One developer. 30 apps. 30 days. Here's the story behind the experiment — who's building it, why, and what we're trying to learn.
I'm a solo indie developer who got tired of overthinking and decided to just build and ship. The idea is simple: 30 apps in 30 days, each one tested with real users on TikTok and Instagram.
I've been building web projects for a while, but I kept falling into the trap of polishing things that nobody ever saw. This challenge is my way of forcing myself to launch fast, learn faster, and document everything honestly — the wins and the embarrassing failures.
IndieLab isn't a company. It's not a team. It's one person, one laptop, and a commitment to figure out what actually works in the wild.
Four reasons this challenge exists — beyond just building cool stuff.
Most ideas die in a notebook. This challenge forces real launches, no matter how rough or small the app is.
Not what works in theory. Real user behaviour — what people click, share, play again, or ignore entirely.
Everything gets written up — the results, the mistakes, the surprises. No fake success stories here.
The whole journey is shared openly, so others can learn from it, follow along, and maybe feel inspired to build too.
How the whole experiment is structured from start to finish.
One new mini web app every single day for 30 consecutive days. Each app is small enough to build in hours, but interesting enough that someone might actually want to share it.
Each app is coded from scratch — HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No templates, no drag-and-drop builders. Real code, launched the same day it's built.
Every app gets a short TikTok and Instagram Reel. Real people see it, try it, and share (or don't). That's the test. No paid ads, no tricks — just organic reach.
After 24 hours, the results are written up in the dev journal. Views, plays, shares, what worked, what didn't — all published openly on this site.
Same process, next day. Some apps will be forgotten in hours. Some might hit thousands of plays. The whole point is to find out which — and why.
The principles that guide every app we build and every post we write.
If an app flops, we say it flopped. If a reel got 12 views, we publish 12. No vanity metrics, no cherry-picked wins. Real data, always.
A shipped app that's 70% polished beats a perfect app that never launches. We move fast, and that means some rough edges. That's the deal.
We care about whether real people enjoy and share an app — not whether it looks impressive on a dashboard. If it's fun, that's the metric that matters.
The results, the learnings, the failures — all published here for anyone to read. If this journey helps even one other indie developer, that's worth something.
The first experiment is live. Play it, share it, and see if you're in the 2% who solve it first try.