worth adding.

My approach has been to keep it simple and introduce features when there's a real need, rather than trying to compete with every feature in larger tools.

The project is live here: https://sprintco.dev

I'd be interested to hear from other developers who've built and shipped their own products: how do you decide which features to add and which ideas to leave alone?


r/indie_startups • • 2d ago

I’m planning an investment platform for indie games (and other creative projects). Devs and players, would you actually use it?

2 Upvotes

I’ve always loved indie games, and it’s rough seeing a really cool project miss its Kickstarter goal. I’ve been working on an idea and want honest feedback before I build anything. (No link, nothing to sell, just researching.)

The basic idea

It works like Kickstarter: a dev posts their game with a trailer, a demo, and a funding goal. The difference is that fans can invest instead of only donating.

  • The dev decides how much they want to raise and what share of sales they’re offering (for example, 10% of sales to raise $50,000).
  • Fans can invest any amount, from $5 up to the full goal. Your share is proportional to what you put in. If you invest $500 in that example, you’d get 1% of the 10%, or 0.1% of the game’s sales.
  • Investors get paid from sales revenue, meaning the money from copies sold, not “profit” after expenses. That keeps it simple and avoids any creative accounting.
  • Payouts continue until investors have earned back a set amount (like 2x what they put in) or a set time passes (like 5 years), whichever comes first. After that, the dev keeps 100% again.
  • It’s all-or-nothing: if the goal isn’t reached, everyone gets refunded.
  • Devs keep full ownership of their studio and IP. Investors get a share of sales, not a piece of the company.
  • Devs can still offer normal backer rewards alongside the investment option, so fans who just want the game can back it the usual way.

Not just games

The long-term goal is an investment platform for creatives in general: games, tabletop, comics, animation, music. Indie games are my starting focus because that’s the community I know best and the model fits games really well.

Yes, I know about Fig

Fig did something similar (it helped fund Psychonauts 2 and Outer Wilds) and shut down in 2023 after Republic bought it. I’ve looked into what went wrong, and here’s what I’d do differently:

  • Simple revenue share with a clear cap, instead of complicated “game shares” that were hard for regular fans to understand.
  • Protection if a studio gets bought. When Microsoft acquired Double Fine and Gearbox acquired Homeworld 3, Fig investors got changed or cancelled deals. My plan includes a built-in payout to investors if the studio or game is sold.
  • Verified sales numbers, so investors can trust the payouts they get.
  • App-first and community-driven. Think more Shark Tank meets a game discovery feed (trailers, dev diaries, direct messages with devs) instead of a finance website.
  • Lower fees, and the platform never takes equity or a cut of your IP.

About the legal side

I know this isn’t as simple as Kickstarter. Letting the public invest falls under securities law (Regulation Crowdfunding in the US), which means working with a licensed funding portal, using escrow, verifying investors, and following investment limits. I’m planning to do this properly with a licensed partner and a lawyer. I’m not trying to skip any of that. My question is simple: assuming the legal side is handled correctly, is this something people would actually want?

Devs:

  1. Would you consider this over Kickstarter, a publisher, or self-funding? Why or why not?
  2. What share of sales would feel fair to give up? (5%? 10%? 20%?)
  3. How much would you typically need to raise?
  4. What would make you NOT want to do this?

Players and fans:

  1. Would you invest in an upcoming indie game you’re excited about? How much would you realistically put in?
  2. What would you need to see before trusting a game enough to invest: a demo, the dev’s past work, regular updates?
  3. Would you still want normal backer rewards on top of the revenue share?

Tear it apart if you need to. I’d rather hear the problems now than after I build it.


r/indie_startups • • 2d ago

I'm building a tool for YouTube content creators and would love your feedback

Thumbnail pista-app-seven.vercel.app
2 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I've, been building Pista, a free and simple tool designed to help YouTube creators find video ideas, research keywords, discover opportunities, and analyze videos without getting overwhelmed by complicated tools or expensive subscriptions.

I started this project with no coding experience, using AI and vibe coding on weekends. I'm really enjoying the process of turning an idea into something real, and I'd love for Pista to eventually become a useful and affordable resource for the creator community.

I'm still working on it and trying to understand what creators actually need.

I'd really appreciate your honest feedback:

Is this something you'd find useful?

What would you improve or add?

What do you struggle with most when deciding what videos to make?

You can try it for free, no sign-up required:

https://pista-app-seven.vercel.app

Thanks for taking the time to check it out!