Nikolas Köppl’s Post

Everyone thinks billion-dollar companies require years of planning and massive funding. But what if I told you a frustrated programmer built a $7.5 billion empire in just 10 days? 🤯 April 2005: The entire Linux development team, thousands of the world's best programmers, suddenly loses access to their critical workflow system due to a licensing dispute. Most teams would panic. But "Linus Torvalds" got angry... then got coding. "The 10-Day Sprint That Changed Everything" Frustrated by being held hostage by proprietary software, Linus disappeared into his home office. His mission? Build something better that no company could ever take away. Day 1: Started from scratch. Day 10: Had a working system managing its own development He called it "Git" (British slang for "unpleasant person") because, in his words: "I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself." "The Accidental Goldmine" Here's what blew my mind: Linus never intended to make money from Git. He released it for free. But entrepreneurs saw the opportunity he created: → GitHub built a platform around Git (sold for $7.5B to Microsoft) → GitLab created DevOps tools (peaked at $11B valuation) → Entire ecosystems emerged worth hundreds of billions 📈 The Numbers Today: • 93.87% market dominance in version control • 100+ million developers use GitHub globally • 5.2 billion contributions made in 2024 alone • 90% of Fortune 500 companies depend on this technology The surprising part? Microsoft paid nearly 30x annual revenue for GitHub not for its profits, but to own developer mindshare. Today, that "crazy" price looks genius. ✅ The Universal Lesson: Sometimes the most valuable businesses aren't built to be businesses at all. They're built to solve real problems for real people. Linus created something genuinely useful and gave it away freely. The result? An entire ecosystem where everyone could capture value in their own way. What problem are you solving that could become tomorrow's invisible infrastructure?👇 #Innovation #Business #OpenSource #Success #Entrepreneurship #Future #Opportunity

Before VC backing, before a massive team, GitHub's entire company was a simple, radical bet: What if developers reviewed each other’s code in public? That bet built more than a tool. It built the backbone of modern software. It built a culture of transparency so robust that Microsoft acquired it for $7.5 billion. The lesson isn’t that code reviews are useful. The lesson is that trust is the only infrastructure that truly scales. Your investors aren’t betting on your idea. Your engineers aren’t betting on your tech stack. Your customers aren’t betting on your roadmap. They are all betting on one thing: their trust in you. Code reviews are the continuous, unforgiving audit of that trust. They transform individual competence into systemic reliability. They are the mechanism that turns a codebase into a credible asset. Velocity isn’t how fast you can break things. It’s how fast you can move with confidence. Stop seeing reviews as a brake pedal. And start seeing it as the engine of trust. Because in the end, your start-up growth doesn’t matter if no one trusts what you’ve built.

Moving fast feels exciting... until speed turns into tech debt. It’s basically like borrowing from your own future. When I was working with a tiny startup team (literally just me and one backend dev), he told me something that stuck: “For an MVP, it just has to work. Don’t worry about best practices or scaling. Just get it done.” And honestly, at that stage, he was right, it worked for impressing investors and getting something live. But here’s the issue: that same MVP mindset often sneaks into production code today. Builders, technical or not, end up shipping with tape and glue instead of structure. And sooner or later, the cracks show: ⚡️ Scaling bottlenecks 🔒 Security gaps 🧩 Architecture nightmares 💥 Fragile deployments The fix? Plan clearly, build guardrails, then ship. Solid foundations beat fragile hacks. Have you ever been on a team where that MVP fast-hack approach overstayed its welcome? What happened when it hit real users? #TechDebt #SoftwareEngineering #StartupLife #DevCommunity #Productivity #LearnWithNayan Credits: https://lnkd.in/dJ6avkny

After working on 37+ products that reached millions of users, I noticed one clear pattern: Founders who plan scalability from day one grow faster, with less stress and lower costs. Here are 3 things that actually work 👇 1️⃣ Start with a clear tech stack. Pick tools that can scale, not just work for today. (Flutter, NodeJS, Firebase... all let you move fast and scale easily.) 2️⃣ Track early. Learn faster. Add analytics from MVP stage, know what users love before you spend on marketing. 3️⃣ Don’t chase features. Chase retention. It’s not about how many features you add. It’s about how many users stay after using them. Most startups fail not because they built the wrong product, but because they built the right product the wrong way. If you’re building your MVP now and want to scale it right, Let’s talk. I can share what worked for 37+ founders who made it big. 🚀

random thoughts that were in my head when I first started cloneanysite in aug 2025: I entered the indie SaaS space in early 2025, dedicating 12-16 hours a day to building, coding MVPs with my job, testing APIs, launching landing pages, engaging on indie hacker forums, and doing everything else you can imagine. I noticed mid- and large-sized SaaS founders consistently gaining traction through referrals and community incentives, like early access to tools, partnerships, and exclusive beta invites. > I thought to myself: wow, having a strong brand must be amazing. I want to be like them. it’s so inspiring. they probably worked hard for a long time to reach that level. when I launched cloneanysite in aug 2025, I saw creators earning 2k+ users and $500 MRR/mo within months. many also made significant progress with eazyads.co and other projects. > again, I thought: It’s incredible to build a brand with a loyal following. they onboard users and climb product leaderboard mindshare quite easily. I want to be like them. it’s inspiring. building a decent-sized SaaS like theirs must definitely be highly +EV. never once in my entire time as a solo founder have I resented the indie hackers who were winning, whether through referrals, content, or other means. Instead, I followed them closely, observed their strategies, and tried to emulate their success. that said, I’m human, so I’ll admit to feeling envious or jealous at times. but those feelings only fuel my energy and motivation to get to the same level like them. If they can do it, I believe I can too. can anyone become a design engineer, product manager, or founder? no, I don’t think so. the barriers to entry are quite high. can anyone become an indie SaaS builder? absolutely, 100% imho. the only requirements are a domain, some code, and a willingness to learn by doing.

Vibe code an MVP. Last weekend, one of our Venture Miner teams went from zero to a working prototype in just two days. Here’s what made it possible (and what most coders overcomplicate): 1. Scope Cut → They killed 80% of features. Focused on 1 job-to-be-done. 2. Default Stack → No custom infra. Just Next.js, Firebase, and Stripe. 3. Ruthless Demo → Built only what they could show in 5 minutes. Result? A live product was demoed to 40 peers—working, not vaporware. Reminder: MVP ≠ “minimal everything.” It’s maximum clarity on what matters now. If you had 48 hours, what would your MVP look like? Join us: https://t.me/vmineracademy

I’ve launched something I’ve been thinking about for a while 𝗕𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗸 A space where I share what I’ve learned building and scaling software not just writing code, but understanding how great products actually grow. It’s not just about better code… it’s about building things that grow, scale, and truly matter. Here’s one snippet video on planning before you start building something every developer and tech creator should think about. 🎥 𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲: 👉 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗧𝘂𝗯𝗲: https://lnkd.in/gkiSBTcd 👉 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺: https://lnkd.in/g5Azu2TV Let’s build better products and better developers. 🚀 #BinaryMonk #SoftwareDevelopment #EngineeringLeadership #DeveloperGrowth #TechCareer

🚀 Open-source keeps shaping the future of software! GitHub just rolled out a new update that makes it easier for developers to discover, share, and collaborate on projects. The focus is on improving search and accessibility, so finding the right repositories and tools is now faster than ever. 🔍 Why it matters: Better discoverability means less time searching, more time building. Open collaboration fosters innovation at scale. Developers and teams can now connect with the right projects seamlessly. This is another big step toward making GitHub not just a code host, but the global hub of open-source innovation. 💡 Excited to see how this helps indie devs, startups, and enterprises speed up their projects! #GitHub #OpenSource #Developers #Collaboration

🚀 Where are all the technical founders? Last month, a friend mentioned their portfolio skewed heavily toward non-technical founding teams. When I asked why, they said: "That's just who shows up." That answer stuck with me. Not because technical founders don't exist, but because it reveals a fundamental selection bias in how we source deals. Here's what's actually happening: Technical founders don't need permission to start. If you can code, you ship an MVP in a week, put it in front of real users, and iterate based on what you learn. No pitch deck required. No £200K pre-seed round just to hire your first engineer. This creates different funding timelines. Non-technical founders often need capital up front to build the product. Technical founders can bootstrap to traction, sometimes even profitability, before they ever think about raising. And many choose not to raise at all. I've met founders running £1M+ ARR businesses who've never taken a single investor meeting. For them, staying bootstrapped means maintaining control, moving at their own pace, and keeping the thing they built exactly as they envisioned it. So if you want to meet technical founders earlier, you need to show up where they actually are. Not at pitch competitions or polished demo days. Try hack nights, open-source communities, developer Discord servers, and local meetups where people build things for the sake of building. That's where ideas become products before they become companies. The reality is simple: many of the best technical founders are shipping quietly, iterating in public, and already building their next thing. They're just not raising for it yet. Different paths. Same potential. You just have to look in different places.

I built my first SaaS in 3 months using no-code tools. It failed spectacularly. Not because the idea was bad. Not because we lacked users. It failed because we couldn't scale past 500 customers without the whole thing falling apart. Low-code platforms are incredible for MVPs and early validation. But they're a ticking time bomb for growth-stage startups. Here's what I wish I knew then: 1. No-code ≠ No technical debt 2. API limits will strangle you 3. Custom features become nightmares 4. Costs spiral as you scale The hard truth? At some point, you need real code. But when? The sweet spot: Use no-code until you have 100 paying customers or $10k MRR. Then start the transition to a custom stack. It's a delicate balance. Move too early, you waste resources. Too late, and you're rebuilding mid-flight. I've helped dozens of non-technical founders navigate this transition. The key? Plan for it from day one. Building something? I'd love to hear your tech stack strategy. Or if you're stuck, drop me a DM. Happy to share more insights from the trenches.