How ShipFast got its users

Name the asset first. shipfa.st's own page sells Marc Lou as Product Hunt Maker of the Year 2023 with 135,000+ X followers, earned by shipping 16 startups in public before ShipFast existed. That feed is why the Aug 31 2023 Product Hunt launch took #2 of the day. Without it, a Product Hunt launch returns nothing, so do not open there. Give the repo free to 20 people already stuck wiring Stripe or auth this week, and ask only that they ship and tell you what broke.

done whenTen of your twenty free seats have pushed code within two weeks. If people take the repo and never open it, the promise is wrong, not your reach.

ShipFast was not researched, it was extracted. Marc pulled the Stripe, Google OAuth, magic link, Mailgun and SEO wiring he had already re-pasted across his own projects into one repo in about a week. The founder-led credibility is that he was his own first user 16 times over. If you have not built the same setup at least five times, for yourself or for clients, you have nothing to package and no story behind it. Build the repeat first, then sell the residue.

done whenYou can name five past projects where you copied the same auth, payment and email plumbing. If you have to invent that list, the boilerplate is speculation.

Sell the outcome and let buyers supply the evidence. The headline is 'Ship your startup in days, not weeks', and every quote on shipfa.st is a result, not praise: 'I launched a week and a half ago and I'm at $450 MRR', 'I managed to exit & sell for 5 figures in a few weeks', 'I shipped in 6 days as a noob coder'. Ask each buyer exactly two things: what did you ship, what did it make. Throw away compliments about the code, they convince no one.

done whenYour last five testimonials each contain a number the customer earned or a date they shipped. If they read 'great product' or 'well documented', you collected the wrong thing.

Build the proof page that publishes without you. shipfa.st/leaderboard ranks customer startups by revenue pulled straight from each founder's own Stripe connection, opt-in, refreshed hourly, split monthly and all-time. Customers link to it because they want to be on it. This is the direct substitute for a founder timeline: it posts fresh proof every hour whether or not you have followers or feel like tweeting.

done whenAt least three customers have agreed to publish a live number about their own results. If nobody will be measured in public, they do not believe the promise worked for them.

Rent many small audiences instead of needing one large one. ShipFast pays 30% at zero referrals, 40% at three, 50% plus a free seat at ten, with the cookie widening from 30 to 60 days as the tier climbs. Buyers are indie hackers with tiny followings, and the ladder pushes them from one referral toward ten. The 5,000+ member Discord is where they watch each other launch and drop their links, so the referrals compound among strangers.

done whenOne buyer with under 1,000 followers sends a second paid referral without being chased. Two from the same person means the ladder works; one is luck.