As kids, we all crushed it in business and strategy games. But in reality, the same brains produce mediocre results. The gap between games and real life reveals the true obstacles on the path to wealth.
Exchange rate advantage, less competition, a bigger market, and AI flattening the language barrier — for ordinary people in China, making money overseas with AI tools might be the highest-ROI move right now.
Build in Public, launch on Product Hunt — everyone knows those. But the indie developers actually making money are using tactics you probably haven't thought of.
3,000 product listings with only 10 successes. 70+ projects with only a few hits. 50+ repos before one broke through. Indie dev isn't gambling—it's rolling dice. Roll once, you need luck. Roll a hundred times, you need math.
If the essence of human technology is boiling water and throwing rocks, then the essence of business is having goods and knowing how to shout. From street markets to the internet, the medium changes but the logic stays the same.
In the AI era, building products is easier than ever. But the story of an indie developer who quit his job and earned less than $1,000 in a year reveals the real challenge isn't development—it's distribution.
I checked my Xiaohongshu analytics and found an uncomfortable truth: algorithms systematically reward sensationalism and punish honest reporting.
