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A founder community that turned meetups, matching and memberships into about $50K of projected annual revenue without outside funding.
$20K last year · about $50K projected this year · 200 active founders
Fewer bars = easier, cheaper, or faster for an AI-assisted solo builder. Editorial judgments based on the case details.
Anthony Castrio started Indie Worldwide after organizing in-person indie hacker meetups in Medellin, Mexico City, Montreal and Boston while traveling. The meetups repeatedly disappeared when he moved on, so he built a virtual community that could persist across locations.
The quick-reference card — acquisition channels, replication playbook, and risk map — is members-only.
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Two production-grade prompts per idea — a full build spec and an SEO growth plan — plus 10 tailored build specs a week. Members only.
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Data credibility: Founder interview with Anthony Castrio. The $40 matching price, about $10K first-year revenue, about $20K following-year revenue, roughly $50K current-year projection and about 200 active founders are self-reported and unaudited. The interview describes the community’s formats and acquisition channels but does not provide a financial dashboard or current membership price.
The first customers were already inside the free community. Anthony had spent time organizing meetups and maintaining Indie Worldwide, so the initial audience did not need to be acquired from a cold market.
The first dollar came from a one-time $40 payment for the founder matching product. The offer was not a broad membership with a long feature list; it was a simple promise to introduce a founder to another relevant founder once a week.
The flywheel began with repeated founder interactions, not software. Weekly meetups, mastermind sessions, interviews and group challenges gave members reasons to return, while the lunch-club matching helped them form relationships with people they might not otherwise meet.
Indie Worldwide spent about a year and a half free while Anthony searched for a business model, and he kept freelancing while trying other startup ideas. That period worked because the community itself remained useful even before it was monetized.
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