Shipping as an Indie? Build Like It’s a Letter to One Person

It starts with a single voice.

Not a product roadmap. Not a Google Doc full of feature gaps. Just a murmur. One person. One heartbeat. One use case you can’t unsee.

That’s how Voicenotes began.

Not chasing trends. Not benchmarking against Apple Notes. But locking in—so tightly you start building like you’re solving it for a friend. A real one. With a name, a face, a voice in your head.

Because the best products? They’re never made for “users.” They’re built for someone.

Zoom in until it hurts

That’s what Jijo Sunny does. He doesn’t build for the market. He builds like a novelist writes. For one reader. One moment. One tension they can’t shake.

You can feel it in the product. No bloat. No fluff. Just obsession. The kind of care that survives App Store clones and AI copycats.

Because if you build from conviction—not competition—you make something Apple can’t: Personality. Taste. Soul.

What if Apple ships a clone?

They will. They always do. More features. More polish. More integrations. But mass-market tools blur at the edges. They lose the “for me” feeling.

Jijo doesn’t flinch. Because Voicenotes isn’t for “everyone.” It’s for the obsessed founder. The scattered student. The one who just needs to get it down before the idea slips away.

That’s the edge. That’s the moat. Not tech. Not speed. Just care.

Refuse to compete. Dare to listen.

Most builders chase. They peek at competitors. They optimize for parity. They copy features hoping users will stay.

But copying is follower energy. It’s safe. And it’s invisible.

Jijo does the opposite: He gets dangerously close to his user. Not to sell— To serve.

That’s how you build something that feels like it knows you. Because it does.

Focus isn’t a strategy. It’s survival.

Zoom in on one workflow. One pain. One daily grind. Let your early users gather like gravity around that signal.

Because when it’s built for someone— That someone shows up again.

They don’t churn. They tell friends. They fight for you.

You don’t need a “go-to-market” plan. You need a truth that lands so specifically, it can’t help but echo.

A simple test for every indie:

At every product fork, ask: Does this serve my one true user? Not: Does this look good on Product Hunt. Not: Will this feature close the gap with X. Not: What would Apple do.

Just— Would they love this?

Singular focus creates compounding pull

• You move faster.

• You notice what others gloss over.

• You start leading without even trying.

It’s not strategy. It’s intimacy.

That’s what turns apps into habits. Tools into tribes. Founders into artists.

So build like a letter. Not a launch.

Write to one person. Design for one morning. Code for one pain point that hasn’t left your head in days.

And if it lands? Others will feel it too.

Because specificity scales. Conviction compounds. And the product you built for one—

Becomes the thing nobody else can quite copy.