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ShipFast
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Researched profile. Starter Story's AI research system compiled this page from 59 public sources — the founder didn't write it. Automated research can misread or misattribute a source, so treat figures as best-effort. How this works →
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How ShipFast Grew

NextJS boilerplate for rapid startup launches

Channels

24 channels · grouped by how ShipFast grows

  • Twitter

    · 7 mentions · 7 sources
    “For two-and-a-half years before launching Shipfast, Marc did this relentlessly on Twitter. He posted updates about his projects. He answered questions from followers. He shared stories about failed products—17 projects failed before Shipfast. He showed his income numbers, his struggles, and his v...”
    high
    Show 6 more quotes
    “For a year, I shared daily progress on Twitter. Most tweets went completely ignored. But every now and then, one post would click and bring in dozens of signups. The real lesson wasn’t about writing the perfect tweet — it was that consistency beats quality. By showing up every day, I built trust....”
    high
    “Since his launch on Product Hunt, more than half of ShipFast’s entire website traffic has come from his personal brand on Twitter which has over 40,000 followers. Marc attributes his Twitter growth and derived traffic to “building in public", meaning sharing the journey of building his projects o...”
    high
    “Twitter, c'est fin 2021. C'est fou. Oui. Fin 2021, tu commences ton Twitter. Oui. Et du coup, juste entre 2019 et 2021, tu fais quoi ? ... En fait via Peter je crois que j'ai compris que si tu as des gens qui te suivent un peu en ligne, tu ne repars pas de zéro parce que même si tu fais un nouvea...”
    high
    “Mark Liu is a perfect example of the Bid in Public approach, a strategy where developers share their progress and experiences in real time during product development. If your social media content is highly professional within your industry, it will attract attention from insiders. Mark Liu has dr...”
    medium
    “Rather than rely on a single platform, Marc also shared the launch on Reddit, Hacker News, and Twitter. Each community brought fresh eyes.”
    medium
    “I discovered my role models on Twitter: Pieter Levels, Danny Postma, and other cool kids working solo on their projects from anywhere in the world, making much more money than needed to live comfortably.”
    medium

  • Reddit

    · 5 mentions · 5 sources
    “The third part of the strategy was sharing the product organically on Reddit and Hacker News—places where indie hackers hang out. On Reddit, Marc posted a video demo of Shipfast on r/SideProject, a subreddit with 120,000+ members. The post got 100+ upvotes, which meant tens of thousands of people...”
    high
    Show 4 more quotes
    “Marc has also been able to drive traffic to his website and get paying users via Reddit. He did this all organically by sharing his startup on relevant subreddits like r/SideProject which has 120,000 members. Here he made a post which simply was a video demo of ShipFast and this post got 100 upvo...”
    high
    “Et tu découvres Product Hunt, tu découvres aussi le fait de launch sur Hacker News, Product Hunt, Reddit et tous ces sites qui te permettent d'avoir du trafic.”
    medium
    “Rather than rely on a single platform, Marc also shared the launch on Reddit, Hacker News, and Twitter. Each community brought fresh eyes. Subreddits related to web development and startups drove an initial wave of signups, while Hacker News threads delivered technical feedback.”
    high
    “The app is free so I could launch it everywhere on Reddit. One post went viral and got 10K visitors.”
    high

  • Product Hunt

    · 4 mentions · 4 sources
    “When Marc launched Shipfast on August 23, 2023, he didn't just post it and hope for the best. He engaged with other products on the platform, built excitement by announcing the launch on his Twitter account, and made a fun promotional video for his product page.”
    high
    Show 3 more quotes
    “The rapid success of ShipFast has stemmed from three key marketing strategies, consisting of utilizing: Product Hunt, Twitter and Reddit.”
    medium
    “He launched it on Product Hunt, drove 3,000 visitors, and made $6,000 in 48 hours.”
    high
    “My marketing is mostly launching. And I see how people react. And I’ve seen that with some product like ShipFast, I have really good feedback and traction from the launch.”
    high

  • Integrations

    · 2 mentions · 2 sources
    “My first batch of DataFast customers came from my course CodeFast and my boilerplate ShipFast — where I upsold my analytics tool. When people deploy a site built with ShipFast, I nudge them to try DataFast”
    high
    Show 1 more quote
    “It includes payments, it includes emails and all that. Back then it was just a way for me to ship faster.”
    medium

  • LinkedIn

    · 1 mention
    “I always launch on Twitter as well. I make videos that I think I remember you were one of the first person who made a comment on that Joe Rogan video.”
    high

  • Craft fairs

    · 1 mention
    “Mark Liu created a website to host his course for sales and then thought, what if other indie hackers want to create courses and sell them too? They don't need to build a website from scratch because he's already built one. So he started selling the code of the website to other hackers.”
    medium

  • Hacker News

    · 1 mention
    “C'est comme ça que certaines personnes, au tout début tu as 10 personnes qui te découvrent et du coup tu crées une image, les gens voient quel type de personnalité tu as et tout. Et tu découvres Product Hunt, tu découvres aussi le fait de launch sur Hacker News, Product Hunt, Reddit et tous ces s...”
    medium

  • Content marketing

    · 1 mention
    “I started to make fun launch videos. People enjoyed and shared them, creating a viral loop.”
    high

  • AppSumo Launch

    · 1 mention
    “Marc Lou doesn't separate his personal brand from ShipFast. His journey (16 startups in 2 years), credibility (Product Hunt Maker of the Year), and audience (135,000+ Twitter followers) are all leveraged as business assets. This creates trust that can't be replicated by competing products and pro...”
    medium

  • User feedback

    · 1 mention
    “In May 2025, I added a customer chat box on every page Instantly, users started sharing what they wanted. Patterns emerged. I turned those into a feedback board where people could vote. The roadmap became obvious. Instead of building features based on my assumptions, I built what users actually c...”
    high

  • Sampling

    · 1 mention
    “Once, when making a promotional video for one of his products called By Dispute, he created a parody video. He photoshopped himself into a scene with Leonardo DiCaprio, making it look like he was pitching his product to the movie star. That video did really well. It got over 7,000 views on YouTube.”
    medium

  • Demo in-store

    · 1 mention
    “Every time I see something that is useful, I’ll add it to ShipFast. So I shipped ZenVoice yesterday using ShipFast and out of ZenVoice, there were two UI components that I made for the landing page that were nice. I thought I could reuse later. And so I went back to ShipFast. And I added those tw...”
    high

  • Paid social ads

    · 1 mention
    “I push it live before going on holiday to Hong Kong. And then I just woke up to the launch. And at the time, I was making maybe 3,000 to 4,000 a month and I would wake up to the launch with something like 3k already made within 24 hours.”
    high

  • PR

    · 1 mention
    “Marc was making $50,000+ per month, which got media attention. Newsletters wrote about him. YouTubers covered his story. Podcasts interviewed him. All this publicity drove more traffic to his website, which created more revenue, which got more coverage.”
    medium

  • Community marketing

    · 1 mention
    “ShipFast isn't just selling code; it's providing access to a community of like-minded builders. This community serves multiple strategic purposes: Creates additional value beyond the code itself ... Generates organic testimonials and success stories ...”
    medium

  • Business cards

    · 1 mention
    “My first batch of DataFast customers came from my course CodeFast and my boilerplate ShipFast — where I upsold my analytics tool. When people deploy a site built with ShipFast, I nudge them to try DataFast One-time products are low-commitment, so they convert better. And once someone has already ...”
    high

  • Optimize conversion rates

    · 1 mention
    “Because I let customers decide the roadmap, I ended up building a feature I never thought I needed: Funnels That’s how I discovered the biggest bottleneck in my SaaS: Onboarding. Only 6% of users who signed up ever started a free trial. So I went back and stripped the onboarding flow down to the ...”
    high

  • Offline Campainging

    · 1 mention
    “I build it live on YouTube. I set up my stream. I have a little microphone and I go live every morning and I would spend two to six or eight hours live building the product. And then I get people’s feedback.”
    high

  • Republish Content

    · 1 mention
    “Thanks to side-project marketing and launch videos, Habits Garden reached 10,000 users in January 2023.”
    high

  • Word of mouth

    · 1 mention
    “It created momentum. Part 2: Twitter and 'Building in Public' ... Because of this consistent presence, when Marc tweeted about Shipfast, his followers already trusted him.”
    medium

  • Online Comic

    · 1 mention
    “I designed features to be shareable. Because people only share what feels valuable and beautiful to them. It’s a heuristic that forces me to aim for the best. If it isn’t good enough to screenshot, it isn’t good enough. That’s how I built things like the real-time globe with avatars, customer jou...”
    high

  • Referral Program

    · 1 mention
    “Affiliate Program: Paying up to $124 per sale to create a scalable acquisition channel”
    medium

  • Product expansion

    · 1 mention
    “Every time I see something that is useful, I’ll add it to ShipFast.”
    medium

  • Online Community

    · 1 mention
    “Someone mentioned do you have a Discord community? And I was like, why not? Let’s give it a try and I opened the Discord. And I made it part of the premium plan. And people started to join and like share, like crazy help, like debug each other, vote each others.”
    high

How 2,547 businesses grow

Of businesses with mapped growth channels, the share using each — ShipFast’s highlighted.
  • Referral/Word-of-mouth
    68% ◀
  • Social media
    57% ◀
  • Search/SEO
    57% ◀
  • Email
    47%
  • Community
    31% ◀
  • Content/Inbound
    30% ◀
  • Partnerships
    28% ◀
  • Events
    23% ◀
  • Paid ads
    23% ◀
  • Press/PR
    17% ◀
  • Outbound/Sales
    14%
  • Marketplaces/App stores
    7% ◀
  • Brand Authenticity
    2%
  • Customer interviews
    2%
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